Theodore de Banville is not exactly materialistic; he is luminous. His poetry represents happy hours.
For each letter from a creditor, write fifty lines on an abstract subject, and you are saved.
XV
Translation and paraphrase of the Passion. To refer everything to that.
Spiritual and physical joys born of the storm, thunder and lightning, tocsin of loving, shadowy memories, of years gone by.
XVI
I have found the definition of Beauty, of my Beauty. It is something ardent and sad, something slightly vague, giving conjecture wing. I will, if you please, apply my idea to a palpable object, for instance, to the most interesting object in society, to a woman's countenance. A seductive and beautiful head, a woman's head, I mean, is a head that brings dreams at once—confusedly—of voluptuousness and of sadness; which bears a suggestion of melancholy, of weariness, even of satiety,—or perhaps an opposite emotion, an ardor, a wish to live, mingled with pent up bitterness, as springs from privation or from despair. Mystery, regret, are also characteristics of beauty.
A handsome male head need not convey, save perhaps in the eyes of a woman, that suggestion of voluptuousness, which, in a female countenance, is generally tantalizing in proportion as the face is melancholy. But that head also will bear something ardent and sad, spiritual needs, ambitions vaguely receding, the thought of a rumbling, unused power, sometimes the thought of a vengeful lack of feeling (for the ideal type of the dandy must not be neglected here), sometimes also—and that is one of the most interesting characteristics of beauty— mystery, and finally (let me have the courage to confess to what degree I feel myself modern in esthetics) misfortune. I do not claim that Joy cannot be associated with Beauty, but I do say that Joy is one of its most vulgar ornaments, while Melancholy is, as it were, its illustrious companion, to such a degree that I can scarcely conceive (is my brain an enchanted mirror?) a type of beauty in which is no Misfortune. Following—others might say: obsessed by—these ideas, you can see that it would be difficult for me not to conclude that the most perfect type of manly Beauty is Satan,—as pictured by Milton.
XVII
Auto-idolatry. Poetic harmony of character. Eurhythmy of character and faculties. Of conserving all the faculties. Of augmenting all the faculties. A cult (Magianism, evocatory sorcery).