vu POETRY AND THE POWERS OF NIGHT ‘Tune are certain ‘key-words, Goethe with great insight calls them “‘mothers”, which could probably lead us more surely than anything else to che heart of the mystery of poetry.” We should have to analyse their substance, ex- plore their harmonic vibrations, determine upon’ the mysterious aura which surrounds them; then, as they have the power to introduce us into the realm of poetry, we should understand better what that realm itself is, we should know more about its frontiers and its climate. Such an attempt is necessarily rather chimerical; these words, because they are so charged with poetry, are very fluid, and each one of us uses them in a stricly personal sense. Every love is unique for the lover. My night differs from yours, But at lease these “mothers” of thought and form bring to life realities immediately recognized by us all, though the names we give them have a meaning known to ourselves alone. The ideas which they suggest are of great diversity and yet fundamental. . They are the ideas which belong to the world of poetry. Love and night are the chief and indeed almost the only key-words of this kind. They have synonyms, death is ‘one, but wherever the spirit moves we are bound to find them in one form or another. The most intellectual poets depend upon them just as much as the most emotional. If taken in their fillest sense, they embrace the whole poetic world which indeed revolves upon a secret axis invisibly traced between them, It is not by chance that 161Where Angels Pass in every country and age they ace used so abundantly in ll poetry istespective of its merit. The mere fact of their constant appearance in every variety of work, from the feebiest romance to the loftiest lytic, is surely significant. If Keats and Novalis fly to them as well as Midinette and Manon, it proves that they derive from something deep down at the hidden spring of infused poetry, the necessary origin of every poem. The “mothers” do not only give birth to creations of genius but to all chat is human; they are universal. It is not only dough the play of imagery that these words suggest so much to us. The laws of analogy and metaphor are deeper and more secret, They to\ very heart of spiritual reality. It is remarkable that che highest mysticism, when it seeks expression, makes use of those very same words which are found in all the ¢ and tums of metre and rhyme, Love and night are the words of St, John of the Cross and St. Teresa, quite as much as of Lamariine and Baudelaire, If they can convey such wealth of poctic grace as well as such power of adoration, it can only be because they have direct contact with the secrets of the soul, because they participate in the mysteries by which we live, ‘And the te seeping ofa long shoud hough the Wese=n é sen, my love, listen to the sweet night as she passes——* ‘The power of Baudelaire’s verse rises within us til, as the word night is pronounced, it overflows and floods the mind with its calm surface, whilst an iniumerable multi- tic presences immediately hastens to supply an is the night of Idumea from Racine’s pure pen, 4.Bt comme un Jong linceal tmainant A Porient Entends, ma ehire, entends la douce nuit qui marche——— 162 Poetry and the Powers of Night of a like transparency, in which Ruth ith, hope and willing surrender. It is the romantic night of insatiable yearnings in which René, Obermann, Lamartine and Musset led 2 flock of youthful souls, groping their way forward, tom with brambles. It is the night of the votaries of Oxpheus and Pythagoras, learned poets searching into mysterious secrets, the night of magic and Dionysian initiations, the Walpurgische Nacht in which a Goethe, an Edgar Allan Pos, ot a Blake sought escape from earthly limitations. It s alo the night (of unnatural silence and nameless gloom in which Gérard de Nerval and Serge Essenine wandered by deserted roads to the ultimate decision. Finally, it is the night of super- natural certainty, the night in which, on the terraces of Hostel, Claudel heard La Cantate 2 Trois Voix in the song of the Rhéne, the night of blessed agony in which Bascal vwas struck by the adorable hand of his Master, If poetry can draw nourishment of so many different kinds feom night, it must surely be because the emotion associated with this word plunges its root right down into immense zones of our interior universe, where innumer- able and even contradictory possibilities prove the wealth of the soul. It is because “tout qui nous exalte en porte Ja couleur” (all that raises us to a high pitch wears its colours), as Novalis says, because night is at the same time the Baudelaircan philter of oblivion, and uncontrolled panic, an orgy of the instincts; an atmosphere charged with acute anxiety—the terror of Pascal—and yet a temple resounding swith spontaneous praises itis because night has all these aspect, that it offers poetry the possibilities of an eternally new symbolism, It is impossible for anyone with a spark of greatness to pronounce this simple word without immediately seting up countless harmonic vibrations which 163Where Angels Pass call forth innumerable echoes before they are merged in a sense of spiritual hunger at the very centre of thi satiable soul, an intense longing to enter into the ineffable of the world and to surrender completely to the wave h is surging up from hidden depths. “Now I turn towards night, holy, inexpressible, mysteri- cous night, ‘The world lies at my feet, engulfed by the abyss. The place I used to eccupy will henceforth be empty. There is deep anguish at my heart, But what is it that suddenly rises from the centre of my being and Grives away my melancholy? Are you friendly towards us, O sombre night? What do you carry beneath your cloak which moves my soul by its invisible powert”” This Hymox to Night is not the work of an isolated poet, it is not Novalis alone whose voice we heat, poctry itself can claim the lines and ever repeat their chanting melodies, If this movement of the soul towards night does not com- prise the whole of poetry, it is none the less true that it contains an indispensable part. It is linked up with the beginnings of poetic experience, confused and springing largely from the unconscious. Even when it comes out into the light of day, poetry still keeps a quality of wonder and mystery which has its origin in the things of the night. It is related to music, because like music, only to a lesser degree, it is a nocturnal art in the most elemental part of its essence, although we must not forget that it is more than * * * * * ‘The first nocturnal harmonic is one of silence and aban donment. Night is as it were a woman with closed eyes whose relaxed countenance expresses a great absence, the mute renunciation of all life's turmoil. We long to be Poetry and the Powers of Night enveloped by her and absorbed into her infinite calm. We ‘want her to soothe us sweetly om her bosom. Her tempta~ tion enters and ways. There is a primordial felicity in yielding ourselves uustingly to sleep as our eyes close in the darkness. A load falls from our shoulders, the burden of life, and night gives us the consoling illusion that we have done with it for ever. “Who can doube that this represents one of the most fandamental demands of our consciousness, one of our first needs? Life is offen an intolerable struggle. Who is not sometimes tempted to give it all up? Within easy reach night is waiting, a blessed means of escape. Too many cruel battles have to be fought in the hard light of facts: here is repose, a blessed vagueness and confusion. Viewed from this aspect, night corresponds to our nature's “lullaby side” (c6té berceuse), always connected more or less with the presence within us of an eter childhood, ‘The poetry which echoes it rocks us with its soothing sound, enveloping and lulling a to. sleep, Maternal. protection having disappeared we ask for our s from the poets :some of as go to Keats, Novalis, ine, others to the authors of popular romance, but it i the same deep need, the same emotion which draws us all, So the poetic material which the first harmonic vibra- tion of night has called forth is inexhaustible, It has different modulations and is of all varieties. es farthest echo is confused with another sound, the muffled voice of death, our final rest and profoundest oblivion. “The two twin childcen, sleep and deach” have always appeared to the poets as being essentially related to cach others death is “the other sleep". Again, in the same poetic wave we find the world of dreams which Heidegger has 165