rather than on the sensual, v. le Roman de la momie as compared to Mademoiselle de Maupin, the plastic preoccupation of Tiburce in the Toison d'or as compared to the desires of the Jeunes-France, etc.) 78. La Toison d'or, p. 161. " 79. La vraie esthétique," Poésies complètes, II, 261. 80. Cf. LOVENJOUL, Histoire des œuvres . I, 38, on the rôles played by Gautier himself. Tourneux, in his preface to Celle-ci et celle-là, points out similar characteristics of the author's heroes. 81. In his correspondence with Louis de Cormenin, Gautier writes of the advisability of introducing this friend as one of the personages who shall figure in his accounts of Venice, just as he had taken part in the actual days spent there. In August Gautier writes that he had not mentioned Cormenin, because he disliked to make use of his friends for his literature; he omitted him, due to respect and not to forgetfulness. In November he says that this figure has been named and introduced into certain feuilletons, and that if Cormenin thinks this too episodic, "je taillerai une petite statuette que je fourrerai dans le livre. . . V. Lovenjoul, C-486-129, 137. Gautier had no intention of creating figures to take the place which he might give to Cormenin; he would dispense with spectators for the scenes he described if he could not, with proper personal respect, make use of the actual visitors who had accompanied him in his travels. æsthetician distinguished also, in the choice of form, the effect which the author desires to produce, the exigencies of the material with which he works, and the demands of the subject which is to be treated. These are subjectively almost wholly matters of personal endowment and development of technique, and, objectively, are the result of the initial choice which is due to the author's feelings. It is therefore unnecessary to consider them at this point in the study of Gautier's creative imagination. 84. Le Moniteur universel, 12 juin 1858. 85. Op. cit., in l'Histoire du romantisme, p. 322. 66 86. L'Excellence de la poésie, 16 janvier 1837; in Fusains et eaux-fortes, p. 54. It is interesting to note, in this connection, the estimate of Gautier's art in the short-story which has been made by one of his recent critics: . . . His critics (Faguet and Sainte-Beuve), maintaining that he is above all a poet and a painter, like to stress either the lyric or the pictorial element in his stories, and grant him small skill in sheer narration. Without doubt their view that fiction was of secondary interest to him is correct. Yet he accepted its conditions more wholeheartedly than they think. There is a suggestion of this truth in his letter to Sainte-Beuve. . . . And the evidence proves.that the structure of many of his tales is far from being either haphazard or spontaneous, that the degree of unity he sometimes attains is the result of a deliberate plan, that after all, as a narrator, he is no mean figure." SMITH, The Brief-narrative art p. 664. 87. The choice of feuilleton-writing is, as indicated in the first chapter, largely due to Gautier's desire for protection: his sentiment of self-regard made the neglect of his family a neglect of himself, and he could not afford, from this personal point of view, to let them be uncared-for and unprotected. Earning a comfortable living became a necessity to him. The whole question of these rival tendencies of the self-regarding and æsthetic sentiments is to be considered, together with technical facilitations or hindrances, in connection with Gautier's economy of effort as applied to literary production. 88. It will be recalled that Gautier writes, in his autobiographies, of early experiments with Latin metres; in Spain he attempted to adapt new rhyme-schemes or metrical combinations to French verse, etc. 89. In the passages quoted by David from the sources of Gautier's Pavillon sur l'eau, it is of interest to note certain paragraphs or phrases dealing with poetic technique (op. cit., nos. 46, 47, 66), which Gautier has wished to take over and incorporate in his new construction. 90. Cf. FEYDEAU's accounts, Souvenirs intimes, pp. 87-94, of the composition of this novel. 91. Cf., for the reflection of Gautier's non-plastic interests, op. cit., pp. 21, 32, 34, 35, 41, 53, 60, 61, 174, 204, 222, 231, 242, 243, 249, 254, 262 and 287; for his personal interventions, pp. 6, 15, 21, 29, 35, 50, 52, 63, 106, 125, 127, 144, 147, 148, 173, 192, 193, 198, 204, 221, 240, 242, 250, 303, 304. A similar method is noticeable in the Roi Candaule and in Arria Marcella, which might both, on account of their genre, do without lyric expression; cf., le Roi Candaule, pp. 303, 365, 366, 367, 371, 395 and 407, for personal judgments by the author; pp. 368, 369, 373, 375, 378, 382, 392, 395, for interpolations in the first person; pp. 398 and 399, for additions to the ancient setting due to the later knowledge of the author. Arria Marcella, pp. 277, 280, 281, 293, 300, 311 and 312, shows similar developments due to Gautier's personal knowledge. 92. CLÉMENT DE RIS, Portraits à la plume, p. 149. THE LITERARY COMPOSITION OF THEOPHILE When one passes from the consideration of a correspondence between his sentiments and the atmosphere, theme and form in Gautier's work to the investigation of technical abilities-from an analysis of his writings in the light of his desires to a study of his method of production-it becomes necessary to search out records of the man as exterior evidence of the process carried on. What the author of Mademoiselle de Maupin was in endowment, what was his command of language, what his memory, how he set out to compose, to document himself, actually to write these questions arise in the beginning of any attempt to analyze the character of his literary composition. Not that this is sufficient: his capacity as a writer, his type of mind, cannot be determined without an intensive study of the product itself, at all possible stages of its development, but even before these processes of his imagination are inquired into, a general view of the author's technical equipment and method may be attained. Many facts of Gautier's daily life are available; it is possible to follow him from the care-free time of the Premières Poésies to the discouraging years during which the Histoire du romantisme was written. The author's general attitude toward the work which he undertook, and his coïncident habits of mind, are not wholly unknown. The friends of his youth, he himself, the devoted disciples of his old age, have all left records which make possible a reconstruction. One of the earliest statements, indeed, is that of his school comrade Tampucci, whose poem "A Théophile Gautier " gives in 1832 a very definite impression of the young poet in the midst of his first composition: "Sur un sable doré ta vie, ô Théophile! Coule parmi des fleurs, Qui, se courbant au bord de ton onde tranquille, "Elle coule. Jamais nul caillou ne dérange Son cours capricieux, Et son murmure est doux comme le vol d'un ange Qui descendrait des cieux. Et tu dors aux parfums de ta rive embaumée ; Et, pendant ton sommeil, La Poésie accourt à ta lèvre enflammée Livrer son front vermeil. Ainsi passent tes jours nonchalans! Que t'importe ! Ne trouble, en paraissant sur le seuil de ta porte, Ta lèvre n'a jamais gouté l'absynthe amère Du morne désespoir. Près de toi sont test sœurs; un baiser de ta mère Et tu te dis: C'est bien; je jouis; que le monde, Que sert de me montrer sa plaie énorme, immonde? Je n'en ai nul souci. Dans un ciel idéal mon âme va se teindre D'ineffables couleurs. Elle y trouve une vie où ne peuvent l'atteindre Vos ignobles douleurs'" (1). It is a picture of ease, of pleasure in his writing, which Gautier himself confirms a few years later: "Au temps où nous passions nos journées à faire se becqueter deux rimes au bout d'une idée, où nous nous couchions fort content de nous-même lorsque nous avions accouplé heureusement perle et merle, aigle et seigle,-délicieuse occupation que rien ne remplace au monde, pas même l'amour!-nous avons écrit quelques pages sur le théâtre tel que nous l'entendions. . . . Voici donc quelles étaient nos idées en 1835. Nous avouons, à la honte de notre raison, qu'aujourd'hui, 16 décembre 1838, par cette matinée de brouillard qui prête peu aux illusions poétiques, nous sommes encore du même avis" (2). His historian, Lovenjoul, gives an account of the composition of his first novel which, in its turn, shows the liberty of spirit, the atmosphere of play, which filled the two years (1833 to 1835) taken for the writing of the first volume: "Une tradition conservée dans sa famille raconte qu'à cette époque le père du poète l'enferma souvent dans sa chambre, avec interdiction d'en sortir avant d'avoir achevé un nombre de pages déterminé des Grotesques ou de Mademoiselle de Maupin. Quand la bonté maternelle ne venait pas à son secours, l'espiègle écrivain, qui demeurait alors avec ses parents place Royale, trouvait souvent moyen de s'enfuir par la fenêtre, et d'échapper ainsi au pensum paternel. Grâce à de pareilles évasions, fréquemment renouvelées, le roman n'avançait guère" (3). Very different was the attitude of twenty years later, when Gautier wrote to Madame Regina Lhomme in 1851: "Moi je suis seul maintenant .. je me traine nonchalamment sur les différens bitumes, un peu fatigué de mon Salon et m'entraînant pour finir l'Italie..." (4). It was twelve years later still that Maurice Dreyfous met Gautier and began the friendship which continued until the latter's death. His observations of the methods of work of this man who now wrote in an effort, more and more difficult, to keep his many dependents from want, show that another step has been taken: Work and pleasure are no longer one, as in 1833, work is no longer a normal though arduous part of his ordinary life, as in 1851, but between 1863 and 1872, the years of his acquaintance with Dreyfous, a separation between the task and the daily interests has been made. The task has become perfunctory, it is exacted from him by the necessities of life, and so is isolated from his principal personal interests, though no diminution of technical skill results from this division. Much of the author's work was, according to Dreyfous, performed during those rides on the imperial of the omnibus for which Gautier had a mania; when he arrived at his work-table, he had only to record this composition word for word, while he listened to the conversation about him and took his part in it. Dreyfous considered that this double personality was remarkable. "Il était, comme disent les gens du commun, continuellement sorti Rarement, je crois, un homme possède au même degré que Gautier le don de disparaître de soi-même, et celui de se croire en toute sincérité en des lieux où il n'était pas réellement" (5). At the very end of his life, when literary work was no longer possible and when all effort was difficult, Edmond de Goncourt found in the changed manner of speech-that speech which was at the basis of Gautier's composition-the surest evidence of his illness: "Il y a chez Théophile Gautier, non point encore une diminution de l'intelligence, mais comme un ensommeillement du cerveau. Quand il parle, il a toujours l'épithète peinte, le tour original de la pensée, mais pour parler, pour formuler ses paradoxes, on sent dans sa parole plus lente, dans le cramponnement de son attention après le fil et la logique de son idée, on sent |