Pour out the power that has flowed in upon thee! Surrender thyself! That too is Verhaeren's ecstatic cry at this hour. Opposites touch. Supreme solitude is turned to supreme fellowship. The poet feels that self-surrender is more than self-preservation. All at once he sees behind him the frightful danger of this self-seeking pain.
Et tout à coup je m'apparais celui
Qui s'est, hors de soi-même, enfui
Vers le sauvage appel des forces unanimes.[10]
And he who in days gone by had fled from this appeal into cold solitude, now casts himself ecstatically into the arms of the world, with the I deepest yearning
De n'être plus qu'un tourbillon
Qui se disperse au vent mystérieux des choses.[11]
He feels that in order to live to the full all the greatness and beauty of this fiery world, he must multiply himself, be a thousandfold and ten thousandfold what he is. 'Multiplie-toi!' Be manifold. Surrender thyself! For the first time this cry bursts up like a flame. Be manifold!
Multiplie et livre-toi! Défais
Ton être en des millions d'êtres;
Et sens l'immensité filtrer et transparaître.[12]
Only from this brotherhood with all things accrue the possibilities of being a modern poet. Only by self-surrender to everything that is could Verhaeren attain to so grandiose a conception of contemporary manifestations, only thus could he become the poet of the democracy of cities, of industrialism, of science, the poet of Europe, the poet of our age. Only such a pantheistic feeling could create this intimate relationship between the world of self and the world surrounding self, the relationship which subsequently ends in an unparalleled identity: only so despairing a 'no' could be transformed to so enraptured a 'yes,' only one who had fled from the world could possess it with such passion.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 'Un Soir' (Au Bord de la Route).
[2] 'Le Forgeron' (Les Villages Illusoires).