Baudelaire’s “L’Étranger” and Verlaine’s “Art
Poetique” are appended following the endnotes in new translations of my own as
well as in the French originals.
Teachers of
expository writing, technical writing, and journalism generally stress clarity
and economy. For such forms of discourse the language
should most often be transparent with the meaning evident and the style
unobtrusive. In aesthetic genres,
though, to exploit literature’s capacity for an extraordinary density of
meaning, phrasing, figures of speech, tone, and sound enrich and deepen
signification. Ambiguity can convey a
richer truth that reflects the contradictions, even the mystery of things, rather
than a reductive simplicity.
Literary usage,
however, differs widely in deployment of this strategy. Some texts have what seems a unitary (or at
least a rapidly decodable) signification while others are more ambiguous or unclear in meaning [1]. The
distinction was recognized in medieval France in the contrast between trobar
leu and trobar clus. Either
may be appropriate depending on the aims of the text. Realistic fiction, for instance, is generally
highly determined as are popular dramas like television situation comedies and folktales,
while experimental and avant-garde works are more likely to be underdetermined.
Poetry that succeeds in oral performance
is likely to be more immediately intelligible than written texts which the
reader may ponder and review.
Though works of
both kinds may be found throughout
literary history, during the last century and half underdetermined poetry has been
particularly prestigious. Since
Romanticism the elevation of the individual genius and the rise of an art
indifferent or even hostile to popularity has in part displaced the old
emphases on art’s transmitting cultural norms while seeking to please. Intellectuals relish complexity while the
great majority of the population consumes poetry only through the medium of popular music.
These attitudes are
often quite self-conscious. Flaubert and
Baudelaire sought to distance themselves from social norms [2]. Verlaine considered the modern writers he
admired to be Les Poètes Maudits and Mallarmé
cultivated an obscure style. French Symbolism and Italian Hermeticism gloried
in vaguer signification, while Realism, Naturalism, and Tendenzromane of
both right and left strove in general for unitary, clearly prescribed
meanings.
“L’Étranger,”
one of the prose poems in Baudelaire’s Petits poèmes en prose or Spleen
de Paris (1869) and Verlaine’s “Art Poétique” from Jadis
et Naguère (Formerly and Recently) (1884) both promote underdetermination
in service of rather different styles. While
both poets share with Gautier the view that beauty is the primary desideratum
of art, Gautier’s “L’Art” promotes a Parnassian style with attention focused on
form and precise concrete description. For
Gautier a poem is a cunningly crafted object like Cellini’s gold, enamel, and
ebony salt cellar, its shapes well-defined, with solid heft. Though Gary Snyder would scarcely be classed
with Gautier, he expresses a similar notion in “Riprap”: Lay down these words/
Before your mind like rocks.” Both
Baudelaire and Verlaine depend on a different aesthetic, with beauty based on more
elusive meaning.
Baudelaire’s
stranger prefers clouds the very excellence of which arises from their imprecise
suggestiveness. After denying that he
loves what others do – family, friends, country, and wealth – the speaker hedges
on beauty, saying that what is called art he finds not always beautiful or
divine. He chooses instead to celebrate
the clouds. Surely this is a manner of
saying that he revels in his own imagination.
The clouds themselves bear no meaning, it is only his reception of their
appearance that lends them appeal. In
other words, he is affirming his own sensibility as the source of aesthetic
delight. He follows here the Romantic celebration
of genius and anticipates not only the obscurity associated with Symbolist
imagery, but also the notion of idiosyncratic taste inherent in hip, camp, and
kitsch appreciation. Classical standards
of beauty and monosemous theme are dismissed or ignored.
Verlaine’s “Art Poetique” advocates a similar aesthetic,
though with considerably more elaboration. In fact his “nuance” (also nuance in
English) shares an etymology with Baudelaire’s ”nuage” (cloud). Like Baudelaire he condemns traditional eloquence
using vivid terms, even saying it should be throttled). Like Pater in The Renaissance saying
that all art aspires to the condition of music, he declares that music, the
most abstract of the arts, must rule [3].
His enemy is the obvious: a cheap laugh, too much garlic, showy costume
jewelry. For him beauty lies in the
subtlety of a scent in the breeze, a musical phrase, the flight of a bird. Equivocation becomes a part of charm.
Baudelaire’s “L’Étranger”
used the open form of the prose poem, employed by Aloysius Bertrand in Gaspard
de la nuit (1842) and later to shattering effect by Rimbaud in in
Illuminations (1886). Though Verlaine
inveighs against rhyme, he rhymes nonetheless (sometimes in slant rhymes such
as midi/attiédi, énergie/assagie, and matin/thym). The eight syllable lines are not entirely
predictable, as they are varied without pattern with seven and nine syllable
lines, and one of ten [4].
This freedom is consistent
with the expression of novel content and the elevation of art to a
quasi-religion. The appeal of the poets’
underdetermination arises in part from its suggestion that the artist is a kind
of shamanic conjurer dealing in spells, but the reader, too, shares in the creation
of meaning not through mechanical decoding but in a kind of collaborative construction
of signification. By violating conventions
and establishing new ones, the poets help bring to birth new forms of literature.
1. Roland Barthes’ S/Z
distinguished between readerly (lisible) texts and writerly (scriptable)
ones Since for him certain further assumptions and
value judgements are associated with these terms, underdetermined and highly determined
are preferred here. (Overdetermined
should be reserved for cases in which too much information is given resulting
in potentially tiresome replication.)
2. Flaubert ridiculed
the bourgeois, for instance, in Bouvard and Pecuchet and the Dictionary
of Received Ideas, and Baudelaire praised the “dandy” whose style indicates
his aesthetic concerns. In another clear
sign of transgressive intent, both were prosecuted for obscenity.
3. Pater in 1873 was
far from alone in his sentiment. In
Poe’s “The Poetic Principle” (1850) he said "It is in Music perhaps that
the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired by the
Poetic Sentiment, it struggles -- the creation of supernal Beauty.” Verlaine had described Poe as malin
though naïf and even puéril in a letter of May 16, 1873 to Edmond
Lepelletier. Many others have voiced
similar ideas. For instance, Susan
Sontag in Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963 says “Music is at
once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts— it is the most
abstract, the most perfect, the most pure— and the most sensual. I listen with
my body and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos
embodied in this music.”
4. I find two lines
of seven syllables, ten of eight, twenty-three of nine, and one I count as ten:
8899 8899 8998 9979 10998 9999 9898 9997 9989.
The Stranger
“Whom do you love better, mystery man,
tell me: your father, or mother, your sister or brother?”
“I have no father, mother, sister, or brother.”
“Your friends?”
“You are using a word the meaning of which
has always been unknown to me.”
“Your country?”
“I don’t even know its latitude.”
“Beauty?”
“I would gladly love her as an immortal
goddess.”
“Gold?”
“I hate it just as you hate god.”
“So, what then do you love, you
extraordinary stranger?”
“I love the clouds – the clouds which drift by – like there – and there!
The marvelous clouds!”
L’Étranger
— Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme
énigmatique, dis ? ton père, ta mère, ta sœur ou ton frère ?
— Je n’ai ni père, ni mère, ni
sœur, ni frère.
— Tes amis ?
— Vous vous servez là d’une parole
dont le sens m’est resté jusqu’à ce jour inconnu.
— Ta patrie ?
— J’ignore sous quelle latitude
elle est située.
— La beauté ?
— Je l’aimerais volontiers, déesse
et immortelle.
— L’or ?
— Je le hais comme vous haïssez
Dieu.
— Eh ! qu’aimes-tu donc,
extraordinaire étranger ?
— J’aime les nuages… les nuages
qui passent… là-bas… là-bas… les merveilleux nuages !
The Art of Poetry (Paul Verlaine)
Before all else the verse must
swing,
so build a rhythm just off-beat,
dissolved in air and not too neat,
no weighty or prescriptive thing.
You must not choose your words
without
allowing polysemy in.
Grey songs have aways finest been
where certainty contends with
doubt.
Behind a veil a lovely eye,
or noonday trembling in the sun.
Blue stars arrayed when day is
done
across the mild autumn sky.
Nuance alone is what will suit
No color, just nuance alone!
For only by nuance is shown
The links of dreams or horn to
flute!
Fly far then from the deathly
spot,
the cruel shade, the laugh so
cheap
which makes the very sky to weep
like too much garlic in the pot.
Take eloquence and twist its
neck!
A little work and you’ll do well
To calm the rhymes for a short
spell
If we don’t curb them, there’s no
check!
Why, who rhyme’s wrongs can ever
know?
And what deaf child or crazy slave
to us this shoddy jewel gave
which proves so false when studied
close.
It’s music always wins the prize!
Your verse must be a thing in flight,
an active soul alone can write
which takes to other loves and
skies.
So may your verse fly with the
birds,
and swim in morning’s breeze so
chilled,
with mint and thyme aromas filled
and all the rest is only words.
Art Poetique
Paul Verlaine
De la musique avant toute chose,
Et pour cela préfère l’Impair
Plus vague et plus soluble dans
l’air,
Sans rien en lui qui pèse ou qui
pose.
Il faut aussi que tu n’ailles
point
Choisir tes mots sans quelque
méprise :
Rien de plus cher que la chanson
grise
Où l’Indécis au Précis se joint.
C’est des beaux yeux derrière des
voiles,
C’est le grand jour tremblant de
midi,
C’est, par un ciel d’automne
attiédi,
Le bleu fouillis des claires
étoiles !
Car nous voulons la Nuance encor,
Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance
!
Oh ! la nuance seule fiance
Le rêve au rêve et la flûte au cor
!
Fuis du plus loin la Pointe
assassine,
L’Esprit cruel et le Rire impur,
Qui font pleurer les yeux de
l’Azur,
Et tout cet ail de basse cuisine !
Prends l’éloquence et tords-lui
son cou !
Tu feras bien, en train d’énergie,
De rendre un peu la Rime assagie.
Si l’on n’y veille, elle ira
jusqu’où ?
Ô qui dira les torts de la Rime ?
Quel enfant sourd ou quel nègre
fou
Nous a forgé ce bijou d’un sou
Qui sonne creux et faux sous la
lime ?
De la musique encore et toujours !
Que ton vers soit la chose envolée
Qu’on sent qui fuit d’une âme en
allée
Vers d’autres cieux à d’autres
amours.
Que ton vers soit la bonne
aventure
Éparse au vent crispé du matin
Qui va fleurant la menthe et le
thym…
Et tout le reste est littérature.
