Cuban and Academician

—The first election to the French Academy during the present year took place in February. It brought a writer of sonnets — and of only a single volume at that — into the chair left vacant by the death of Mazade, who was for fifty years the weigher of European politics in the Revue; des Deux Mondes. It was a difficult task for newspaper correspondents, who had not followed closely the inner mysteries of recent French literature, to render account of the lucky poet. Edmund Gosse, in the Contemporary Review, has finally enlightened English and American readers as to the poetic quality of M. José Maria de Heredia. But who shall succeed in tempering the refreshing legend which the daily press had “ grown ” about his name ?

The highest point of misinformation was reached, perhaps, by the Paris correspondent of the London Daily News, who, I believe, also writes the lively and inaccurate Paris notes for Mr. Labonchere’s Truth. According to this version of his life, M. de Heredia is a mulatto of Cuba, a former minister of the French state, and has been mixed up with a defunct gambling club of Paris. The last accusation was the consequence of an incorrect reading of names in a recent baccarat scandal ventilated by the French courts. The confusion with M. Severiano de Heredia, the French politician, is probably due to the fact that Vapereau, in his latest edition of the Dictioimaire Universel des Contemporains, speaks of no other bearing the family name. The epithet “ mulatto ” was doubtless due to a defective logic working on the statement that the Academy had not actually elected a foreigner to its very French bosom, since the poet is of mixed blood.

In the vivid truth of things, José Maria de Heredia was born in Cuba, of a mother whose grandfather was a member of the parliament of Normandy under the old régime in France. By his father he descends from the proudest blood of the early Spanish conquistudores, a fact that has inspired one of his most stirring sonnets, To the Founder of a City : —

His first literary work, when he was scarcely more than a boy, at the end of his studies in the École des Chartes, was a careful edition and translation of some of the chronicles which narrate the great deeds of his ancestors. They have always had the same effect upon his soul that the reading of Chapman’s Homer had on Keats, making him feel like

Of course, the Spanish-American Frenchman could never have made the Englishman’s mistake of placing Cortez where Balboa stood. But he, too, has traveled to good purpose — and sonnets — “ round many western islands,”

His latest addition to the still unwrought literary mine of this American heroic age is a deliciously painstaking translation into French of the memoirs of the “ nun Alferez,” who, in man’s attire, overran all that was then known of America ; playing high, drinking deep, and stabbing to right and left as valiantly as any hero of them all.

In 1870, M. de Heredia wished to enlist in the service of his mother’s country ; but, in spite of the fearful need of defenders, his near-sightedness caused his rejection. He did not finally secure his naturalization as a French citizen until the publication of his sonnets, gathered iuto a small volume, had made the literary sensation of a season and opened his way to the Academy. The esteem of Les Trophées has not ceased its growth with his election ; the little book has now had nearly a score of editions, something long unknown in the annals of French verse.

In the innermost circles of literature, the poetic power of the rich Cuban, living quietly in his house on the Rue de Balzac, and mingling only with chosen spirits, had been known for many years. Taine, with the eye of an historian of art for chiseled forms, whether of things or of thoughts, asked to learn prosody of him. Among the poet’s treasures is the manuscript wherein Taine wrote out those playful sonnets on the Cat which were somehow published after the philosopher’s death, to the dismay of his widow. On the first leaf is the flattering dedication : “ Offered to José Maria de Heredia, lapidary in diamonds and tine pearls, by a worker in paste, his admirer and his pupil, H. Taine. December, 1883.” It was at the instance of Francois Coppée that the poet collected his sonnets for publication ; and MM. de Vogiid and d’Haussonville, backed by the Parnassian poet Leconte de Lisle, whose methods he has followed, made him decide to become a candidate for the Academy. Taine’s chair was now vacant ; but a talk with his friend Zola, who preferred that his own chronic candidature should bear on the place of the philosopher whom he claimed to follow, — and who still keeps him from the Academy, — led to the election as it finally came about.

The special power of the poet’s pen, comparable to the goldsmith’s steel, has its parallel in the conversation which has made him a welcome guest at the banquets of the chosen few. Among the notes of the painter, Joseph de Nittis, there is a gruesome instance. Heredia was recounting a surgical operation in cruel detail. “ Diable de Heredia !” said Goncourt, “he goes about the butchery as he does about a sonnet.” “ Naturally ! ” retorted the poet. “ I have the old blood of an Inquisitor in my veins.” The painter remarks that he was feeling uneasy himself, when one of the party fell over on tlie table. Tlie arclneologist and art critic, Foureaud, had fainted before the poet’s vision of reality. A more pleasant detail is that the grace of his faultless verse has been inherited by his daughter Blanche, who has already published her Premiers Vers.