Hatred is queen in the hierarchy of literary sentiments. Literature is, perhaps, with religion, the abstract passion which excites men most violently. True, we have not yet seen literary wars resembling the religious wars of—let us say—the past; but that is because literature has never yet descended suddenly to the people's level. By the time it reaches them, it has lost its explosive force. It is far from the first night of Hernani to the sale of the play in illustrated editions. However, it is not hard to imagine a mobilization of German sentimentality against English humour or French irony. It is because peoples do not know each other that they hate each other so little. An alliance marked by close fraternization always ends in cannon shot.
The hatred which pursued Mallarmé was never very bitter, for men hate seriously, even in matters of literature, only when material interests come to envenom a little the strife for the ideal; but he offered no surface for envy, and he bore injustice and abuse as necessities inherent in the very nature of genius. It was only, then, the pure and unalloyed superiority of his intelligence that was derided, on the pretext that he was obscure. Artists, even when depreciated by instinctive cabals, receive orders, earn money. Poets have the resource of long articles in the reviews and in the newspapers. Certain of them, like Théophile Gautier, earned their living in this way. Baudelaire succeeded ill at it, Mallarmé worse still. It was, then, in his case, against the poet stripped of every social ornament that the sarcasm was directed.
There is, by accident, at the Louvre, in a ridiculous collection, a marvel, an Andromeda, carved in ivory by Cellini. It is a terror-stricken woman, all her flesh aquiver with fright at being bound. Where can she flee? It is also Mallarmé's poetry. The emblem is the more appropriate that, like the sculptor, the poet wrought nothing but cups, vases, caskets, statuettes. He is not colossal, he is perfect. His poetry does not present a great human treasure spread forth before the dazzled crowd. It does not express common, strong ideas, which easily galvanize popular attention dulled by toil. It is personal, shrinking like those flowers that fear the sun. It has no scent save at evening. It yields its thought only to the intimacy of another thought, trusty and sincere. Its excessive modesty, it is true, draws about itself too many veils; but there is much delicacy in this eagerness to flee the eyes and hands of popular appreciation. Flee, where could it flee? Mallarmé sought refuge in obscurity as in a cloister. He interposed the wall of a cell between himself and the understanding of others. He wished to live alone in his pride. But that was the Mallarmé of the last years, when, hurt, but not disheartened, he felt himself seized with the same disgust for vain phrases which had also, in the past, stricken Jean Racine—the years when he created a new syntax for his own use, when he used words according to a system of new and secret relations. Stéphane Mallarmé wrote relatively much, and the greater part of his work is stained by no obscurity; but, if later and towards the last, beginning with the Prose pour des Esseintes, there are doubtful phrases or irritating verses, it is only an inattentive and vulgar mind that dreads to undertake the delicious conquest.
There are too few obscure writers in French. So we accustom ourselves like cowards to love only writing that is easy and that will soon be elementary. Yet it is rare that books blindly clear are worth rereading. It is clearness that constitutes the prestige of classic literature and it is clearness that makes them so clearly tiresome. Clear minds are commonly those that see but one thing at a time. When the brain is rich in sensations and in ideas, there is a constant eddy, and the smooth surface is troubled at the moment of spouting. Let us, like M. Doudan, prefer marshes swarming with life, to a glass of clear water. One is thirsty at times, to be sure. Well, then, one filters. Literature which gives immediate pleasure to all men is necessarily of no value. It must first, falling from on high, leap in cascades from ledge to ledge, in order to flow at last through the valley, within reach of all men and of all stocks.
If, then, one undertook a definitive study of Stéphane Mallarmé, the question of obscurity would have to be treated exclusively from the psychological standpoint, for the reason that there is never absolute, literal obscurity in an honestly written work. A sensible interpretation is always possible. It will, perhaps, vary according to the evening hour, like the play of cloud-shadows on the velvet lawn; but the truth, here and everywhere, will be what our passing sentiment shall make it. Mallarmé's work is the most marvellous pretext for reveries yet offered men weary of so many heavy and useless affirmations. It may well be that a poetry full of doubts, of shifting shades, and of ambiguous perfumes, can alone please us henceforward; and, if the word decadence really summed up all these autumnal, twilight charms, we might welcome it, even making it one of the keys of the viol; but it is dead; the master is dead, the penultimate is dead.
1898.
[1] It must be remembered that the Abbé Delille is not at all, as is commonly believed, a poet of the Empire. Almost all his poems and his glory date from the Ancien Régime.
[2] P. Stapfer, Des Réputations littéraires, Paris, 1891.
[3] A genre which has degenerated into the complaint. But the complaint has had its great period. The oldest poem in the French language is a complaint and inspired, precisely, by one of the poems of Prudentius.