tive of the differences between Gautier's imaginations in prose and poetry. It was in La Presse of November 6, 1836, that the author published his description of a new engraving of the “Passage du Thermodon "; the verses first appeared in 1838. The "Passage" commences by the facts in regard to the engraving, the poem by a general statement of the subject, arriving, in the ninth stanza, at the author and his personal reactions (as in the case of "Magdalena "). In the two versions there is at the beginning a transposition of the visual into the auditory, and also the remark that the bridge forms the centre and the frame of the picture. The two pieces, likewise, leave to the end of the description the notation of those portions of the engraving which Gautier considered most beautiful. The poem is more condensed and at the same time more general in its application; it omits all mention of the most horrible point in the picture, and the whole description is less precise. A generalization of the specific action is made by means of personification. The prose offers a better picture than the poetry, in its total effect, although the latter condenses and renders the main ideas more concisely. In the prose, also, there are included certain technical commentaries and explanations which interrupt the sequence of the description and yet make it more exact, more comprehensible. The planes of the picture are not given the same reproduction in the two versions; the author appears to vary his descriptive placing in order to bring out his own desired emphasis, without regard to the actual visual impression which the picture has made on him. With regard to verbal expression, there are in the prose various images which the poet had not employed: "les grains de ce chapelet," "deux grappes de chevaux et de femmes " which hang "de chaque côté du pont comme des boucles d'oreille du carnage," etc., but there are also various passages which are almost identical in expression:

"C'est toi, Rubens. . .

Qui joignis ses deux bouts comme un bracelet d'or,
Et lui mis pour camée un beau groupe de femmes

Si blanches, que le fleuve aux triomphantes lames
S'apaise et n'ose pas les submerger encore

'Cette immense boucherie fait le tour de la toile, elle est menée hardiment et d'un seul jet, et tous les grains de ce chapelet se tiennent exactement, de

sorte qu'à six ou sept pas de distance on ne voit qu'un grand ruisseau de combattants, qui se ferme comme un bracelet par ce précieux groupe des trois femmes qui lui sert d'agraffe et de camée . . ." (80).

From these comparisons it appears that there was an advantage in precision for the prose rendering of a work of art or other visual impression; that, on the other hand (and at least in the early poetry), the versified form demanded of Gautier the inclusion in the piece of a literary development of personal or philosophical thought which, to an author interested in impersonality and plastic representation as means and end in literature, constituted a distinct disadvantage. These two points must have assisted in turning the scale in favour of a form of composition where the actual work involved was less, where the author could depend on his verbal facility with relatively little thought of the difficulties encountered in rhythmic creation, and where, indeed, the less rigid form permitted of a greater use of those various, treasured words and images upon which Gautier's method of literary creation was constituted.

1. DAVID, op. cit., p. 100.

2. LUNN, Gautier and "le Roman de la Momie," p. 176-179.

3. Article non-signé de la "Revue littéraire" de l'Artiste, 1839, 2e série, II, 12, p. 169.

4. Cf. the views of Lehtonen and Félix Frank on Gautier's use of vocabulary in the Capitaine Fracasse.

5. Rabelais et Théophile Gautier, p. 12.

6. MONTÉGUT, Nos Morts contemporains, II, 54.

7. Lovenjoul C-486-35.

8. DURAND, Théophile Gautier

p. 804.

9. From certain Règles de composition littéraire données par Théophile Gautier à M. Paul Dalloz, Lovenjoul C-510-50.

10. Critique de la Couronne de Bleuets d'Arsène Houssaye, 2° édition, p. 19. "Salon de 1836", first article; Le Cabinet de lecture, mars 1836.

11.

64

12. Salon de 1837", La Presse, 1er mars 1837.

13. Paul Baudry, in Bergerat's Peintures décoratives

14. Op. cit., p. 87.

15. Ibid., p. 107.

16. Ibid., p. 114.

p. 5.

17. Cf., for example, Les Vacances du lundi, pp. 254 and 255, with regard to

the images of saints seen at each cross-road.

18. POULAIN, Traces de l'influence allemande

19. Les Vacances du lundi, p. 227.

P. 54.

20. YRIARTE, Portraits cosmopolites, p. 65: Yriarte's example here is the names

of Gautier's favourite cats.

21. Emaux et Camées, p. 57.

23. Voyage en Espagne, p. 176; Poésies complètes, II, 118.

24. RÉGNIER, Portraits et Souvenirs, chapter on Théophile Gautier and JoséMaria de Hérédia, pp. 77–84; BRUNET, Théophile Gautier, poète.

25. Emaux et Camées, pp. 103, 101; LOVENJOUL, Histoire des œuvres

Nos. 1283 and 1381; Lovenjoul C-443-2, 3, 4.

26. Lettre à MM. Hachette et Cie., 25 novembre 1857, Lovenjoul C-487-119. 27. Lovenjoul C-466-8, 5, 3; manuscript of the Voyage pittoresque en Algérie. 28. Lovenjoul C-408-20.

29. Lovenjoul C-408-45.

30. Lovenjoul C-408.

31. Lovenjoul C-442–149, 150; Emaux et Camées, p. 15, “Etudes des mains." 32. I, Lovenjoul C-444-33; II, LOVENJOUL, Histoire des œuvres

. . ., No.

No. 989, Emaux et Camées, p. 31.

35. Lovenjoul C-442-149, 150; Emaux et Camées, p. 15.

44. Salon de 1852", article 12; Lovenjoul C-408.

45. "Les Barbares ", feuilleton de La Presse du 5 et du 7 septembre 1851;

Lovenjoul C-408.

46. Op. cit., 3 mars 1862, II, 14.

47. Poésies complètes, I, 333.

48. Op. cit., scene 4, p. 129.

49.

"Prix de Rome," Lovenjoul C-413-12.

50. Ibid., Lovenjoul C-413-19.

51. Voyage en Espagne, p. 235, Lovenjoul C-460.

52. Cherbourg, V; Lovenjoul C-464-33.

53. Lovenjoul C-500–344; it may be noted that the poet did not leave this line

56. La Comédie de la Mort, édition originale, p. 109. 57. Lovenjoul C-486-52.

58. Cited by Lovenjoul in his Histoire des œuvres

December 9, 1834; Lovenjoul C-484-93.

59. Lovenjoul C-485-133.

60. Lovenjoul C-485-353.

no. 118. Letter of

61. A propos de la "Nativité", lettre à Montigny, directeur du Gymnase;

64. Lovenjoul C-442-156; the verse of ten syllables was finally chosen. 65. Cf. the "Cid vainqueur", for the stanza where the Jew speaks. This is a romance imitated from Sepúlveda. Lovenjoul C-442.

66. Lovenjoul C-442-40; Gautier's need of noting the musical scale to facilitate him in his transcription confirms Servières' analysis of his lack of technical knowledge in music (cf. SERVIÈRES, Théophile Gautier et Ernest Reyer). The fact that he was capable of using a technical vocabulary, (see above, § c., in regard to his comparison of light to violin crescendos, etc.) is not contradictory to this evidence but is rather a further indication of Gautier's mastery of words and of his verbal

facility.

67. Lovenjoul C-444-28, 29, 30.

68. Lovenjoul C-444-89, 90, 91.

69. Lovenjoul C-442-9, 10.

70. Lovenjoul C-444-21; the autograph copy of this piece is the property of M. L. Duvanchel.

71. Lovenjoul C-485-132.

72. Letter to Eugène Didier, May 19, 1852; Lovenjoul C-490-37. 73. The pieces already cited represent only a small proportion of those manuscripts which show this difficulty of poetic composition. Even such a piece as the occasional poem of the "28 juillet 1840" has manuscript versions in very different stages of development, some almost definitive, others simply sketches of lines or verses, with numerous corrections. V. Lovenjoul C-442-31 to 38. Of the clear signed autographs preserved in the Collection Lovenjoul, a large number are noted as having been acquired at sales of the effects of Gautier's friends and admirers, etc.; it seems probable that many were presentation copies which in no sense represented the first draught of the poems.

74. Lovenjoul C-464-14 to 20.

75. Op. cit., p. 243; Lovenjoul C-463. The paragraph in question has been reworked to such an extent that most of the first version is illegible. 76. Lovenjoul C-458.

77. Lovenjoul C-419-1 to 171.

78. LOVEN JOUL, Histoire des œuvres, II, 395.

66

79. "Les Rubens de la Cathédrale d'Anvers", La Presse, 29 novembre 1836; 'Magdalena", Poésies complètes, I, 289, first published in 1838. It is interesting to note in the description of the picture a phrase which seems to have its origin in Gautier's literary memories; on dirait de l'ivoire élastique et du marbre flexible" is very close to the following lines:

L'Astre du jour la prit en mesme instant

Pour de l'Ivoire souple et du Marbre flottant

66

where Saint-Amant describes Pharaoh's daughter at her bath in a passage which Gautier seems to have recalled for his Cléopâtre also. Cf. Moïse sauvé, 12e partie, p. 156.

80. "Le Thermodon", Poésies complètes, I, 332; "Le Passage du Thermodon", loc. cit.

PHASES OF THE PROCESS OF COMPOSITION

a. The Analytic Spirit

In a study of the general characteristics of Gautier's imaginative process, some inquiry must be made into the manner of progression, the kind of mental action, which his work betokens. Does he see and present a subject as a whole, or does he distinguish and reproduce more or less isolated parts of the general matter which he is considering? Is his single production an organic unity, a work of art, or is it a succession of comparatively unrelated traits, each possibly striking or beautiful in itself, but not necessarily contributory to a greater whole? In other words, the question is raised as to whether Gautier is analytic or synthetic in method, and as to whether his underlying mental process, his creative imagination, is to be classified in the one way or in the other. In Gautier's own time, the power of synthesis was regarded as worthy of much praise; Baudelaire's study of Eugène Delacroix selects this point as the basis for a very high appreciation of the painter's genius (1). Another contemporary critic believed that synthesis was more readily characteristic of painters than of poets:

"Le peintre qui, forcément, procède par détails, personnifierait l'analyse, et l'écrivain, qui a la liberté de procéder par grands traits caractéristiques, personnifierait la synthèse. Et cependant le peintre, qui prend l'action à son moment suprême, est en réalité plus synthétique que le poète, qui retrace successivement toutes les époques de l'action. . . . Ainsi le peintre, par des moyens analytiques atteint à la synthèse, au lieu que le poète reste dans l'analyse malgré l'emploi de moyens synthétiques" (2).

That this distinction is not absolute is easily apparent, yet it is not without interest to note that the gift of synthetic writing was recognized in two of Gautier's contemporaries, diversely preoccupied with the art of painting. Flaubert, for example, had never practised it, although his writings abound in portrayals of colour and form; not only did he employ what Houssaye considered moyens synthétiques," but he also remained synthetic in his finished work: