They live no less than us in the middle of immensities, only, from their lower standpoint, they remark (even less than we do) the disproportion between the world they inhabit, and the unthinkable Infinity they leave unmodified.
‘Très peu de ciel dans ce décor; c’est important de donner l’impression qu’étant très bas, à hauteur de poule, on en voit moins.’
Knowing so little about it, Chantecler is convinced that the magic of his cock-a-doodle-doo! makes the sun rise every morning! The pearl of the poem is the scene in the second act, where Chantecler confides this marvellous secret to the gloriosa donna delta sua mente, the Hen-Pheasant, who has taken refuge in the poultry-yard. A pheasant sees more of the world than a cock, flies and rockets up in the sky, dwells in the forest, and therefore, half-sceptical, half-scandalised, she listens while Chantecler, manlike, expatiates on the necessity of his existence.
So far at least the myth is charming in its quaint philosophy, the characters appear full of humour each of them as French as French can be; for why should not animals as well as human beings, have a nationality and racial qualities of their own? Chantecler is a coxcombed Don Quixote, chimerical, infatuate, peremptory, and brave; but he is, we have said, a French Don Quixote, and so he represents not only chivalry, but also order and authority; he is not only generous but masterful; loyal to his subordinates, vain of his beauty and prone to vaunt it; and he thinks himself the natural sultan of every female fowl. Chantecler, like Don Quixote, is absurd; and yet not merely lovable, but honourable in his absurdity. If his adventure proves anything, it is that an illusion and a chimera are necessary to prevent us from lapsing into scepticism or savagery.
Chantecler, with his valiance, his vain-glory, and his optimism, is one type of French character (a noble or military sort of type); another French fowl is the blackbird, the ‘Merle.’ Le Merle is a French Mephistopheles—a Geist der stets verneinet—paralysing all effort by his scepticism, his criticism, his pitiless raillery, his pitiable blague, which is often merely,—
‘Une prudence, un art de rester vague,
Un élégant moyen de n’avoir pas d’avis.’
He is
‘Le petit croque-mort de la Foi.’
The blackbird is at once a boulevardier and an intellectuel. He is the ‘Chat Noir,’ he is Montmartre; alas, he is the pretext for many bad verses, execrable conceits, and parlous puns. Not that a poet, I repeat, is obliged to have good taste; but there are moments when the pun kills the poem. When the Blackbird says to the philosophic fowl, ‘Fichez le Kant!’ (camp); when he interrupts, ‘C’est vieux œufs!’ (vieux jeu)—surely he outdistances the most trivial dialogues of Moth and Armado; and we answer with old Chaucer,—
‘Allas! conceytes stronge!’