Théophile Gautier

“ It is not, on this occasion, Sully-Prudhomme whom we are considering, but his critics. If Théophile Gautier was right in 1867, Rémy de Gourmont must have been wrong in 1907; yet they both were honourable men in the world of criticism. Nor is it merely the dictum of a single man, which, however ingenious, may be paradoxical. It is worse than that; it is the fact that one whole generation seems to have agreed with Gautier, and that another whole generation is of the same mind as Rémy de Gourmont. ”

“ Now I know all; we always know all when it is too late, when the seal of the irreparable is fixed upon events! You came to Havre, poor beauty, to find me, and fled believing yourself deceived; you could not read my despair through my fictitious joy; you took my mask for my real countenance, the intoxication of my body for the oblivion of my soul! In the midst of my orgie, at the very moment when my foot pressed on the Ethiop's body, your azure eyes illumined my dream, your blonde tresses rippled before me like golden waters of Paradise ”

“ Nofré, bending over the edge of the chariot, held the reins of the oxen, bridled like horses, and drove the car in the Egyptian fashion, while Tahoser, motionless by her side, leaned a hand, studded with rings from the little finger to the thumb, on the gilded moulding of the shell. These two lovely maidens, the one brilliant with enamels and precious stones, the other scarcely veiled in a transparent tunic of gauze, formed a charming group on the brilliantly painted car. ”

“ In its own climate it is a gaudy flower; in this temperate zone it is a poisonous, spotted lily, rank of smell and blistering to the touch. The licentiousness of Théophile Gautier is elevated by the power of his transcendent genius to the plane of true art. In America it sinks into a denizen of the gutter. ”

“ The day after his death Théophile Gautier wrote: “He carried with pride the old tattered banner, which had seen so many battles; we can make a shroud of it, the valiant followers of Hernani are no more.” How true! He devoted his entire life to ideals, loving literature for itself; as the last fanatic loves a religion nearly or quite extinct.
“Second-rate genius,” you will say; but fourth-rate ones are not so plentiful now! We are getting wide of the mark. We are so engrossed in stupidity and vulgarism that we shun delicacy and loftiness of mind; we think it a bore to show respect to great men. ”

“ A negro page—the same who had before brought me the tablet from Clarimonde, and whom I instantly recognised—approached to aid me in dismounting, and the major-domo, attired in black velvet with a gold chain about his neck, advanced to meet me, supporting himself upon an ivory cane. Large tears were falling from his eyes and streaming over his cheeks and white beard. ‘Too late!’ he cried, sorrowfully shaking his venerable head. ‘Too late, sir priest! But if you have not been able to save the soul, come at least to watch by the poor body.’
He took my arm and conducted me to the death-chamber. ”

“ I have admired her smooth, luminous forehead, her chastely transparent temples, her cheek bones tinged with a dark, maidenly flush, more delicate than the peach bloom; I have counted one by one the lovely golden lashes that cast their trembling shadow on her cheeks; I have distinguished, in the half-light in which she is bathed, the fleeting outlines of her slender, modestly bent neck; I have even, with audacious hand, raised the folds of her tunic and seen without a veil that virgin bosom, swollen with milk, that was never pressed by any save divine lips ”

“ Milord, shattered, sore and helpless, also heard a charming voice singing sweetly in his ear: "Thou art stretched full length upon the summit of Tschamalouri."
This melody insensibly affected him as the balm of Fier-à-Bras. He rallied, he arose, and with radiant face, sparkling eyes and bosom swelling with pride, drew a poniard from its sheath and prepared to cut his name upon the rock. Suddenly he turned pale, his limbs gave way under him, the knife dropped from his grasp and fell blunted upon the rocks. ”

“ Twea, Taïa, Amense, Hont-Reché, whom I have kept to avoid the disgust of having to find others who the next day would have been as indifferent as themselves, have never been, when in my arms, aught but vain phantoms, perfumed and graceful forms, beings of another race with whom my nature could not mingle any more than the leopard can mate with the gazelle, the dweller in the air with the dweller in the waters. I had come to think that, placed by the gods apart from and above all mortals, I was never to share either their pains or their joys. ”

“ Her hair, clustering in sunny ringlets round her brow, was like living gold, it made a glory round her head, and the whole audience was enraptured with her beauty, though an envious mask concealed so much of it; all, indeed, save the snow-white forehead, the round dimpled chin, the ripe red lips, whose tint was rendered yet more vivid by the contrast with the black velvet that shaded them, the perfect oval of the face, and a dainty little ear, pink as a sea-shell—a combination of charms worthy of a goddess, and which made every one impatient to see the radiant, beauteous whole. ”

“ If the honest tyrant could have seen him as he walked briskly away, the moment he was safely out of sight, he would have been astonished at the way the broad, stooping shoulders straightened themselves up, and at the rapid, vigorous step that succeeded to the slow, rather infirm gait of his venerable visitor—but these things our worthy Hérode neither saw nor suspected. ”

“ Never was there a braver, more fearless man. In our first attack on him, at Poitiers, he got the better of us in a most wonderful way—we never saw the like of it—and all he had to fight with was a dull, rusty sword, not intended for use at all; a theatre sword, just for looks. And when we tried to do for him here in Paris, the very night he got here, it all came to naught, because he was so watchful, and somehow suspected what we were up to, and was ready for us ”

“ It must be that Théodore is a woman in disguise; it cannot be otherwise. His excessive beauty, excessive even for a woman, is not the beauty of a man, were he Antinous, the friend of Adrian, or Alexis, the friend of Virgil.—He is a woman, parbleu! and I am a fool to have tormented myself so. In that way everything is explained as naturally as possible, and I am not such a monster as I thought.
Does God put such long, dark, silky fringes upon a man's coarse eyelids? Would he tinge our vile, thick-lipped, hairy mouths with that bright, delicate carmine? ”

“ As for me, I can imagine none.—What mystery is hidden by such coldness?—I cannot believe that you feel repugnance for me; what you have done proves that you do not, for a man does not pay court so earnestly to a woman for whom he has a feeling of disgust, though he were the greatest scoundrel on earth. O Théodore, what have you against me? ”

“ ‘The heart contains passion but the imagination alone contains poetry,’ says Charles Baudelaire. This too was the lesson that Théophile Gautier, most subtle of all modern critics, most fascinating of all modern poets, was never tired of teaching—‘Everybody is affected by a sunrise or a sunset.’ The absolute distinction of the artist is not his capacity to feel nature so much as his power of rendering it. The entire subordination of all intellectual and emotional faculties to the vital and informing poetic principle is the surest sign of the strength of our Renaissance. ”

“ Only, I have washed from my face the dust of the road, I have smoothed out the folds in my crushed gown and put a flower in my hair. If I am poor, that is no reason why I should be ugly, and the gods sometimes refuse beauty to the rich. But does it please you that I should go on?"
"Yes. Repeat that air; it fascinates, benumbs me, it takes away my memory like a cup of nepenthe. Repeat it until sleep and forgetfulness fall upon my eyelids."
Poëri's eyes, fixed at first upon Tahoser, soon were half-closed, and then completely so. ”

“ Never has passion in any one made my heart of brass beat within my stony breast. Resist me, hate if you will,—you will only be more charming; for the first time an obstacle will have come in the way of my will, and I shall know how to overcome it."
"But suppose I love another?" continued Tahoser, more boldly.
At this suggestion the eyebrows of the Pharaoh were bent; he violently bit his lower lip, in which his teeth left white marks, and he pressed to the point of hurting her the fingers of the maid which he still held. ”

“ The blue smoke ascended from the chimneys of the village of Andelys, nestling at the foot of the mountain; the silvery tones of the bells ringing the Angelus came to us on the evening breeze; Venus shone soft and pure in the western sky. Madame Taverneau had not yet joined us; Alfred's fascinations had made her forget her companion.
Louise, uneasy at being so long separated from her chaperon, leaned over the edge of the battlement. A stone, which only needed the weight of a tired swallow to dislodge it, rolled from Under Louise's foot, who, terribly frightened, threw herself in my arms. ”

“ Her hair, of a soft blonde hue, was parted in the midst and flowed back over her temples in two rivers of rippling gold; she seemed a diademed queen. Her forehead, bluish-white in its transparency, extended its calm breadth above the arches of her eyebrows, which by a strange singularity were almost black, and admirably relieved the effect of sea-green eyes of unsustainable vivacity and brilliancy. What eyes! With a single flash they could have decided a man's destiny. They had a life, a limpidity, an ardor, a humid light which I have never seen in human eyes ”

“ Théodore seated himself at the foot of Rosette's bed, for D'Albert had taken his place at her pillow, by right of having arrived first. The conversation wandered for some time from subject to subject, very bright and gay and animated, and that is why we do not report it; we should be afraid that it would lose too much in being transcribed. The manner, the tone, the vivacity of speech and gesture, the countless ways of uttering a word, the effervescent wit, like the foam of champagne which sparkles and evaporates at once, are details that it is impossible to note down and reproduce. ”

“ The Eupatridæ of Sardes, who hoped that the young king might, perchance, choose a wife from their family, the hetairæ of Athens, of Samos, of Miletus and of Cyprus, the beautiful slaves from the banks of the Indus, the blond girls brought at a vast expense from the depths of the Cimmerian fogs, were heedful never to utter in the presence of Candaules, whether within hearing or beyond hearing, a single word which bore any relation to Nyssia. The bravest, in a question of beauty, recoil before the prospect of a contest in which they can anticipate being outrivalled. ”

“ When one is sad, one ought to mingle with the crowd, for solitude feeds sombre thoughts. From his chariot Ahmosis will smile graciously upon you, and you will return happier to your palace."
"Ahmosis loves me, but I do not love him," answered Tahoser.
"You speak as a maid," replied Nofré, who was very much smitten with the handsome officer, and who thought that the disdainful nonchalance of Tahoser was assumed. In point of fact, Ahmosis was a very handsome fellow. His profile resembled that of the images of the gods carved by the most skilful sculptors. ”

“ It is very fortunate for me that Théodore is a woman, it is very unfortunate for Rosette that he is not a man, and she is now wallowing in the slough of amorous impossibilities in which I recently went astray. ”

“ Indulging my traveller's extravagancies laughingly, to the amusement of my fair companion, she said:
"Truly your philosophy is of the happy school, and the burden of life must be very light when it is so lightly borne."
"You must know, my dear Roger," said the Duchess, feigning commiseration, "that my young cousin, Mlle. de Chateaudun, is pitiably unhappy, and you and I can weep over her lot in chorus with orchestral accompaniment; poor child! she is the richest heiress in Paris." ”

“ In poetry, his favourite author was Théophile Gautier, both on account of his construction and the precision of his metaphors—in prose, the severe Flaubert, on account of his wonderfully clear style, and his lack of all mannerisms.
It pleased him, however, that Suzanne should see in her father a liberal protector of literature, for it proved the depth of her filial piety. He was also pleased to find that she cherished an ideal of his art almost childish in its simplicity. Such a comprehension of beauty, if sincere, showed real inner purity. ”

“ A few minutes later the two young gentlemen entered the Armes de France, and asked for Maître Bilot. The worthy landlord came forward at once, and himself conducted them into a cosy, well-lighted room on the ground floor, where a bright fire was burning cheerily; he took the old, dusty bottle, with cobwebs clinging about it, from the waiter’s hands, drew the cork very carefully, and then poured the amber wine, as clear as a topaz, into the delicate Venetian glasses held out for it by the duke and his companion, with a hand as steady as if it had been of bronze. ”

“ Thought, which Théophile Gautier once defined, "the final medium in which the poet takes refuge when he is devoid of both passion and coloring," was the main essential with Paludan-Müller, if not in his poetry, at least in his æsthetics. He himself always strove to represent the idea, in the Platonic sense of the word, as what was eternally typical. Therefore it was that he wrote "Amor and Psyche," "Adam Homo," and "Ahasuerus." When he failed to find this universality, this typical element, he could discover no merit in poetry. ”