To be begotten quite alone, to owe his mind only to himself, to write (since it is a question of writing) with the certitude of achieving the true new wine, of an unexpected, original and inimitable flavor, that is what must be, to the author of l'Écornifleur a legitimate motive of joy and a very weighty reason for being less troubled than others about posthumous reputation. Already, his Poil-de-Carotte, that so curious type of the intelligent, artful, fatalistic child, has entered into the very form of speech. The "Poil-de-Carotte, you must shut the hens in each evening" equals the most famous words of the celebrated como dies in burlesque truth, and he is at once Cyrano and Molière and will not be robbed of this claim.
Originality being undeniably established, other merits of Jules Renard are distinctness, precision, freshness; his pictures of life, Parisian or rural, have the appearance of dry-point work, occasionally a little thin, but well circumscribed, clear and alive. Certain fragments, more shaded off and ample, are marvels of art, as for instance, Une Famille d'Arbres.
"It is after having traversed a sun-parched plain that I meet them.
"Because of the noise, they do not stand by the road's edge. They inhabit the unploughed fields, near a fountain, like lone birds.
"From afar they seem inscrutable. When I approach, their trunks relax. They discreetly welcome me. I can repose and refresh myself, but I divine that they observe and mistrust me.
"They live together, the oldest in the center, and the little ones, whose first leaves have just appeared, almost everywhere, without ever dispersing.
"They take long to die, and they protect the standing dead until they fall to dust.
"They caress each other with their long branches to be assured that they are all there, like the blind. They gesticulate with rage, if the wind puts itself out of breath trying to uproot them. But among themselves, no dispute. They only murmur agreement.
"I feel that they should be my real family. I will forget the other. These trees by degrees will adopt me, and to merit this, I understand what must be known.
"Already I know how to gaze at passing clouds.
"I know, too, how to rest in a spot.
"And I almost know how to be silent."
When the anthologies will hail this page, they will hardly have an irony so fine and a poetry so true.
[LOUIS DUMUR.]
To be the representative of logic among an assembly of poets is a difficult role and has its inconveniences. There is the risk of being taken too seriously and consequently of feeling bound to treat literature in grave tones. Gravity is not necessary for the expression of what we believe is truth; irony agreeably seasons the moral decoction; pepper is needed in this camomile. Scornfully to affirm is a sure enough way of not being the dupe of even one's own affirmations. This is practicable in literature, for here all is uncertain and art itself doubtless is but a game where we philosophically deceive each other. That is why it is good to smile.
Louis Dumur rarely smiles. But if, having now gained more indulgence and some rights to real bitterness, he wished to smile so as to excuse and amuse himself, it seems that the whole assembly of poets would protest, astonished and perhaps scandalized. So, by habit and logic, he remains grave.
He is logic itself. He can observe, combine, deduce; his novels, dramas, poems are of a solid construction whose balanced architecture delights by the skillful symmetry of curves, everything directed towards a central dome whither the eye is severely drawn. He is clever and strong enough, when charmed with error, not to abandon it except after having driven it to a corner, with its extremest consequences, and sufficiently master of himself not to confess his error, but even to defend it with all the ingenuities of argument. Such is his system of French verse based on tonic accent; it is true that the result, often deficient, for languages themselves have a quite imperious logic, was occasionally felicitous and unexpected, with hexameters like this.