Volume 8 — A WORDSWORTH BIBLIOGRAPHY (continued 2)

4

Hoyt, A. S. “Wordsworth, the Man and the Poet.” (Imperfectly reported in The Houghton Record.)

III.—FRANCE

WORDSWORTH IN FRANCE

By Émile Legouis, Professeur à la Faculté de Lettres, Université de Lyon, France

I BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is no separate or whole book on Wordsworth that I know of.

Articles in Magazines, or Chapters in Books

Voyage historique et littéraire en Angleterre et en Écosse, par Amédée Pichot (passim). 3 vols. in 8. Paris, 1829.[575] An English translation was published in London in 1825.

Revue Britannique.

Mai 1827. Wordsworth, Crabbe, and Campbell, pp. 61-79, a criticism translated from the New Monthly Magazine.

Février 1835. Poésie domestique de la grande Bretagne, translated from the New Monthly Magazine.

Janvier 1836, p. 190. Compte-rendu de “Yarrow Revisited and other Poems,” translated from the Repository of Knowledge.

Revue des Deux Mondes. 1er Août 1835. William Wordsworth, par A. Fontaney.[576]

Revue Contemporaine. 15 Décembre 1853. Poètes contemporains de l’Angleterre: William Wordsworth et John Wilson, par L. Étienne.

Littérature anglaise de H. Taine.[577] 1864. Vol. iv. pp. 311-324.

Études sur la Littérature contemporaine, par Éd. Schérer.[578]

Revue critique d’histoire et de littérature. 16 Janvier 1882. Article de James Darmesteter sur la Biographie de Wordsworth, par Myers.[579]

Essais de Littérature anglaise, par James Darmesteter. Paris, 1883.[580]

Histoire de la Littérature anglaise, par M. Léon Boucher. Paris, 1890. pp. 355-363.

La Renaissance de la Poésie anglaise, par Gabriel Sarrazin. 1887.

Études et Portraits, par Paul Bourget. Vol. ii. Études anglaises.[581] 1888.

Étude sur la Vie et les Œuvres de Robert Burns, par Auguste Angellier. Paris, 1892. (Passim, et surtout vol. ii. pp. 362-393, Étude sur le sentiment de la nature dans Wordsworth et autres poètes anglais contemporains.)

Le général Michel Beaupuy, par Georges Bussière et Émile Legouis. Paris, 1891.

II TRANSLATIONS

Pas de traduction complète, ni de volume spécial de traductions de Wordsworth.

Une traduction par Fontaney annoncée en 1837 comme devant paraître dans le Bibliothèque anglo-française, n’a pas paru.

En dehors des poèmes ou parties de poèmes traduit par les critiques énumérés plus haut, il n’y a guère de traduction en prose de quelque importance.

Traductions en Vers

Madame Amable Tastu. We are Seven.

Sainte-Beuve. Joseph Delorme. 1829.

“Le plus long jour de l’année,” p. 88.

Sonnet, “Personal Talk,” p. 123.

“Sonnet sur le Sonnet,” p. 124.

Consolations. 1830.

Sonnet, “It is a beauteous evening,” p. 234.

Sonnet, “Not Love, nor War,” p. 239.

Sonnet, “Quand le poète en pleurs,” p. 236.

Pensées d’Août. Trois sonnets imités de Wordsworth.

I. “Reposez-vous et remerciez.”

II. “La Cabane du Highlander.”

III. “Le Château de Bothwell.”

Sainte-Beuve cite en outre dans ses Nouveaux Lundis des 21 et 22 Avril 1862, trois sonnets de Wordsworth traduits en vers, par l’Abbé Roussel. Ces traductions assez pauvres de poésie sont celles des sonnets suivants—

“Nuns fret not.…”

“Dark and more dark.…”

“These words were uttered as in pensive mood.”

Jean Aicard a traduit We are Seven dans La Chanson de l’Enfant.

Paul Bourget (Études et Portraits, vol. ii. op. cit.) a traduit l’un des sonnets au Duddon.

III INFLUENCE

Wordsworth’s influence on French literature was altogether very slight, nor did it make itself felt till about 1830; when, after a very limited period, it silently died away.

Wordsworth was but little known by his contemporary Châteaubriand, who merely names him among other poets in his Essai sur la Littérature anglaise. Byron, Walter Scott, and in a lesser degree Thomas Moore, were the only writers of Great Britain whose works told on our literature at that time. Villemain, in his criticism of Byron, contemptuously dismisses all the so-called lake-poets to fix on his hero. He calls them: “Des métaphysiciens, raisonneurs sans invention, mélancoliques sans passion, qui, dans l’éternelle rêverie d’une vie étroite et peu agitée, n’avaient produit que des singularités sans puissance sur l’imagination des autres hommes. Tel était Woodsworth (sic) et le subtil mais non touchant Coléridge.”

To Byron also, and to him alone (Ossian being excepted) among the poets of England, was Lamartine indebted. I am not sure that he names Wordsworth once; but still the striking analogy between the ideas and imaginative style of both cannot fail to be noticed by the reader. Without insisting on a parallel that might be drawn between many pages of The Excursion and of Jocelyn, I will only point out two short pieces of Lamartine that bear strong resemblance to two poems of Wordsworth, so much so that they almost read like free imitations—

LamartineWordsworth’s

“A Augusta,” Recueillements Poètiques, xx.Nightingale and Stock-dove.

“Le Fontaine du Foyard,” Nouvelles Confidences.The Fountain.

Victor Hugo, so far as I know, only names Wordsworth once, in L’Âne—

M. Sully Prudhomme when he wrote A l’Hirondelle (stanzas, la vie intérieure) appears to have borne in mind To a Skylark, “Ethereal minstrel,” etc.

M. Coppée has often been called a French Wordsworth, owing to his poetical collection called Les Humbles, wherein he shows the same partiality as the English Poet does for humble themes and characters, together with a bold attempt to naturalise trivial or ludicrous details in serious poetry; but there is no proof, as far as I know, of Wordsworth’s influence having been strong upon him.

If we except two or three disciples of Wordsworth, neither he, nor the lake-poets taken as a whole, seem to have been much thought of, or even read, by our contemporary verse-writers. The word Lakist has generally been used as a synonym for “weak and doleful mysticism.” Ex.:—

(a) Revue Encyclopédique. 1831. Article de Pierre Leroux, sur la “Poésie de notre Époque.” “L’Angleterre a entendu autour de ses lacs bourdonner comme des ombres plaintives un essaim de poètes abîmés dans une mystique contemplation.”

(b) Journal d’un Poète, par Alfred de Vigny. (Ed. Michel Lévy. 1867. p. 80.) “Barbier vient de publier Il Pianto. Les délices de Capone ont amolli son caractère de poésie et Brizeux a déteint sur lui ses douces couleurs virgiliennes et laquistes (sic) dérivant de Sainte-Beuve.”

(c) Théophile Gautier (Portraits Contemporains, p. 174) almost seems to derive the word Lakiste from Lamartine’s poem called Le Lac. He has just mentioned the poem and goes on: “Il ne faut pas croire que Lamartine, parce qu’il y a toujours chez lui une vibration et une résonnance de harpe éolienne, ne soit qu’un mélodieux lakiste et ne sache que soupirer mollement la mélancolie et l’amour. S’il a le soupir, il a la parole et le cri …” (Journal Officiel, 8 Mars 1869.)

I now come to the man who, first and foremost among our poets and critics, paid due homage to Wordsworth, i.e. Sainte-Beuve. I have already enumerated his several translations in verse from Wordsworth. Strange to say, the voluminous critic has no single article with Wordsworth for its main subject; but, whoever will go through his many volumes will find many judicious and admiring references to the poet.

Moreover, as a poet, Sainte-Beuve has endeavoured to naturalise in France the poetic style that has been associated with the name of Wordsworth. He expressly claims Wordsworth as one of his masters in his Consolations xviii. “A Antony Deschamps.” Among his bosom-poets he reckons—

The original attempt of Sainte-Beuve (for he was original in his very choice of Wordsworth as a model at a time when Byron engrossed all the admiration of the French poets) has been ably characterised by Théophile Gautier in his “Portraits Contemporains” (pp. 208, 209), an article reprinted from La Gazette de Paris, 19 Novembre 1871:—

“(Sainte-Beuve) avait été en poésie un inventeur. Il avait donné une note nouvelle et toute moderne, et de tout le cénacle c’était à coup sûr le plus réellement romantique. Dans cette humble poésie qui rappelle par la sincérité du sentiment et la minutie du détail observé sur nature, les vers de Crabbe, de Wordsworth, et de Cowper, Sainte-Beuve s’est frayé de petits sentiers à mi-côte, bordés d’humbles fleurettes, où nul en France n’a passé avant lui. Sa facture un peu laborieuse et compliquée vient de la difficulté de réduire à la forme métrique des idées et des images non exprimées encore ou dédaignées jusque-là, mais que de morceaux merveilleusement venus où l’effort n’est plus sensible!”

Sainte-Beuve’s admiration of Wordsworth is a well-known fact. Less generally known is the influence of this admiration on several poets of that time (circa 1830-40), who, either through Sainte-Beuve’s imitations, or with a direct knowledge of Wordsworth’s poems, to the reading of which they had thus been stimulated, offer great marks of resemblance with Wordsworth. I have quoted a judgment of De Vigny that considers Brizeux and Barbier as having turned laquistes through Sainte-Beuve. I know no other immediate proof of this influence. Perhaps Barbier and Brizeux have consigned it somewhere. Anyhow Brizeux with his glorification of his youthful years and school-time, with his intense love of his native Brittany, his fond attachment to local customs and habits, his lamentations on the death of the poetical poet as embodied in his own province (Élégie de la Bretagne), is to all extent and purposes the most thoroughly Wordsworthian of all our poets. There may be more of Wordsworth’s philosophy in Lamartine, but there is more of his poetry proper in Brizeux.

The influence of Wordsworth on Maurice de Guérin and Hippolyte de la Morvonnais, is more easily ascertained than the preceding. Here, again, Sainte-Beuve appears to have been the intermediate agent.[582]

In 1832-33 Maurice de Guérin, fresh from the reading of the Consolations, and De la Morvonnais, who came to be a direct admirer of the Lake Poets, and chiefly of Wordsworth, set to write short poems which they aspired to make as little different from prose as possible, rejecting all traditional ornaments, and making little of the rhythmical improvements of the Romantiques proper. Some of those pieces were inserted in a local paper as downright prose (no stop intervening at the end of the lines), whereas the said paper would not have made room for verse.[583] This looks like trifling, but the earnestness of this attempted revolution is shown in the interesting poems of Maurice de Guérin. Another outcome of this was an intended publication on Wordsworth, of which it is impossible to say whether it was to be a criticism, or a translation, of the English Poet. It is thus mentioned in a letter of Guérin to De la Morvonnais of June 30, 1836: “Nous avons adressé des circulaires à un grand nombre d’éditeurs pour l’impression Wordsworth. Nous attendons la réponse d’un moment à l’autre.” The answer must have been unfavourable, as nothing more was heard of the intended publication.

The early death of Guérin left it for De la Morvonnais alone to spread the influence of Wordsworth’s poetry in France. Of him we read in Sainte-Beuve’s Étude sur Maurice de Guérin:—

“La Morvonnais, vers ce temps même (1834), en était fort préoccupé (des lakistes et de leur poésie), au point d’aller visiter Wordsworth à sa résidence de Rydal Mount, près des lacs du Westmoreland, et de rester en correspondance avec ce grand et pacifique esprit, avec ce patriarche de la Muse intime. Guérin, sans tant y songer, ressemblait mieux aux Lakistes en ne visant nullement à les imiter.”

Of the supposed correspondence between Wordsworth and De la Morvonnais no trace remains. M. Hippolyte de la Blanchardière, De la Morvonnais’ grandson, has informed me that in the collection of his grandfather’s letters there is no letter of Wordsworth to be found. That at least a Study of Wordsworth existed at the time is proved by the following preface to his poem La Thébaïde des Grèves, written by his friend A. Duquesnel (ed. by Didier, Quai des Augustins. 1864. p. xxvii.)

“Nous avons trouvé dans les Reliquiae du poète de l’Arguenon[584] de précieuses études sur les lakistes. Il s’était passionné pour ces hommes dans les dix dernières années de sa vie (1843-53).[585] Wordsworth lui semblait plus grand que Byron, qu’il trouvait trop emphatique, trop solennel, pas assez près de la nature. L’auteur de l’Excursion a exercé une pénétrante influence sur l’esprit et le cœur de la Morvonnais, nous trouvons dans ses cahiers des traductions en vers de Wordsworth, de Coléridge, de Crabbe, qui, lui, ne faisait pas partie de ce groupe. Nous les publierons peut-être un jour; elles ont d’autant plus d’intérêt que l’on ne connaît guère les lakistes en France, que par de rares extraits. Il s’était livré, comme on le verra, à une étude approfondie de la littérature anglaise. Son admiration pour Walter Scott était inexprimable.”

The study and translations above-mentioned have also been lost, many manuscripts of De la Morvonnais having been destroyed.

It remains for me to point out some allusions to, or imitations of, Wordsworth in the existing verse of De la Morvonnais.

In the Thébaïde des Grèves (1838), “Le Petit Patour” is a close imitation of We are Seven, the conclusion being—

“Le Vagabond,” a story of a vagrant by whom the poet is taught resignation, is an imitation of Resolution and Independence.

In “A Sainte-Beuve” are found these two lines—

In “Dispersion, à Mistress Hemans,” etc., we read this—

In “Dernières Paroles” we find this praise of Wordsworth—

I pass over many sonnets, and divers other poems, in which the influence of Wordsworth is unmistakable, and come to a last quotation which is useful to elucidate an allusion in Wordsworth’s The Poet’s Dream: Sequel to the Norman Boy. In this poem, written in 1842, Wordsworth says—

As Wordsworth read very little French poetry in his old age, I think he here alludes to a poem of his admirer De la Morvonnais, who very likely sent him that Thébaïde des Grèves (1838), in which Wordsworth was so highly praised. The passage alluded to is taken from “Solitude,” and reads thus—

As a whole, De la Morvonnais, though he imitates Wordsworth, is very unlike him. Of course I do not mean to compare the two, but even in like subjects he differs from Wordsworth, owing to a sort of constitutional nervousness and brooding melancholy.[586]