Chapter II

M. de Gourmont almost immediately left the half-hearted realism of _Merlette_, and, just as in his scientific writings he is more profoundly scientific than the men of science, so in his works of this period he carried to their uttermost limits the doctrines of the symbolists. In his critical work the historian must look for the manifestoes and polemics of the group that gathered in Mallarmé’s rooms in the Rue de Rome. The theories are in _Idéalisme_, published in 1893, and in such essays as his defence of Mallarmé, written in 1898, and included in the _Promenades Littéraires_. Of their practice he supplies plenty of examples. “Nommer un objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance du poème qui est faite du bonheur de deviner peu à peu; le suggérer voilà le rêve.” Mallarmé wrote that in 1891, and during the ’nineties Remy de Gourmont was publishing mysterious little books of poetry and prose, of which small limited editions were issued on rare paper, in curious covers, with lithographed decorations as reticent as the writing. There is the _Histoire tragique de la Princesse Phénissa expliquée en quatre épisodes_, a play whose action might be seen through seven veils, a play whose motive, never stated directly, is, perhaps, the destruction of the future for the sake of the present. There is _Le Fantôme_, the story of a _liaison_ between a man and a woman if you will, between the intellect and the flesh if you will, that begins with such an anthem as might have been sung by some of those strange beings whom Poe took “into the starry meadows beyond Orion, where, for pansies and violets and heartsease, are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted suns.” The man--is it a man?--who tells the story, ends with a regret for something too real to be visible, something that is seen because it is not visible: “Je me sentais froid, j’avais peur--car je la voyais, sans pouvoir m’opposer à cette transformation doloureuse--je la voyais s’en aller rejoindre le groupe des femmes indécises d’où mon amour l’avait tirée--je la voyais redevenir le fantôme qu’elles sont toutes.” There is _Le Livre des Litanies_, with its elaborate incantation, from which I take the beginning and end:

“Fleur hypocrite,

“Fleur du silence.

“Rose couleur de cuivre, plus frauduleuse que nos joies, rose
couleur de cuivre, embaume-nous dans tes mensonges, fleur
hypocrite, fleur du silence.

* * * * *

“Rose améthyste, étoile matinale, tendresse épiscopale, rose
améthyste, tu dors sur des poitrines dévotes et douillettes, gemme
offerte à Marie, ô gemme sacristine, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.

“Rose cardinale, rose couleur du sang de l’Eglise romaine, rose
cardinale, tu fais rêver les grands yeux des mignons et plus d’un
t’épingla au nœud de sa jarretière, fleur hypocrite, fleur du
silence.

“Rose papale, rose arrosée des mains qui bénissent le monde, rose
papale, ton cœur d’or est en cuivre, et les larmes qui perlent sur
ta vaine corolle, ce sont les pleurs du Christ, fleur hypocrite,
fleur du silence.

“Fleur hypocrite,

“Fleur du silence.”