Henri Cazalis
Henri Cazalis was a French physician who was a symbolist poet and man of letters and wrote under the pseudonyms of Jean Caselli and Jean Lahor.
His works include:
- Chants populaires de l'Italie
- Vita tristis. Rêveries fantasques. Romances sans musique dans le mode mineur
- Melancholia
- Le Livre du néant
- Henry Regnault, sa vie et son œuvre
- L'Illusion
- Cantique des cantiques
- Les Quatrains d'Al-Gazali
- William Morris.
Some of his poems have been set to music by Camille Saint-Saëns, Henri Duparc, Charles Bordes, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn, Edouard Trémisot, Dagmar de Corval Rybner, and Paul Paray.
He also maintained a correspondence of interest with the poet Stéphane Mallarmé from 1862 to 1871.
See a notice by Paul Bourget in Anthologie des poétes fr. du XIXieme siècle ; Jules Lemaître, Les Contemporains ; Émile Faguet in the Revue bleue. George Santayana's Poetry and Religion has an essay on his concept of La gloire du néant.
Danse Macabre
Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre is based on this poem written by Henri Cazalis.Zig, zig, zig, Death in cadence,
Striking with his heel a tomb,
Death at midnight plays a dance-tune,
Zig, zig, zig, on his violin.
The winter wind blows and the night is dark;
Moans are heard in the linden-trees.
Through the gloom, white skeletons pass,
Running and leaping in their shrouds.
Zig, zig, zig, each one is frisking.
The bones of the dancers are heard to crack-
But hist! of a sudden they quit the round,
They push forward, they fly; the cock has crowed.