Agen,with its narrow and crooked streets,is not altogether a pleasant town,excepting,perhaps,the beautiful promenade of the Gravier,where Jasmin lived.Yet the neighbourhood of Agen is exceedingly picturesque,especially the wooded crags of the Hermitage and the pretty villas near the convent of the Carmelites.From these lofty sites a splendid view of the neighbouring country is to be seen along the windings of the Garonne,and far off,towards the south,to the snowy peaks of the Pyrenees.
Down beneath the Hermitage and the crags a road winds up the valley towards Verona,once the home of the famous Scaligers.[1]
Near this place Jasmin bought a little vineyard,and established his Tivoli.In this pretty spot his muse found pure air,liberty,and privacy.He called the place--like his volume of poems--his "Papillote,"his "Curlpaper."Here,for nearly thirty years,he spent some of his pleasantest hours,in exercise,in reflection,and in composition.In commemoration of his occupation of the site,he composed his Ma Bigno--'My Vineyard'--one of the most ****** and graceful of his poems.
Jasmin dedicated Ma Bigno to Madame Louis Veill,of Paris.
He told her of his purchase of Papillote,a piece of ground which he had long desired to have,and which he had now been able to buy with the money gained by the sale of his poems.
He proceeds to describe the place:
"In this tiny little vineyard,"he says,"my only chamber is a grotto.Nine cherry trees:such is my wood!I have six rows of vines,between which I walk and meditate.The peaches are mine;the hazel nuts are mine!I have two elms,and two fountains.
I am indeed rich!You may laugh,perhaps,at my happiness.
But I wish you to know that I love the earth and the sky.
It is a living picture,sparkling in the sunshine.Come,"he said,"and pluck my peaches from the branches;put them between your lovely teeth,whiter than the snow.Press them:from the skin to the almond they melt in the mouth--it is honey!"He next describes what he sees and hears from his grotto:the beautiful flowers,the fruit glowing in the sun,the luscious peaches,the notes of the woodlark,the zug-zug of the nightingale,the superb beauty of the heavens.
"They all sing love,and love is always new."He compares Paris,with its grand ladies and its grand opera,with his vineyard and his nightingales."Paris,"he says,"has fine flowers and lawns,but she is too much of the grande dame.
She is unhappy,sleepy.Here,a thousand hamlets laugh by the river's side.Our skies laugh;everything is happy;everything lives.From the month of May,when our joyous summer arrives,for six months the heavens resound with music.A thousand nightingales sing all the night through.Your grand opera is silent,while our concert is in its fullest strain."The poem ends with a confession on the part of the poet of sundry pilferings committed by himself in the same place when a boy--of apple-trees broken,hedges forced,and vine-ladders scaled,winding up with the words:
"Madame,you see I turn towards the past without a blush;will you?What I have robbed I return,and return with usury.
I have no door to my vineyard;only two thorns bar its threshold.
When,through a hole I see the noses of marauders,instead of arming myself with a cane,I turn and go away,so that they may come back.He who robbed when he was young,may in his old age allow himself to be robbed too."A most amicable sentiment,sure to be popular amongst the rising generation of Agen.
Ma Bigno is written in graceful and felicitous verse.We have endeavoured to give a translation in the appendix;but the rendering of such a work into English is extremely difficult.
The soul will be found wanting;for much of the elegance of the poem consists in the choice of the words.M.de Mazade,editor of the Revue des Deux Mondes,said of Ma Bigno that it was one of Jasmin's best works,and that the style and sentiments were equally satisfactory to the poetical mind and taste.
M.Rodiere,of Toulouse,in his brief memoir of Jasmin,[2]says that "it might be thought that so great a work as Franconnette would have exhausted the poet.When the aloe flowers,it rests for nearly a hundred years before it blooms again.But Jasmin had an inexhaustible well of poetry in his soul.Never in fact was he more prolific than in the two years which followed the publication of Franconnette.Poetry seemed to flow from him like a fountain,and it came in various forms.His poems have no rules and little rhythm,except those which the genius of the poet chooses to give them;but there is always the most beautiful poetry,perfectly evident by its divine light and its inspired accents."Jasmin,however,did not compose with the rapidity described by his reviewer.He could not throw off a poem at one or many sittings;though he could write an impromptu with ready facility.When he had an elaborate work in hand,such as The Blind Girl of Castel-Cuille,Franconnette,or Martha the Innocent,he meditated long over it,and elaborated it with conscientious care.He arranged the plan in his mind,and waited for the best words and expressions in which to elaborate his stanzas,so as most clearly to explain his true meaning.
Thus Franconnette cost him two years'labour.Although he wrote of peasants in peasants'language,he took care to avoid everything gross or vulgar.Not even the most classical poet could have displayed inborn politeness--la politesse du coeur--in a higher degree.At the same time,while he expressed passion in many forms,it was always with delicacy,truth,and beauty.
Notwithstanding his constant philanthropic journeys,he beguiled his time with the germs of some forthcoming poem,ready to be elaborated on his return to Agen and his vineyard.