Gautier
played a
central role in underground, experimental culture for over 40 years,
and his influence on the literary avant-garde was both profound and
problematic – so much that he was almost systematically erased from
the avant-garde 's collective consciousness by the Surrealists. Yet
he is ignored to our peril. The problem: he has been enshrined
(especially in anglophone criticism) as the father of de-politicized,
“Art for Art's Sake” (a term he tossed out when describing what
he called the 'cult of art' in his massively influential Preface
to Mlle. de Maupin).
Gautier truly does have much to answer for here – in retrospect, we
can see how he set a politically distanced pattern that was not
shaken free of until the Modernists. However, when read carefully and
outside of Walter Pater's critical shadow, even his famous Preface
turns out much more nuanced and complex, if still flawed. I would
propose (some other time) that the vision he proposes there is as
close to Hakim Bey's Ontological Anarchy as Pater's Art for Art's
Sake. In fact, he specifically espouses
Fourierist socialism in that tract, giving the very same reasons that
the Surrealists and Situationists would later offer. What he
renounces is his belief in the “political” electoral plane as an
effective vehicle for change. This poem from his 1st collection, is
explicitly political and calls out the current "Liberal
Monarchy" that took over after the July Revolution of 1830, the
year of publication, and its suppression of multiple democratic
uprisings in its wake. Four years later, in the Maupin
Preface,
he echoed the poem's point: “What matters it whether 'tis a sword,
a holy-water sprinkler, or an [bourgeois-republican] umbrella that
rules you? It's a stick all the same... it would be far more
progressive... to break it and throw away the pieces.” In
experimental fashion, even his syntax fractures here, along with his
faith in positivist revolution.
Sonnet
VII (1830)
by
Théophile Gautier
Liberty
of July! Woman of bust divine,
And
whose body ends in a tail!
Gérard
de Nerval
And
this blind life of theirs is so debased,
They
envious are of every other fate.
Inferno,
canto III
With
this disgraceful age tis high time that we break it;
The
fatal finger placed upon its brow condemned1
As
upon hell’s gates: Hope depleted! – Friends,
Enemies,
public, kings, all trump us taken in.
A
budget elephant sucks gold by trunk taken in;
In
their thrones yet a-quake from yesterday’s ascents,
From
kinsmen overthrown they keep all, but rescind
The
palm prompt with gifts and pomp breathtaking.
And
yet in July, neath the sky’s indigo,
There
where the cobbles lurched,2
they proffered promises
Equal
to Charles tenth’s overseen masses!
Alone,
Poetry manifest in Hugo
Refused
deluding us, of which palms divine
Enshadow
our debris, destiny inclined.
–
Trans. Olchar E. Lindsann
from
Théophile Gautier, Poésies Complètes, Tome premier. 1884.
Charpentier: Paris. p.107.
1
In
the original, this line ends with a
mis,
“placed”, which is an exact homophone of amis,
“friends”, in the next line. I have found it impossible to
translate this wordplay.
2
Referring
to the paving-stones of Paris being pried up to build barricades, a
potent symbol of revolution in France throughout the 19th Century.
