New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-05-27

torial quality which the imagist critic
so admires In Verhaeren, the vital
force, the humanitarian passion, the
constant. inevitable pushing on, the
movement, one might call II, or
change" in his poetry, have far more
profoundly influenced the younger
French generation than have the purei
and more distinguished talents OF Sa-
main and de Regnier or the stylistic
skill of Remy de Gourmont.
Samain. Miss Lowell admits, Is .
minor poet. He was ain love with per
lection" wrote little and polished
much. as is the way OF unvital
temperaments. His three collected
volumes are full Of "sumptuous mag
inings," Tenderness with lovely and
fragile things" "preoccupation with
the past" Remy de Gourmont, though
far less natively poet, carried the
Symboliste movement much furtner
through his critical rs well as his
poetic activities. lie was IAN artist
and an insatiably curious person /.
something of photographed dandy
Individualism was his creed. and he be
came the chief spokesman OF Symool.
isme. which he defined as abandonment
Of existing forms, tendency toward
what is new, strange, and even bizarre
finally for poets ,rers
librc The capital crime for a
writer is conformity, imitation. sub
mission to rules and teaching
The dangers of such creed are OBJ
vious, and de Gourmont's poems, with
few exquisite exceptions like the 81
none" series, are so artificial that they
are already out of fashion. With dc Reg
nier. however. we reach poet OF quite
another cslibre. zone OF the great
poets Of France"7 That is Miss Low
ellis dictum. Certainly most rare
and beautiful talent. In the technique OF
Uers Libre de Regnier is unsurpassed
But he, too, is melancholy and sumptu
Gus, haunted by the past. He, too, de
scrbes the interior Of his persona
prison which Jean de Gourmont has
called "a palace with onyx columns
He himself said OF the men who came
after him: eve dreamed; they want e
live and say they have lived, directly
simply, intimately, lyricslly. They dc
not want TO express man in his sym
| bols; they want to express him IN his
thoughts, in his sensations, in his sen
! timents"
This definition Of the "modern" not,
in poetry comes much nearer, we be
leve, to summing up what Francis
Jammes and Paul Fort stand for thar
| Miss Lowell's rather meaningless dis
tinction between "interiority" and tex
teriority." The modern poet, she tell'
us, dares be happy and say so; he rec
ognizes that the world 'is all inter
related" and that he does not neces
sarily sit in its centre like spider il
| its web; he gives us picture making
without comment" All this is tru,
up to certain point. Jammes anC
Fort are by no means imagists. One
finds i'm both a certain naturalistic in
terest in detail, great preoccupatior
with description. But they are no
most Of the time. or at their best. i'm
personal commentators, interested il
things for themselves" With them
as with the Romantics, il is the refec
tion Of the thing" in the soul of the
, poet that gives rise to the creative i'm
pulse. Listen to Paul Fort himself:
Mature, je ne coneois rien de
ties beauties graves que scion
lamalgame, au miroir de mon
crur. de tes lignes, de ties ma
there's imperissables avec mes joies,
ces reeves, ct ma vie, ces douleurs-
qu'avec mon ceur, ou bien mon
anne, perissables.
dams mes proses en- vers; CONNIE
lis dissent, les ssges.
The above is al example Of Pau
Forts new form, mixture Of prost
and verse. which he calls the BALLAD
/ FRANCHISE" Forts exuberant ego fsirl,
capcrs through his works that is VIII
so many conservatives object to him
81 alone in my blood have all poetry
and will not die without having sun.