Romain Rolland et Lugné-Poe. Correspondance, 1894-1901 by J. RobichezReview by: John CruickshankThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Jan., 1959), pp. 121-122Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3720879 .

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tions like detaux, mide, which the context makes sufficiently clear. In a word the volume, originally a thesis, suffers from reluctance to omit anything.

Some of the notes are moreover open to doubt. On p. 14 we read: 'Verlaine datait bien ses lettres, contrairement a l'opinion repandue.' Having spent a con- siderable time establishing and publishing the chronology of letters and poems that Verlaine dated wrongly or not at all, the reviewer is one of those who spread the opinion. Professor Zayed himself justifies it in the schedule of letters from London to the chores amies which he sets out in a whole-page note (p. 278) resulting from the mentioning of one of these ladies to Cazals. Here he dates 29 November a letter which the poet did not date at all (Mercredi 29 has been added to the autograph by another hand), but which other evidence puts two or three days earlier. Verlaine was not in Mons prison in August 1873 (p. 145), but was transferred there from Brussels two months later. It is hard to believe that 'pas un seul exemplaire de l'edition [the original edition of Sagesse] ne fut vendu' (p. 20): Professor Zayed seems to have taken hyperbole too literally. When he states on p. 22 that Lucien Letinois is not mentioned in any of Verlaine's prose works, he appears to have forgotten the allusions in the Voyage en France par un FranQais, though of course Letinois is not named. Three-quarters of p. 99, about Fernand Langlois, is irrelevant since Verlaine, in writing 'soleciseum, prononcerait l'Anglais', is not referring to Langlois but airing his knowledge of English pronunciation to Cazals, as he often did (cf. terribeul, pp. 103, 185), and as I noted on p. 365 of Verlaine et l'Angleterre, which Professor Zayed has consulted. I also pointed out (p. 414) that Arthur Symons, having departed to Italy, was not a reliable witness to Verlaine's alleged London escapade in 1893, and that there are other possible reasons for the dis- appearance of the proceeds from his lectures: Professor Zayed (p. 280) prefers to retain the legend inaugurated by Symons and retailed by Jean-Aubry, but not mentioned by Rothenstein or any other contemporary. He half-corrects (p. 279) a mistake in vol. III of Verlaine's published Correspondance, changing 'la badname' to 'a badname', whereas in fact Verlaine correctly wrote 'a bad name'. The letter from Vermersch's London father-in-law, quoted in extenso (p. 97) from Delahaye and Cazals's article in Le Sagittaire, is in fact in the Fonds Cazals with these letters.

There are at least seventeen misprints additional to those in the Corrections et Additions and on the title-page, two (donalla for dancella, decidely for decidedly, both correctly written by Verlaine) in the same sentence on p. 213.

The volume adds nothing to our knowledge of Verlaine's best work, and makes us regret that the editor's zeal has not been devoted to more important material. If great authors' correspondence must be published integrally against their wish, exegesis should limit itself to essentials. . U V. P. UNDERWOOD LONDON

Romain Rolland et Lugne-Poe. Correspondance, 1894-1901. Edited by J. ROBI- CHEZ. Paris: L'Arche. 1957. 239 pp. 870 fr.

The past ten years have brought increasing confirmation of Romain Rolland's status as one of the most prolific and wide-ranging of recent French epistoliers. The recovery of so much of his correspondence is chiefly due to the tireless activity of his widow, Madame Marie Romain Rolland, and the Archives Romain Rolland now contain a rich store of letters written both by Rolland himself and by his many correspondents. This is the source on which M. Robichez has mainly drawn. So far 188 letters exchanged between Lugne-Poe and Rolland have been traced, and 152 of them are now published for the first time-ninety-four by Rolland and fifty- eight by Lugne-Poe. The thirty-six letters omitted are of relatively slight interest

tions like detaux, mide, which the context makes sufficiently clear. In a word the volume, originally a thesis, suffers from reluctance to omit anything.

Some of the notes are moreover open to doubt. On p. 14 we read: 'Verlaine datait bien ses lettres, contrairement a l'opinion repandue.' Having spent a con- siderable time establishing and publishing the chronology of letters and poems that Verlaine dated wrongly or not at all, the reviewer is one of those who spread the opinion. Professor Zayed himself justifies it in the schedule of letters from London to the chores amies which he sets out in a whole-page note (p. 278) resulting from the mentioning of one of these ladies to Cazals. Here he dates 29 November a letter which the poet did not date at all (Mercredi 29 has been added to the autograph by another hand), but which other evidence puts two or three days earlier. Verlaine was not in Mons prison in August 1873 (p. 145), but was transferred there from Brussels two months later. It is hard to believe that 'pas un seul exemplaire de l'edition [the original edition of Sagesse] ne fut vendu' (p. 20): Professor Zayed seems to have taken hyperbole too literally. When he states on p. 22 that Lucien Letinois is not mentioned in any of Verlaine's prose works, he appears to have forgotten the allusions in the Voyage en France par un FranQais, though of course Letinois is not named. Three-quarters of p. 99, about Fernand Langlois, is irrelevant since Verlaine, in writing 'soleciseum, prononcerait l'Anglais', is not referring to Langlois but airing his knowledge of English pronunciation to Cazals, as he often did (cf. terribeul, pp. 103, 185), and as I noted on p. 365 of Verlaine et l'Angleterre, which Professor Zayed has consulted. I also pointed out (p. 414) that Arthur Symons, having departed to Italy, was not a reliable witness to Verlaine's alleged London escapade in 1893, and that there are other possible reasons for the dis- appearance of the proceeds from his lectures: Professor Zayed (p. 280) prefers to retain the legend inaugurated by Symons and retailed by Jean-Aubry, but not mentioned by Rothenstein or any other contemporary. He half-corrects (p. 279) a mistake in vol. III of Verlaine's published Correspondance, changing 'la badname' to 'a badname', whereas in fact Verlaine correctly wrote 'a bad name'. The letter from Vermersch's London father-in-law, quoted in extenso (p. 97) from Delahaye and Cazals's article in Le Sagittaire, is in fact in the Fonds Cazals with these letters.

There are at least seventeen misprints additional to those in the Corrections et Additions and on the title-page, two (donalla for dancella, decidely for decidedly, both correctly written by Verlaine) in the same sentence on p. 213.

The volume adds nothing to our knowledge of Verlaine's best work, and makes us regret that the editor's zeal has not been devoted to more important material. If great authors' correspondence must be published integrally against their wish, exegesis should limit itself to essentials. . U V. P. UNDERWOOD LONDON

Romain Rolland et Lugne-Poe. Correspondance, 1894-1901. Edited by J. ROBI- CHEZ. Paris: L'Arche. 1957. 239 pp. 870 fr.

The past ten years have brought increasing confirmation of Romain Rolland's status as one of the most prolific and wide-ranging of recent French epistoliers. The recovery of so much of his correspondence is chiefly due to the tireless activity of his widow, Madame Marie Romain Rolland, and the Archives Romain Rolland now contain a rich store of letters written both by Rolland himself and by his many correspondents. This is the source on which M. Robichez has mainly drawn. So far 188 letters exchanged between Lugne-Poe and Rolland have been traced, and 152 of them are now published for the first time-ninety-four by Rolland and fifty- eight by Lugne-Poe. The thirty-six letters omitted are of relatively slight interest

Reviews Reviews 121 121

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and belong to the desultory correspondence carried on by the two men between September 1901 and the outbreak of the last war.

M. Robichez's edition of the Rolland/Lugne-Poe correspondence is the published version of a these complementaire which he submitted in March 1955, together with a these principale entitled 'Le Symbolisme au theatre: Lugne-Poe et les debuts de l'CEuvre', for the doctorat d'etat. I mention this mainly because the present edition appears to me to possess both the virtues and the vices of its doctoral origins. On the credit side it is clear that M. Robichez offers a wholly admirable example of sound editing. The letters are reproduced with scrupulous accuracy, they are intelligently dated and accompanied by excellent explanatory notes and comments. On a more general level M. Robichez also provides his readers with all the informa- tion they require: full bibliographical details; accounts of the lives of Rolland and Lugne-Poe up to the year 1893; summaries of the three plays by Rolland (Aert, Les Loups and Le Triomphe de la Raison) which form the main subject of the corres- pondence; lists of the articles to which the first performance of each of the three plays gave rise; a lengthy analysis of the significance and value of the letters as a whole.

It is mainly in connexion with this last point that a debit side to this edition suggests itself. M. Robichez naturally wishes to assert the fundamental importance of the letters which he has edited with such exemplary care, but one is tempted to wonder whether the resources of his scholarship have been brought to bear on genuinely rewarding and significant material. In the first place, many of these letters, particularly those by Lugne-Poe, are of a completely banal nature, fixing a rendezvous, requesting a subscription, etc. Secondly, the attitude of the two men towards each other was often a guarded one and a number of the views they express cannot be taken altogether at their face value. Rolland's ideas, in particular, are set out in both more detailed and more reliable form in his Memoires for the same period. Thirdly, M. Robichez's claim that this correspondence is an important source for the study of Rolland's aesthetic as a dramatist seems excessive. Rolland's ideas on this subject are expressed very incompletely here. From the point of view of detailed and coherent explanation these letters to Lugne-Poe fall far short of those to his mother and to Malwida von Meysenbug. Much more information will also be found in his Memoires, the articles he wrote for La Revue d'art dramatique between 1899 and 1903, and his book, Le Theatre du peuple (1903).

The real interest and value of this correspondence is limited, I think, to the letters written between August 1897 (after Lugne-Poe had broken with Symbolism and was looking around for new dramatic authors) and June 1899 (by which time three of Rolland's plays had been performed by the Theatre de l'CEuvre). Not only do these letters throw some light on the new theatrical policy being tentatively evolved by Lugne-Poe; for students of Rolland they offer additional information about several features of his thought. There is a clear expression of his strong anti- semitism at this time-an attitude which has still not been satisfactorily related to his later views but which seems from these letters to have a possible connexion with Rolland's increasing disharmony with his first wife (Clotilde Breal was a Jewess). Again, an intense patriotism emerges from Rolland's letters in a form which helps to explain the apparent paradox of his patriotic decision, in 1914, to adopt a position au-dessus de la melee. Finally, this combination of anti-semitism and patriotism, together with his comments in several letters on the subject of his play, Les Loups, helps to clarify his uncharacteristic reaction to the Dreyfus Affair and constitutes the main claim of this correspondence to contain important new information.

JOHN CRUICKSHANK SOUTHAMPTON

122 Reviews

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