“Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!”
Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, and imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of men of letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a university town thirty years ago, and the students were certain to be largely represented at the ball.
The “Odes Funambulesques” contain many examples of M. De Banville’s skill in reviving old forms of verse—triolets, rondeaux, chants royaux, and ballades. Most of these were composed for the special annoyance of M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and a M. Jacquot who called himself De Mirecourt. The rondeaux are full of puns in the refrain: “Houssaye ou c’est; lyre, l’ire, lire,” and so on, not very exhilarating. The pantoum, where lines recur alternately, was borrowed from the distant Malay; but primitive pantoum, in which the last two lines of each stanza are the first two of the next, occur in old French folk-song. The popular trick of repetition, affording a rest to the memory of the singer, is perhaps the origin of all refrains. De Banville’s later satires are directed against permanent objects of human indignation—the little French debauchée, the hypocritical friend of reaction, the bloodthirsty chauviniste. Tired of the flashy luxury of the Empire, his memory goes back to his youth—
“Lorsque la lèvre de l’aurore
Baisait nos yeux soulevés,
Et que nous n’étions pas encore
La France des petits crevés.”
The poem “Et Tartufe” prolongs the note of a satire always popular in France—the satire of Scarron, Molière, La Bruyère, against the clerical curse of the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe’s stronghold at the moment. “French interests” demanded that Italy should be headless.
“Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux crémus
Que pour tout bon Français l’empire est à Rome,
Et qu’ayant pour aïeux Romulus et Rémus
Nous tetterons la louve à jamais—le pauvre homme.”
The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not be forgotten, “wrought miracles”; but he has his doubts as to the morality of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is addressed as she hovers above the Geneva Convention,—
“Quoi, nymphe du canon rayé,
Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles
Et ce petit air effrayé
Devant les balles exploisibles?”
De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his freedom from Weltschmerz, from regret and desire for worlds lost or impossible. In the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began to vex even his careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators and decorated capitalists. “Le Sang de la Coupe” contains a very powerful poem, “The Curse of Venus,” pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own commercial enterprise:
“Vends les bois où dormaient Viviane et Merlin!
L’Aigle de mont n’est fait que pour ta gibecière;
La neige vierge est là pour fournir ta glacière;
Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin,
Et vole, diamant, neige, écume et poussière,
N’est plus bon qu’à tourner tes meules de moulin!”