He becomes lyric over the avenues, parks, of Buenos Aires, in one of which he remembers to tell us he found Rodin’s Thinker.
Carillo is learned. He possesses charm with power of distinguished seeing. I have read him for years. He is seldom disappointing, unless he writes a story. In the story he lacks architectural sense-structure.
La Lampara Maravillosa, by Valle-Inclán is a charming piece of book-making; richly illustrated, printed in two colors, red and black, and from the Sociedad General Española de Libreria, Madrid. I have seen lovely books from there! I wish I could buy them all. Even if one could not read them, they are pleasant to look at, like objects of art.
Valle-Inclán is a dreamer, a maker of poetic prose. I recall a merry caricature of his long, thin, black, owl-eyed, glasses-berimmed Spanish face in a magazine of Mexico. Probably the magazine was Tricolor.
The Magic Lamp, in this book, renews memory, a memory rich with the accumulation of a thousand years. It has charm, inventive grace. There is a touch to be sure here and there in the prose of the Spanish church-fathers; something monastic, shadowed, hieratic, a trifle pedantic. The gesture of a priest, in short, a lingering, regretful, graceful gesture, for beauty of a world which is passing, and which he should not pause too often to see. His prose is great enough to serve as a model for writers.
He visited Mexico. I read his articles. His reactions to the new country interested me. This dreaming scholar sees best with eyes of the mind. The eyes of his body have weakened. In his heart he loves the beauty of Greece, Rome, the pagan world. At the same time, by birth, he is a priest of the Inquisition. He has their face, too; long, thin, pale ascetic. A long list of books, sensitive, delicately and powerfully written, stand to his credit. He is one of the most accomplished stylists.
Villaespesa, of El Espejo Encantado, was in Mexico at about the same time. His fancy was touched to furious flame by pre-historic, Toltec Mexico; the Indian past. He wrote sonnets about it. He reconstructed the romantic twilights of long ago, by fanciful, flower-burdened lakes in that land of fabulous forgotten wealth, and prodigious palaces where, from ears of stone statues, scattered carelessly in gardens, pink pearls hung the size of pecans; and emeralds, gold, gems, had no value. He seemed especially able to savor its sumptuousness, then to pass on the sensation to others. He has written well, too, of the African desert. He writes novels, plays, verse. Villaespesa is poet of old Spain, España vieja. He might be great. I do not know why he is not. He has power over words, and vision.
L’Atlantide, whose originality or non-originality they have quarreled over happily in French journals, is a peculiar novel for a Frenchman to write, because it is excellent example of what is known as Teutonic imagination. As to originality, referring to his idea of injecting something into bodies of living people which would turn them to stone, this was subject of a story by myself, called The Painter of Dead Women. It was first printed in the Smart Set many years ago and later made one of a book of short stories called Dear Dead Women, published by Little, Brown & Company. It is the same thing, even in details, in which it is carried out. And my book, of course, never came to notice of the Frenchman. It is a case of two people having the same idea, which is not impossible. Many of us bend at the same moment over the great grey, shining, reflecting pool which is universal mind across which, in time, all pageants pass.
There are good sentences in Benoit’s novel, pleasant pictures of Africa. The old story of Lost Atlantis continues to fascinate like the faces of blond women. It is a dream of vanished delight which has floated over the world. In both that novel and Pour Don Carlos, Benoit proves he knew better than almost any Frenchman today, how to handle the gripping moment.
I have had happiness with André Salmon’s L’Art Vivante. It is not a great book. Instead it is a satisfying one. I commend it to people who care to know painters of the new school.