TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, 1881.
My dear Krehbiel,—How could you ever think you had offended me? I was so sick—expecting to go blind and “lift the cover of my brains,” as the Spaniards say, and also ill-treated—that I had no spirit left to write. You will be glad to know that I have now got so fat that they call me “The Fat Boy” at the office.
Your letter gave me great pleasure. I think your plan—vague as it appears to be—will crystallize into a very happy reality. You have the sacred fire,—le vrai feu sacré,—and with health and strength must succeed. What you want, and what we all want, who possess devotion to any noble idea, who hide any artistic idol in a niche of the heart, is that independence which gives us at least the time to worship the holiness of beauty,—be it in harmonies of sound, of form, or of colour. You have strength, youth,—not in years only but in the vital resources of your being,—the true parfum de la jeunesse is perceptible in your thoughts and hopes and abilities to create; and you have other advantages I will not mention lest my observations might be “embarrassing.” I should be surprised indeed to hear in a few years from now that you had not been able to emancipate yourself from the fetters of that intensely vulgar and detestably commonplace thing, called American journalism,—of which I, alas! must long remain a slave. A prize in the Havana lottery might alone deliver me speedily; but I mostly rely on the hope of being able next year to open a little French bookstore in one of the tense quaint old streets. I had hoped to leave New Orleans; but with my eyes in their present condition, it would be folly to fight for life over again in some foreign country.
You say you hope to see some day a product of my pen more durable than a newspaper article. But I very much doubt if you ever will. My visual misfortune has reduced my hours of work to one third. I only work from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. You will see, therefore, that my work must be rapid. At 2 P.M. my eyes are usually worn out. But as you seem to have been interested in some of my little fantasies, I take the liberty of sending you several now. They are too flimsy, however, to be ever collected for publication, unless in the course of a few years I could write a hundred or so, and select one out of three afterward.
Your observations about Amphion and Orpheus prompted me to send you an old issue of the Item, in which you will find some very extraordinary observations on the subject of Greek music, translated from a charming work in my possession. But you will be disgusted, perhaps, to know that with all his erudition upon musical legends and musical history, Gautier had no ear for music. I almost feel like asking you not to tell that to anybody.
If you could pay a visit this winter I think you would have a pleasant time. I would like to aid you to get some of the Creole music I vainly promised you. I found it impossible so far to obtain any; yet had I the ability to write music down I could have obtained you some. If you were here I could introduce you to the President of the Athénée Louisianaise, who would certainly put you in the way of doing so yourself.
What I do hope to obtain for you—if you care about it—is Mexican music. Mexicans are common visitors here; and every educated Mexican can sing and play some instrument. They have sung here for us,—guitar accompaniment. Did you ever hear “El Aguardiente”? It is a very queer air,—boisterous, merry with a merriment that seems all the time on the point of breaking into a laugh—yet withal half-savage like some Spanish ditties. When they sang it here, it was with a chorus accompaniment of glasses held upside down and tapped with spoons.
Did you ever hear negroes play the piano by ear? There are several curiosities here, Creole negroes. Sometimes we pay them a bottle of wine to come here and play for us. They use the piano exactly like a banjo. It is good banjo-playing, but no piano-playing.
One difficulty in the way of obtaining Creole music or ditties is the fact that the French coloured population are ashamed to speak their patois before whites. They will address you in French and sing French songs; but there must be extraordinary inducements to make them sing or talk in Creole. I have done it, but it is no easy work.
Nearly all the Creoles here—white—know English, French, and Spanish, more or less well, in addition to the patois employed only in speaking to children or servants. When a child becomes about ten years old, it is usually forbidden to speak Creole under any other circumstances.
But I do not suppose this will much interest you. I shall endeavour—this time I’m afraid to promise—to secure you some Mexican or Havanese music; and will postpone further remarks to a future occasion.
I am sorry Feldwisch is ill; and I doubt if the Colorado air will do him good. When he was here I had a vague suspicion I should never see him again.
Remember me to those whom you know I like, and don’t think me dilatory if I don’t write immediately on receipt of a letter. I have explained the condition of affairs as well as I could.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, 1882.
How are you on Russian music?
You could make a terrible and taking operatic tragedy on Sacher-Masoch’s “Mother of God.” Get it, if you can, and read it. I send you specimen translation. It was written, I believe, in German.
Have you read in the “Kalewala” of the “Bride of Gold,”—of the "Betrothed of Silver"?
Have you read how the mother of Kullevo arose from her tomb, and cried unto him from the deeps of the dust?
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, 1882.
Dear K.,—It got dark yesterday before I could finish some extracts from “Kalewala” I wanted to send. They are just suggestion. I must also tell you I have only a very confused idea of the “Kalewala” myself, having read it through simply as a romance, and never having had time to study out all its mythological bearings and meanings. In fact my edition is too incomplete and confusedly arranged in any case: notes are piled in a heap at the end of each volume, causing terrible trouble in making references. See if you can get Castrén.
I want also to tell you that the Pre-Islamic legends I spoke of to you are admirably arranged for musical suggestion. The original narrator breaks into verse here and there, as into song: Rabiah, for instance, recites his own death-song, his mother answers him in verse. All Arabian heroic stories are arranged in the same way; and even in so serious a work as Ibn Khallikan’s great biographical dictionary, almost every incident is emphasized by a poetical citation.
Your idea about your style being heavy is really incorrect. Your art has trained you so thoroughly in choosing words that hit the exact meaning desired with the full strength of technical or picturesque expression, that the continual use of certain beauties has dulled your perception of their native force, perhaps. You do not feel, I mean, the full strength of what you write—in a style of immense compressed force. I would not wish you to think you had done your best, though; better to feel dissatisfied, but not good to underestimate yourself. I am now, you see, claiming the privilege of criticizing what I could not begin to do myself; but I believe I can see beauty where it exists in style, and I don’t want you to be underestimating your own worth.
Are your letters of a character suitable for book-form? Hoppin,—I think, is the name,—the author of “Old England,” a Yale professor, who made an English tour, formed one of the most charming volumes in such a way. Think it over.
Please never even suspect that my suggestions to you are made in any spirit of false conceit: a friend of the most limited artistic ability can often suggest things to a real artist, and even give him confidence.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, 1882.
KALEWALA
Dear K.,—The Society of Finnish Literature celebrated, in 1885, I think, the first centennial of the publication of the “Kalewala.”
There are two epics of Finland—just as most peoples have two epics—most people at least of Aryan origin; and the existence of such tremendous poems as the “Kalewala” and “Kanteletar” affords, in the opinion of M. Quatrefages, a strong proof that the Finns are of Aryan origin.
Loennrot was the Homer of Finland, the one who collected and edited the oral epic poetry now published under the head of the “Kalewala.”
But Léouzon Le Duc in 1845 published the first translation. (This I have.) Loennrot followed him three years later. Le Duc’s version contained only 12,100 verses. Loennrot’s contained 22,800. A second French version was subsequently made (which I have sent for). In 1853 appeared Castrén’s magnificent work on Finnish mythology, without which a thorough comprehension of the “Kalewala” is almost impossible.
You will be glad to know that the definitive edition of the "Kalewala,” as well as the work of Castrén, have both been translated into German by Herr Schiefner (1852-54, I believe is the date). Since then a whole ocean of Finnish poetry and folk-lore and legends has been collected, edited, published, and translated. (I get some of these facts from Mélusine, some from the work of the anthropologist Quatrefages.)
In order to get a correct idea of what you might do with the “Kalewala,” you must get it and read it. Try to get it in the German! I can give you some idea of its beauties; but to give you its movement, and plot, or to show you precisely how much operatic value it possesses, would be a task beyond my power. It would be like attempting to make one familiar with Homer in a week.
Once you have digested it, I can then be of real service, perhaps. You would need the work of Castrén also—which I cannot read. To determine the precise mythological value, rank, power, aspect, etc., of gods and demons, and their relation to natural forces, one must read up a little on the Finns. I have Le Duc, but he is deficient.
I don’t think that any epic surpasses that weirdest and strangest of runes. It is not so well known as it deserves. It gives you the impression of a work written by wizards, who spoke little to men, and much to nature—but the sinister and misty nature of the eternally frozen North.
You have in the “Kalewala” all the elements of a magnificent operatic episode,—weirdness, the passion of love, and the eternal struggle between evil and good, between darkness and light. You have any possible amount of melody,—a universe of inspiration for startling and totally novel musical themes. The scenery of such a thing might be made wilder and grander than anything imagined even by the Talmudically vast conceptions of Wagner.
An opera founded on the “Kalewala” might be made a work worthy of the grandest musician who ever lived: think of the possibilities suggested by the picture of Nature’s mightiest forces in contention,—wind and sea, frost and sun, darkness and luminosity.
I don’t like the antique theme you suggest, because it has been worn so threadbare that only a miracle could give it a fresh surface. Better search the “Kathā-sarit-Sāgara,” or some other Indian collection,—or borrow from the sublimely rough and rugged poetry of Pre-Islamic Arabia. You will never regret an acquaintance with these books—even at some cost. They epitomize all the thought, passion, and poetry of a nation and of a period.
I prefer the “Kalewala” to any other theme you suggest. I might suggest many others, but none so vast, so grand, so multiform. Nothing in the Talmud like that. The Talmud is a Semitic work; but nothing Jewish rises to the grandeur of Arabic poetry, which expresses the supreme possibilities of the Semitic mind,—except, perhaps, the Book of Job, which is thought by some to have had an Arabian creator.
What you say about the disinclination to work for years upon a theme for pure love’s sake, without hope of reward, touches me,—because I have felt that despair so long and so often. And yet I believe that all the world’s art-work—all that which is eternal—was thus wrought. And I also believe that no work made perfect for the pure love of art, can perish, save by strange and rare accident. Despite the rage of religion and of time, we know Sappho found no rival, no equal. Rivers changed their courses and dried up,—seas became deserts, since some Egyptian romanticist wrote the story of Latin-Khamois. Do you suppose he ever received $00 for it?
Yet the hardest of all sacrifices for the artist is this sacrifice to art,—this trampling of self under foot! It is the supreme test for admittance into the ranks of the eternal priests. It is the bitter and fruitless sacrifice which the artist’s soul is bound to make,—as in certain antique cities maidens were compelled to give their virginity to a god of stone! But without the sacrifice can we hope for the grace of heaven?
What is the reward? The consciousness of inspiration only! I think art gives a new faith. I think—all jesting aside—that could I create something I felt to be sublime, I should feel also that the Unknowable had selected me for a mouthpiece, for a medium of utterance, in the holy cycling of its eternal purpose; and I should know the pride of the prophet that had seen God face to face.
All this might seem absurd, perhaps, to a purely practical mind (yours is not too practical); but there is a practical side also. In this age of lightning, thought and recognition have become quadruple-winged, like the angels of Isaiah. Do your very best,—your very, very best: the century must recognize the artist if he is there. If he is not recognized, it is because he is not great. Have you faith in yourself? I know you are a great natural artist; I have absolute faith in you. You must succeed if you make the sacrifice of working for art’s sake alone.
Comparing yourself to me won’t do!—dear old fellow. I am in most things a botch! You say you envy me certain qualities; but you forget how those qualities are at variance with an art whose beauty is geometrical and whose perfection is mathematical. You also say you envy me my power of application!—If you only knew the pain and labour I have to create a little good work. And there are months when I cannot write. It is not hard to write when the thought is there; but the thought will not always come—there are weeks when I cannot even think.
The only application I have is that of persistence in a small way. I write a rough sketch and labour it over and over again for half a year, at intervals of ten minutes’ leisure—sometimes I get a day or two. The work done each time is small. But with the passing of the seasons the mass becomes noticeable—perhaps creditable. This is merely the result of system.
You may laugh at this letter if you please,—this friendly protest to one whom I have always recognized as my superior,—but there is truth in it. Think over the “Kalewala,” and write to
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, 1882.
My dear Krehbiel,—When I got your letter I felt as if a great load was lifted off me—the sky looked brighter and the world seemed a little sweeter than usual. As for me, you could have paid me no higher compliment. Glad you did not disapprove of the article.
Your clippings are superb. I think your style constantly gains in force and terseness. It is admirably crystallized; and I have not yet been able to form a permanent style of my own. I trust I will succeed in time; but in purity and conciseness you will always be my master, for your art has taught you style better than a thousand university professors could do. I suppose, however, you will always be slightly Gothic,—not harshly Gothic, but Middle Period,—making ornament always subordinate to the general plan. I shall always be more or less Arabesque,—covering my whole edifice with intricate designs, serrating my arches, and engraving mysticisms above the portals. You will be grand and lofty; I shall try to be at once voluptuous and elegant, like a colonnade in the mosque of Cordova.
I send you something your article on the Jubilee Singers makes me think of. It is from the pen of a marvellous writer, who long lived at Senegal. If you do not find anything new in it, return it; but if it can be of use to you, keep it. I hope to translate the whole work some day.
Have heard Patti; but did not understand her power until you explained it me.
TO H. E. KREHBIEL
New Orleans, 1882.
My dear Krehbiel,—Much as it pleased me to hear from you, I assure you that your letter is shocking. It is shocking to hear of anybody being compelled to work for seventeen hours a day. You have neither time to think, to study, to read, to do your best work, or to make any artistic progress—not even to hint of pleasure—while working seventeen hours a day. Nor is that all; I believe it injures a man’s health and capacity for endurance, as well as his style and peace of mind. You have a fine constitution; but if once broken down by over-straining the nervous system you will never get fully over the shock. It is very hard for me to believe that it is really necessary for you to do reportorial work and to write correspondence, unless you have a special financial object to accomplish within a very short space of time. The editorial work touching upon art matters which you are capable of doing for the Tribune might be done in the daytime; but what do you want to waste your brain and time upon reportorial work for? D—n reportorial work and correspondence, and the American disposition to work people to death, and the American delight in getting worked to death! Well, I have nothing more to say except to protest my hope that the seventeen-hours-a-day business is going to stop before long; for the longer it lasts the more difficult it will be for you to accomplish your ultimate purpose. The devil of overworking one’s self is that it renders it impossible to get fair and just remuneration for value given,—impossible also to create those opportunities for self-advancements which form the steps of the stairway to the artistic heaven,—impossible to maintain that self-pride and confident sense of worth without which no man, however gifted, can make others fully conscious of it. When you voluntarily convert yourself into a part of the machinery of a great daily newspaper, you must revolve and keep revolving with the wheels; you play the man in the treadmill. The more you involve yourself the more difficult it will be for you to escape. I said I had nothing further to observe; but I find I must say something more,—not that I imagine for a moment I am telling you anything new, but because I wish to try to impress anew upon you some facts which do not seem to have influenced you as I believe they ought to do.
Under all the levity of Henri Murger’s picturesque Bohemianism, there is a serious philosophy apparent which elevates the characters of his romance to heroism. They followed one principle faithfully,—so faithfully that only the strong survived the ordeal,—never to abandon the pursuit of an artistic vocation for any other occupation however lucrative,—not even when she remained apparently deaf and blind to her worshippers. The conditions pictured by Murger have passed away in Paris as elsewhere: the old barriers to ambition have been greatly broken down. But I think the moral remains. So long as one can live and pursue his natural vocation in art, it is a duty with him never to abandon it if he believes that he has within him the elements of final success. Every time he labours at aught that is not of art, he robs the divinity of what belongs to her.
Do you never reflect that within a few years you will no longer be the YOUNG MAN,—and that, like Vesta’s fires, the enthusiasm of youth for an art-idea must be well fed with the sacred branches to keep it from dying out? I think you ought really to devote all your time and energies and ability to the cultivation of one subject, so as to make that subject alone repay you for all your pains. And I do not believe that Art is altogether ungrateful in these days: she will repay fidelity to her, and recompense sacrifices. I don’t think you have any more right to play reporter than a great sculptor to model fifty-cent plaster figures of idiotic saints for Catholic processions, or certain painters to letter steamboats at so much a letter. In one sense, too, Art is exacting. To acquire real eminence in any one branch of any art, one must study nothing else for a lifetime. A very wide general knowledge may be acquired only at the expense of depth. But you are certainly right in thinking of the present for other reasons. Still, there is nothing so important, not only to success but to confidence, hope, and happiness, as good health and a strong constitution; and these you must lose if you choose to keep working seventeen hours a day! It is well to be able to do such a thing on a brief stretch, but it is suicide, moral and physical, to keep it up regularly. The rolling-mill hand, or the puddler, or the moulder, or the common brakeman on a railroad cannot keep up at such hours for a great length of time; and you must know that even hard labour is not so exhausting as brain-work. Don’t work yourself sick, old friend,—you are in a fair way to do it now.
TO JEROME A. HART
New Orleans, May, 1882.
Dear Sir,—Thanks for your kindly little article. I suppose it emanated from the same source as the charming translation of Gautier’s “Spectre de la Rose”—which we reproduced here, comparing it with the inferior translation—or rather mutilation—of the same poem which appeared in the ——.
Your translation of the epitaph seems to me superb as far as the first two lines go; but I can hardly agree with you as to the last. “La plus belle du monde” cannot be perfectly rendered by “the loveliest in the land”—which is a far weaker expression, by reason of the circumscribed idea it involves. “La plus belle du monde” is an expression of paramount force, simple as it is; it conveys the idea of beauty without an equal, not in any one country, but in the whole world. But I think your second line is a masterpiece of faithfulness; and, as you justly remark, my hobby is literalism.
TO JEROME A. HART
New Orleans, May, 1882.
Dear Sir,—I am very grateful for your kind letter and the pleasure of making your acquaintance even through an epistolary medium.
We have the same terrible proverb in Spanish that you cite in Italian; but it certainly can never apply to the Argonaut’s exquisite translations—preserving metre, colour, and warmth so far as seems to be possible. Still, I must say that I do not believe the poetry of one country can be perfectly reproduced in corresponding metre in the poetry of another: much that is even marvellous may be done,—yet a little of the original perfume evaporates in the process. Therefore the French gave prose translations of Heine and Byron: especially in regard to the German poet they considered translation in metrical form impossible. Nevertheless it is impossible also to refrain from attempting such things at times,—when the beauty of exotic verse seems to take us by the throat with the strangulation of pleasure. I have felt impelled occasionally to make an essay in poetical translation; the result has generally been a dismal failure, but I venture to send you a specimen which appears to be less condemnable than most of my efforts. I cannot presume to call it a translation,—it is only an adaptation.
As for the lines in “Clarimonde,” if the book ever reaches a second edition, I think I will be able to remedy some of their imperfections. Skaldic verse, I suppose, would be anachronistically vile; but something corresponding to the metre of “La Chanson de Roland,” unrhymed, what the French call vers assonances. This corresponds exactly with your lines in breadth; also in tone, as the accent of the assonance is thrown upon the last syllable of each line
P. S. Just received another note from you. Have seen the reproduction; I am exceedingly thankful for the compliment; and you know that so far as the copyright business is concerned, the credit must do the book too much good for Worthington to find any fault. I suppose you receive the Times-Democrat of New Orleans. I forward last Sunday’s issue, containing a little compliment to the Argonaut.
TO JEROME A. HART
New Orleans, December, 1882.
Dear Sir,—I venture to intrude upon you to ask a little advice, which as a brother-student of foreign literature you could probably give me better than any other person to whom I could apply. I am informed that in San Francisco there are enterprising and liberal-minded publishers, with whom unknown authors have a better chance than with the austere and pious publishers of the East. It would be a very great favour indeed, if you could give me some positive indication in this matter. I desire to find a publisher for that excessively curious but somewhat audacious book, “La Tentation de Saint Antoine,” of Flaubert, of which I have completed and corrected the MS. translation. You who know the original will probably agree with me that it would be little less than a literary crime to emasculate such a masterpiece in the translation. I have translated almost every word of the Heresiarch dispute, and the soliloquy of the god Crepitus, etc.
Consequently I have very little hopes of obtaining a publisher in New York or Boston. Do you think I could obtain one in San Francisco? I would be willing to advance something toward the cost of publishing,—if necessary.
Trust you will pardon my intrusion. I think the mutual interest we both feel in one branch of foreign literature is a fair excuse for my letter.
With thanks for previous many kindnesses,
TO JEROME A. HART
New Orleans, January, 1883.
Dear Sir,—Writing to San Francisco seems, after a sort, like writing to Japan or Malabar, so great is the lapse of time consumed in the transit of mail-matter, especially when one is anxious. I was quite so, fearing you might have considered my letter intrusive; but your exceedingly pleasant reply has dispelled all apprehension.
I am not surprised at the information; for the difficulty of finding publishers in the United States is something colossal, and my hopes burned with a very dim flame. I do not know about Worthington,—as he is absent in Europe, perhaps he will undertake the publication; but I fear, inasmuch as he is a Methodist of the antique type, that he will not. Now the holy Observer declared that the “Cleopatra” was a collection of “stories of unbridled lust without the apology of natural passion;” that "the translation reeked with the miasma of the brothel,” etc., etc.,—and Worthington was much exercised thereat. Otherwise I should have suggested the publication in English of “Mademoiselle de Maupin.”
I regret that I cannot tell you anything about the fate of “Cleopatra’s Nights,” but the publisher preserves a peculiar and sinister silence in regard to it. Perhaps he is sitting upon the stool of orthodox repentance. Perhaps he is preparing to be generous. But this I much doubt; and as the translations were published partly at my own expense, I am anxious only regarding the fate of my original capital.
Yes, I read the Critic—and considered that the observation on Gautier stultified the paper. If the translator had been dissected by the same hand, I should not have felt very unhappy. But I received some very nice private letters from Eastern readers, which encouraged me very much, and among them several requesting for other translations from Gautier.
“Salammbô" is the greatest, by far, of Flaubert’s creations, because harmonious in all its plan and purpose, and because it introduces the reader into an unfamiliar field of history, cultivated with astonishing skill and verisimilitude. It was twice written, like “La Tentation.” I translated the prayer to the Moon for the preface to “La Tentation.” I sincerely trust you will translate it. As for time, it is astonishing what system will accomplish. If a man cannot spare an hour a day, he can certainly spare a half-hour. I translated “La Tentation” by this method,—never allowing a day to pass without an attempt to translate a page or two. The work is audacious in parts; but I think nothing ought to be suppressed. That serpent-scene, the crucified lions, the breaking of the chair of gold, the hideous battles about Carthage,—these pages contain pictures that ought not to remain entombed in a foreign museum. I pray you may translate “Salammbô,”—a most difficult task, I fancy,—but one that you would certainly succeed admirably with. In my preface I spoke of “Salammbô” as the most wonderful of Flaubert’s productions.
“Herodias" is another story which ought to be translated. But I would write too long a letter if I dilate upon the French masterpieces.
I will only say that, in regard to recent publications, I have noticed some extraordinary novels which have not earned the attention they deserve. “Le Roman d’un Spahi” seems to me a miracle of art,—and “Le Mariage de Loti” contains passages of wonderful and weird beauty. These, with “Aziyadé,” are the productions of a French naval officer who signs himself Loti. Think I shall try to translate the first-named next year.
Verily the path of the translator is hard. The Petersons and Estes & Lauriat are deluging the country with bogus translations or translations so unfaithful to the original that they must be characterized as fraudulent. And the great American public like the stuff. One who translates for the love of the original will probably have no reward save the satisfaction of creating something beautiful, and perhaps of saving a masterpiece from desecration by less reverent bards. But this is worth working for.
With grateful thanks, and sincere hopes that you will not be deterred from translating “Salammbô” before some incompetent hand attempts it, I remain,
TO REV. WAYLAND D. BALL
New Orleans, 1882.
Dear Sir,—I am very grateful for the warm and kindly sympathy your letter evidences; and as I have already received about a half-dozen communications of similar tenor from unknown friends, I am beginning to feel considerably encouraged. The “lovers of the antique loveliness” are proving to me the future possibilities of a long cherished dream,—the English realization of a Latin style, modelled upon foreign masters, and rendered even more forcible by that element of strength which is the characteristic of Northern tongues. This no man can hope to accomplish; but even a translator may carry his stone to the master-masons of a new architecture of language.
You ask me about translations. I am sorry that I am not able to answer you hopefully. I have a curious work by Flaubert in the hands of R. Worthington (under consideration); and I have various MSS. filed away in the Cemetery of the Rejected. I tried for six years to obtain a publisher for the little collection you so much like, and was obliged at last to have them published partly at my own expense—a difficult matter for one who is obliged to work upon a salary. As for “Mademoiselle de Maupin,” much as I should desire the honour of translating it, I would dread to work in vain, or at best to work for the profit of some publisher who would have the translator at his mercy. If I could find a publisher willing to publish the work precisely as I would render it, I would be glad to surrender all profits to him; but I fancy that any American publisher would wish to emasculate the manuscript.
I am told that an English translation was in existence in London some years ago, but I could not learn the publisher’s name. Chatto & Windus, the printers of the admirable English version of the “Contes Drolatiques,” might be able to inform you further. But I am afraid that the English version was scarcely worthy of the original, owing to the profound silence of the press in regard to the matter. An American translation was being offered to New York publishers a few years ago. It was not accepted.
Although my own work is far from being perfect, I think I am capable of judging other translations of Gautier. The American translations are very poor (“Spirite,” “Captain Fracasse,” “Romance of the Mummy”), in fact they are hardly deserving the name. The English translations of Gautier’s works of travel are generally good. Henry Holt has reprinted some of them, I think.
But out of perhaps sixty volumes, Gautier’s works include very few romances or stories. I have never seen a translation of “Fortunio” or "Militona,”—perhaps because the sexual idea—the Eternal Feminine—prevails too much therein. “Avatar” has been translated in the New York Evening Post, I cannot say how well; but I have the manuscript translation of it myself, which I could never get a publisher to accept. Then there are the “Contes Humoristiques” (1 vol.) and about a dozen short tales not translated. Besides these, and the four translated already (“Fracasse,” “Spirite,” “The Mummy,” and possibly "Mademoiselle de Maupin”) Gautier’s works consist chiefly of critiques, sketches of travel, dramas, comedies—including the charmingly wicked piece, “A Devil’s Tear,”—and three volumes of poems.
My purpose now is to translate a series of works by the most striking French authors, each embodying a style of a school. I tried in the first collection to offer the best novelettes of Gautier in English, relying upon my own judgement so far as I could. Hereafter with leisure and health I shall attempt to do the same for about five others. I can understand your desire to see more of Gautier, and I trust you will some day; but when you have read “Mademoiselle de Maupin” and the two volumes of short stories, you have read his masterpieces of prose, and will care less for the remainder. His greatest art is of course in his magical poems; except the exotic poetry of the Hindoos, and of Persia, there is nothing in verse to equal them.
I must have fatigued your patience, however, by this time. With many thanks for your kind letter, which I took the liberty to send to Worthington, and hoping that you will soon be able to see another curious attempt of mine in print, I remain,
I forgot to say that in point of archæologic art the “Roman de la Momie” is Gautier’s greatest work. It towers like an obelisk among the rest. But the American translation would disappoint you very much; it is a poor concern all the way through. It would not be a bad idea to drop a line to Chatto & Windus, Pub., London, and enquire about English versions of Gautier. You know that Austin Dobson translated some of his poems very successfully indeed.
TO REV. WAYLAND D. BALL
New Orleans, November, 1882.
Dear Sir,—I translate hurriedly for you a few extracts from "Mademoiselle de Maupin,” some of which have been used or translated by Mallock, who has said many very clever things, but whose final conclusions appear to me to smack of Jesuitic casuistry.
Gautier was not the founder of a philosophic school, but the founder of a system of artistic thought and expression. His “Mademoiselle de Maupin” is an idyl, nothing more, an idyl in which all the vague longings of youth in the blossoming of puberty, the reveries of amorous youth, the wild dreams of two passionate minds, male and female, both highly cultivated, are depicted with a daring excused only by their beauty. I think Mallock wrong in his taking Gautier for a type of Antichrist. There are few who have beheld the witchery of an antique statue, the supple interlacing of nude limbs in frieze or cameo, who have not for the moment regretted the antique. Freethinkers as were Gautier, Hugo, Baudelaire, De Musset, De Nerval, none of them were insensible to the mighty religious art of mediævalism which created those fantastic and enormous fabrics in which the visitor feels like an ant crawling in the skeleton of a mastodon. With the growth of æstheticism there is a tendency to return to antique ideas of beauty, and the last few years has given evidence of a resurrection of Greek influence in several departments of art. But when the first revolution against prudery and prejudice had to be made in France, violent and extreme opinions were necessary,—the Gautiers and De Mussets were the Red Republicans of the Romantic Renaissance. Gautier’s poems utter the same plaints as his prose; mourning for the death of Pan, crying that the modern world is draped with funeral hangings of black, against which the white skeleton appears in relief. But the dreams of an artist may influence art and literature only; they cannot affect the crystallization of social systems or the philosophy of the eye.
They were all pantheists, these characters of Romanticism, some vaguely like old Greek dreamers, others deeply and studiously, like De Nerval, a lover of German mysticism: nature, whom they loved, must have whispered to them in wind-rustling and wave-lapping some word of the mighty truths she had long before taught to Brahmins and to Bodhisatvas under a more luxuriant sky. They saw the evil beneath their feet as a vast “paste” for which the great Statuary eternally moulded new forms in his infinite crucible, and into which old forms were remelted to reappear in varied shapes;—the lips of loveliness might blossom again in pouting roses, the light of eyes rekindle in amethyst and emerald, the white breast with its delicate network of veins be re-created in fairest marble. The worship within sombre churches, and chapels, seemed to them unworthy of the spirit of Universal Love;—to adore him they deemed no temple worthy save that from whose roof of eternal azure hang the everlasting lamps of the stars; no music, save that never-ending ocean hymn, ancient as the moon, whose words no human musician may learn.
I do not know whether Mallock translated Gautier himself, or made extracts; but Gautier’s madrigal pantheistic alone contains the germ of a faith sweeter and purer and nobler than the author of “Is Life Worth Living?” ever dreamed of, or at least comprehended. The poem is a microcosm of artistic pantheism; it contains the whole soul of Gautier, like one of the legendary jewels in which spirits were imprisoned.
Speaking of the “Decameron,” Petronius, Angelinus, and so forth, I must say that I think it the duty of every scholar to read them. It is only thus that we can really obtain a correct idea of the thought and lives of those who read them when first related or written. They are historical paintings, they are shadows of the past and echoes of dead voices. Brantôme or De Châteauneuf teach one more about the life of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries than a dozen ordinary historians could do. The influence of sex and sexual ideas has moulded the history of nations and formed national character; yet, except Michelet, there is perhaps no historian who has read history fairly in this connection. Without such influence there can be no real greatness; the mind remains arid and desolate. Every noble mind is made fruitful by its virility; we all have a secret museum in some corner of the brain, although our Pompeian or Etruscan curiosities are only shown to appreciative friends.
I have read your enclosed slip and am quite pleased with the creditable notice given you by way of introduction, and quite astonished that you should be so young. You have fine prospects before you, I fancy, if so successful already. Of course Congregational is so vague a word that I cannot tell how latitudinarian your present ideas are (for people in general), nor how broadly you may extend your studies of philosophy. Your correspondence with a freethinker of an extreme type would incline me to believe you were very liberally inclined, but I have often noticed that clergymen belonging even to the old cast-iron type may be classed among warm admirers of the beautiful and the true for their own sakes
P. S. Have just been looking at Mallock, and am satisfied that he made the translation himself because he translated the “virginity” by “purity.” No one but a Catholic or Jesuit would do that; only Catholics, I believe, consider the consummation of love intrinsically impure, or attempt to identify purity with virginity. Gautier would never have used the word—a word in itself impure and testifying to uncleanliness of fancy. I have translated it properly by the English equivalent. I suppose you know that Mallock’s aim is to prove that everybody not a Catholic is a fool.
ENCLOSURE
“Mademoiselle de Maupin,” petite édition, Charpentier, 2 vols.; vol. ii, page 12.
“I am a man of the Homeric ages;—the world in which I live is not mine, and I comprehend nothing of the social system by which I am surrounded. Never did Christ come into the world for me; I am as pagan as Alcibiades or Phidias. Never have I been to Golgotha to gather passion-flowers; and the deep river flowing from the side of the crucified, and making a crimson girdle about the world, has never bathed me with its waves.”
Page 21: “Venus may be seen; she hides nothing; for modesty is created for the ugly alone; and is a modern invention, daughter of the Christian disdain of form and matter.”
“O ancient worlds! all thou didst revere is now despised; thine idols are overthrown in dust; gaunt anchorites clad in tattered rags, gory martyrs with shoulders lacerated by the tigers of the circuses, lie heaped upon the pedestals of thy gods so comely and so charming;—the Christ has enveloped the world in his winding sheet. Beauty must blush for herself, must wear a shroud.”
Pages 22, 23: “Virginity, thou bitter plant, born upon a soil blood-moistened, whose wan and sickly flower opes painfully within the damp shadows of the cloister, under cold lustral rains;—rose without perfume, and bristling with thorns,—thou hast replaced for us those fair and joyous roses, besprinkled with nard and Falernian, worn by the dancing girls of Sybaris.”
“The antique world knew thee not, O fruitless flower!—never wert thou entwined within their garlands, replete with intoxicating perfume;—in that vigorous and healthy life, thou wouldst have been disdainfully trampled under foot! Virginity, mysticism, melancholy,—three unknown words, three new maladies brought among us by the Christ. Pale spectres who deluge the world with icy tears and who,” etc., etc.
TO REV. WAYLAND D. BALL
New Orleans, 1883.
SECRET AFFINITIES
(A Pantheistic Madrigal)
“Emaux et Camées—Enamels and Cameos”
For three thousand years two blocks of marble in the pediment of an antique temple have juxtaposed their white dreams against the background of the Attic heaven.
Congealed in the same nacre, tears of those waves which weep for Venus,—two pearls deep-plunged in ocean’s gulf, have uttered secret words unto each other;—
Blooming in the cool Generalife, beneath the spray of the ever-weeping fountain, two roses in Boabdil’s time spake to each other with whisper of leaves;—
Upon the cupolas of Venice, two white doves, rosy-footed, perched one May-time evening on the nest where love makes itself eternal.
Marble, pearl, rose, and dove—all dissolve, all pass away;—the pearl melts, the marble falls, the rose fades, the bird takes flight.
Leaving each other, all atoms seek the deep Crucible to thicken that universal paste formed of the forms that are melted by God.
By slow metamorphoses, the white marble changes to white flesh, the rosy flowers into rosy lips,—remoulding themselves into many fair bodies.
Again do the white doves coo within the hearts of young lovers; and the rare pearls re-form into teeth for the jewel-casket of woman’s smile.
And hence those sympathies, imperiously sweet, whereby in all places souls are gently warmed to know each other for sisters.
Thus, docile to the summons of an aroma, a sunbeam, a colour, the atom flies to the atom as to the flower the bee.
Then dream-memories return of long reveries in white temple pediments, of reveries in the deeps of the sea,—of blossom talk beside the clear-watered fountain,—
Of kisses and quivering of wings upon the domes that are tipped with balls of gold; and the faithful molecules seek one another and know the clinging of love once more.
Again love awakens from its slumber of oblivion;—vaguely the Past is re-born; the perfume of the flower inhales and knows itself again in the sweetness of the pink mouth.
In that mother-of-pearl which glimmers in a laugh, the pearl recognizes its own whiteness;—upon the smooth skin of a young girl the marble with emotion recognizes its own coolness.
The dove finds in a sweet voice the echo of its own plaint,—resistance becomes blunted, and the stranger becomes the lover.
And thou before whom I tremble and burn,—what ocean-billow, what temple-font, what rose-tree, what dome of old knew us together? What pearl or marble, what flower or dove?