"_notre vieux grimoire_," _grimoire_ is the
parchment, parchment is used for writing, therefore, _grimoire_ is the
symbol for literature, "_d'ou s'exaltent les milliers_," thousands of
what? of letters of course. We have heard a great deal in England of
Browning obscurity. The "Red Cotton Nightcap Country" is child's play
compared to a sonnet by a determined symbolist such as Mallarme, or better
still his disciple Ghil who has added to the difficulties of symbolism
those of poetic instrumentation. For according to M. Ghil and his organ
_Les Ecrits pour l'Art_, it would appear that the syllables of the
French language evoke in us the sensations of different colours;
consequently the timbre of the different instruments. The vowel _u_
corresponds to the colour yellow, and therefore to the sound of flutes.

Arthur Rimbaud was, it is true, first in the field with these pleasant and
genial theories; but M. Ghil informs us that Rimbaud was mistaken in many
things, particularly in coupling the sound of the vowel _u_ with the
colour green instead of with the colour yellow. M. Ghil has corrected this
very stupid blunder and many others; and his instrumentation in his last
volume, "Le Geste Ingenu," may be considered as complete and definitive.
The work is dedicated to Mallarme, "Pere et seigneur des ors, des
pierreries, et des poissons," and other works are to follow:--the six tomes
of "Legendes de Reves et de Sangs," the innumerable tomes of "La Glose,"
and the single tome of "La Loi."

And that man Gustave Kahn, who takes the French language as a violin, and
lets the bow of his emotion run at wild will upon it producing strange
acute strains, unpremeditated harmonies comparable to nothing that I know
of but some Hungarian rhapsody; verses of seventeen syllables interwoven
with verses of eight, and even nine, masculine rhymes, seeking strange
union with feminine rhymes in the middle of the line--a music sweet,
subtil, and epicene; the half-note, the inflexion, but not the full
tone--as "_se fondre, o souvenir, des lys acres delices._"

Se penchant vers les dahlias,
Des paons cabrient des rosace lunaire
L'assoupissement des branches venere
Son pale visage aux mourants dahlias.

Elle ecoute au loin les breves musiques
Nuit claire aux ramures d'accords,
Et la lassitude a berce son corps
Au rhythme odorant des pures musiques.

Les paons out dresse la rampe occellee
Pour la descente de s