Discourse upon the Essence and Form of Poetry
Project Gutenberg EPUB edition
Fabre d'Olivet, Antoine, Pythagoras, and Redfield, Nayán Louise
Mes chants qui, surpassant d’un essor non timide,
Les monts Aoniens, vont raconter des faits
Que n’ont point encor dits la prose ni la rime.
Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, heavenly Muse, that, on the secret top
Of Oreb or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd, who first taught the chosen seed,
In the beginning how the heavens and earth
Rose out of chaos; or if Sion hill
Delight thee more, and Siloa’s brook that flow’d
Fast by the oracle of God; I thence
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,
That with no middle flight intends to soar
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.
This invocation is manifestly in imitation of Homer, from whom Milton has received the second inspiration without the intermediary—Vergil. One can observe in the English poet the same movement and almost as much force as in the Greek poet, but much less clarity, precision, and particularly harmony. Nearly all of these defects pertain to his subject and his tongue. Circumstances were not favourable to Milton. His lines could not have been better with the elements that he was forced to employ. All imperfect as they are, they are worth much more than those of Klopstock; for at least they are in the character of his tongue, whereas those of the German poet are not. Milton is satisfied with throwing off the yoke of rhyme, and has made eumolpique lines of one foot only, measured by ten syllables. Their defect, inherent in the English idiom, consists, as I have said, in having all the lines bearing equally the masculine final, jarring continually one with the other. Klopstock has aspired to make, in German, verses measured by the musical rhythm of the Greeks; but he has not perceived that he took as long and short, in his tongue, syllables which were not such in musical rhythm, but by accent and prosody, which is quite different. The German tongue, composed of contracted words and consequently bristling with consonants, bears no resemblance to the Greek, whose words, abounding in vowels, were, on the contrary, made clear by their elongation.
The rhythmic lines of Klopstock are materially a third longer than those of Homer, although the German poet has aspired to build them on an equal measure.[228] Their rhythmic harmony, if it exists there, is absolutely factitious; it is a pedantic imitation and nothing more. In order to make the movement of these lines understood in French, and to copy as closely as possible their harmony, it is necessary to compose lines of two cæsuras, or what amounts to the same, to employ constantly a line and a half to represent a single one. Here are the first fourteen lines which contain the exposition and invocation of the Messiah:
Des coupables humains, célèbre, Ame immortelle, l’heureuse délivrance,
Que sur terre envoyé le Messie accomplit dans son humanité:
Dis comment il rendit les fils du premier homme à leur Auteur céleste;
Souffrant et mis à mort, enfin glorifié. Ainsi s’exécuta
Le décret éternel. En vain Satan rebelle opposa son audace
A ce Fils du Très-Haut; et Judas vainement s’éleva contre lui:
Réconciliateur et Rédempteur suprême, il consomma son œuvre.
Mais quoi, noble action! que Dieu seul en son cœur miséricordieux,
Connaît, la Poésie, en son exil terrestre, pourra-t-elle te suivre?
Non, Esprit créateur, c’est à toi, devant qui je m’incline en tremblant,
A rapprocher de moi cette action divine, à toi-même semblable.
Viens donc, conduis-la-moi dans l’état immortel de toute sa beauté;
Remplis-la de ton feu, toi que, sondant l’abîme du Très-Haut, peux de l’homme
Issu de la poussière, et fragile et mortel, te faire un temple saint.
My Soul, degenerate man’s redemption sing,
Which the Messiah in his human state
On earth accomplished, by which, suffering slain
And glorify’d, unto the Love of God
The progeny of Adam he restored.