[26] 'L'Attente' (Les Visages de la Vie).
[27] 'La Folie' (Les Forces Tumultueuses).
[28] (La Multiple Splendeur).
[29] Les Rythmes Souverains.
THE ETHICS OF FERVOUR
La vie est à monter et non pas à descendre.
É.V., 'Les Rêves,'
Il faut admirer tout pour s'exalter soi-même
Et se dresser plus haut que ceux qui out vécu.
É.V., 'La Vie.'
The metaphysical ideal crystallised by Verhaeren from his contemplation of life, which was at first wildly passionate, but then more and more synoptical and logical, has been called unity. He has himself recently, in answer to a question submitted to various men of letters, confirmed this conception as part of his programme. 'It seems to me,' he says, 'that poetry is bound ere long to be merged in a very clear Pantheism. More and more the unity of the world is admitted by upright and healthy minds. That old dualism between the soul and the body, between God and the universe, is becoming effaced. Man is a fragment of the architecture of the world. He understands and is conscious of the entity of which he is a part.... He feels that he is encompassed and dominated, while at the same time he himself encompasses and dominates. By reason of his own miracles he is becoming, in some sort, that personal God that his ancestors believed in. Now I ask, is it possible that lyric exaltation should long remain indifferent to such an unchaining of human power, should hesitate to celebrate such a vast spectacle of grandeur? The poet of to-day has only to surrender himself to what he sees, hears, imagines, conjectures, for works to be born of his heart and brain that are young, vibrating, and new.'[1] But he who would build up the whole image must not make a halt at this stage of knowledge: over against the logical ordering of external things he must set another of inward things; against the knowledge of life he must set the feeling of life. He must set up an ethical ideal as well as a metaphysical ideal, a commandment of life corresponding to his law of life.
But great poets never discover a standard of life, a moral precept, which is not a reflex of the law of their own inner nature. Many possibilities of contemplation are open to the thinker, to the quiet observer; to the poet however, to the lyrist, only a poetic philosophy of life is possible, a contemplation lyrically exalted. Whereas the philosopher can attain the knowledge of unity by measurement and calculation, by a perception and calm computation of forces, a poet can discover the evolution of things in the direction of harmony and unity only in his ecstasy, only in an exalted state of enthusiasm. He will perforce recognise a commandment for the whole world in his own enthusiasm, and in his lyric ecstasy a moral demand of life. 'Toute la vie est dans l'essor,' for the poet all life is in ecstasy. And just as Verhaeren never described things in a state of rest, so too his comprehension of the universe is never conceivable except in the permanently exalted state of the unrest of joy and motion.
Verhaeren's relationship to the world around him was ever passionate. He has always approached things feverishly, as a lover approaches the woman he desires. Only what he has won by fighting has the value to him of a possession. Things do not belong to us as long as we pass them by, as long as we only look at them with unfeeling and cold eyes as though they were a scene in a play, a walking picture. To feel the connection between them and us, between the world and the poet, between man and man, to pass over from the purely contemplative state to the assessment of values, we must enter into some personal relationship of sympathy or antipathy. Verhaeren's first crisis had taught him that negation is sterile, and his recovery had then shown him that only assent, acceptance, affection, and enthusiasm can place us in a real relationship with things.