9
APOLLINAIRE: OR LET US RE
TROUBADOURS
One of the first illusions to be rejected upon con
tact with European letters in the flesh is that the
present generation consists of exthausted and disenchant
ed young men. Nothing could have been more
unfounded. There is far more danger, I am told, of
the present American generation exhausting itself in
attempting to dent the stupidity of its art-patrons, its
censors, its inarticulate loosebrained prophets.
They are not exhausted, these young men who have
survived 1914—1918. Witness the excellent morale of
the writers of the avant-garde in France who, in iso
lation from the rest of their countrymen, have com
pletely forgotten the war. Talented, extravagant,
intolerant, fun-loving, these young writers whether of
Dada affiliations or not have broken with the direct
line of French literature. The fifty or sixty crowned
poets of the pre-war era from Mallarmé to Paul Fort,
all of whom de Gourmont treats with such encyclo
paedic precision, and some of whom Amy Lowell
introduced belatedly and inaccurately to the American
public, — these have all been immolated. There is a
brisk inclination to forget the silver age of twenty
years or so preceding the war which was dominated
by such sterile traditions as those of de Regnier,
Barrés, Moréas, Anatole France, de Gourmont.
In the main line from the tendencies of yesterday
falls the group dominated by André Gide and associa
ted with the Nouvelle Revue Française. In its most
characteristic contributors, André Salmon, Jean Girau
doux, Paul Morand, there is a certain penchant for
mockery, a certain cleverness at the comedy of manners.
But in none of these writers has there been a clean
break with the artistic conceptions of the foregoing era.
Inasmuch as the majority of French writers are still
reiterating the a little frozen beauties of the Symbo
lists or the vers-libre universitaire of Laforgue there
is very little to hope for. One meets with a great
many names in the throng of reviews and books pub
lished and commented upon every day. They are