The length of these feuilletons was disputed; of Jean et Jeanette the inadequacy in length had to be acknowledged:

"Moi je pioche. Jean et Jeannette a beaucoup de succès mais j'ai été obligé d'allonger les feuilletons qui se trouvaient trop courts et c'est une besogne très difficile d'ajouter après coup à un feuilleton qui a un sens achevé. Enfin je m'en tire . . ." (52).

One sees, then, the artist and critic in the midst of his work. He is equipped with an admirable verbal facility and noteworthy power of visual and verbal memory; he writes most willingly in the midst of the turmoil of an office, under pressure of financial necessity, and with the encouragement and aid of his friends. Technical information, contemporary facts, are received gladly from outside sources; the author's arrangements with his editors confirm the implication that his principal care will have to do with the form, with the actual preparation of this material for publication. Even this part of the work becomes more or less mechanical; predictions as to the time to be taken, space to be filled, are ventured well in advance of the finished product, and any unforeseen changes are still in the direction of formal achievement. It is the finished technician who writes from London, in 1862:

Dans la boîte exhibitionnelle

... j'ai pu voir un beau désordre qui n'était pas un effet de l'art. La cérémonie d'ouverture était pour une heure. Il était alors huit heures du matin. J'ai visité le bocal soigneusement prenant des notes et relevant le plan de la chose. Je me suis installé dans une boutique industrielle de connaissance et j'ai écrit au crayon une partie de mon article que je vais terminer cette nuit. Je suis las comme un chien étant resté debout 9 heures d'horloge lesté d'une simple tranche de viande froide absorbée à l'aube. Je crois que mon article sera assez curieux . (53).

1. TAMPUCCI, Poésies, pp. 172-174; dated Décembre 1832."

2. La Presse, 17 décembre 1838. The pages referred to appeared first in Mademoiselle de Maupin.

3. SP. DE LOVENJOUL, Lundis d'un chercheur, p. 182.

4. Lovenjoul C-485-62; letter probably of 1851.

5. M. DREYFOus, Ce que je tiens à dire, pp. 75-78. Cf. E. BERGERAT, Souvenirs, p. 10, where the same fact is attested.

6. Journal des Goncourt, 23 avril 1872, V, 39.

7. ALBALAT, Le Travail du style, pp. 283-294.

*

8. Lovenjoul, C-505–27; cf. A. BoscнOT, Chez nos poètes, (1925), p. 192: Dans sa prose, destinée presque toujours à remplir hâtivement de trop nombreuses colonnes de journal, il eut souvent recours à sa fantaisie primesautière, à sa verve, à son exubérante facilité de méridional, prompt à la parole, et servi par une inépuisable richesse et même une resplendissante prodigalité verbale."

9. Lovenjoul, C-505-35, letter to Pierre Gautier, 26 février 1827. 10. Lovenjoul, C-506-3, letter to Gautier at Seville, 12 août 1840. 11. Lovenjoul, C-490-252, letter of the end of March, 1857.

12. Journal des Goncourt, I, 181.

13. Ibid., III, 192.

14. Lovenjoul, C-490-23, letter of June 25th, 1868.

15. E. FEYDEAU, Souvenirs intimes, p. 253.

16. Ibid., p. 169.

17. V. E. BERGerat, Souvenirs, passim.

18. E. BERGERAt, Souvenirs d'un enfant de Paris, I, 312–313.

19. PAUL PARFAIT, Th. Gautier, p. 228.

20. CH. YRIARTE, Les Portraits cosmopolites, p. 71.

21. MARCEL, Essai sur Th. Gautier, p. 5.

22. V. E. BERGERAT, Souvenirs, p. 117.

66

23. Salon de 1852," 12e article, La Presse, 3 juin 1852.

24. Salon de 1847, p. 125. Note that he considers Corot's a singular talent, in that "ce maladroit arrive à des résultats étonnants, où n'atteint jamais la dextérité la plus consommée. .. C'est que l'on peint avec la tête et avec le cœur encore plus qu'avec la main

.", Ibid.,

30. SP. DE LOVENJOUL, Lundis d'un chercheur, p. 192; Lovenjoul considers that this occurrence was due to forgetfulness on the part of Gautier. 31. Cf. YRIARTE, Les Portraits cosmopolites, p. 71: "La forme versifiée l'attire, et lui qui oublie ses vers et ne garde que le souvenir du rhythme et de la mesure sans se rappeler l'expression, sait par cœur les élucubrations de quelques poëtes qui ne se doutent pas de l'honneur que leur fait l'un des plus grands de ce temps-ci."

It seems at first that this statement is in contradiction to the testimony in regard to Gautier's remarkable verbal memory. However, when the manner of composition of his own poems has been taken into consideration, it will be evident that in the working-process the form-rhythm and measure-was far more constant than the expression, and it will not seem surprising that, of the many types of expression suggested and worked over, the final and definitive one should be less deeply impressed on the author than the system of rhythm and measure to which they all conformed.

32. BERGERAT, Souvenirs, p. 83.

33. Journal des Goncourt, 28 juillet 1868, III, 221.

34. Cf. JUDITH GAUTIER, Préface au Capitaine Fracasse, pp. i-ii.

35. YRIARTE, op. cit., p. 68.

36. Lovenjoul, C-485-48.

37. V. HENRI MALO, La Gloire du Vicomte de Launay, passim, and Loven

joul C-482.

38. H. MALO, op. cit., p. 176.

39. Lovenjoul C-487-102, letters of August 18th, 1851. 40. SP. DE LOVENJOUL, Histoire des œuvres

I, 451.

41. V. SERVIÈRES, Les Relations d'Ernest Reyer et de Th. Gautier, p. 71-75. 42. Lovenjoul, C-485-220, 221. Letter to Eugène Piot at Strasbourg, 23 septembre 1837.

43. Lovenjoul, C-469-19. Letter of early March, 1840.

44. Lovenjoul, C-486-264. Letter to M. Dujarier, administrateur du journal de la Presse, 1844.

45. Lovenjoul, C-484-119, 22 mai 1868. 46. Lovenjoul, C-484-122, 23 mai 1868. 47. Lovenjoul, C-484-125, 10 août 1868. 48. Lovenjoul, C-485-332, 1er avril 1867.

49. Lovenjoul, C-486-142, 24 juin 1852, à Louis de Cormenin. It is to this same friend that he writes, on the way to Constantinople, of his progress in finishing Inès de las Sierras" (cf. BLANGUERNON, Une amie inconnue I p. 143); and, the preceding year, of the composition

of the first obelisk-eighteen quatrains, as he calculates it (V. Lovenjoul C-486-130, 1er août 1851).

50. Lovenjoul, C-485-359, letter to Julien Turgan. The finished product was published in seventeen installments.

51. Lovenjoul, C-485–354, 355. Letter of December 16, 1858, from Saint Petersburg.

52. Lovenjoul, C-485-57. Letter of July 17, 1850, to Madame Ernesta Grisi. 53. Lovenjoul, C-484-113. Letter to Paul Dalloz, 1er mai 1862.

INCEPTION

A picture of Gautier at work has been given by his friends and critics, its meaning is made clear only by a study of the production itself. The question is a triple one: from what inspiration does the author advance, to what extent and how does he document himself for his work, and what is the actual process of its composition? The inspiration of an author is in itself not a simple matter to determine, for in it are bound up, in the first instance, his whole personal preparation for writing, the spurs and the restraints to production inherent in his temperament and tendencies. From this point of view, the character of Gautier's work has already been considered in respect to general atmosphere, themes and form. Again, inspiration is in part dependent on exterior circumstances, on what may seem, of its nature, foreign to literary production. Financial necessity or, on the other hand, relative freedom from questions of money, may show its influence on habits of composition; so the exigencies of the press affected the author of Jean et Jeannette and of Spirite. Conservation of energy, also, plays its rôle in the determining of inspiration to production as in all activity. Strictly from the point of view of literary technique, however, inspiration must be looked upon in the light of the occasion of the work produced: given temperamental preparedness (1) upon what circumstances is the inception of the individual piece dependent? From what source does the author receive the idea of a particular work of art? Here again inspiration is complex; there is not one sole spring to action, and the conjunction of various occasions, all acceptable to the individual author, may be necessary before the work is brought into being. In this case, however, the very variety of inspiration will be indicative of the quality of mind in question, and the mingling of stimuli and their proportionate values will repay study. There is, of course, danger in the search for such occa

sions or, rather, in the unconsidered acceptance of all possibilities as true. The finding of adequate occasions for literary work is, nevertheless, not without its interest, and their sum may well give certain definite indications as to what the author finds necessary in the way of incitement to production.

In the case of Théophile Gautier, the setting in action of the creative imagination seems to follow upon occasions of diverse kinds of which the most prominent are the inspiration found in the specific literary production of others, that taken from works of plastic or pictorial art, that which has apparently been welded together from the manifestations of general contemporary interests, and that which has come into being from a strictly personal observation or experience. The possible literary occasion for the work of Gautier is by no means infrequent, nor is it limited to the author's own language. Thus, writers of England and of Italy, above all those of Germany, even an American (2), contribute to his production. Counson, in his article on Dante et les romantiques français, speaks of the Divine Comedy in its relation to Gautier's works, and finds it a notable inspiration of the Comédie de la Mort:

La mort dans la vie (V) présente un décor ressemblant singulièrement à celui du cinquième chant de l'Enfer:

'A travers les soupirs, les plaintes et le râle,
Poursuivons jusqu'au bout la funèbre spirale

De ses détours maudits.

Notre guide n'est pas Virgile le poète,
La Béatrix vers nous ne penche pas la tête,

Du fond du paradis.

Pour guide nous avons une vierge au teint pâle.'

"Le chemin qu'il parcourt, l'interrogatoire des grandes ombres qu'il rencontre, rappellent le voyage dantesque" (3).

Gautier himself acknowledges his debt here, and again in Une Larme du Diable. Here the scene between Satan and the rabbit furnishes the essentials of Satan's character as portrayed in the piece, and this character has its base in Dante's conception of Hell:

"Le Lapin:

C'est que vous avez sur le front, écrite en caractères rouges, une inscription terrible: Je n'aimerai jamais.