es yeux vers le tapis
De choses et de sens
Qui va vers l'horizon, parure vemiculee
De son corps alangui
En ame se tapit
Le flou desir molli de recits et d'encens.

I laughed at these verbal eccentricities, but they were not without their
effect, and that effect was a demoralising one; for in me they aggravated
the fever of the unknown, and whetted my appetite for the strange, abnormal
and unhealthy in art. Hence all pallidities of thought and desire were
eagerly welcomed, and Verlaine became my poet. Never shall I forget the
first enchantment of "Les Fetes Galantes." Here all is twilight.

The royal magnificences of the sunset have passed, the solemn beatitude of
the night is at hand but not yet here; the ways are veiled with shadow, and
lit with dresses, white, that the hour has touched with blue, yellow,
green, mauve, and undecided purple; the voices? strange contraltos; the
forms? not those of men or women, but mystic, hybrid creatures, with hands
nervous and pale, and eyes charged with eager and fitful light ... "_un
soir equivoque d'automne_," ... "_les belles pendent reveuses a nos bras_"
... and they whisper "_les mots speciaux et tout bas_."

Gautier sang to his antique lyre praise of the flesh and contempt of the
soul; Baudelaire on a mediaeval organ chaunted his unbelief in goodness and
truth and his hatred of life. But Verlaine advances one step further: hate
is to him as commonplace as love, unfaith as vulgar as faith. The world is
merely a doll to be attired to-day in a modern ball dress, to-morrow in
aureoles and stars. The Virgin is a pretty thing, worth a poem, but it
would be quite too silly to talk about belief or unbelief; Christ in wood
or plaster we have heard too much of, but Christ in painted glass amid
crosiers and Latin terminations, is an amusing subject for poetry. And
strangely enough, a withdrawing from all commerce with virtue and vice is,
it would seem, a licentiousness more curiously subtle and penetrating than
any other; and the licentiousness of the verse is equal to that of the
emotion; every natural instinct of the language is violated, and the simple
music native in French metre is replaced by falsetto notes sharp and
intense. The charm is that of an odour of iris exhaled by some ideal
tissues, or of a missal in a gold case, a precious relic of the pomp and
ritual of an archbishop of Persepolis.

Parsifal a vaincu les filles, leur gentil
Babil e