They appeared in journals and magazines, and, as M. de Banville applied the utmost lyrical skill to light topics of the moment, they were the most popular of "Articles de Paris." One must admit that they bore the English reader, and by this time long scholia are necessary for the enlightenment even of the Parisian student. The verses are, perhaps, the "bird-chorus" of French life, but they have not the permanent truth and delightfulness of the "bird-chorus" in Aristophanes. One has easily too much of the Carnival, the masked ball, the debardeurs, and the pierrots. The people at whom M. De Banville laughed are dead and forgotten. There was a certain M.
Paul Limayrac of those days, who barked at the heels of Balzac, and other great men, in the Revue des Deux Mondes. In his honour De Banville wrote a song which parodied all popular aspirations to be a flower. M. Limayrac was supposed to have become a blossom:
"Sur les coteaux et dans les landes Voltigeant comme un oiseleur Buloz en ferait des guirlandes Si Limayrac devenait fleur!"There is more of high spirits than of wit in the lyric, which became as popular as our modern invocation of Jingo, the god of battles.
It chanced one night that M. Limayrac appeared at a masked ball in the opera-house. He was recognised by some one in the crowd. The turbulent waltz stood still, the music was silent, and the dancers of every hue howled at the critic "Si Paul Limayrac devenait fleur!"Fancy a British reviewer, known as such to the British public, and imagine that public taking a lively interest in the feuds of men of letters! Paris, to be sure, was more or less of a university town thirty years ago, and the students were certain to be largely represented at the ball.
The "Odes Funambulesques" contain many examples of M. De Banville's skill in reviving old forms of verse--triolets, rondeaux, chants royaux, and ballades. Most of these were composed for the special annoyance of M. Buloz, M. Limayrac, and a M. Jacquot who called himself De Mirecourt. The rondeaux are full of puns in the refrain:
"Houssaye ou c'est; lyre, l'ire, lire," and so on, not very exhilarating. The pantoum, where lines recur alternately, was borrowed from the distant Malay; but primitive pantoum, in which the last two lines of each stanza are the first two of the next, occur in old French folk-song. The popular trick of repetition, affording a rest to the memory of the singer, is perhaps the origin of all refrains. De Banville's later satires are directed against permanent objects of human indignation--the little French debauchee, the hypocritical friend of reaction, the bloodthirsty chauviniste.
Tired of the flashy luxury of the Empire, his memory goes back to his youth -"Lorsque la levre de l'aurore Baisait nos yeux souleves, Et que nous n'etions pas encore La France des petits creves."The poem "Et Tartufe" prolongs the note of a satire always popular in France--the satire of Scarron, Moliere, La Bruyere, against the clerical curse of the nation. The Roman Question was Tartufe's stronghold at the moment. "French interests" demanded that Italy should be headless.
"Et Tartufe? Il nous dit entre deux cremus Que pour tout bon Francais l'empire est e Rome, Et qu'ayant pour aieux Romulus et Remus Nous tetterons la louve e jamais--le pauvre homme."The new Tartufe worships St. Chassepot, who once, it will not be forgotten, "wrought miracles"; but he has his doubts as to the morality of explosive bullets. The nymph of modern warfare is addressed as she hovers above the Geneva Convention, -"Quoi, nymphe du canon raye, Tu montres ces pudeurs risibles Et ce petit air effraye Devant les balles exploisibles?"De Banville was for long almost alone among poets in his ******* from Weltschmerz, from regret and desire for worlds lost or impossible. In the later and stupider corruption of the Empire, sadness and anger began to vex even his careless muse. She had piped in her time to much wild dancing, but could not sing to a waltz of mushroom speculators and decorated capitalists. "Le Sang de la Coupe" contains a very powerful poem, "The Curse of Venus,"pronounced on Paris, the city of pleasure, which has become the city of greed. This verse is appropriate to our own commercial enterprise:
"Vends les bois ou dormaient Viviane et Merlin!
L'Aigle de mont n'est fait que pour ta gibeciere;La neige vierge est le pour fournir ta glaciere;Le torrent qui bondit sur le roc sybillin, Et vole, diamant, neige, ecume et poussiere, N'est plus bon qu'e tourner tes meules de moulin!"In the burning indignation of this poem, M. De Banville reaches his highest mark of attainment. "Les Exiles" is scarcely less impressive. The outcast gods of Hellas, wandering in a forest of ancient Gaul, remind one at once of the fallen deities of Heine, the decrepit Olympians of Bruno, and the large utterance of Keats's "Hyperion." Among great exiles, Victor Hugo, "le pere le-bas dans l'ile," is not forgotten:
"Et toi qui l'accueillis, sol libre et verdoyant, Qui prodigues les fleurs sur tes coteaux fertiles, Et qui sembles sourire e l'ocean bruyant, Sois benie, ile verte, entre toutes les iles."The hoarsest note of M. De Banville's lyre is that discordant one struck in the "Idylles Prussiennes." One would not linger over poetry or prose composed during the siege, in hours of shame and impotent scorn. The poet sings how the sword, the flashing Durendal, is rusted and broken, how victory is to him -" . . . qui se cela Dans un trou, sous la terre noire."He can spare a tender lyric to the memory of a Prussian officer, a lad of eighteen, shot dead through a volume of Pindar which he carried in his tunic.
