ies of song, those
'little clans', of which I am now about to speak as likely more and more
to prevail.

In France, where the interest in poetry has, during the last generation,
been far more keen and more abundant than anywhere else in the world, we
already see a tendency to the formation of such experimental houses of
song. There has been hitherto no great success attending any one of these
bodies, which soon break up, but the effort to form them is perhaps
instructive. I took considerable interest in the Abbaye de Creteil, which
was a collectivist experiment of this kind. It was founded in October
1906, and it was dissolved in consequence of internal dissensions in
January 1908. It was an attempt to create, in defiance of the public, in
contemptuous disregard of established 'literary opinion', a sort of
prosodical chapel or school of poetry. It was to be the active centre of
energy for a new generation, and there were five founders, each of whom
was highly ambitious to distinguish himself in verse. At Creteil there was
a printing-press in a great park, so that the members should be altogether
independent of the outside world. The poets were to cultivate the garden
and keep house with the sale of the produce. When not at work, there were
recitations, discussions, exhibitions of sketches, for they were mixed up
with the latest vagaries of the Cubists and Post-impressionists.

This particular experiment lasted only fifteen months, and I cannot
conscientiously say that I think it was in any way a success. No one among
the abbatical founders of Creteil had, to be quite frank, any measure of
talent in proportion to his daring. They were involved in vague and
nebulous ideas, mixed up with what I am afraid I must call charlatans, the
refuse and the wreckage of other arts. Yet I consider that it is
interesting to note that the lay monks of Creteil were in a sense correct
when they announced that they were performing 'a heroic act', an act
symbolical of the way in which poetry would in the future disdainfully
protect itself against the invasion of common sense, the dreadful impact
of the sensual world. I think you will do well, if you wish to pursue the
subject of our conjectural discourse, to keep your eye on this tendency to
a poetical collectivism. We have not noticed much evidence of it yet in
England, but it is beginning to stir a good deal in France and Italy.
After all, the highest poetry is a mysterious thing, like the