"
The verse about "the sun in bed," unconsciously Miltonic, is in a
vein of bad taste which has always had seductions for M. De
Banville. He mars a fine later poem on Roncevaux and Roland by a
similar absurdity. The angel Michael is made to stride down the
steps of heaven four at a time, and M. De Banville fancies that this
sort of thing is like the simplicity of the ages of faith.
In "Les Cariatides," especially in the poems styled "En Habit
Zinzolin," M. De Banville revived old measures--the rondeau and the
"poor little triolet." These are forms of verse which it is easy to
write badly, and hard indeed to write well. They have knocked at
the door of the English muse's garden--a runaway knock. In "Les
Cariatides" they took a subordinate place, and played their pranks
in the shadow of the grave figures of mythology, or at the close of
the procession of Dionysus and his Maenads. De Banville often
recalls Keats in his choice of classical themes. "Les Exiles," a
poem of his maturity, is a French "Hyperion." "Le Triomphe de
Bacchus" reminds one of the song of the Bassarids in "Endymion" -
"So many, and so many, and so gay."
There is a pretty touch of the pedant (who exists, says M. De
Banville, in the heart of the poet) in this verse:
"Il reve e Cama, l'amour aux cinq fleches fleuries,
Qui, lorsque soupire au milieu des roses prairies
La douce Vasanta, parmi les bosquets de santal,
Envoie aux cinq sens les fleches du carquois fatal.
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