He is not only softened. He is tender, and what passion and sensuality, but so delicate!
Tu marchais chaste dans la robe de ton âme,
Que le désir suivait comme un faune dompté,
Je respirais parmi le soir, ô pureté,
Mon rêve enveloppé dans tes voiles de femme.
[(Tr. 22)]
A delicate sensuality, which is really the impression his verses should give to conform to his poetics, where he dreams
De vers blonds où le sens fluide se délie
Comme sous l'eau la chevelure d'Ophélie,
De vers silencieux, et sans rythme et sans trame,
Où la rime sans bruit glisse comme une rame,
De vers d'une ancienne étoffe exténuée,
Impalpable comme le son et la nuée,
De vers de soirs d'automne ensorcelant les heures
Au rite féminin des syllabes mineures,
De vers de soirs d'amours énervés de verveine,
Où l'âme sente, exquise, une caresse à peine....
[(Tr. 23)]
But, this poet who would only love nuance, Verlainian nuance, could on some occasions be a violent colorist or a vigorous hewer of marble. This other Samain, older and not less genuine, is revealed in parts of his collection called Evocations. It is a Parnassian Samain, but always personal, even in grandiloquence. The two sonnets entitled Cléopâtre have a beauty not only of expression but of ideas; it is neither pure music nor pure plastic art. The poem is complete and alive, a strange, disconcerting marble; yes, a living marble whose life stirs and fertilizes the very desert sands, around the momentarily enamoured Sphinx.
Such is this poet: powerfully delicious in the art of making all the bells and all the souls vibrate in harmony. All souls are in love with this "child in robes of state."
[PIERRE QUILLARD]
It was in the already far-off and perhaps heroic times of the Art Theatre; we were brought to hear and see la Fille aux Mains coupées: To me there remains a most pleasant, complete and perfect memory of a play that truly gave the exquisite and keen sensation of the definitive. That hardly endured an hour; of it remains verses which makes a poem with difficulty forgotten.