Fabre, Poet of Science

by Georges Victor Legros

But the manner of speaking, describing, and depicting is none the less an integral part of the truth when it is a matter of expounding and transmitting the latter. To express it feebly is often to compromise it, to diminish it; and even to betray it. There are terms which say better than others what has to be said. "Words have their physiognomy; if there are lifeless words, there are also picturesque and richly-coloured words, comparable to the brush strokes which scatter flecks of light on the grey background of the picture." There are particular terms of expression, felicities which present things in a better light, and the writer must search in his memory, his imagination, and his heart, for the fitting accent; for the flexibility of language and the wealth of words which are needful if he would fully succeed in the portrayal of living creatures; if he would tender the living truth, reproduce in all its light and shade the spectacle of the world, arouse the imagination, and faithfully interpret the mysterious spirit which impregnates matter and is reflected in thought.

The artist then comes forward to co-ordinate all these scattered fragments, to assemble them, to breathe vitality into them, to restore these inert truths to life.

But what a strange manner of working was Fabre's; what a curious method of composition! However full of ideas his mind might be, he was incapable of expressing them if he remained in one place and assumed the ordinary preliminary attitude of a man preparing to write. Seated and motionless, his limbs at rest, pen in hand, with a blank page before him, it seemed to him that all his faculties became of a sudden paralysed. He must first move about; activity helped him to pursue his ideas; it was in action that he recovered his ardour and uncovered the sources of inspiration. Just as he never observed without enthusiasm, so he found it impossible to write without exaltation, and it was precisely because he so ardently loved the truth that he felt himself compelled to show it in all its beauty.

Moving like a circus-horse about the great table of his laboratory, he would begin to tramp indefatigably round and round, so that his steps have worn in the tiles of the floor an ineffaceable record of the concentric track in which they moved incessantly for thirty years.

His mind would grow clear and active as he walked, smoking his pipe and "using his marrow-bones." [(12/1.)] He was already at work; he was "hammering" his future chapters in his brain; for the idea would be all the more precise as the form was more finished and more irreproachable, more closely identified with the thought; he would wait until the word quivered, palpitated, and lived; until the transcription was no longer an illusion, a phantom, a vision devoid of reality, but a faithful echo, a sincere translation, a finished interpretation, reflecting entire the fundamental essence of the thing; in a word, a work of art, a parallel to nature.

Then only would he sit before the little walnut-wood table "spotted with ink and scarred with knife-cuts, just big enough to hold the inkstand, a halfpenny bottle, and his open notebook": that same little table at which, in other days, by force of meditation, he achieved his first degrees.

Then he would begin to write, "his pen dipped not in ink only" but in his heart's blood [(12/2.)]; first of all in ordinary ruled notebooks bound in black cloth, in which he noted, day by day, hour by hour, the observations of every moment, the results of his experiments, together with his thoughts and reflections. Little by little those documents would come together which elucidated and completed one another, and at last the book was written. These notebooks, these copious records, are remarkable for the regularity of the writing and the often impeccable finish of the first draught. Although here and there the same data are transcribed several times in succession, and each time struck through with a vigorous stroke of the pen, there are whole pages, and many pages together, without a single erasure. The handwriting, excessively small--one might think it had been traced by the feet of a fly--becomes in later years so minute that one almost needs a magnifying glass to decipher it.

These notebooks are not the final manuscript. The entomologist would write a new and more perfect copy on loose sheets of paper, making one draught after another, patiently fashioning his style and polishing his work, although many passages were included without revision as they were written in the first instance.

The greatest magician of modern letters, versed in all the artifices of the French language, speaking one day of Fabre and his writings, made in my hearing the assertion that he was not, properly speaking, an artist. He might well be a great naturalist, a veteran of science, an observer of genius, but he was by no means and would never be a writer according to the canons of the craft.

But how many others, like him, in their time regarded as "pitiable in respect of their language," charm us to‑day, simply because they were gifted with imagination and the power of giving life to their work! [(12/3.)]