For if men hitherto have arrived at no clear and harmonious relationship with one another, that was because, so Verhaeren thinks, they had not admiration sufficient, because they were too suspicious of one another, because they had too little faith. 'Magnifiez-vous donc et comprenez-vous mieux!'[16] he calls out to them, 'admirez-vous les uns les autres!' and here, in the last phase of his knowledge, he is again in agreement with the great American, who, in his poem Starting from Paumanok, preaches:
I say no man has ever yet been half devout enough,
None has ever yet adored or worshipped half enough,
None has begun to think how divine he himself is, and
how certain the future is.
For the highest pleasure is only in this highest ecstasy. And therefore these ideals of Verhaeren are not cold, sober commandments, but a passionate hymn.
Aimer avec ferveur soi-même en tous les autres
Qui s'exaltent de même en de mêmes combats
Vers le même avenir dont on entend le pas;
Aimer leur cœur et leur cerveau pareils aux vôtres
Parce qu'ils ont souffert, en des jours noirs et fous,
Même angoisse, même affre et même deuil que vous.
Et s'énivrer si fort de l'humaine bataille
—Pâle et flottant reflet des monstrueux assauts
Ou des groupements d'or des étoiles, là-haut—
Qu'on vit en tout ce qui agit, lutte ou tressaille
Et qu'on accepte avidement, le cœur ouvert,
L'âpre et terrible loi qui régit l'univers.[17]
To raise these mystic moments of ecstasy, these seconds of identity, which every one in his life experiences in quite rare and strange moments, to permanency, to a constant, unconquerable feeling of life—this is Verhaeren's highest aim. His cosmic conception is concentrated in this supreme ideal of an incessantly felt identity of the ego with its environment, of an identity ever fired anew by passion.
For not till nothing more is contemplation and everything is experience, not till this vast enrichment is accomplished, does life cease to be vegetative, indifferent, and somnolent, not till then does it turn to pure delight. Not to feel individual feelings of pleasure, but to feel life itself in all its forms as supreme pleasure, is the last goal of Verhaeren's art. What he says of Juliers, the hero of Flanders, 'son existence était sa volupté,'[18] the fact of life itself was his pleasure, is also his own highest longing. He does not want life that; he may fill out the span that is allotted to every mortal, but that he may consciously enjoy, and to the full, every minute of life as a delight and as; happiness. And in such a moment of ecstasy he says,
Il me semble jusqu'à ce jour n'avoir vécu
Que pour mourir et non pour vivre,[19]
lines that seem to me unforgettable, as the highest ecstasy of vitality.
And, wonderful to say, here too the circle is closed, here too the end of Verhaeren's know-ledge—as we have seen in so many things with him—is a return to the beginning. Here too there is nothing save an inherited instinct which has become a rapt consciousness. His first book and his last ones, Les Flamandes, as well as Les Rythmes Souverains and Les Blés Mouvants, celebrate life—the first, it is true, only life's outer form, the dull enjoyment of the senses: the last books, however, celebrate the conscious, intensified, sublimated feeling of life. Verhaeren's whole evolution—here again in harmony with the great poets of our nation, with Nietzsche and Dehmel—is not suppression, but a conscious intensification of original instincts. Just as in—his first books he described his native province, and again in his last, save that now the land is bounded by the horizons of the whole world, here again the feeling of life returns as the sense of life, but it is now enriched with all the knowledge he has acquired, with all the victories he has won. Passion, which was in his first book a chaotic revolt, has here become a law; the instinctive sensation of pleasure in health has been transformed into a deliberate and conscious pleasure in life and in all its forms. Now again Verhaeren feels the great pride of a strong man:
Je marche avec l'orgueil d'aimer l'air et la terre,
D'être immense et d'être fou
Et de mêler le monde et tout
À cet enivrement de vie élémentaire.[20]