THE POETRY AND PROSE OF FRENCH FORESTS 



BY WILLIAM H. SCHEIFLEY 



THE French, in their appreciation of forests, seem 

 to have inherited something akin to the Greek and 

 Roman adoration of sylvan deities and the Druidic 

 worship of trees. Such a feeling is early attested in the 

 Sony of Roland, the Romances of Chretien de Troyes, 

 and the Lays of Marie de France ; but it may be dis- 

 cerned in every epoch. Ronsard, writing in eulogy of 

 the forest of Gastine, exclaims : 



"Hearken, woodman; withhold the threatening stroke! 

 These are not trees you ruthlessly lay low. 

 For, see you not the blood distilled in pain 

 By nymphs who dwell beneath the hardy bark?" 



Even during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 

 when attention was so largely focused upon the world of 

 fashion as to obscure the previous sylvan enthusiasm of 

 Rabelais, Charles Estienne, Ronsard, Bernard Palissy, 

 Olivier de Serres and Sully, men like La Fontaine and 

 Buffon could not forget amid court frivolities their joy 

 in the woodland. A certain Jesuit of the period, Jacques 

 Vaniere (1664-1739), celebrating in his remarkable 

 Pracdum Rusticum the beauties of the forest, affirms : 



"To the orchards, to the forests, your first cares are due. 

 Plant, plant, to begin with, if later you'd build." 



Rousseau and the economists express an interest in 

 forests both sentimental and practical, and Gregoire, a 

 member of the National Convention, after depicting in 

 his Essai des Arbres de la Liberte the devotion to trees 

 in antiquity, gives an interesting account of the cere- 

 monies connected with the planting of "Liberty Trees" 

 during the Revolutionary period, 1789-1800 a custom 

 revived in 1830 and 1848. The National Convention, 

 believing the tree to be "the object which the French 

 cherished most," decreed that it be planted in every com- 

 mune and confided to the care of the citizens. 



During the nineteenth century, in particular, the cult 

 of the forest has flourished, trees having been extolled 

 in poetry and prose for their beauty and age, as com- 

 panions to man and silent witnesses of his achievements. 

 "With the last tree," declares Michelet, "will disappear 

 the last man." In the same vein, Chateaubriand affirms 

 that "Wherever trees have disappeared, man has been 

 punished for his lack of providence." Adolphe Rette 

 exclaims : 



"Sing praises to the trees that are so beautiful 

 And that rustle so softly in orchards and forests!" 



Marcel Prevost holds that only the sea and the moun- 

 tains can rival the forest in beauty. Paul Margueritte 

 finds that "There is no season when we are not dazzled 

 by the splendor of the forest." Taine, according to 

 Maurice Barres, regarded his favorite planetree as a 

 master in ethics. "How I love that tree!" he cries. 

 "I never grow tired of admiring and interpreting it. 

 During the months I spend in Paris, it is the goal of my 

 walks. Every day, in all kinds of weather, I pay it a 



744 



visit. It will be the friend and counselor of my declining 

 years." Not less enthusiastic are the words of Francois 

 Fabie : 



"O chestnut trees, brave offspring of the Cevennes! 

 Within whose veins courses good Gallic blood! 

 You I revere as I would hold in awe the aged; 

 Rejoicing that in the sun, instead of pallid marble monuments. 

 You, noble trees, sturdy and strong, rise to heaven 

 As witnesses of the ancients among their descendants." 



Still others have shown their enthusiasm for trees. 

 Georges Lecomte vaunts in poetic prose the "surges of 

 mysterious verdure, in which the Spirit of Darkness 

 sicks concealment during the splendor of the day, only 

 to envelop the earth again upon emerging: Edouard 

 Schure greets his favorite fir trees with the words : 



"Hail, invincible kings of heights untrodden! 

 Behold, youth encompasses you in torrents, 

 And you delight to thrill to balmy breezes 

 When Spring ferments beneath your green branches." 



Lamartine pays homage to the autumnal woods : 



"Hail, woods, crowned with a last vestige of verdure, 

 Your yellowing leaves on the meadows strewn! 

 Hail, last sweet days; the mourning of nature 

 Matches my grief yet charms my sight." 



Lamartine could never forget the "majestic sycamores" 

 that had afforded him shelter in the Holy Land. Henri 

 de Regnier, who likens the sylvan splendor of autumn 

 to a pyrotechnic display, avers that: "At Versailles, 

 Autumn is sovereign. His scepter creates there a fairy 

 land. In order to receive him, the trees adorn them- 

 selves in the richest and most sumptuous of colors, don- 

 ning gold and purple, decking out the alleys and basins 

 and filling the solitude with the splendor of their attire." 

 Maurice Maeterlinck thinks that, "whether viewed by 

 sunlight or moonlight, in the burning heat of summer 

 or the white garb of winter, nothing is comparable to 

 the architectural, altar-like alignment of innumerable 

 trees, lifting heavenwards, smooth, rigid, clear-cut, 

 crowded close like a bundle of lictors' rods." Sincere 

 is the tribute of Gerard d'Houville to his adored mari- 

 time pines : "Lofty pines by the sea, extending toward 

 heaven your wide-spreading, swaying summits, you abide 

 in my memory, and embody the fondest dreams of my 

 childhood." Charles Le Goffic sees in the twilight haze 

 of Brittany towering, tapering poplars that resemble a 

 ruined cathedral reduced to bare pillars. 



In all this admiration of the forests may be discerned 

 a tendency to personify trees as organisms endowed with 

 animal or human traits. Emile Verhaeren sings of a 

 woodland friend : 



"That willow tree, I love it like a human friend. 



Morning and evening and by night, 



At every hour, indeed, I seek it eagerly." 



