André Chénier

“ The latter assimilated many of the characteristics of the rediscovered master, though he emancipated himself from the old-fashioned Hellenism of style which hampered Chénier's flight. The poem La Dryade, to which he gives the additional title of "Idyll in the manner of Theocritus," is in reality an idyll in the manner of André Chénier. What distinguishes De Vigny most markedly from Chénier as a lyric poet is his cult of pure intellect and his proud, stoic feeling of solitude. He has painted his own ideal portrait in such poems as Moïse, La colère de Samson, and La mort du loup. ”

“ ‘The storm of revolution,’ as Andre Chenier said, ‘blows out the torch of poetry.’ It is not for some little time that the real influence of such a wild cataclysm of things is felt: at first the desire for equality seems to have produced personalities of more giant and Titan stature than the world had ever known before. Men heard the lyre of Byron and the legions of Napoleon; it was a period of measureless passions and of measureless despair; ambition, discontent, were the chords of life and art; the age was an age of revolt: ”

“ Struck by their beauty, this man began to make inquiry after the rest of Andre's manuscripts. He brought one old packet, one little yellow book after another to light, made a careful, tasteful selection, and by its publication produced a revolution in the poetic doctrines of his country. The name of André Chénier was soon known throughout the land, and the youth of the provinces as well as the youth of Paris received the new poetic revelation with enthusiasm. (See the description of this enthusiasm in Balzac's Les deux Poètes, the introduction to Les Illusions perdues.) ”

“ In all this there was something more than a poet: it was for France the dawn of a new literature.
The authenticity of André Chénier’s MSS. has never been seriously contested, and could not be so. I must quote on this head, however, Béranger’s opinion—not that I for a moment believe it sustainable, but because coming from such a man it interests the world of letters. ”

“ But the man, too, who loomed through the works and fragments of André Chénier's maturer years, formed a suggestive temperamental antithesis to those lyric outpourings which aroused enthusiasm in 1819. The women whom he celebrated in unforgettable poems were heroines or victims of the Revolution. There was a manly pathos in his iambics which recalled the old Greek iambic poets, and the fragments of his long poem, Hermès, revealed a philosophy of life, the antique sincerity and scientific sobriety of which formed the strongest possible contrast to the romantic emotionalism of Lamartine. ”

“ Providence does not send its voice down from them to men, prayers do not ascend from men to them; the result of reflection is a profound impression of the unity of nature and its subjection to law.
But André Chénier's poetry, which in so many ways anticipates that of the nineteenth century—it is distinctly lyrical, and in France the eighteenth century produced no other real lyric poet—is also marked by the influence of the two leading spirits of his own age, Rousseau and Voltaire. ”

“ Divinest form of beauty most divine!
The last production which we shall present in our present bundle of samples, selected from Púshkin's lyrics, is the irregular ode entitled André Chénier. This composition is founded upon one of the most well-known and tragic episodes of the first French Revolution: the execution of the young and gifted poet whose name forms the title of the lines. ”

“ M. Gillenormand fancied that he detected a faint frown on the part of Marius, who, in truth, as we must admit, was no longer listening to him, and who was thinking far more of Cosette than of 1793.
The grandfather, trembling at having so inopportunely introduced André Chénier, resumed precipitately:
“Cut his throat is not the word. The fact is that the great revolutionary geniuses, who were not malicious, that is incontestable, who were heroes, pardi! found that André Chénier embarrassed them somewhat, and they had him guillot . ”

“ Alfred de Vigny is quite as indifferent to local colouring as he is to facts. He places André Chénier's scaffold "on the Revolution Square" after taking him thither in a cart laden with more than "eighty victims, among them being some women with children sucking at the breast"!!!
It is the same with the rest!
Being more careful, I did not disdain the old stones that were humble witnesses of deeds so great; and, thanks to them, I was able to live through the Revolution again on the spot. They were fated to disappear. A new city cannot be built except on the remains of the old ”

“ In this snug resting-spot sleep many illustrious dead. On the wall, alongside the iron-railed gate, under a laurel-wreath, is a tablet inscribed with the name of "André de Chénier, son of Greece and of France," who "servit les Muses, aima la sagesse, mourut pour la verité." ”

“ The family, of which André was the third son, and Marie-Joseph (see below) the fourth, remained in France; and after a few years, during which André ran wild with “la tante de Carcasonne,” he distinguished himself as a verse-translator from the classics at the Collège de Navarre (the school in former days of Gerson and Bossuet) in Paris. In 1783 he obtained a cadetship in a French regiment at Strassburg. But the glamour of the military life was as soon exhausted by Chénier as it was by Coleridge. ”

“ Chénier’s real disciples, according to the latest view, are Leconte de Lisle and M. de Heredia, mosaïstes who have at heart the cult of antique and pagan beauty, of “pure art” and of “objective poetry.” Heredia himself reverted to the judgment of Sainte-Beuve to the effect that Chénier was the first to make modern verses, and he adds, “I do not know in the French language a more exquisite fragment than the three hundred verses of the Bucoliques.” ”

“ La Jeune Tarentine is a work of personal emotion and inspiration. The colouring is that of classic mythology, but the spiritual element is as individual as that of any classical poem by Milton, Gray, Keats or Tennyson. Apart from his idylls and his elegies, Chénier also experimented from early youth in didactic and philosophic verse, and when he commenced his Hermès in 1783 his ambition was to condense the Encyclopédie of Diderot into a poem somewhat after the manner of Lucretius. This poem was to treat of man’s position in the Universe, first in an isolated state, and then in society. ”

“ But if Rabbe admired antiquity madly, it was because he felt it strongly; his piece, Le Centaure, is André Chénier in prose. Let us give the proof of what we have been stating—
THE CENTAUR
"Swift as the west wind, amorous, superb, a young centaur comes to carry off the beauteous Cymothoë from her old husband. The impotent cries of the old man are heard afar.... Proud of his prey, impotent with desire, the ravisher stops beneath the deep shade of the banks of the river. His flanks still palpitate from the swiftness of his course; his breath comes hard and fast. He stops ”

“ Only the Cour des Femmes remains at all as it was in those days.
There are three victims of the Terror who have had the unstinted pity of later generations, and who have happily left traces of their presence on Paris brick and mortar. The last of these three to die was André-Marie de Chénier, and we will go first to his dwelling. It is an oddly shaped house, No. 97 Rue de Cléry—Corneille's street for many years—at its junction with Rue Beauregard; and a tablet in its wall tells of de Chénier's residence there. ”

“ Among the poems written or at least sketched during this period were L’Oaristys, L’Aveugle, La Jeune Malade, Bacchus, Euphrosine and La Jeune Tarentine, the last a synthesis of his purest manner, mosaic though it is of reminiscences of at least a dozen classical poets. As in glyptic so in poetic art, the Hellenism of the time was decadent and Alexandrine rather than Attic of the best period. But Chénier is always far more than an imitator. ”

“ This piece was played after the fall of the Terror, but the fratricide of Timoléon became the text for insinuations to the effect that by his silence Joseph de Chénier had connived at the judicial murder of André, whom Joseph’s enemies alluded to as Abel. There is absolutely nothing to support the calumny, which has often been repeated since. ”

“ Unfortunately, the works of M. Chénier, though they show the germ of a remarkable talent, glow with neither that antique simplicity nor that sublime majesty. The author was distinguished for an eminently classical mind. None better understood the principles of ancient and modern literature; the stage, eloquence, history, criticism, satire: he embraced all these; but his writings bear the impress of the disastrous days that witnessed his birth. Too often dictated by the spirit of party, they have been applauded by factions. ”

“ In his Églogues the beauty of his workmanship often reaches perfection. The short poems are Attic in their serenity and their grace. It is not the rococo pseudo-classicism of the later versifiers of the eighteenth century, it is the delicate flavour of true Hellenism that breathes from them; and, as one reads them, one is reminded alternately of Theocritus and of Keats. Like Keats, Chénier was cut off when he had hardly more than given promise of what his achievement might have been. ”

“ The edge of romance is dulled when we read that there was more of the hot head and mulish foot about Chénier than the hero; but to the present day there is a local phrase, “Brave comme Chénier.” The day after the battle Colborne’s chief officers declared that they were obliged to despatch Chénier. A patriot dame standing by said none but an English soldier was capable of killing a wounded man. ”

“ At a time when so many were striving to force themselves into notice there still existed a feeling of esteem in the public mind for men of superior talent who remained independent amidst the general corruption; such was M. Lemercier, such was M. de Chateaubriand. I was in Paris in the spring of 1811, at the period of Chenier's death, when the numerous friends whom Chateaubriand possessed in the second class of the Institute looked to him as the successor of Chenier. ”

“ At length, the fair Eugénie had recourse to a graceful expedient, which had more effect than all the philosophical reasonings of her learned friend. It was the custom of Chénier to spend his evenings at the little Hôtel d’Esparda, and there, in the society of the comtesse and Corinne,40 after a day spent in toil and strife, amid the loud uproar of the tribune, or the furious declamation of the club, would he love to retremper son âme and imbibe fresh inspiration for the composition of those splendid odes with which he has enriched our language. ”

“ His paternal reprimands to the people were but promises of impunity. The public force always arrived too late to punish; excuse was always to be found for sedition, amnesty for crime. The people felt that their magistrate was their accomplice and their slave, and yet whilst they despised they loved him.
XVII.
"This fête that is preparing for these soldiers," wrote Chénier, "is attributed to enthusiasm. For my part, I confess I do not perceive this enthusiasm. I see a few men who create a degree of agitation, but the rest are alarmed or indifferent. ”

“ Chénier, who had been the hero of the session, ascended the tribune again, and, with that eloquence which is akin to grandeur, he raised his arms to heaven, saying: "O Thou, who for the last six years hath guided the ship of [Pg 328] the Revolution through the most frightful tempests, amid the rocks of contending parties; Thou, through whose aid we have conquered Europe without a government and without rulers, without generals, and with soldiers without pay, O thou, Genius of Liberty, watch over us Thy last defenders!" ”

“ The performance was timed to commence at seven, and a quarter of an hour before that time the citizens of Paris who had come to applaud citoyenne Vestris, citoyen Talma, and their colleagues, in Chénier's tragedy, Henri VIII, were in their seats.
The theatre in the Rue de Richelieu was crowded. Talma and Vestris had always been great favourites with the public, and more so perhaps since their secession from the old and reactionary Comédie Française. Citizen Chénier's tragedy was in truth of a very poor order ”

“ It was she who inspired the poet with the idea of his poem called 'The Young Captive,' perhaps the most beautiful, as it is the most touching, of all his poems.
Shortly before Chénier was arrested he had formed a close friendship with Madame Pourrat of Luciennes and her two daughters, the Countess Hocquart and Madame Laurent Lecoulteux. To the latter, under the name of Fanny, he addressed many charming verses; one ode in particular, that seems to have been intended to accompany the gift of a necklace, is almost worthy of Ronsard, although like many of Chénier's poems it was never finished. ”

“ He can do nothing without his umbrella. He is d'une etourderie--"
"You must allow me to carry the umbrella," Longmore risked; "there's too much of it for a lady."
She assented, after many compliments to his politeness; and he walked by her side into the meadow. She went lightly and rapidly, picking her steps and glancing forward to catch a glimpse of her husband. She was graceful, she was charming, she had an air of decision and yet of accommodation, and it seemed to our friend that a young artist would work none the worse for having her seated at his side reading Chenier's iambics. ”