ANote on Jean Sans Terre
I
Louise Bogan
N PRE-ROMANTIC PERIODS,
man is nothing; it is his terrors that counl
Poetry's long stay in the region of pre-Romanticism is the oddest phenome–
non in the literature of our day. The Dada and Surrealist schools were
both pre-Romantic, and Surrealism announced itself as an end, refusing
to look forward to any further development beyond itself. The poets of
Surrealism remained singularly naive concerning the atmosphere they
created, and considered themselves "new,"-without forerunners or his–
toric exemplars. It is becoming clear, however, that in Surrealism-its
delight in the horror-weighted scene, the dark region, and the grisly fetich
-the whole
macabre
of pre-Romantic Gothic has made another appear·
ance. The haunted silent squares and arcades of Chirico, rather than the
haunted castle of Radcliffe, set the stage. And the "subconscious" imagery
of surrealist poetry corresponds to the subconscious imagery of Blake,
Young and Poe. In both periods, as an escape from harsh reality, poetry
recedes back to the play and primitive terrors of the savage and the child.
In Ivan Goll's
Jean Sans Terre
an actual Romantic spirit and feeling
reappears. The secularized Flesh and Devil have been surpassed and
passed beyond. Now actual Nature comes back for applause. The stage
sets, the underground corridors, the deserted public squares with their
frozen shadows, the blank shores with empty horizons, yield to recogniz·
able landscapes. And emotion, no longer disguised and transformed,
returns freshly and without shame; and can be applied directly to the
earth, the sun and the moon, to animals and flowers, and to man. Although
the atmosphere of displacement, of nostalgia, is still very strong, man is
released from full helplessness before the childish dream. He is no longer
completely at the mercy of events. He is freed of the full burden of his
situation, because he is now free to apply to it both irony and love.
This is the Romantic spirit at its best, and in Ivan Goll's
Jean Sans
Terre,
it is always evident. The poet creates, as well, in the best Romantic
tradition, a myth which will accommodate all the capabilities of a sensi·
tive and complex observer. The Romantic character often embodies itself
in some one figure (such as the Byronic Don Juan and Childe Harold);
or in two complementary figures (Faust-Mephisto). Jean Sans Terre is
such a romantic embodiment. The modern mythical personage, however,
is never a "hero." The "I'' has been subdued; the action becomes more
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