1909.
THE RETROSPECTION OF FRANÇOIS COPPÉE
THE RETROSPECTION OF FRANÇOIS COPPÉE
Some writers seem to represent single moods of life. Most men grow from childhood to old age, passing from illusion to disillusion (in which illusion does no more than turn its coat), then to resignation (a kind of agnostic attitude towards their own sensations), and, finally, perhaps, end in the most obstinate illusion of all. But there are writers who seem to stop at this or that point in the road, to take up their stand there, and to date from that resting-place all the monologues that they allow humanity to overhear. The work of the greatest artists is sent off from every post-office on the journey, or, if their work is done in age, it holds proof that they have travelled all the way. Coppée hesitates on the brow of that hill from which can be seen for the last time the sunlit country of youth. Already disillusioned, he looks back, and spends his life in regretting the past. All his work has a retrospective glamour, and where he writes joyously of the present, it is easy to feel that the joy is a religious joy, and that his work is a memorial rite, re-enacting something that has long since faded away.
He took this attitude when very young. There are, indeed, men whose eyes have always been turned back, men whose earliest memory is a regret for the memory earlier still that they have lost. In the prologue to Le Reliquaire, published in 1866, he wrote:
“Et de même que, tous les soirs,
Ils font autour du reliquaire
Fumer les légers encensoirs.