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Japan in French Poetry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William Leonard Schwartz
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Extract

It is generally known that the timely discovery in Paris of specimens of Japanese color-prints and watercolor painting in the late sixties had an immediate influence on the French Impressionist painters. However, it is not always noted that the writers who supported this school of painting: Baudelaire and Zola, Manet's special friends; the Goncourt brothers who admired Degas; Clemenceau and Théodore Duret, knew certain aspects of Japanese art, and were collectors of curios. Japanese stories and legends entered Europe at about the same time as the color-prints, descriptions of Japanese life are numerous in the magazines of the period. The first poem in French about Japan appears to be this sonnet by Catulle Mendès, which he dates back in his Œuvres complètes to the volume Philoméla (1863).

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , June 1925 , pp. 435 - 449
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 Louis Aubert, Les Maîtres de l'Estampe japonaise, vii, L'Estampe japonaise et la peinture occidentale.

2 Baudelaire's Correspondance to A. Houssaye, 1861; to Ancelle, Dec. 29, 1864, Jan. 27, Feb. 4, Feb. 25, 1865. Manet's portrait of Zola, 1865, has a Japanese actor print in the background; Goncourt and Duret wrote monographs on prints. T. Ouéda's Céramique japonaise was written for Clemenceau.

3 Cf. Noël & Stoullig, Annales théâtrales, 1876, p. 276; and 1893, p. 92. Note that Saint-Saens' first operatic composition was la Princesse jaune, Paris, Opéra-Comique, 1872, libretto by Louis Gallet. See Saint-Saens' école buissonnière, 1908, and Portraits et souvenirs, 1909, which contains a sonnet by Gallet entitled Boutique japonaise, of uncertain date.

4 Okakura-Kakuzo, The Book of Tea, p. 93.

5 Miodrag Ibrovac, Josê-Maria de Heredia, I, 351, II, 133-35.

6 Verlaine, Œuvres complètes, III, 225.

7 Ed. Lepelletier, Paul Verlaine, sa vie et son œuvre, p. 301.

8 Akitsushima, the land of the dragon-fly, is a name given to Japan by the semi-historical Emperor Jimmu, v. Nipon o dai itsi ran, trans. Titsingh, xxxvi, 3. The Poèmes were published by Gillot in 1884 on decorated Japan vellum, and do not seem to have been reprinted. Cario and Régismanset, in l'Exotisme, la littérature coloniale, p. 215, note, say that this book interprets China.

9 Cited by M. Ibrovac in Jose-Maria de Heredia, I, 542.

10 Blémont's Poèmes de Chine, rimed versions of Chinese poetry, appeared in 1887. Pseudonym of Léon-émile Petitdidier (1839).

11 Tourmentes, p. 67. “La Jaline” is Henri Joubert (1875).

12 1921. The name was selected with reference to the rime scheme employed, 8A, 6B, 8B, 6A.

13 Consult the bibliography, Le Haïkaï français by René Maublanc, double number of Le Pampre, (Rheims, 12 rue Chabaud), for October, 1923.

14 Best studied in E. H. Chamberlain's monograph, Bashō and the Japanese Poetical Epigram, Trans. of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 1902, and C. H. Page, Japanese Poetry, 1923.

15 Cf. Bashō's picture of a rustic maiden, attending to business but not unmindful of her appearance.

Chimaki yuu She wraps up rice-cakes, while one hand

Kata-de ni hasamu Restrains the hair upon her brow.

Hitai-gami (Bashō, 1644-1694). (Chamberlain, op. cit. N° 7).

16 Reprinted in La Chaîne éternelle, 1910.

17 Maublanc's bibliography of the French haikai only lists Neuville's second edition, épigrammes à la Japonaise, (1921) enlarged to 249 pieces; but without the preface and bibliography of the first edition.

18 Chargé du cours of the history of Far Eastern civilizations at the Sorbonne.

19 La Fenêtre ouverte sur la Vallée, Paris, 1912, 109-19.

20 After the poetess Chiyo, who, finding that a vine was clinging to her well-rope, preferred to beg water from a neighbour, leaving the flowers undisturbed. My account of Gilbert de Voisins' publications completes the data given in Maublanc's bibliography.

21 Chamberlain, Bashō and the Japanese poetical Epigram N° 205: “Behold the frog, who, when he opes His mouth, displays his whole inside! (Anon.) Proverbial in the sense of ‘Do not blurt out your secret thoughts.‘”

22 L'Humanité, “Chronique, Poésie,” Nov. 16, 1920, Jan. 3, 1921, articles mentioned by Maublanc in Le Haïkaï français.

23 L'Opinion, Jan. 29, 1921, “Divers Poètes.” Boulenger also mentions haikai favorably in Mais l'art est difficile …. 1921, 1st series, pp. 162 and 167.

24 La Connaissance, June 1921, 489-91.

25 Scaferlati pour troupes, p. 24.

26 Idem, p. 22.

27 Mercure de France, “Tankas” par Nico D. Horigoutchi, June 15, 1921.

28 Partial bibliographical supplement, to April, 1925. Lalou, in his Littérature française contemporaine, new ed. p. 501, note, says that Paul Claudel's Sainte Geneviève (Tokio, 1923, now out of print) contains “douze brèves évocations japonaises.” Collections of French haikai: R. Maublanc, Cent Haïkaï, 1924, Jean Baucomont, Goutelettes (Haïkaï et Outa), 1924; Marc Adolphe Guégan, Trois petits tours et puis s'en vont, Nov. 1924. Magazine articles: Les Nouvelles Littéraires, 29 mars, 1924, Du Haïkaï français, by B. C. (Benjamin Crémieux), idem, 12 avril, Les Haïkaïs de nos Lecteurs, 39 poems selected from about 1000 received by B. C. Les Annales littéraires et politiques, 4 mai, 1924, Les Livres. Here G. de Pawlowski comments on the haikai published in Les Nouvelles littéraires, stating that the first duty of the modern poet is to be brief.