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font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Portraits and Speculations, by Arthur Ransome</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online -at <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Portraits and Speculations</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Arthur Ransome</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: August 4, 2021 [eBook #65992]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Tim Lindell, Charlie Howard, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PORTRAITS AND SPECULATIONS ***</div> - -<div class="transnote covernote"> -<p class="center larger">Transcriber’s Note</p> - -<p class="center">Cover created by Transcriber -and placed into the Public Domain.</p> -</div> - -<h1 class="wspace">PORTRAITS AND SPECULATIONS</h1> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter narrow"> -<h2 class="nobreak wspace"><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></h2> - -<div class="blockquot hang"> - -<p>A HISTORY OF STORYTELLING: -<span class="smcap">Studies in the development of -Narrative</span>. 1909</p> - -<p>EDGAR ALLAN POE: <span class="smcap">A Critical -Study</span>. 1910</p> - -<p>THE HOOFMARKS OF THE -FAUN. 1911</p> - -<p>OSCAR WILDE: <span class="smcap">A Critical Study</span>. -1912</p> -</div> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter center vspace wspace larger"> -<p class="xxlarge"> -<span class="gesperrt">PORTRAITS</span><br /> -<span class="xxsmall">AND</span><br /> -<span class="gesperrt">SPECULATIONS</span></p> - -<p class="p2 larger"><span class="small">BY</span><br /> -ARTHUR RANSOME</p> - -<p>MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br /> -ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON<br /> -1913 -</p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4"><i>Copyright</i></p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="newpage p4 vspace wspace"> -TO<br /> -<span class="larger">JOHN MASEFIELD</span> -</p> -</div> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak">NOTE</h2> -</div> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">Of</span> the Essays in this book, “Art for Life’s Sake” -appeared in <i>The English Review</i>; “The Poetry -of Yone Noguchi,”<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> “Remy de Gourmont,” and -“Aloysius Bertrand” in <i>The Fortnightly Review</i>; -“Kinetic and Potential Speech,” in <i>The Oxford -and Cambridge Review</i>. The papers on Daudet -and Coppée were prefixed to collections of stories -by these writers: I thank the publishers, Messrs. -T. C. and E. C. Jack, for permission to reproduce -them here.</p> - -<hr /> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2> -</div> - -<table id="toc" summary="Contents"> -<tr class="small"> - <td> </td> - <td class="tdr">PAGE</td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">ART FOR LIFE’S SAKE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_1">1</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">ALOYSIUS BERTRAND</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_35">35</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">ALPHONSE DAUDET</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_57">57</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE RETROSPECTION OF FRANÇOIS COPPÉE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_71">71</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_87">87</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">WALTER PATER</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_129">129</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">REMY DE GOURMONT</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_161">161</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">THE POETRY OF YONE NOGUCHI</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_187">187</a></td> -</tr> -<tr> - <td class="tdl">KINETIC AND POTENTIAL SPEECH</td> - <td class="tdr"><a href="#toclink_207">207</a></td> -</tr> -</table> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_1" class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak">ART FOR LIFE’S SAKE</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">3</span></p> -<h2>ART FOR LIFE’S SAKE</h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">It</span> is not yet fifty years since one or two men -of genius, followed presently by a score of -men of talent, noisier, shriller in voice than -themselves, preached a theory of art new -in this country, shocking to our prejudices -at that time, and imported from some French -artists and from a German philosopher. This -was the doctrine of art for art’s sake. -Baudelaire had written: “Poetry ... has -no other end than itself; it can have no -other, and no poem will be so great, so -noble, so truly worthy of the name of a -poem, as that which has been written solely -for the pleasure of writing a poem.” Whistler, -that butterfly of letters, who had borrowed -his sting from the wasp, directed it with -gay despair against the granite face of the -British public. Rossetti and, with certain -qualifications, Pater, illustrated the theory -in their practice, as Whistler did also; and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">4</span> -Wilde, a little later than they, remarked: -“All art is quite useless,” and “There is no -such thing as a moral or an immoral book. -Books are well written or badly written. -That is all.”</p> - -<p>With this doctrine of art for art’s sake we -are now dissatisfied. We object to it, not -for the sake of “morality,” against which it -was partly directed, nor yet for the sake of -“nature,” but for the sake of art, whose -function it limits rather than glorifies. We -have seen the school of art, if we may speak -of a school of art, that carried the banner on -which those words were inscribed, tire and -fall away as the nineteenth century drew to -its close, until now the tattered banner, with -words almost illegible, is carried only by a -schoolboy who joined the procession late and -marches on, unconscious that the parade is -over, that he is marching alone, and that -nobody is looking at him. Yet the demonstration -was successful; its promoters, who -stitched the banner with gaiety, hope, and -defiance, themselves painted and wrote fine -things, and men are working to-day whose -work would have been impossible if, in -the course of its march, that small, daring<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">5</span> -procession had not walked seven times round -a city of Jericho and blown silver trumpets -under its walls.</p> - -<p>Some battle-cries are no more than an irrelevant -but inspiriting noise. Most of them, -however, are related to something fought for, -(St. George and Merry England!), something -that, it is hoped, will superintend the fight -(God with us!), or something that is fought -against (<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">A bas Marat!</span>). The knight who -shouted, “Two red roses across the moon” -on a sultry day <span class="locked">when—</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“... the battle was scattered from hill to hill</div> - <div class="verse indent0">From the windmill to the watermill.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">may have been incomprehensible to his -enemies, but was not incomprehensible to -himself, and “Art for Art’s sake!” forty -and fifty years ago, a surprising, rather ridiculous -phrase in the ears of the early Victorians -who then survived, was something -very different for the men who were fighting -to destroy a petrified mental attitude towards -art in general. We must first understand -what they fought against before we have the -right to speak of the meaning of their battle-cry.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">6</span></p> - -<p>They fought, primarily, against a moral -valuation of art. They fought, secondly, -against “nature” ... against, that is to say, -a crude conception of the relation between -nature and art; against, to put that crude -conception in its crudest form, the supposition -that he who looked at a picture could -find something in the external world, by -its resemblance to which the picture should -be judged. It would be a fascinating task -to show that the too faithful imitation of -external things is an impediment to the -highest functions of art, and, on the other -hand, that imitation in some kind, in some -degree, is an essential part of that function. -But I do not wish to be tempted into discussion -of the true relation between art and -nature, though a solution of that problem -will, perhaps, suggest itself to those who read -this paper to its end. I am here chiefly interested -in art’s relation to ourselves. Nature -for the moment is outside the discussion, -though, in justice to the artists for art’s sake, -I must point out that their revolt was not -against “morality” alone. When we hear -Wilde’s gay proclamation that “Life imitates -Art far more than Art imitates Life,” we must<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">7</span> -take care to hear also, from Whistler, more -serious, that “Nature contains the elements, -in colour and form, of all pictures, as the -keyboard contains the notes of all music,” -and that the artist “in all that is dainty -and lovable ... finds hints for his own -combinations, and thus is Nature ever his -resource and always at his service, and to -him is nought refused.” We must not imagine -that the revolt was merely playful.</p> - -<p>Against “nature” and against “morality.” -In an age when the painter of “Derby Day” -assisted Ruskin by saying that he could not -“see anything of the true representation of -water and atmosphere in the painting of -“Battersea Bridge,” they upheld the superiority -of art to “nature.” In an age when Dickens -was praised for his reforms of the workhouse -and blamed for his love of low life, when -novelists were judged by the deeds, no, by the -manners of the persons of their fiction, when -poets were judged by their private lives, they -protested the irrelevance of all such things -to the question at issue, which was the -goodness or badness of the work of art to be -judged. We must not blame their formula, -but the ideas against which it was directed,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">8</span> -for the bad manners, the morality that they -hoped would be regarded as immorality, for -the unpublishable private lives, that were the -excesses after victory. We may, perhaps, -smile as we observe how accurately they -balance those other excesses against which -they were a reaction.</p> - -<p>The question, no longer how to conquer, -became how to use the victory, and we had -the common spectacle of veterans and retired -camp-followers trying to live up to the -battle-cry of their youth, and, unable to free -themselves from the habit of their excesses, -committing these excesses with less and less -gusto and more and more skill. But skill, even -so acquired, is not valueless. The battle-cry, -after opening a primrose path to charlatans, -after turning “morality” into “immorality” -as a spectre ruling over art, remained the -stimulus to an improved technique, a scrupulousness, -an economy of effect, a delicacy -in the handling of material, a care for melody -and counterpoint, an intolerance of careless -workmanship, for which for a long time -it will be our privilege to be grateful.</p> - -<p>Art, however, cannot live by perfection of -technique alone, nor yet by the repetition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">9</span> -of remembered excesses. A new generation -of artists, working in a new environment, -inspired by new aims, and threatened by -new dangers, requires a new formula, or a -restatement of the old. These artists of our -own generation look at the faded banner with -the remains of reverence, or, in their dislike -of the mistakes it made possible, with a -suspicion of contempt. In the turbulence -of valuations in this century, in the different, -sharply defined attitudes of men on such -questions as property, labour, capital, the -position of women in the State, marriage, -education, or the Church, they see a herd of -conflicting moralities. Involved in one or -other of these conflicts, perhaps in many -of them, they cannot but believe, suspect, -or hope that art also must speak for or -against, as tribune or as patrician, as -Churchman or as secularist, and, if the -conflict be important to them, the excellence -of an artist must seem to be determined, -at least in part, by the views that he -expresses. How then can art “have nothing -to do with morality”? They are, however, -sufficiently critical to see that it is possible -that a work of art may be good for a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">10</span> -democrat, bad for an aristocrat, and yet, -somehow, good in itself. Was there something -in “Art for Art’s sake” after all?</p> - -<p>Of the men whose names I mentioned in -the first paragraph of this essay one had -founded his views on those of a philosopher, -and so, whatever may be his rank among -those dogmatists, we are able to examine -the background of reasoning on which he -saw his own dogmatic statements. It is -in that reasoning, and not in the cheerful -taunts of the battlefield that we are likely -to learn how it was that the formula of “Art -for Art’s sake” seemed to be justified, and -how it is that the formula is fundamentally -inadequate. Baudelaire’s proclamation, -Pater’s practice, Whistler’s blue-feathered, -silver-tipped darts point us to no analysis. -The analysis that made Wilde’s paradoxes -possible is open to our view in the pages -of Kant.</p> - -<p>Now Kant said that what was called -beautiful was the object of a delight apart -from any interest, and showed that charm, or -intimate reference to our own circumstances -or possible circumstances, so far from being a -criterion of beauty, was a disturbing influence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">11</span> -upon our judgment. Upon our judgment of -what? The beautiful. How many crimes has -that word committed, how many discussions -it has obscured, how many it has closed at -the very moment of their fertility. Not the -least of its knaveries has been this substitution -of a condition of art for the function of art, -which, as I hope to show, is life itself. A -work of art suggests the achievement of the -beautiful. That may be its immediate object. -It is not its ultimate object. It may be an -essential condition. It is not a function. -Art for art’s sake means the substitution of -condition for function, and, as the beautiful -can never be a function of anything, the -implicit denial that art has a function at all. -“All art is quite useless.”</p> - -<p>But that is not what we believe. And the -reason why the theorists of art for art’s sake -were both right and wrong was that they -did not want art for the sake of anything -irrelevant to the artistic phenomenon, but -were a little ungenerous in their interpretation -of that phenomenon. They saw that -moralities, private lives, reforms, interests, -had nothing to do with the attempted -achievement of the condition of the beautiful,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">12</span> -but, having seen that, forgot, in their -hurry for battle, that the work of art persists -beyond this achievement or attempted -achievement; forgot that, will he nill he, the -artist’s work cannot but bear the impress of -his personality, and forgot that through that -fact all the things they wished to rule out -of the discussion had their rightful place in it.</p> - -<p>The question is, what is their rightful -place? And to answer it we must first -satisfy ourselves as to the nature of the -artistic phenomenon.</p> - -<p>A work of art is a collaboration between -two artists, whom, for purposes of reference, -I shall call the speaker and the listener. -But, before it is a collaboration, a re-creation, -in which form we commonly know it, -it is an independent act performed by the -speaker alone. He, as first creator, isolates -some from the flux of impressions in which -he lives. It is as if he were to arrest that -flux, and momentarily to stop its flow. He -holds back the sun and the moon in their -courses, and, for a moment, the world stands -motionless before him, embodied in the -dominating impressions given him by a -single moment of its and his existence.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">13</span> -This one moment he disentangles from all -others; the world, the universe, at that -moment, for him, he fashions into a memory, -clearer than life, and owing its clarity to -his refusal to allow it to have a before or -an after, an above or a below, other than -those which itself implies. He isolates -that moment with its implications. The -resulting clarity is as if he had suddenly -stopped the cross-currents of a stream, and -the stream, losing the opaqueness of its -tangled motion, had become crystal. He -isolates that moment by surrounding it -with his own consciousness, while other -moments fly past taking with them shreds -of that tattered veil, no more.... There is a -choice of moments, and because the choice -is not reasonable, but determined by the -moment itself, the speaker feels himself -inspired. That which attracts him, seduces -him, compels him to catch it as it passes -and hold it fast, instead of letting it break -free and join the myriad others with their -worthless trophies of incomplete comprehension, -is a moment whose impressions present -themselves as melody, gesture, words, shape, -or ordered colour, or the promise of such.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">14</span> -Two bars are heard as it goes by, a significant -arm swings out of the flood, a jumble -of words, like those of a sleeper, startle his -mind, the ghost of an unpainted picture -wakes his eyes.... These things are pledges. -He seizes them and, warily, lest he lose them, -listens for the rest of the melody, watchfully -draws out of the flood the figure whose -gesture had seemed to be the moment itself, -pieces the brittle words together, and shapes -the picture in his brain. He allows the -moment to redeem the pledge it has given, -his care being not to impede it by forestalling -its further appearance with something -contradictory to the original fragment, something -that the character of that fragment has -not determined. He seeks only to be true -to the original promise, and the good artist -is known by the fact that it is impossible -to tell with what he began, the bad artist -by the fragment he has surrounded with -baser metal that does not ring with its note, -or the phantom whose vitality he has blurred -by clothing it with flesh uninformed by its -peculiar vitality.</p> - -<p>The process of the speaker in the first -creation of a work of art is a process of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">15</span> -finding out. He is engaged in <em>knowing</em> the -uttermost implications of the fragment of -impression caught by him from the flux of -unconscious or semi-conscious life. He is -making the whole of that impression his own -by his profound, his complete consciousness -of it. That is why the artist can never -understand those people, not artists, who -ask him how he can prefer art to life; imitation -to the real thing. He cannot believe -that such people mean what they say. In -his humility he assumes that they too have -the modesty to admit to themselves that their -life is unconscious, or semi-conscious, and he -believes that this process of <em>knowing</em>, of becoming -conscious, is the intensest form of -living that there is.</p> - -<p>Then, when the work of art is as we know -it, we, the listener, collaborate with that -other artist, the speaker, and from what he -has said, in stone, music, paint or words, try -to reconstruct the fragment of life that he -has made his own and to share his consciousness -of it. Accurately speaking, this is -impossible. We become conscious of a -moment of life different from his. We cannot -give his words the precise atmosphere<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">16</span> -they had for him, we cannot see with exactly -his eyes, or hear with his ears, we are without -his private and individual memory. We can -but be inaccurate translators. We can, however, -perceive, uncertainly, that he has been -successful himself in allowing a moment of -life to redeem the pledge it had given him, -that his work does not contradict itself, and -so is true to the original inspiration bedded -in it or clothed by it. And this perception -suggests to us that, if it were possible, we -should find, certainly, what we already -believe, that his share in the collaboration -is perfect. We then say that a work of art -is beautiful; the wistfulness with which we -sometimes say it, the tears that sometimes -dim our eyes as we close a book or turn from -a picture that we believe to be beautiful, and -the sadness that has often been associated -with the name of beauty, are due to the half-conscious -knowledge that our share in the -collaboration is imperfect, since we can never -stand exactly where he stood.</p> - -<p>Our judgment of the beautiful then depends -on our belief that, were certain unalterable -facts altered in the constitution of the -universe and of ourselves, we should be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">17</span> -sharing a perfect expression, an expression, -that is to say, in perfect unity with itself. -Art then for art’s sake, perfection of expression -first. But what is this expression in -perfect unity with itself, but a moment of -conscious living, isolated from all else, lifted -from the unconscious flux and given us—to -live?</p> - -<p>Let us rewrite the half-obliterated formula. -Let us write it now: Art for Life’s sake, and -raise a party cry from its momentary usefulness -into a proud suggestion of the noble -function of art. This function is not merely -to teach us how to act, as was supposed by -the old critics, who recommended Homer for -the heroism of his heroes, though, as we shall -see, they were not wholly wrong, nor yet -merely to teach us how to order our lives, -though it may do that by suggestion. Art is -itself life. Its function is to increase our -consciousness of life, to make us more than -wise or sensitive, to transform us from beings -overwhelmed by the powerful stream of unconscious -living to beings dominating that -stream, to change us from objects acted upon -by life to joyful collaborators in that reaction. -By its means we become conscious gainers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">18</span> -by life’s procreative activity. No longer -hiding our faces from that muddied storm -that sweeps irresistibly from the future to the -past, a medley of confused figures, a babel -of cries of joy, of laughter, of sorrow, of pain, -by its means we lift our heads, and, learning -from the isolation of moments in eternity, to -imagine the isolation of all such moments, -we conquer that storm, and accept pain, joy, -laughter or sorrow, with equal gratitude, in -our continually realised desire to feel ourselves -alive.</p> - -<p>Let us examine from this point of view the -fundamental quarrel between the theorists of -“Art for Art’s sake” and the moralists. -What are their respective beliefs?</p> - -<p><i>The Moralist.</i>—The noblest end of being -is to be good. All human activities must -serve this end or be pernicious. Art, the -most eloquent, the most powerful of pleaders, -cannot, without violating the trust that -humanity puts in her, turn devil’s advocate. -Let the artist be as skilful an artist as he -can, but let him make a right use of his -excellence. In peace we ask no more of a -good shot than that he hit the bull’s eye of a -target. But we live in times of war between<span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">19</span> -the hosts of good and of evil. The fight is -to the death, and we admire the good shot -if he fire from among the ranks of angels, -and fear him if we see that his skill is at -the service of our opponents, who in age-long -battle have shown themselves merciless -and strong.</p> - -<p><i>The Artist for Art’s sake.</i>—Morality in art -is an accident of no importance. We hear -the battle of which you speak, but do not -take part in it, though we listen sometimes -to the music of its trumpets far away, and see -the red glow it throws up to the sky. But -morality concerns our circumstances or -possible circumstances, and so has nothing -to do with the beautiful, which is art’s sole -concern. A work of art that declares its -sympathy with one or other party to your -battle is one whose creator has looked aside -to ends other than beauty. It is therefore -a failure as a work of art. Art must not be -limited to edifying subjects. There is nothing -that may not become beautiful in the hands -of an artist. Church and lupanar, angel and -courtesan, are of equal value in his eyes. -They are material, no more, and he will not -tolerate that morality should hamper him by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">20</span> -dictating the choice or use of his material. -A work of art is independent of morality.</p> - -<p><i>To these two we reply, believing that art is -for life’s sake.</i>—When a man tells you that -his work of art has nothing to do with -morality, ask him, With whose morality has -it nothing to do? He will be compelled to -admit that the morality of which he is thinking -is the morality he attributes to somebody -else. Morality is a code of values, differing -in each individual, and dictated to each -individual by his character and his environment. -No artist, no human being, escapes -morality, and the code of values that is his -will be one of the determining influences -on an artist’s vision of life. If, perchance, -he is so uncritical as to believe that he has -nothing to do with morality, that belief will -itself share in giving his work a moral value. -There is no escape from morality in art. If, -therefore, we choose to consider ourselves as -one of a band of people whose moralities are -more or less similar, and to regard their -average morality, their average code of values -as important, we shall be perfectly justified -in judging art by what we suppose to be -its effect on that average morality. But we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">21</span> -must not forget that we are then regarding -artists as a regiment from which we are -engaged in picking out the traitors and the -loyalists—and that it is a regiment whose -immediate business is not war, a regiment -which does not know that it is enlisted.</p> - -<p>Let us now consider the nature of the -moral influence which the speaker exerts -upon the listener. It will not be surprising -if we find that it has a direct bearing upon -the point under discussion.</p> - -<p>The artist whose act of conscious living -is the work of art cannot alter his personality -without disloyalty to the moment of -life that under his hands is simultaneously -becoming conscious and becoming expression. -His personality, and with it his morality, is -already involved; any dishonesty blurs his -vision, and the crystal whose increasing clarity -was his delight becomes for ever opaque. -Here and nowhere else must we find the -origin of the artist’s distrust of morality. -He means by it not “morality,” but any -morality other than his own at the time of -artistic creation or <em>knowing</em>. A work of art -is always the expression of <em>a</em> morality, the -morality of its creator at the moment when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">22</span> -he began its creation, a morality that has -ceased to exist, since its creator has been -changed to a greater or less degree by the -very fact of its creation. Returning to our -metaphor of speaker and listener, we may -say that the listener, who tries as nearly as -possible to share the moment of conscious -life that was the speaker’s, to stand where -he stood, and think what he thought, does, -in contemplation of the work of art, share -to some extent in the morality, that momentary -morality we have described, of another -man.</p> - -<p>Besides this fundamental morality of a -work of art, it may hold other moralities -which are also not without their influence. -Codes of values may themselves be the -material of artistic creation. A code of -values foreign to the speaker may enter into -the moment of conscious life that is his work -of art. Plato and Socrates were different -men with different moralities. The Socrates -of Plato’s Dialogues, however Platonized, is -not Plato, and, as well as the fundamental -morality of those dialogues, the morality of -those speeches which are supposed to be -Socratic has its separate influence upon us.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">23</span> -Anatole France plays with the Abbé Jérôme -Coignard, and with Jacques Tournebroche, -and beside the morality of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">La Rôtisserie de -la Reine Pédauque</i> we are offered these -other moralities included in it and ruled -by it.</p> - -<p>There would seem to be little else but -morality in art, and its influence would -seem to be so largely as to be almost exclusively -moral. But observe what actually -happens. Have you not noticed, in reading -a book, that you insensibly pick out and -offer to your digestion those of the accidental -moralities in it that seem to be cousins of -your own. You linger over the sayings of -Coignard, if you feel that in some mood or -other you could have said them. You accept -with gratitude the follies, the humours of -M. Bergeret, if you recognise in him a -kinship, however distant, with yourself. In -listening to a play you side, at least in -simpler moods, with the character whose -code of values approximates to that by -which you are in the habit of weighing your -actions and those of others. These minor -judgments are independent of your judgment -of the work of art, though here too a similar<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">24</span> -instinct bids you prefer those artists in whom -you recognise, let us say, the full development -of some one possibility that your -personality contains. And, since our temperament -thus picks and chooses among the -moralities that art offers, because it is like -Paracelsus’ alchemist, situate in the stomach -of man, digesting the food that is good for -him and rejecting the poison, art does not -so much alter our morality as increase our -consciousness of it. It is an individualising -influence on morality, essentially hostile to -the averaging of codes of values. It seeks -uniqueness, not uniformity, and so does not -so much spread moralities abroad as cherish -and grow to their full strength the moralities -it finds among its listeners. In this sentence -the moralists and the artists for art’s sake -come to an understanding.</p> - -<p>Leaving now the question of its moral -influence, let me give an example, of the -simplest nature, to show what I mean by -the conscious living that is art. I find one -in the following exquisite poem, “The Happy -Child,” by William Davies:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“I saw this day sweet flowers grow thick,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But not one like the child did pick.</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">25</span></p> </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I heard the pack-hounds in green park,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But not one like the child heard bark.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I heard this day bird after bird,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But not one like the child has heard.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A hundred butterflies saw I,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But not one like the child saw fly.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">I saw the horses roll in grass,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But no horse like the child saw pass.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">My world this day has lovely been,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But not like what the child has seen.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Rossetti believed that “Poetry should seem -to the hearer to have been always present -to his thought, but never before heard,” and -the statement that this has been accomplished -(so just, sometimes, is popular -instinct) is the commonest praise accorded -to individual works of art. Many of Mr. -Davies’ readers must have said, rightly, but, -critically speaking, with imperfect accuracy, -“Now that expresses what I have always -felt.” They should have said, “That enables -me to feel what I always could have felt.” -For they have never truly felt it. That -wistful, regretful moment, now articulate, was -carried unhappily past them in the general -flux of incompletely conscious life. They -suspected a possibility of feeling something,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">26</span> -of knowing what they dimly felt, but it -eluded them in the tangled currents of the -stream, and they did not detain it, <em>know</em> -it, and make it part of themselves. Mr. -Davies has not so allowed it to escape; he -warily netted it in his consciousness, <em>learnt</em> -it accurately and fully, and wrote that poem, -thus isolating it for ever from unconsciousness. -And we, reading those words, collaborate -with him in the re-creation of the -work of art for whose notation they serve, -and, with our memories behind us, not his, -ourselves win out of the river of unconsciousness -such a moment, different a little from -his, our own, filled delicately with our vitality, -and giving us, for the vitality we have given -it, an increased consciousness of the life that -is in ourselves. The conscious life of art does -not imply what is known with contempt as -self-consciousness, which means a hampering -inability to forget not self but other people’s -eyes. It implies a new reading of the Delphic -command, γνῶθι σεαυτόν. It does not mean -Know thy opinions only, nor yet, Know what -are thy desires, but Know thy life, not thy -biography but thy living, thine innumerable -acts of life.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">27</span></p> - -<p>I took my example from a short poem of -extreme simplicity, and, as I have again and -again in this essay spoken of “moments” of -conscious life, a scrupulous reader might well -conclude that I concerned myself only with -what is commonly known as lyrical art, or -that I should presently offer a proof of Croce’s -theory that all art is essentially lyrical. I -agree with Croce, and perhaps go further than -he in believing, for reasons with which I will -not burden this discussion, that all lyricism -in art is dramatic, in that it involves a dramatic -conception of himself by the author. His -care is, that his creation shall be wholly determined -by one moment, not by a series, and -for this reason, he is compelled as he works -to refer continually to himself as he was at -that moment. For if a work of art were to -be representative of more than one moment, -it would be representative of more than one -man. It would not be homogeneous, and -could not be beautiful. This applies not -only to a song or a picture, but to those -works of art which are in appearance the -most elaborate, the least uniform, the least -determined by a single moment. A play, -whose reading or performance may occupy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">28</span> -hours, during which a number of characters -whom we accept provisionally as human, as -separate entities, live imaginary lives before -us, is, no less than a song, the result of -becoming completely conscious of a single -moment. The duration of the reading is -in no way affected by the duration of the -moment of life that set the author playing -with his marionettes. A moment of life -such as would, for a poet, become articulate -in a song, may require from a playwright -that he represent it to himself in persons -talking, a clash of personalities, a breaking -of personalities by destiny, a series of events -explicable within itself, not resembling any -one moment of his life, but in their totality -representing his means of <em>knowing</em> a moment, -and the means he offers us whereby, as nearly -as we may, we shall share that knowing. -When a play is not the artist’s learning a -moment of his own life, it is mere scaffolding, -resembling a building at dusk, or at a -sudden first sight, but presently found out to -be empty and fraudulent, when with contempt -we leave it to oblivion. Passage of time, -intricacy of construction, apparent multiplicity -of imagined lives do not affect the question.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">29</span></p> - -<p>John Masefield did not by a sudden effort -of genius conceive “Nan,” scenes, persons, -and dialogue in a moment. One moment, -however, determined its conception, and implied -all that is in the play. Let me, with -deference, suggest what may have happened. -He heard a story that affected him with a -mixture of emotions. If he had not been an -artist, he would probably have done no more -than repeat the story to others as it was told -to him, and wonder idly if it produced the -same mixture of emotions in them. Instead, -he lingered with it, and let the unconscious -flux flow on unobserved while he brooded -over this one emotional moment, becoming -more and more clearly conscious of the -emotions it contained as they, in the formative -processes of his mind, came to be -represented by persons and actions and words. -His mind was not making but discovering, -following the implications of the original -emotional moment, careful only to be true -to that, and rejecting proffered representations -solely on account of their inaccuracy. -His skill was shown only in so dealing with -the flood of representations that no one -particle of it should contradict another,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">30</span> -should hamper the full realisation of that -moment. His greatness was shown in the -profundity with which he realised that -moment, and the depth to which he could -follow its implications.</p> - -<p>Therein, by the way, is suggested the -criterion of greatness that is contained in -the doctrine that art is for life’s sake. The -theory of art for art’s sake left its holders -at a loss before the question “Is no man -greater than another, if his works are beautiful, -if he is an equally skilful artist?” They -knew that he was, but their theory could not -tell them why, and they had to take refuge in -cynicism. The theory of art for “morality’s” -sake was no more satisfying. It suggested -that the greatest artist was he who preached -the most good, and so left its holders in -speechless difficulty before a comparison of -Rossetti and Dr. Watts. The theory of -art for life’s sake has a clear answer, and -offers a valid test. That man is the greatest -artist who makes us the most profoundly -conscious of life. Shakespeare is set above -Herrick, who was a better technician, and -Leonardo above Murillo, who painted more -devotional subjects, on grounds with which<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">31</span> -men, neither as artists nor as moralists, need -quarrel.</p> - -<p>Art for Art’s sake was a battle-cry, and, to -understand it, we had to understand what -those who used it fought. Art for Life’s sake -is also a battle-cry, though it includes in -those four words a suggestion not only of -the function of art but of its nature. Let -us review the enemies we attack with those -words upon our lips. What do we fight -against? What are the misunderstandings -which in our time encourage the production -of false, of secondary art, and obscure the -excellence of the finest?</p> - -<p>We fight first against a political valuation -of art, that imagines poetry, pictures and -music as auxiliaries in the reconstruction or -conservation of the state, and judges them -by their efficiency as political pamphlets.</p> - -<p>We fight secondly against an educational -valuation of art, that judges works of art by -the accuracy of the facts they happen to embody, -the accuracy of the pictures they paint -of this or that form of life, the clearness with -which they illustrate generalisations.</p> - -<p>We fight thirdly against the valuation of -art by its technical skill, by the beauty that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">32</span> -is a universal condition of its being. These -things cannot afford a scale of comparison -for works of art, but only a guarantee that -they are worthy of judgment. We should not -fight against this valuation if it showed itself -in practice capable of so useful an office. It -is, however, not sufficiently selective, but -allows itself to be tricked by things built -in imitation of perfect building, things whose -form is not identical with their content, things -which manifest more skill than vitality. This, -our old ally, since it made our battle possible, -is now our subtlest enemy.</p> - -<p>Our battle is far from being easy, for we -fight not to kill but to make captive, and it -is easier and safer to fight to kill. We fight -not to destroy those valuations, but to destroy -their pre-eminence. Recognising (1) that a -work of art has a political, comparable to -its moral, influence, (2) that it always embodies -knowledge, (3) that it is nothing if -it does not wake in us the feeling that we -are near the achievement of the beautiful, -we wish to deny none of these facts, but -to prevent any one of them from being taken -as the foundation of a criterion of art. We -wish to set over them a criterion of art that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">33</span> -shall include them all. Above technique, -above opinion, above information, we set life, -of the special kind that is here described, -whose conscious vitality is to unconscious -vitality what living is to existence.</p> - -<p>What, then, do we ask ourselves after experiencing -a work of art.</p> - -<p>We ask one thing only, though, perhaps, -in many forms: Has it given us an increased -consciousness of life, or has it merely had in -view one or other of those valuations whose -supreme authority we reject? Is its title to -the name of art merely that it is an illustration -of a doctrine that has elbowed out the -doctrine it illustrates, merely that it gives -us a clear idea how some people live, merely -that it has a skin-deep appearance of unity? -Or is it a piece of conscious life, separated -watchfully from the flux of living, a piece of -<em>knowing</em> carried out by the artist, which we -are allowed to share? Does it give us a new -possession by making us aware of something -we possess. We do not ask an artist for -opinions, for facts, for skill, alone. We have -the right to ask for more. We ask him for -ourselves; we ask him for life. “Poetry -enriches the blood of the world” by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">34</span> -practice it affords of living consciously. Vain -learning, opinion, skill, impoverish it. We -ask from an artist opportunities of conscious -living, which, taken as they come, multiply -the possibilities of their recurrence, turn us -into artists, and help us to contract the habit -of being alive.</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1912.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">35</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_35" class="chapter"> -<h2 class="nobreak">ALOYSIUS BERTRAND:<br /> -A ROMANTIC OF 1830 -</h2> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">37</span></p> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<h2>ALOYSIUS BERTRAND:<br /> -A ROMANTIC OF 1830 -</h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">In</span> the preface to <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Petits Poèmes en Prose</cite>, -Baudelaire makes respectful reference to a -little-known book: “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">J’ai une petite confession -à vous faire. C’est en feuilletant pour la -vingtième fois au moins, le fameux <cite>Gaspard -de la Nuit</cite>, d’Aloysius Bertrand (un livre -connu de vous, de moi et de quelques-uns -de nos amis, n’a-t-il pas tous les droits à -être appelé fameux?), que l’idée m’est venue -de tenter quelque chose d’analogue, et d’appliquer -à la description de la vie moderne, -ou plutot d’<em>une</em> vie moderne et plus abstraite, -le procédé qu’il avait appliqué à la peinture -de la vie ancienne, si étrangement pittoresque.</span>” -He speaks of Bertrand as <span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“mon -mystérieux et brillant modèle</span>,” though, -remembering the teaching of Poe, he adds -that he is ashamed to have made something -so different from <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Gaspard de la Nuit</cite>, since<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">38</span> -he holds that the highest honour of a poet -is to accomplish exactly what he set out -to perform. A writer who wrote prose -poems good enough to be read “twenty times -at least” by Baudelaire, good enough to suggest -an imitation, a writer but for whom -the <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Petits Poèmes en Prose</cite> would not have -been written, or would have been written -differently, is more than a literary curiosity. -I was led to examine his book, and, presently, -to find an interest in the man himself as well -as in his accomplishment. M. Anatole -France was good enough to direct me in -my search for information. My friend, M. -Champion, of the Quai Malaquais, generously -put his bibliographical knowledge at my disposal. -The files of forgotten magazines and -newspapers and essays by Sainte-Beuve, -Charles Asselineau, and M. Leon Séché -combined to build in my mind a portrait -of this picturesque and luckless Romantic, -a portrait blistered here and there, obliterated -in patches, but not without vitality.</p> - -<div class="tb">* * * * *</div> - -<p>Louis-Jacques-Napoleon Bertrand, who took -the name of Ludovic and later preferred that -of Aloysius, was born on April 20, 1807, at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">39</span> -Céva, in Piedmont. Hugo was born in 1802, -and Gautier in 1811. He was a child of -that old grey-haired army of which Musset -speaks in the <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Confession d’un Enfant du -Siècle</cite>. His mother was an Italian, his father -a Frenchman of Lorraine, an old soldier -described by his son, in a fiery letter to a -newspaper which had insulted him, as “only -a patriot of 1789, only an officer of fortune, -who at eighteen rushed to pour out his blood -on the banks of the Rhine, and, at fifty, -counted thirty years of service, nine campaigns, -and six wounds.” At the age of -seven the young Bertrand was brought to -France. He grew up at Dijon, learned in -youth of the great things that were being -done in Paris, and read Hugo, Nodier, Hoffmann, -and Scott, all of whom helped him -to turn the modern Dijon into a mediæval -city of dreams.</p> - -<p>Early in 1828, a few young men of Dijon -founded a newspaper, <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Provincial</cite>, to be a -mouthpiece for their enlightened generation. -It endured for a few months, and Bertrand -contributed prose and verse to it, including -a first draft of a prose poem that, in a much -altered form, was printed in <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Gaspard de la Nuit</cite>.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">40</span> -The paper was not unnoticed in -Paris, and when it died and Bertrand left -Dijon for the capital, he found some doors -already open to him. He was twenty-one, -penniless, with rolls of manuscript in his -pocket, and a shy eagerness to read aloud -from them.</p> - -<p>Two portraits of him remain, one by -Sainte-Beuve and the other by Victor Pavie. -Sainte-Beuve describes him as “... a -tall, thin young man of twenty-one, with a -yellow and brown complexion, very lively -little black eyes, a face mocking and sharp -without doubt, rather wretched perhaps, and -a long, silent laugh. He seemed timid, or -rather uncivilised....”</p> - -<p>Victor Pavie says: “His awkward walk, -his incorrect and unsophisticated costume, -his lack of balance and of aplomb, betrayed -that he had newly escaped from the provinces. -One divined the poet in the ill-restrained -fire of his timid and wandering -eyes. As for the expression of his face, a -lofty taste for beauty was combined in it -with a somewhat uncivilised taciturnity....”</p> - -<p>Beside these pictures let me print Bertrand’s -portrait of the imaginary Gaspard de<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">41</span> -la Nuit: “A poor devil whose exterior -announced nothing but poverty and suffering. -I had already noticed in the garden his -frayed overcoat, buttoned to the chin, his -shapeless hat that never brush had brushed, -his hair long as a weeping-willow, combed -like a thicket, his fleshless hands like ossuaries, -his mocking, wretched, and sickly -face; and my conjectures had charitably -placed him among those itinerant artists, -violin-players and portrait-painters, whom an -insatiable hunger and an unquenchable thirst -condemn to travel the world in the footsteps -of the Wandering Jew....” It is different -from the portraits of himself, but not more -different than would be such a Germanicised -caricature as might have been made by Hoffmann.</p> - -<p>Bertrand’s life in Paris was hidden from -the celebrated men whom he met at Nodier’s -evening receptions and in Sainte-Beuve’s -study. He showed himself for a moment, -recited some of his verses “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">d’une voix sautillante</span>,” -and disappeared. He had no money, -and probably suffered from that lack of confidence -which can only be removed by a -banking account. Sainte-Beuve, who saw<span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">42</span> -him two or three times and gave him a -copy of the <cite>Consolations</cite>, with the inscription -“<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Mon ami Bertrand</span>,” speaks of him threading -lonely streets with the air of Pierre -Gringoire, the out-at-elbows poet of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Notre -Dame de Paris</i>. He paints what must be -an imaginary portrait of the young and -penniless genius leaning on the window-sill -of his garret, “talking for long hours with -the pale gilliflowers of the roof.”</p> - -<p>Unable to earn a living in Paris, he went -back to Dijon in 1830, where he contributed -to a Liberal newspaper, <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Patriote de la -Côte-d’Or</i>. In spite of his poverty, his blood -was young and proud, and as he walked the -streets of Dijon he must have felt himself -a representative of that exuberant young -Parisian manhood that was putting <i>Hernani</i> -on the stage and sending <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Mademoiselle de -Maupin</i> to the press. A rival paper jeered at -him, and he was able to reply: “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Je préfère -vos dédains à vos suffrages</span>,” and to quote a -letter from Victor Hugo to explain his independence. -Hugo had written: <span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Je lis vos -vers en cercle d’amis, comme je lis André -Chenier, Lamartine et Alfred de Vigny: il -est impossible de posséder à un plus haut -point les secrets de la facture.</span>” With such<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">43</span> -a testimonial in his pocket he need not care -for the scorn or the approval of a provincial -journalist.</p> - -<p>At this time his Liberalism was as ardent -as his youth. Asselineau quotes a fiery -article praying for war, bloody war, against -the Holy Alliance: “It is time to throw the -dice on a drum; and, should we all perish, -the honour of France and of liberty shall -perish not.” But, as was not unnatural, he -presently left France and liberty to take care -of themselves, and, full of new plans for -literary achievement, returned hopefully to -Paris, where he was joined by his mother -and sister. He was again unable to earn a -living. The last lines of a piteous letter -written to Antoine de Latour in September -1833, show how miserable was his condition:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Si je te disais que je suis au point de n’avoir bientôt -plus de chaussures, que ma redingote est usée, je -t’apprendrais là le dernier de mes soucis: ma mère et -ma sœur manquent de tout dans une mansarde de l’hôtel -des Etats-Unis qui n’est pas payée. Qu’est ce pour toi -qu’une soixantaine de francs (mon Dieu, à quelle humiliation -le malheur me contraint!). Quelques pièces d’argent -dans une bourse, pour nous c’est un mois de loger, c’est -du pain!</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">44</span></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Et je te dois déjà cinquante francs! J’en pleure de rage.</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Mon camarade de collège!!!</div> - <div class="verse indentq">“Je cherche une place de correcteur d’épreuves dans une imprimerie.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>It is not known whether the money was -sent him, nor whether he found employment -as a proof-reader.</p> - -<p>In such poverty, in such dejection, he put -together the book that preserves his memory, -dreaming, when he could forget his empty -stomach and the holes in his shoes, of the -prose that Baudelaire was to imagine after -him, “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">une prose poétique, musicale sans -rhythme et sans rime, assez souple et assez -heurtée pour s’adapter aux mouvements -lyriques de l’âme, aux ondulations de la -rêverie, aux soubresauts de la conscience.</span>” -He would not, perhaps, have thought of -sudden starts of conscience, for his was a -simpler soul than Baudelaire’s, and he never -felt that the portrait he was drawing might -be only the portrait of a portrait. He was -born in 1807 and not in 1821, and, with the -Romantic joy in colour and local colour, he -had more than the Romantic simplicity. His -fantasies are prefaced by quotations, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">45</span> -these are taken from Scott, Hugo, Byron, -folk-song, the Fathers of the Church, Scottish -ballads, Charles Nodier, old chronicles, Lope -de Vega, Fenimore Cooper, the cries of the -night watchmen, Lamartine, Coleridge, -Chateaubriand, a medley of the Romantics -and the writers and things that they admired. -They sometimes mistook the picturesque for -the beautiful, and so did Bertrand. He was -a man who thought with his eyes. He was -not an analyst.</p> - -<p>So far indeed did his visual conception of -life carry him that he represents, better than -any other French writer, the tendency, new -at that time, to identify literature with painting. -Hoffmann, in Germany, had written -<i>Fantasy-pieces after the manner of Callot</i>. -Leigh Hunt, in England, amused himself, in -<i>Imagination and Fancy</i>, by cutting little bits -out of Spenser and proposing them as -subjects to the ghosts of Titian and Rubens. -Bertrand used words like oil-colours, and in -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Gaspard de la Nuit: fantaisies à la manière -de Rembrandt et de Callot</i>, wrote what, if he -had had a palette and brush, he might very -well have painted. If he thought through -his eyes, his eyes had been trained by the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">46</span> -painters, and he was proud to offer his book -as a series of engravings after imaginary -pictures, or etchings from plates that had -never been bitten.</p> - -<p>“Art,” he says in his preface, “has always -two antithetical faces; it is a medal, one side -of which, for example, would suggest the -image of Rembrandt, and the other that of -Jacques Callot.... Rembrandt is the white-bearded -philosopher who shuts himself up -like a snail in his retreat, who absorbs his -life in meditation and in prayer, who closes -his eyes to gather himself together, who -converses with spirits of beauty, of science, -of wisdom, and of love, and consumes himself -in penetrating the mysterious symbols of -nature.... Callot, on the other hand, is -the jolly, braggart soldier of foot, who peacocks -in the square, makes a noise in the inn, -swears only by his rapier and his carbine, and -has no other care than the waxing of his -moustache.... Now, the author of this -book has envisaged art under this double -personification, but he has not been too -exclusive, and presents, besides fantasies in -the manners of Rembrandt and of Callot, -studies after Van Eyck, Lucas de Leyde,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">47</span> -Albert Durer, Peeter Neef, Breughel de -Velours, Breughel d’Enfer, Van Ostade, -Gerard Dow, Salvator Rosa, Murillo, Fusely, -and many other masters of different schools.”</p> - -<p>Bertrand’s book is one of the documents -that must be studied by any historian of -the grotesque who would trace the re-awakening -of a spirit in art that had dozed -during the eighteenth century, a spirit quite -different from that of Hogarth, with which -it is sometimes confounded. Bertrand’s was -not the noble, the sublime conception of the -grotesque that ruled the finer drawings and -much of the poetry of William Blake. It -was akin to that whose love of a gargoyle -brought it to life and sent Quasimodo to -haunt the dark and winding stairs of the -towers of Notre Dame. Bertrand contrasts -Rembrandt and Callot, but does not see that -in the mind of the man “who consumes himself -in penetrating the mysterious symbols -of nature” there is the essence of the feeling -for the grotesque, which, in such men -as Callot, having forgotten its origins, too -often becomes mere sport, shadows flung -on a wall by a will-o’-the-wisp instead of -by a philosopher’s lamp. But in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Gaspard de<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">48</span> -la Nuit</i> this feeling is groping towards consciousness, -recognising its food in the etchings -alike of Rembrandt and of Callot, of -Salvator and of Durer, noticing the more -obvious differences between them, but as -yet incapable of a more sensitive distinction. -It is interesting to notice that he takes suggestions -from the Breughel<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> whose wild and -energetic picture made Flaubert, ten years -later, set to work on <i>The Temptation of -St. Anthony</i>.</p> - -<p>Bertrand’s book is made up of six series -of fantasies, labelled “Flemish School,” “Old -Paris,” “The Chronicles,” like the rooms in -a picture-gallery. The usual form of the -pieces is that of a small number of carefully -balanced paragraphs, mostly single sentences, -sometimes linked by refrains of movement -or meaning. Some have minute prologues -and epilogues. Some are like prose-ballades, -finished by an <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">envoi</i>. Few cover more than -two or three pages in a small book of large -type. Each one is complete in itself, and -built of a firm, noun-ful prose, richer in -colour than in subtlety.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">49</span></p> - -<p>They were written by a man to whom -sustained effort was impossible, a man elusive, -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">fugace</i>, who could not settle in one place -or in one mood, and perhaps found in these -little scraps of goldsmithery the nearest -approach to permanence and solidity in -his life. He was a hunter of the moment, -and these fantasies are the only trophies of -his chase. Their form seems made for him -and he for it, and he needed no models for -the gait of his soul.</p> - -<p>Bertrand was not, any more than Leigh -Hunt, a great and noble personality. Like -Leigh Hunt, he could write something quite -charming that owed at least part of its -charm to its neglect of something else. His -was a poetical temperament rather than the -temperament of a poet. He felt things and -saw things, but never dominated them, so that -all he could save in his difficult existence -was a wonderful handful of dreams. He -dreamt by day and by night, and caught a -few of his dreams with their bright colours in -two or three skilful paragraphs. In a cottage -on the edge of a forest he read chronicles of -monks and knights while the snow froze -on the ground, or else, in such a study<span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">50</span> -as Faustus might have used, pored upon -Raymond Lully. He was surrounded in his -dreams by ancient books, and looking far -beyond and through their phantom leather -backs, saw a black gondola in the Venetian -night, or a Messire Blasius with double chin -and worldly-wise eye, like a portrait by Van -Eyck. He saw the old Paris of Hugo’s -reconstruction, and the old Dijon that he -rebuilt himself. Before his eyes the witches -departed to keep their Sabbath with Satan. -An Undine of German fairy story offered him -her love, but, rich with dreams, he preferred -to watch the changes of the moon.</p> - -<p>This is perhaps one of the most characteristic -of his reveries:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> - <div class="verse indentq">“<span class="smcap">Le Clair de Lune.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent4">“‘Réveillez-vous gens qui dormez</div> - <div class="verse indent6">Et priez pour les trépassés.’</div> - <div class="verse indent15">—<i>Le cri du crieur de nuit.</i></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Oh! qu’il est doux, quand l’heure tremble au clocher, -la nuit, de regarder la lune qui a le nez fait comme un -carolus d’or!</p> - -<p xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Deux ladres se lamentaient sous ma fenêtre, un chien -hurlait dans le carrefour, et le grillon de mon foyer vaticinait -tout bas.</p> - -<p xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Mais bientôt mon oreille n’interrogea plus qu’un -silence profond. Les lépreux étaient rentrés dans leurs -chenils, aux coups de Jacquemart qui battait sa femme.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">51</span></p> - -<p xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Le chien avait enfilé une venelle, devant les pertuisanes -du guet enrouillé par la pluie et morfondu par la -bise.</p> - -<p xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Et le grillon s’était endormi, dès que la dernière -bluette avait éteint sa dernière lueur dans la cendre de -la cheminée.</p> - -<p xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Et moi, il me semblait,—tant la fièvre est incohérente,—que -la lune, grimant sa face, me tirait la -langue comme un pendu!”</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“<span class="smcap">Moonlight.</span></div> - <div class="verse indent6">“‘Wake, men who sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent8">And pray for the dead.’</div> - <div class="verse indent11">—<i>Cry of the night-watchman.</i></div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>“Oh! how pleasant it is, when the hour trembles in -the belfry, at night, to look at the moon, whose nose is -shaped like a golden carolus!<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">3</a></p> - -<p>“Two lepers were complaining under my window, a -dog was howling at the cross-ways, and the cricket on my -hearth was prophesying in a whisper.</p> - -<p>“But soon my ear no longer questioned anything but -a profound silence. The lepers had gone back into their -kennels, at the sound of Jacquemart beating his wife.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">4</a></p> - -<p>“The dog had fled away up an alley, before the -halberds of the watch, rain-soaked, and wind-frozen.</p> - -<p>“And the cricket had fallen asleep, as soon as the last -spark had put out its last glimmer in the ashes of the -fire-place.</p> - -<p>“And, as for me, it seemed to me—fever is so -incoherent—that the moon, wrinkling her face, put out -her tongue at me like a man who has been hanged.”</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">52</span></p> - -<p>The moon put out her tongue at her faithful -admirer, and helped him neither to -honey-dew nor to the milk of Paradise. His -biographers do not agree as to the way he -lived during his few remaining years. Sainte-Beuve -says that he was a private secretary, -and that he wrote in various inconspicuous -newspapers. M. Séché, to whom we owe a -great deal of new information, thinks that -these employments are not likely to have held -Bertrand for long. About 1835, he found in -Eugène Renduel a publisher for <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Gaspard de -la Nuit</i>. He sold the right to print an -edition of 800 copies, of which 300 were to -be called “Keepsake Fantastique,” for the -sum of 150 francs. The money was paid and -the manuscript was put into the publisher’s -desk, where, for some reason or other, it -remained for a very long time. Its publication -was promised from year to year. In -a letter written to David d’Angers, in 1837, -Bertrand says: <span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“<i>Gaspard de la Nuit</i>, ce livre -de mes douces prédilections, où j’ai essayé de -créer un nouveau genre de prose, attend le -bon vouloir d’Eugène Renduel pour paraître -enfin cet automne....</span>” Bertrand did not -make the gallant figure in poverty that was<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">53</span> -made, for example, by Richard Steele, who -turned bailiffs into liveried footmen, as -Whistler is said to have done more recently; -but once, at least, he showed a smiling face -to misfortune, even if the smile was a little -awry. In 1840, the book being still unpublished, -he called on his publisher and -left a sonnet on him, as an ordinary person -might leave a visiting-card. A more charming -protest against procrastination was surely -never written:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Quand le raisin est mûr, par un ciel clair et doux,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dès l’aube, à mi-coteau rit une foule étrange:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">C’est qu’alors dans la vigne, et non plus dans la grange,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Maîtres et serviteurs, joyeux, s’assemblent tous.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">A votre huis, clos encor, je heurte. Dormez vous?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Le matin vous éveille, éveillant sa voix d’ange,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Mon compère, chacun en ce temps-ci vendange;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nous avons une vigne—eh bien, vendangeons nous!</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Mon livre est cette vigne, où, présent de l’automne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">La grappe d’or attend pour couler dans la tonne,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Que le pressoir noueux crie enfin avec bruit.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">J’invite mes voisins, convoqués sans trompettes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A s’armer promptement de paniers, de serpettes.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qu’ils tournent le feuillet; sous le pampre est le fruit.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>Six months later Bertrand was dead. At -least once he had known for several months<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">54</span> -the inside of a public hospital. He was -attacked by phthisis. David d’Angers obtained -a grant of 300 francs for him -and the promise of a post as librarian; but -he was not to leave the hospital again. -David, who was himself ill, did all that -could be done for him, sent him oranges, -and made portraits of him before and after -death, and saw to it that his grave-clothes -were not of the coarseness deemed fitting for -the bodies of the poor. David alone followed -his bier, and, no doubt, supplied Sainte-Beuve -with the material for his picture (in -the introduction to the first edition of -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Gaspard de la Nuit</i>, published in 1842 by -Victor Pavie, who bought the rights from -Renduel for the sum originally paid):—“It -was the eve of Ascension; a terrible storm -was rumbling; the Mass for the dead had -been spoken, and the funeral procession did -not come. The priest had ended by leaving; -the only friend present watched the abandoned -remains. At the end of the chapel -a sister of charity was decorating an altar -with garlands for the next day’s feast.”</p> - -<p>So ended a life that was like a thread -blown in the wind, swung this way and that,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">55</span> -without weight, and at last torn from its weak -hold and whirled away over the edge of the -world. Bertrand’s life was that of the real -Bohemian, whose struggle is not the less -difficult because his head is high and his -eyes, instead of seeing where he is going, -are full of magnificent things. Bertrand was -like a man trying to speak high poetry when -his enemy has him by the throat. He saw, -and wrote, and wrestled, in a breath; his -achievement was scarcely recognised till he -was overthrown. And that achievement, such -as it was, that little flame he contrived to -light before going out himself, kindled a -greater, and in its brighter luminosity almost -became invisible. But when we look back -from the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Petits Poèmes en Prose</i> to this -little book that suggested their creation, we -find that it is not without an independent -interest, personal as well as historical. -Bertrand himself was somebody, and no -book so well as his lets us share the day-dreams -of 1830.</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1911.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">57</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_57" class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">58</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">ALPHONSE DAUDET</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">59</span></p> -<h2>ALPHONSE DAUDET</h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">Daudet’s</span> was the scintillant, flamelike vitality -that makes its possessor the youngest in whatever -company he may find himself. Anatole -France writes of him that he believes no human -creature ever loved nature and art with a more -ardent and more generous affection, or enjoyed -the universe with more delight, more force, and -more tenderness. Even in old age and suffering, -he brought merriment with him when he -limped into the big room that Edmond de -Goncourt called his “grenier,” and kept for -talk and friendship. If the room had been -sad or silent, it woke to laughter when this -invalid came in and began to speak. Men -felt themselves more alive in his presence. -This vitality is different from the physical and -mental momentum of a Balzac. It is a lambent -flame rather than a conflagration; light -without heat. It scorched no one, not even -Daudet himself, who made it into a public -entertainer. He could use it at will; it did<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">60</span> -not impel him into a restless activity. I can -imagine that indolent people felt ill at ease -with Balzac in the room, as if from a fear -that he might go off like a dynamite bomb. -Daudet’s vitality was gentle, and insinuated -itself into his listeners’ veins, so that when -they left they had the pleasant sensation of -having themselves been more than usually -vivacious. “I have missed my vocation,” he -said; “I should have been a merchant of -happiness.” It was a vocation that he had -not missed. A merchant of happiness was -precisely what he was, since one kind of -happiness is a childish enjoyment of everything -that may occur. Children run about all -day, without forethought, and play at being -all sorts of things, and chatter and fall asleep, -still chattering, in the middle of a sentence. -They wake next morning to perform a variation -ever so blithe on yesterday’s performance. -Daudet lived just so, and was able to share -his life with other people.</p> - -<p><i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Petit Chose</i> is the story of his childhood. -It is the tale of a little boy whose father is an -unsuccessful man of business, a little boy with -a parrot and a dream of Robinson Crusoe, who -is transplanted from his south to a northern<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">61</span> -manufacturing town, a child who becomes an -usher in a school where his youth and his -poverty make him butt of boys and masters -alike, where he writes love-letters for a -gymnastic instructor, and suffers in his stead -for their success, a child who goes to Paris -at seventeen to join his brother in poverty and -hope, and to write a poem about blue butterflies. -The book is almost true to history, -except that, unlike Daudet, <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">le Petit Chose</i> -ends as partner in a china shop, regretfully -resigning his blue butterflies to marry the -daughter of the china shop’s proprietor. The -real tale of his shyness and pathetic adventures, -that Daudet was never tired of telling, -since it was his own, goes on in other books. -There is in them all a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">joie d’écrire</i> as much as -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">joie de vivre</i>. He rejoices in every misfortune -of his childhood, because, in describing it, he -finds an opportunity for life as a young man. -His life as a child had been told to himself as -a fairy tale. He had told ingenious lies to -excuse his truant days on the river, killing off -a Pope to hide, in his family’s excitement, his -lateness for a meal. He told lies to himself -to excuse the sordid appearances of his existence, -and now he had a chance of telling lies<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">62</span> -again, and so living another romance. Daudet’s -writing was always a means of living for -him. His own life could be multiplied indefinitely -by the glosses he put upon it. He -is not, like Coppée, a disillusioned man remembering -dreams, paining himself with the -memory of the boy he was. Daudet, far from -envying that boy of whom he writes, seems to -be still identical with him, and tells his escapades -as if they were yesterday’s, as indeed -they might be. Even when he tries to write -disillusioned novels, he sits in a rosy cloud, -and is irrepressibly happy in spite of them. -He never knows whether pain or pleasure is -the more enjoyable. Either is an aid to living, -and perhaps the former gives life a keener -taste.</p> - -<p>Men of this kind do not spend their vitality -altogether for nothing. More than others they -need affection and applause. A face of disapproval -in their audience is enough to wither -their wings, and they ask for goodwill, if only -to help them to continue the performance. <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le -Petit Chose</i>, like most of Daudet’s work, like -his life, and his other representations of his -life, conversational or on paper, is an appeal -to be loved. He asks to be seen as he sees<span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">63</span> -himself, and asks very successfully. It is this, -I think, that makes it easy to forgive him his -sins against pure art; this that accounts for his -friends’ love of him, and also for the popular -success that made him feel a little uncomfortable -among them. His greed of affection made -him not very fastidious; he was glad to be -loved by his baker as well as by Edmond de -Goncourt.</p> - -<p>Daudet acquired the habit of being lovable. -He made his own life into a fairy tale, and, -since it was the surest way to gratitude, soon -found it difficult to see the lives of others -in any different way. He copied his men -and women from nature, as he said, but -each one of them readily became <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">le Petit -Chose</i>, and he his affectionate, rose-spectacled -biographer. When his novels are laid aside, -and we look at their backs, we forget their -extraordinary observation, and see characters -exaggerated by a man who is anxious to -persuade; and when these characters have -faded away into framed drawings like those -taken from back numbers of <i>Punch</i>, we remember -little of the books but a spirit that -asks love and gives it, is ready to understand -more than there is to be understood,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">64</span> -and to make excuses for those who are -without them. We think of Daudet as the -tenderest possible biographer for ourselves, -and at the same time feel a little shrinking -from the idea of being exhibited with such -emphasis. Some of the novels, with which -we are not here particularly concerned, do -their best to dispel the atmosphere of rose-leaves -and sunshine, involving us in a swift -and keen analysis of unkind and unpleasant -motives. But when we close even these, -little is left of them but their author’s charm, -and the memory of those incidents or descriptions, -in which, freed from the burden of an -ambitious task, he loosens the bridle of his -romancing vitality.</p> - -<p>His books are not so consistent as his -character. They are always most satisfactory -when most directly concerned with it. This -is partly because he wrote of himself in -anecdotes, and his inspiration was facile -and short-winded rather than persevering. -The effects he secures in his writings are -the same as those he won in conversation, -snatches of colour and feeling, like the -studies in an artist’s notebook, often better -than when repainted into pictures. Ambition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">65</span> -perhaps obstructed his talent in setting it -to do other men’s work, however well he -may have been able to do it. He was not -a novelist, although he made himself one. -His big books, in which he describes many -lives and kinds of life, are already being -sieved out by time, and the work by which -his name will be remembered is reducing -itself to his real and imaginary reminiscences -and his short stories. In these he -does not mingle contradictory ingredients; -while his novels, even the best, are too -much like battle-grounds between Queen -Mab and Zola.</p> - -<p>In his short stories he is perfectly at ease. -His talent was no eagle for long flights, but -one of his own blue butterflies. It flew far -only with effort, and tired as it flew, drooping -its wings or flapping them irregularly. -But in the short tales no flight was so long -as to tire it. It was happy and at ease, -opened its wings with grace, and as it -dropped, folded them with all imaginable -delicacy. In the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Contes du Lundi</i> he reconciled -his powers and his ambition. He was -a romancer, a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">conteur</i>, a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">causeur</i>, and romantic -anecdotes refuse to be fettered to a strict<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">66</span> -and steady veracity. He wished to be a -painter after nature, to be accurate, to be -real, to be mistaken for reality. There are -moments, but only moments, when the two -kinds of truth, that these powers and this -ambition severally suggest, coalesce in a -truth that is charming and, at the same -time, almost photographic. In the novels -the truth disintegrated into opposing masses. -In short stories he was able to combine -them. His brief, flashing sketches, with -their curious air of stereoscopic perspective, -are seldom in the least unreal. Yet, poignant -little things, unforgettable, however slight, -they are not the probabilities of life but its -possibilities. They are the lies that ought -to be true. The story of the Alsatian schoolmaster, -or that of the siege of Berlin, with -the old colonel, in his worn uniform, standing -on the balcony to welcome the victorious -French, and seeing instead the Uhlans of the -advance guard, and hearing the triumphal -march of Schubert, as the Prussians enter -Paris; all these minute things are too -dramatic, too pathetic, not to be allowed -their moment of existence. Daudet writes -them, and they bring tears to our eyes, tears<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">67</span> -that, unfortunately, we must submit to a -rather cruel analysis.</p> - -<p>Tears, and also laughter. Daudet with -his firm belief in the ultimate victory of -all good and pleasant people, and the corresponding -punishment of the bad and unkind, -enjoyed, like many happy-minded men, a -highly developed faculty of pity. It was -one of his means of being alive, and this -man, who “died of having loved life too -well,” neglected none of the exercises that -made his nerves tingle and his heart beat. -He lived in being sorry for people and -things, and he lived in being glad. Another -group of his short stories is made up of -pure fairy tales that dance before the eyes, -their words running and tripping after each -other, like a band of elves on midsummer’s -eve. They are southern tales of old Provence -that he read in the grasshopper’s library -under the blue sky, where the librarians -sing all day, and there are gossamers for -bookmarks. Their heartsome feeling is that -of the old song:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Sur le pont d’Avignon</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Tout le monde danse en rond.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">68</span></p> -<p class="in0">Even when he brings the elves to town, as in -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Un Réveillon dans le Marais</i>, when, into the -old courtyard of the mansion that has been -turned into a mineral water factory, he introduces -cavaliers and ladies of the ancient -time, fairies now, being dead so long, he -brings with them half a memory of the -farandole, and makes them drunk with -seltzer.</p> - -<p>Laughter and tears; it is by these that we -remember Daudet. His art is that of wearing -his heart on his sleeve. “Here,” he -seems to say, “is a sad tale to make you -cry (I cried myself in making it), and here -is a merry one to make you laugh (my pen -quivered with merriment as I wrote it down -for you).” Laughter and tears tempted him -perhaps too strongly. He was accustomed -to tell his stories many times before he wrote -them. They shaped themselves, like folktales, -in successive recitations, until the inessentials -fell away from them and they won -economical and immediate effects. The -danger of such a manner of composition is -a confusion of ends. The only safe audience -for a writer is that undiscoverable and absolute -judge, who, from his niche in our consciousness,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">69</span> -signs now and again his knowledge -that such and such an expression is truly -expressed, is really expression and not an -incomplete and muffling mask. That other -audience, whose lips open, whose eyes smile -or weep as we read to them, is not a judge -of art. Its values are not aesthetic. Its -most obvious criticisms are those of laughter -and tears, and these are written too clearly -not to become more important to us than -they should. How can the jocund tale be -bad that made you laugh? How can that -sad one fail that sent your kerchief to your -eyes? There may be imperfections in them; -yes, but by removing them, I must be careful -not to lose that laughter or those tears. And -so, almost inevitably, the tears and laughter -come to seem the ends of art instead of its -by-products. And they are not the wistful -tears that dew the eyelashes before a -perfect work, nor the impersonal laughter -that rings out like a spring song because -some man has made a new thing well for -the eternal gods to see.</p> - -<p>Most Frenchmen are performers; and the -Frenchman from the south is he who wins -the greatest joy from his performance. I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">70</span> -remember a big bare studio in the Boulevard -Vaugirard, where a crowd of students, poets, -sculptors, painters, and their women, used to -be merry together and drink coffee (if there -was coke for the stove), and eat Olibet biscuits -(if there was money to buy them). -Among us were two curly-headed Provençals, -whose voices had a more persuasive abandon -than ours to whatever they wished to say. -There was a balcony in the studio with a -ladder fastened to it, so that the artist might -climb to his bed. One of the Provençals used -to stand up, leaning on the ladder, and sing -us old songs of his country, while his friend -sat on the lower steps and dropped the deeper -notes of a silver flute into their proper places -in the melody. The songs were sometimes -joyful, sometimes sad. More than once, -when some pathetic tune or words made -his audience weep, I have seen the flute-player, -unable to restrain his happiness, caper -about the studio with his instrument. Something -of Daudet was in the flute-player and -something of the flute-player in Daudet.</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1909.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">71</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_71" class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">72</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">THE RETROSPECTION OF -FRANÇOIS COPPÉE</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">73</span></p> -<h2>THE RETROSPECTION OF -FRANÇOIS COPPÉE</h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">Some</span> writers seem to represent single moods -of life. Most men grow from childhood -to old age, passing from illusion to disillusion -(in which illusion does no more -than turn its coat), then to resignation -(a kind of agnostic attitude towards their -own sensations), and, finally, perhaps, end -in the most obstinate illusion of all. But -there are writers who seem to stop at this -or that point in the road, to take up their -stand there, and to date from that resting-place -all the monologues that they allow -humanity to overhear. The work of the -greatest artists is sent off from every post-office -on the journey, or, if their work is -done in age, it holds proof that they have -travelled all the way. Coppée hesitates on -the brow of that hill from which can be -seen for the last time the sunlit country of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">74</span> -youth. Already disillusioned, he looks back, -and spends his life in regretting the past. -All his work has a retrospective glamour, -and where he writes joyously of the present, -it is easy to feel that the joy is a religious -joy, and that his work is a memorial rite, -re-enacting something that has long since -faded away.</p> - -<p>He took this attitude when very young. -There are, indeed, men whose eyes have -always been turned back, men whose earliest -memory is a regret for the memory earlier -still that they have lost. In the prologue -to <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Reliquaire</i>, published in 1866, he -wrote:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Et de même que, tous les soirs,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Ils font autour du reliquaire</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Fumer les légers encensoirs.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dédaignant le douleur vulgaire</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Qui pousse des cris importuns,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dans ces poèmes je veux faire</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A tous mes beaux rêves défunts,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">A toutes mes chères reliques,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Une chapelle de parfums</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Et de cierges mélancoliques.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">In building for his fair dead dreams a chapel -of sad perfumes and melancholy candles, he -spent the better part of his life. His prose<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">75</span> -was written later than his verse, but years -did not alter the object of his architecture.</p> - -<p>He was sometimes assailed by other moods, -but did not allow himself to yield to them. -He had succeeded young; it is possible -that having charmed already, he was half -afraid of losing by any change the odour -and the essence impossible to analyse, in -which he knew that he could trust, and -which, once at any rate, had been personal -to himself. There remain, however, the -indications of occasional faith in mutability. -Sometimes he flung himself boldly in the -direction whither life would have taken him. -But the feeling of boldness, of experiment, -that pervades, for example, <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Coupable</i>, is -enough to show that he was ill at ease. -The story is that of a man who leaves his -mistress, a Parisian grisette. She has a -child, who, born in the gutter, grows up -among the vicious and finds his way to a -penitentiary, and, at last, committing a serious -crime, is brought for judgment before his -father. The father, learning his identity, -tells the whole story, and asks whether he -himself, rather than his son, is not the true -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">coupable</i>. Coppée finds in it an opportunity<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">76</span> -for a study of society from below, for much -close and accurate description, and for a -very searching account of the reformatory -system. It is a clever book, but somehow -Coppée has dropped out of it.</p> - -<p>I do not mean that all Coppée’s best work -is to be known by an atmosphere of sentimental -yearning for the past. His mood is -much more delicate. He writes as a man -whose illusions are gone, but he does not -often cry aloud,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Hélas! les beaux jours sont finis.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">He only says that there have been fine days. -By fine days he means days of enthusiasm and -of a simple heart. He has once walked with -the world far below his feet; but, now that its -wisdom has risen over his head, he cannot -recover that old enthusiasm by pretending -to be ignorant. Knowing too much, his only -care is to preserve as a touchstone the -memory of his lost unwisdom. He does -not often more directly express his regret. -But it is a recognition of his regretfulness -that makes his stories bitter to the very -young, half-conscious of their youth, and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">77</span> -pained by all that helps to waken them to -simultaneous knowledge and loss of it.</p> - -<p>In <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Toute une Jeunesse</i> he confesses that -his hero, “personnage imaginaire dans une -action imaginaire, sent la vie comme je la -sentais quand j’étais un enfant, et quand -j’étais un jeune homme.” Much of the -imaginary action follows very closely the -course of his own life, and it is possible in -reading it to watch the fine days and then -the gradual realisation that they had been -fine. Amédée Violette, born in a little flat -in the rue Notre Dame des Champs, behind -the gardens of the Luxembourg, the son of -a government clerk, loses his mother very -young, and grows up in loneliness, except -for the little girls next door. He goes to -school in the rue de la Grande Chaumière, -turning out of the other. There is a plane-tree -in the schoolyard, which allows the -schoolmaster to offer a garden on his prospectus. -The assistant masters are grotesque -and wretched. The head of the principal -is like the terrestrial globe that stands on -the desk in his study to impress his pupils’ -parents. Amédée grows up, spending fine -evenings in long walks through Paris with<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">78</span> -his father, the widower, who takes gradually -to absinthe for the sake of forgetfulness. -He grows up in the quarter, studies at the -university, solitary in the midst of its gregarious -frivolity, partly from poverty, partly -from love of the child with whom he used to -play. He leaves the university with a degree, -and is taken on in the same office as his -father, as a supernumerary clerk. So many -hours a day disappear from his life, and he -wakens only in the evenings, which he spends -in rhyming, and on Sundays when he writes -all day without leaving his room. He has a -few friends who count him almost a hermit. -A young actor takes him to the Café de -Séville in the Boulevard Montmartre, where -he introduces him to Paul Sillery, a poet -and editor of an unpopular review—Catulle -Mendès, perhaps. The café is full of men -with beards, politicians, and men with hair, -poets. Sillery recognises a poet in him, and -when the actor recites one of his poems with -success at a charity performance in a theatre, -sends him to a publisher—no doubt Lemerre, -who published the Parnassians. His first -volume is printed and successful. He has -come so far when his youth is taken from<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">79</span> -him. His nearest friend betrays him, and -he has to compel him to marry the girl he -has so long loved himself. He passes through -various more or less empty adventures. The -Franco-Prussian war leaves the girl a widow -with a boy, and his friend’s last wish is that -they should marry. The wish is fulfilled: -Amédée, married to a woman he has loved -from childhood, has a wife whose heart is -buried with his friend. It is all so different -from its promises. The poet is left with the -consolation of his art, and the book ends: -“Hélas! ta jeunesse est finie, pauvre sentimental! -Les feuilles tombent! Les feuilles -tombent!”</p> - -<p>The leaves fall on the paper as Coppée -writes. It is always autumn in his books, -because he is always thinking of spring. But -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Toute une Jeunesse</i> lets us into more of his -secrets than this. It is full of love for Paris, -and obsessed by the contrast between rich and -poor, or rather between appearances and the -other appearances they hide. Life is very -much like one of those Japanese nests of -coloured boxes; you open the little round -scarlet wooden cylinder, and there is a green -one inside. You open that and find a blue.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">80</span> -Within the blue is a scarlet one again. It is -so with life. No state of disillusionment is -final. There is always another behind it which -will turn what seemed to be an unemotional -acceptance of life as it is into a regretted and -fantastic dream. Coppée is less conscious of -the infinite endurance of mutability than of -his regret for particular yesterdays. He must -put all he writes of in the scarlet box. Paris -for him is always the Paris of 1866. He felt, -he said, like Madame de Staël, “la nostalgie -de son cher ruisseau de la rue du Bac,” but -the gutter he yearned for flowed in the days -when he was young. It is this that gives -some of his work an appeal that has nothing -to do with its merit. For there are many to -whom Paris represents the days when they -were young, many to whom the names tune -the pulses to a quick and joyous march, names -like the rue Notre Dame des Champs, twisting -grey street, whose pavements still beat with -the airy tread of new generations of dreamers. -It is the same throughout. When he talks of -buying books at the Odéon, we do not watch -an old man choosing what he wishes, and -paying for it from a pocketful of money that -he has not counted. We see the Coppée of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">81</span> -1864, or ourselves of ten years ago; boys, with -the price of the book, and perhaps ten sous for -dinner, spending nevertheless an hour in looking -at all the other books on the stalls, and -then buying the one for which we had come -with the swift manner of those who have -walked straight to the bookshop, and, having -got what they want as expeditiously as possible, -are going straight off again. We see that dead -Coppée, or ourselves, sitting among the nurse-maids -in the gardens opposite, cutting the -leaves with a clasp-knife from a fair. The -Café de Seville, once a meeting-place for men -of beards and men of hair, is made a tryst for -Coppée and his dead youth. And when he -says that for the Parisian the seasons come to -town, and that, in a green and rose sunset, -he can find the autumn’s morbid melancholy, -and, in a sunny morning in the Luxembourg -gardens, all the divine joyousness of spring, -we know of what Parisian he is speaking.</p> - -<p>His obsession by the contrast between rich -and poor reduces to the same sentiment. He -does not hate the rich because they are rich; -he is only sorry for them if money has taken -away from them something they might have -had in poverty. He is not sorry for the poor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">82</span> -because they are poor, but only if their poverty -expresses the lack of something that, with -money, they think they might have had. -He has come to regard illusions as the only -sterling coin. In the two contrasted tales of -“The Italian Organ” he seems to weigh rich -and poor in opposite scales, and to find a -balance between them. One tune of the organ -reminds a poor clerk’s wife of the days before -she married, when she was the prettiest girl at -the cheap dances, and Monsieur Fred, amusing -himself, filled her head with dreams. Riches -have carried him away from her, and she has -grown paler, and married Jules with the stiff -collar and the india-rubber-cleaned gloves. It -is very sad. Another tune reminds the Countess -of the days before she married, when as la -Belle Adah of the American Circus, she reigned -in her own place. The Count fell in love with -her, pursued her, married her, and trained her -to be a lady. She spends her mornings in -visiting institutions, and there is a vicar waiting -on her in the drawing-room. It is very -sad. But the sorrow of both these women is -not for their riches or their poverty. It is -mourning for a life that can never be lived. -Coppée’s love for the poor is unlike Daudet’s.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">83</span> -Daudet loves the poor because they are brave -and picturesque. Coppée sees in them the -simpleness of heart and the power of dreaming -that were his when he was poor himself, -that is to say, when he was young. The poor -invented Christianity.</p> - -<p>Very little happens in Coppée’s short -stories. In some of them nothing happens -at all. Things are remembered and set down, -and from those notes rises less a tale than the -suggestion of a story that might have been -told. Now it is old Mother Bernu, who saw -Marie Antoinette carried to the guillotine in -a white shirt, and is thrown up by a careless -Time to take the little Coppée out for walks. -Now it is a couple of old bachelors talking of -might-have-beens. Now, “Mon Ami Meurtrier,” -a swaggering athletic clerk, is discovered -to be the mildest of men, attending to -his mother’s lap-dog, and mixing good coffee. -In most of the stories it is more than usually -evident that the author is the real hero. -“The White Frock” is the tale of a lame child -whose only white dress is worn at her first -communion. All her friends wear a second -on their wedding days, and she will never be -married. It is really the tale of a man who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">84</span> -passes daily through a little street, and, in -watching the street change, beards whiten, -and children marry, sees his own youth passing -from him, and, in the little lame girl, a -melancholy piece of childhood’s jetsam whose -dream will never be realised, never be destroyed. -There was a little boy who lived -near the gardens of the Luxembourg, and -walked there in the spring, when the trees -were caught in a net of fluttering green, and -in the summer heat, when those long walks -were patterned black and white with sun-thrown -shadows, and in the autumn, when -the leaves were rusty gold, and fell to the -ground to make a pleasant trampling place for -children’s feet, and in the winter, when, over -the round steel pond, the grey stone Queens -of France looked mournfully at the straight-fronted -palace. He walked there, intimate -with all the moods of the garden, his eyes -awake with possibilities, rhyming verses that -perhaps would never be published, and finding -the world a fairy-tale with so many ends from -which to choose that it was fortunate it would -not finish soon. He was always alone there, -in the midst of the students, girls and nurse-maids. -He and the sparrows seemed to have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">85</span> -the garden to themselves. The others did not -seem to matter. And this boy never left the -study of François Coppée. If Coppée looked -up from his desk he was there, almost reproachful, -a ghostly boy with clear and truthful -eyes, walking under the trees, in ragged -clothes, rhyming verses for himself. The -wisdom of the world turned to dross beside -his golden ignorance, and the man who had -grown up felt, like the loiterer along the -quays, a continuous pride and pain in thinking -of the days when the sunset had shone -for him alone.</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1909.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">87</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_87" class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">88</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">89</span></p> -<h2>FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE<br /> - -<span class="subhead">AN ESSAY IN COMPREHENSION<br /> - -<span class="smaller"><i>To I. C. R.</i></span></span></h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">Philosophy</span> in the hands of philosophers -tends always to hide the tremors of its -exciting conception in the dried abstract -statements of dialectic. A philosopher’s -pride is in the impersonal nature of his -thought. It must stand by itself, and work -like a piece of machinery, on which the -maker’s name is the only sign that it was -once a daring, personal adventure of the -intellect, the instincts and the senses of the -body of a man. Its maker, when it is -finished, would wish to wipe the filings and -the oil from his hands with a piece of cotton -waste, and, folding his arms, to watch it in -independent activity. The reason of this -ambition is to be found neither in modesty, -nor yet in vanity, but in a ruling intellectual -concept, the concept of absolute truth. If -the true is universally true, if a thing either<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">90</span> -<em>is</em>, or <em>is not</em>, then the personality of the -thinker either is grit in the wheels, or, by -the necessity of its presence and assistance, -betrays the weakness of the thought whose -truth or untruth can in no way be affected -by the existence or non-existence of its discoverer. -This Nietzsche resolutely denied, -and denied in two ways.</p> - -<p>First, he denied the absolute nature of -truth, asserting that the word “true” was -merely a title given by men to opinions, and -that the justice of its application was, in a -broad sense, to be judged pragmatically. A -pragmatist before William James, he said: -“The falseness of an opinion is not for us -any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that -our new language sounds most strangely. -The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, -life-preserving, species-preserving, -perhaps species-rearing; and we are fundamentally -inclined to maintain that the falsest -opinions (to which the synthetic judgments -a priori belong) are the most indispensable -to us; that without a recognition of logical -fictions, without a comparison of reality with -the purely imagined world of the absolute -and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">91</span> -of the world by means of numbers, -man could not live—that the renunciation -of false opinions would be a renunciation of -life, a negation of life.”<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">5</a></p> - -<p>Secondly, he denied that the personality -of the thinker was a disturbing factor in his -thought. It was, on the contrary, the -guarantee that once at least that thought -had been true. “Now philosophical systems -are absolutely true only to their founders; to -all later philosophers they are usually a single -big mistake, and to feebler minds a sum of -mistakes and truths.... Therefore many -disapprove of every philosopher, because his -aim is not theirs.... Whoever, on the -contrary, finds any pleasure at all in great -men finds pleasure also in all such systems, -be they ever so erroneous, for they all have -in them one point which is irrefutable, a -personal touch and colour; one can use them -in order to form a picture of the philosopher, -just as from a plant growing in a certain<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">92</span> -place one can form conclusions as to the soil. -<em>That</em> mode of life, of viewing human affairs -at any rate, has existed once, and is therefore -possible.” He wrote that quite early in his -career in his little book on early Greek -philosophy, a history like the dawn setting -on fire the tips of the distant mountains, -then the nearer, and at last throwing on the -ground behind him the shadow of the -observer. For Nietzsche, the mountain -peaks are those fragments of the crumbled -systems which are personal to their authors, -and, even if refutable as philosophy are irrefutable -as particular and individual revelations. -It is a delightful little gathering of -philosophers and, perhaps, more important -than has yet been admitted, in its promise of -Nietzsche’s habit of thought, his impatience -of dialectic, his dislike of the Parmenidean -mind, his trust in the poetic, the particular. -“What verse is to the poet,” he says, “dialectic -thinking is to the philosopher; he -snatches at it in order to hold fast his -enchantment, in order to petrify it.” From -this view he never departed. In <cite>Beyond -Good and Evil</cite> he repeats his belief in the -personal character of thought: “In each<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">93</span> -cardinal problem there speaks an unchangeable -‘I am this’; a thinker cannot learn -anew about man and woman, for instance, -but can only learn fully—he can only follow -to the end what is ‘fixed’ about them -in himself.” And again in <cite>Zarathustra</cite>: -“‘This is now my way—where is yours?’ -Thus did I answer those who asked me -‘the way.’ For <em>the</em> way—it doth not -exist.”</p> - -<p>And so, for Nietzsche, truth is infinitely -variable, minted afresh by each man and -dependent upon his image and superscription -for a guarantee of its particular validity. It -was for this reason that he despised the -elaborate stage-play of reasoning. He -believed that to exhibit ideas in a white -light and at a mean temperature, when they -offered themselves in the glow of the morning -or in the heat of noon, was to strip them -of their credentials. He insisted that his -own thoughts were true in relation to himself, -and preserved their concreteness by way -of preserving the conditions of their truth. -He refused the step from the concrete to the -abstract as a step into annihilation, and in -this way identified himself with the poets.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">94</span> -To misunderstand him here is to misread -him everywhere.</p> - -<p>We are examining, then, in Friedrich -Nietzsche a man whose view of truth -demanded the personal presence of the -thinker as guarantee of the thought. Consequently, -though for reasons I have already -given it is usual on the part of philosophers -and their critics to rule the personality of -a thinker out of a discussion of his thought, -here, at least, we are justified in glancing -at a man’s character before we examine the -ideas that will help us to fill it out to -approximate verisimilitude.</p> - -<p>Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844, -went mad in January 1889, and died on -August 25, 1900. His father was a country -parson, simple, upright, patriotic and monarchical. -He found joy in the coincidence -of his son’s birthday with that of King -Friedrich Wilhelm IV, and this circumstance -gave Nietzsche his names. His mother was -a young woman of high spirits and great -physical energy, so exuberant and so lovable -as to be described as “a gorgeous savage” -by her mother-in-law. His father, “preordained -to pay only a flying visit—a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">95</span> -gracious reminder of life rather than life -itself,” died in his six and thirtieth year, -before Nietzsche was five. A grandmother, -two aunts and his mother presided over -a pious happy childhood, from which he -emerged as a model schoolboy, laughably -virtuous, walking slowly home in a rainstorm -in spite of his mother’s frenzied urging, and -rebuking this urging with pained austerity: -“But, mamma, in the rules of the school it -is written, ‘On leaving school boys are forbidden -to jump and run about in the streets, -but must walk quietly and decorously to their -homes.’” This sedateness persisted with him, -although he could so completely forget -himself in playing with children, that when -he was twenty-six and a professor, he was -laughed at and told he was only fourteen. -He always dressed with notable nicety. -Though he said, with pride, that he would -rather be a satyr than a saint, he had a -dignity that belongs rather to holiness than -to lust. Children and old women loved him. -The fruit-sellers in the Turin market-place -hurried to pick out for him their finest -grapes. He had gentle manners, a beautiful -voice, and a profound sense of the politeness<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">96</span> -that an aristocrat owes to himself. He clung -to the legend that he was the descendant of -Polish noblemen, and was proud of being -mistaken by Poles for a Pole, that Frenchman -among the Slavs. His favourite books -were the courteous unruffled French moralists -of the seventeenth century, and the works of -Stendhal, who resembled them in wearing a -sword and in his love of fine manners.</p> - -<p>His precarious health gave him extreme -sensitiveness to his physical condition. He -believed that clear thinking was only possible -in dry air and on hills. His highest -praise for his work was that it was mountain -thought. He composed in the open air and -in motion, and advised other people to follow -his example. “Remain seated as little as -possible, put no trust in any thought that is -not born in the open, to the accompaniment -of free bodily motion—nor in one in which -even the muscles do not celebrate a feast. -All prejudices take their origin in the intestines.”</p> - -<p>He seized on Flaubert’s “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">On ne peut -penser et écrire qu’assis</span>,” with a cry: “Here -have I got you, you nihilist? A sedentary -life is the real sin against the Holy Spirit.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">97</span> -Only those thoughts that come by walking -have any value.”</p> - -<p>He defended himself against the charge -of decadence, claiming that “apart from the -fact that I am a decadent, I am also the -reverse of such a creature.” A decadent, he -said, was one attracted by what was detrimental -to him, “as the cabbage attracts the -vegetarian.” A healthy man, on the other -hand, enjoys what is good for him, possesses -“the will to health,” and “is strong enough -to make everything turn to his own advantage.” -He found in convalescence “a pale -delicate light and a sunshine happiness,” “a -feeling of bird-like freedom, prospect, and -haughtiness.” From the combination of his -ill-health and his healthiness (he was in -youth at least physically robust), Nietzsche -learnt, he says, “to look upon healthier concepts -and values from the standpoint of the -sick, and conversely to look down upon the -secret work of the instincts of decadence -from the standpoint of him who is laden -and rich with the richness of life.” He -mentions “the sweetness and spirituality -which is almost inseparable from extreme -poverty of blood and muscle,” and remembers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">98</span> -the unusual dialectical clearness he enjoyed -while suffering from headache and nausea. -He was more conscious than most men that -his body shared in the adventures of his -brain. When the idea of Eternal Recurrence -came into his mind by the lake of Silvaplana, -high in the mountains, it was perhaps -with some recognition of this that, after -scribbling it down on a sheet of paper, he -added the exultant postscript: “6000 feet -beyond man and time!”</p> - -<p>Such, sketched as briefly as possible, is -the physiological background on which we -must set his work.</p> - -<p>The greater part of that work (which fills -seventeen volumes in the English translation) -is made up of short numbered paragraphs, -arranged under general headings. The -lectures and poems are, indeed, the only -exceptions, for though <i>The Birth of Tragedy</i>, -and the essays called <i>Thoughts out of Season</i>, -are less disintegrated than later books, we -can perceive, in their numbered sections, the -promise of sections shorter and continually -shortening to the brief “Maxims and -Missiles” at the beginning of <i>The Twilight -of the Idols</i>. Even <i>Thus Spake Zarathustra</i><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">99</span> -was built in a similar manner, though disguised -by the rush of prophecy and a more -definite general scheme. Nietzsche allowed -such constructive power as he had to atrophy. -He was never a systematic thinker, but, -because his paragraphs are not such separate -and individual observations like those -of Chamfort or Vauvenargues; because they -were often written in swift succession, one -after another, there is a dangerous possibility -that in reading them we may feel we are -reading notes for a book which the author -has not troubled to piece together into the -superficial form to which we are accustomed. -We may resent this, but we are more likely -to grow weary of the constant change of -subject, of the staccato iteration of ideas -without prologues or epilogues to awaken -slowly and lull again to repose our sluggish -brains. It is well to remember that we -have learnt to read too fast, and that -Nietzsche foresaw our discomfort. “He that -writeth in blood doth not want to be read -but learnt by heart.... It is no easy task -to understand unfamiliar blood. I hate the -reading idlers.” We cease to feel the superficial -confusion and inconsistency of those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">100</span> -ten thousand paragraphs when we become -better aware of the half-dozen ideas that -were the parents of that numerous family. -We are then able to trace a paragraph’s pedigree, -and to place it in a larger scheme than -that of the volume in which it happens to -be printed. No reader of Nietzsche can have -failed to notice that his books, different in -detail, different in application, yet often seem -coincident with each other. Nor is this due -to chance repetitions that would betray an -uncritical improvisation. It is an accurate -indication of Nietzsche’s habit of mind. His -books were gleanings, and, after his mature -work began, they were gleanings from fields -almost uniformly sown. The seasons varied -and the sower’s arm was irregular in its swing, -but the harvest was always from a field -that had been fertilised by a fairly uniform -mixture of ideas. The ideas of the pragmatic -nature of truth, of Eternal Recurrence, -of the Will to Power, of the Superman, -and of master and servant morality, yield -in book after book a new crop of lesser -ideas, applied, amplified, restricted or illustrated -in psychological observation. For this -reason I do not intend, in what can but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">101</span> -be a short essay, any detailed criticism of -Nietzsche’s books, but rather to note the -results of such criticism. The reading of -his books, unless it be impatient, careless, -and unworthy, is a process of discovering -what were those half-dozen ideas that separated -Nietzsche from the thinkers of his -time, stimulated his brain until at last it -broke, and during many years kept him in -the lonely joyful ecstasy of continual exploration.</p> - -<p>“The first adherents of a creed do not -prove anything against it,” but they often -so obscure it as to postpone its eventual -utility. Some of the half-dozen ideas I -have mentioned have been so often caricatured -that it is extremely difficult to recognise -them without the exaggeration with -which we have been made familiar. It is -not easy to state another man’s ideas. To -fail is to do him an injury. To succeed is -not unlike taking the words out of his -mouth, which is rude. But I am neither -a translator of Nietzsche nor an opponent. -I wish to understand, not to persuade. And, -for understanding, such statement is desirable.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">102</span></p> - -<p>Nietzsche neither escapes nor attempts to -escape the contradictions in the form of -thought that make logic and life battledores -to toss laughter at each other like a shuttlecock. -He is a determinist and yet gives -advice, the giving of which presupposes a -belief in free will and a possible choice. He -seeks to influence others, and, in his manner -at least, forgets that the logical determinist -should only allow himself to say: “Circumstances -compel me to make certain statements, -which, in the form of circumstances, -may or may not share in the sum of circumstances -that compel you to actions and -thoughts which in their totality I cannot -conceive.” That is not the view of his own -activity which dictates the eager vivid combination -of argument and incantation that -makes Nietzsche’s books. He is free, in -that he has the illusion of freedom. The -illusion of freedom is one of the determining -circumstances. Its effect is to make it -unnecessary to remember in practice that -circumstances determine.</p> - -<p>We need not therefore hesitate over the -inconsistency apparent between some of -Nietzsche’s ideas. We do better to notice<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">103</span> -it as characteristic of his thought, and simply -to state his ideas, remembering, if we will, -that they belong to different circles of consciousness; -some to that wider circle that -includes the universe and with it determinism, -and some to that smaller circle, -concentric with the first, and including only -the area of practical activity. Let us be -determinists first and examine the Nietzschean -universe.</p> - -<p>The idea of Eternal Recurrence seems to -have had for Nietzsche something of the -hypnotic character of those ideas that made -Poe write of his <i>Eureka</i>: “What I here -propound is true: therefore it cannot die;—or -if by any means it be now trodden down -so that it die, it will ‘rise again to the Life -Everlasting.’” Indeed the idea itself is not -unlike that of Poe, who, untrained alike in -philology and philosophy, expressed himself -in a manner that would have given Nietzsche -exquisite pain:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“Guiding our imagination by that omniprevalent law -of laws, the law of periodicity, we are not, indeed, more -than justified in entertaining a belief—let us say, rather, -indulging a hope—that the processes we have ventured -to contemplate will be renewed for ever, and for ever,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">104</span> -and for ever; a novel Universe swelling into existence, -and then subsiding into nothingness, at every throb of -the Heart Divine?” (Poe’s <cite>Eureka</cite>.)</p> -</div> - -<p>Now Nietzsche would not have spoken of -a “Heart Divine,” even explaining, as Poe -did, that this heart was our own; but he -did contemplate a perpetually self-renewing -Universe. Only—and herein lay the importance -of his idea to himself—he saw it -renewing itself in every detail, in every -minutest action of the minutest of its -individual parts, at every moment of its -cycle. Every moment of the future being -dependent upon and involved in the present -moment, sooner or later in the course of -time there would come a moment similar -in every detail to a moment that had already -existed, thus guaranteeing a similar series of -moments till it should recur, and so on. He -said:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“If the Universe may be conceived as a definite -quantity of energy, as a definite number of centres of -energy—and every other concept remains indefinite and -therefore useless—it follows therefrom that the Universe -must go through a calculable number of combinations in -the great game of chance which constitutes its existence. -In infinity, at some moment or other, every possible -combination must once have been realised; not only this,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">105</span> -but it must have been realised an infinite number of -times. And inasmuch as between every one of these -combinations and its next recurrence, every other possible -combination would necessarily have been undergone, -and since every one of these combinations would -determine the whole series in the same order, a circular -movement of absolutely identical series is thus demonstrated; -the Universe is thus shown to be a circular -movement which has already repeated itself an infinite -number of times, and which plays its game for all -eternity.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Nietzsche, hypnotised by this idea, believed -it new, but there is a clear suggestion of it -in the third book of Lucretius’ poem:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza" xml:lang="la" lang="la"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Nam cum respicias immensi temporis omne</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Praeteritum spatium, tum motus materiai</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Multimodis quam sint, facile hoc adcredere possis,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Semina saepe in eodem, ut nunc sunt, ordine posta</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Haec eadem, quibus e nunc nos sumus, ante fuisse:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Nec memori tamen id quimus reprehendere mente:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Inter enim jectast vitai pausa, vageque</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Deerrarunt passim motus ab sensibus omnes.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Lines which Mr. Cyril Bailey in his translation -of Lucretius<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> admirably renders as -follows: “For when you look back over all -the lapse of immeasurable time that now -is gone, and think how manifold are the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">106</span> -motions of matter, you could easily believe -this too, that these same seeds, whereof we -now are made, have often been placed in the -same order as they are now; and yet we -cannot recall that in our life’s memory; for -in between lies a break in life, and all the -motions have wandered everywhere far astray -from sense.”</p> - -<p>The character of Nietzsche’s thinking appears -in his application of this idea. It is -for him “the great disciplinary thought,” and -he leaps the gulf between determinism and -free will in the most careless manner, to -remark: “The question which thou shalt -have to answer before every deed that thou -doest—Is this such a deed as I am prepared -to perform an infinite number of times?—is -the best ballast.” It does not matter to -him at all that a determinist idea is to be -used as a standard of choice by a being -whose free will he assumes. His thoughts -are all thoughts for himself to live with. -He is conscious of them not as abstractions, -but particularly, as concrete things, combinations -of ideas with their effects. He is able -to speak of Eternal Recurrence as “the most -oppressive thought,” and to consider “the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">107</span> -means of enduring it.” I cannot imagine -Kant or Berkeley speaking so of their -ideas.</p> - -<p>Moving now in a smaller circle of consciousness, -let us examine Nietzsche’s view -of the world and man and man’s activity -within this eternally recurring universe. -“The world,” he says, “as we know it, is -representation and erroneous representation: -the world, if we could know it, might well -give us a sensation of disillusion, ‘so full -of meaning, so deep, so wonderful, bearing -happiness and unhappiness in its bosom,’ is -the world that we unconsciously create.” In -Nietzsche’s world we come at once to the -third of his ruling ideas (the first being his -idea of truth, the second, Eternal Recurrence). -A regiment of artillery, galloping to war, filled -Nietzsche (who was at the time serving as -assistant to the field surgeon) with disgust -at the conception of a dull struggle for life -that dictated most nineteenth century thought. -Schopenhauer, at that time still his master, -had supposed that the motive of man was the -will to live. But, as the regiment of artillery -thundered to battle, Nietzsche answered, -No; the will to power, in which that other<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">108</span> -will may or may not be included. Men are -willing to risk existence; they are not ready -to risk power, unless in hope of increased -intensity of power, or of an increased area -over which to exercise it.</p> - -<p>But the Will to Power is to be found in -races as well as in individuals; it is the motive -not of races only but of humanity. Humanity -wills to power, wills to the continual re-creation -of itself as a species ever more powerful; -wills, as Nietzsche puts it, the creation of the -Superman. This is the fourth of his ideas. -Here, again, Nietzsche’s concrete habit of -thought exposed him to misunderstanding, -not only by his disciples, but also by himself. -He did not at first imagine the Superman -as a suddenly appearing demi-god whose -path was to be made smooth by the human -sacrifices of the “down-goers.” He saw him as -the result of a long continued and conscious -will to power, working through many generations, -and gradually evolving a superior type. -Much of his writing is devoted to making -conscious this particular application of the -will. But the idea of a superior type shone -with such effulgence as to dazzle his eyes, and -to blind him to the slow evolution which he<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">109</span> -would never have denied. He could say with -Seannchan, the poet:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“The stars had come so near me that I caught</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Their singing. It was praise of that great race</div> - <div class="verse indent0">That would be haughty, mirthful and white-bodied,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With a high head, and open hand, and how,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Laughing, it would take the mastery of the world.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Supermen were no longer men, but something -different. The long series of gradually improving -types vanished in the conception of -their result, itself to be improved upon, and -it became possible for him to speak of Man -and Superman as two distinct beings, forgetting -the series of beings no less distinct -implied by the development of one into the -other.</p> - -<p>Here, too, it is profitable to notice how -Nietzsche translated an idea from speculation -into life. The hypothesis of the future Superman -allowed him a noble view of friendship. -He has often been compared to Whitman, -partly, no doubt, because the rhythmical -<i>Zarathustra</i> reminded his readers of the -triumphant, unrhymed movement of the sooth-saying -<i>Leaves of Grass</i>. But his friendship is -very different from Whitman’s. Whitman’s -the hand-grip, the smile at meeting, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">110</span> -large tolerance, the collaboration in simple -things; Nietzsche’s a friendship more exacting. -He would have thought Whitman’s friend a -neighbour, and he said, “Not the neighbour -do I teach you, but the friend. Let the -friend be the festival of earth to you, and -a foretaste of the Superman,” and “Let the -future and the farthest be the motive of -thy to-day; in thy friend shalt thou love -the Superman as thy motive.” A friend for -Nietzsche was one who fulfilled desires that -he could not realise himself. Not the least -profound of his observations was this: “Our -faith in others betrayeth wherein we would -fain have faith in ourselves.” His own -friendship with Wagner provides a commentary -of fact. Begun in the belief that -Wagner was bringing to earth such an art -as that of which Nietzsche dreamed, and -ended in the disillusion confirmed by “the -preponderance of ugliness, grotesqueness, and -strong pepper” in the first performances at -Bayreuth, it was at once the greatest inspiration -and the greatest disappointment of -his life. Nietzsche, who had published <i>The -Birth of Tragedy</i> to serve Wagner, wrote -<i>The Case of Wagner</i> to destroy him, or,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">111</span> -perhaps, to cleanse himself of a mistaken -admiration. But listen to his clear-sighted -comment: “I gained an insight into the -injustice of <em>idealism</em>, by noticing that I -avenged myself on Wagner for the disappointed -hopes I had cherished of him.”</p> - -<p>Nietzsche’s fifth ruling idea is most clearly -expressed in the book that he wrote for his -friend. He summed it up in the words Amor -Fati, the acceptance of life, be it what it -might, a joyful “yea-saying” to all its pronouncements, -written in the most cruel facts -though they might be. Now this, as he -pointed out, is the attitude of the tragic -artist, whose work is the expression not of -pity but of a proud acquiescence, an acquiescence -that is an intellectual conquest. He -wished men to be artists in their attitude -towards life, and this desire brought his -writings on art nearer to “the business -and bosoms of men” than the discreet -distance from these things usually preserved -by aesthetic theory. His <i>Birth of Tragedy</i> -was not merely an historical speculation, but -offered for the criticism of life words that -Nietzsche applied for the moment to the -criticism of art. These words were “Apollonian”<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">112</span> -and “Dionysian.” The latter word -has been persistently applied to Nietzsche -himself, though he saw “in the fraternal -union of Apollo and Dionysus the climax of -the Apollonian as well as of the Dionysian -artistic aims.” What does he mean by this -antithetical conception? Let me answer by -two quotations:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>1. “It is in connection with Apollo and Dionysus, the -two art-deities of the Greeks, that we learn that there -existed in the Grecian world a wide antithesis, in origin -and aims, between the art of the shaper, the Apollonian, -and the non-plastic art of music, that of Dionysus: both -these so heterogeneous tendencies were parallel to each -other, for the most part openly at variance, and continually -inciting each other to new and more powerful births, -to perpetuate in them the strife of this antithesis, which -is but seemingly bridged over by their mutual term -‘Art’; till at last, by a metaphysical miracle of the -Hellenic will, they appear paired with each other, and -through this pairing eventually generate the equally -Dionysian and Apollonian art-work of Attic tragedy.”</p> - -<p>2. “In contrast to all those who are intent on deriving -the arts from one exclusive principle, as the necessary -vital source of every work of art, I keep my eyes fixed -on the two artistic deities of the Greeks, Apollo and -Dionysus, and recognise in them the living and conspicuous -representatives of <em>two</em> worlds of art which differ -in their intrinsic essence and in their highest aims. -Apollo stands before me as the transfiguring genius of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">113</span> -the <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">principium individuationis</i> through which alone the -redemption in appearance is to be truly attained, while -by the mystical cheer of Dionysus the spell of individuation -is broken, and the way lies open to the Mothers of -Being, to the innermost heart of things.”</p> -</div> - -<p>He conceives these as “the separate art-worlds -of dreamland and drunkenness,” and -makes for himself a parable about the -Apollonian artist in dreams and the Dionysian -artist in ecstasies, comparable to Blake’s -poem of “The Mental Traveller,” in which -there is just such an alternation of conquest -and captivity:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“And if the babe is born a boy</div> - <div class="verse indent2">He’s given to a woman old,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Who nails him down upon a rock,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">She binds iron thorns around his head,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">She pierces both his hands and feet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She cuts his heart out at his side,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">To make it feel both cold and heat.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Her fingers number every nerve,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">Just as a miser counts his gold;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">She lives upon his shrieks and cries,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And she grows young as he grows old.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Till he becomes a bleeding youth,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And she becomes a virgin bright;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Then he rends up his manacles,</div> - <div class="verse indent2">And binds her down for his delight.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">114</span></p> -<p>It is a fine pictorial expression of the -formative processes of consciousness, the -domination of the unconscious flux by the -shaping of the knowing intellect, and the -escape of that flux, the overbalancing of -the intellect by the onrush of unrealised -impressions. I do not think it has or can -have any deeper significance in aesthetic -criticism. It was, however, of considerable -service to Nietzsche in the criticism of life. -In life, he would be, for the moment, a -worshipper of Dionysus, seeking less to -control life than to live—because Dionysus, -he felt, was being a little neglected. In a -“Dionysian age” he would have left ecstasy -below him and worshipped the placid Apollo, -shaping dreams untroubled by the turmoil in -the valleys. In such an age as that for -which he hoped, such an age as that of -Greek tragedy, he would have stormed -Olympus at the head of the Dionysian -revellers, and conquered the Dionysian -ecstasy to bind it captive in the service of -Apollo.</p> - -<p>There remains Nietzsche’s distinction between -good and evil and good and bad. His -conception of morality resembles his conception<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">115</span> -of truth. Morality and truth, like -the Sabbath, were made for man, not man -for them. He goes further, believing that -they were made and are continually being -re-made <em>by</em> man. “There is no such thing -as moral phenomena, but only a moral -interpretation of phenomena,” which interpretation -a free and healthy man should -make in accordance with his own nature. -The morality generally current in his time -Nietzsche believed to be slave morality, as -opposed to aristocratic or ruler morality, and -he attributed its prevalence to the spreading -of the Christian religion. He believed that -good was invented by those who possessed -it. “The judgment ‘good’ did <em>not</em> originate -among those to whom goodness was shown. -Much rather has it been the good themselves; -that is, the aristocratic, the powerful, the -high-stationed, the high-minded, who have -felt that they themselves were good, and that -their actions were good: that is to say of the -first order, in contradistinction to all the -low, the low-minded, the vulgar, and the -plebeian.” The code of honour, the list of -deeds that a gentleman forbids himself, would, -I suppose, be considered by Nietzsche as a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">116</span> -survival of this original morality. He weighs -“moral interpretations” of phenomena in the -same scale as he weighs “truths,” asking, -“Have they up to the present hindered or -advanced human well-being?” His hostility -to Christianity may be traced to his answer -to this question. The replacement of the -aristocratic judgment of actions done, by the -plebeian judgment on actions suffered, the -substitution of the slave’s point of view for -that of the ruler, and its half-hearted adoption -by those who should rule were impediments -to that ruling, and checks to the will to -power in which he recognised the mainspring -of human activity. He found then that the -common morality was hostile to the highest -development of humanity, a frustration of its -highest hopes by hampering the will to power -of “the highest men,” and proceeded to call -those who had ears to listen “beyond good -and evil,” begging them to make their own -interpretation of phenomena, and not to -accept that of men whose submission to -themselves should be part of their natural -ambition. The morality of “the small” is, -he says, a handicap to greater men, because -“virtue for them is what maketh modest and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">117</span> -tame: therewith have they made the wolf a -dog, and man himself man’s best domestic -animal.” He delights accordingly in using -as terms for praise the words that “the -small” use in condemnation. He speaks, for -example, of the “widespread heaven of clear -<em>wicked</em> spirituality,” a spirituality beyond the -good and evil of the tame. Yet he would -not abolish the tame, nor lighten their -shackles. “For must there not be that -which is danced <em>over</em>, danced beyond? Must -there not, for the sake of the nimble, the -nimblest—be moles and clumsy dwarfs?” -It is not Nietzsche’s fault that his books -have stimulated “moles and clumsy dwarfs” -to the grotesque exercise of trying to dance -over themselves. He did not write for them, -and told them so. He insisted at all times -that he wrote “for higher ones, stronger ones, -more triumphant and merrier, for such as are -built squarely in body and soul.” And his -writings are intended to teach such “laughing -lions” to “become what they are,” -unimpeded by the morality that a thousand -hands offer them from below. He has not -the vain, foolish hope of doing away with -moralities, but asks each of his “higher<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">118</span> -men” to be true to his own. If he goes -“beyond good and evil,” he is to carry with -him his private scale of good and bad, with -which he is to measure his deeds in accordance -with the will to power that leads him -and his descendants to a higher, a more -laughing perfection.</p> - -<p>After the brief statement of these ideas, -we can examine with better hope of understanding -the general character of Nietzsche’s -thought. It was not “systematic” in the -usual sense, but it seems to me foolish to -describe as “unsystematic” a method of -thinking whose formula was as simple as -his. He used the ideas I have catalogued -precisely as the alchemists hoped to use the -philosopher’s stone for the transmutation of -metals. Applying them severally or together -to a very large number of statements he -noted the resulting reactions, and found that -they turned truisms into popular fallacies. -His books accordingly became corrections of -Pseudodoxia. He saw, for example, that if -the Will to Power be substituted for the -Will to Live, and Ruler for Slave Morality, -the common judgments of men on everything -in the world that is capable of moral interpretation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">119</span> -are in some way changed. He -was not content to leave others to find out -in what way. He called this change a -“transvaluation of values,” and wished thus -to transvaluate all values, and so to offer -to other men and to himself a new representation -of the world in the light of his -own ideas, a task so Sisyphean that it is -in itself a sufficient explanation of the -collapse of his brain. His madness was -not promised by his work, any more than -a broken neck is promised by riding to -hounds. Nor did the vivid summer lightning -of his mind destroy him or even -threaten destruction. His madness was a -catastrophe, not the culmination of a disease. -His method of thought, the continual endless -application of his ideas, allowed him to -think too fast. No sedate erection of a -system kept his brain to a normal speed. -Its disaster was like that of an engine -which “races,” as engineers say, breaks its -crankshaft, or so whirls its flywheel as to -allow it to satisfy its centrifugality. All -men build worlds for themselves, but they -borrow from each other, and are content to -fill with hasty scene-painting the gaps in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">120</span> -their construction. No man is capable of -building in innumerable fragments a world -complete and homogeneous. Nietzsche’s -mind, working with frenzied, unchecked -speed in this perilous attempt, ran suddenly -amok, and snapped, and with its snapping -his life ends. The automaton that fed and -slept and was not sure if it had written books, -was not Nietzsche, though it prolonged his -physical existence. For us Nietzsche died -in January 1889; the ten years through -which he lived unconscious of himself were -like the months of M. Valdemar. He was -a dead man, who felt the cold and the -heat, and drank tea with the living. It is -usual for his enemies to explain his work -by his madness; it is wiser to consider his -madness as the result of too much working, -to count his life as ended when he lost his -sanity, and, remembering the clarity of his -last writings, to refuse so easy an escape -from the task of appreciation.</p> - -<p>Nietzsche’s applications of his ideas in -book after book are not frigid illustrations, -but sentences, maxims, aphorisms, and -observations of great psychological subtlety, -earning a place beside those of La Rochefoucauld,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">121</span> -Vauvenargues, or Stendhal by the -guarantee of a scale of values peculiar to -their author. I think it not impossible that -Nietzsche will one day be remembered chiefly -as a psychologist and moralist, a late nineteenth -century representative of a great -tradition, and that the ideas which are now -a noise in men’s ears, and, misunderstood, -obscure our views of him, will then be -remarked merely as explanatory of his -psychology’s private and individual tone. -The Superman will be mentioned in a note -appended to his observations on friends -and friendship, and his theory of the Will -to Power tucked away in small print for -those who wish more clearly to understand -his remarks on self-development or war.</p> - -<p>I have not spoken of Nietzsche as an -artist. That prose, now hammer-welded, -now silver filigree, dancing, walking, running -in time with his ideas and moods, is -not the least of his achievements. When -he wrote: “One day it will be said of -Heine and me that we were by far the -greatest artists of the German language that -have ever existed, and that we left all the -efforts that mere Germans made in this<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">122</span> -language an incalculable distance behind -us,” he was not far from the truth. <i>Thus -spake Zarathustra</i>, that Ossianic poem of -a hero of thought, <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">Ecce Homo</i>, in the self-assertion -of which is not only pride, but -pride a little hurt that it should have so -to assert itself, those paragraphs of witty -and profound psychology, the noble essays -on Schopenhauer and History, the muddled -processional triumph of <i>The Birth of Tragedy</i>; -whatever be our view of his ideas, we -cannot but admire the artist who made -these things. His very thought has an -aesthetic value, as he saw himself, due, no -doubt, to its concreteness; in reading his -books we are translated to the tops of -mountains, where there is a dry wind, a -warm sun, and snow not yet melted. Far -below us are valley and vineyard and a -sea with no haze. Our lungs are so full -that we cannot commit “the sin against the -Holy Spirit”; we cannot sit still. There is -dancing, there is singing in the air, and, as -we turn to more sedate philosophy, it is as -if we were suddenly to leave sun, wind, and -valley for the cloistered dust of a dark -room.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">123</span></p> - -<p>In his own eyes, however, Nietzsche the -artist, like Nietzsche the thinker, was the -humble, reverent servant of Nietzsche the -educator. In childhood he made respectful -word-portraits of his schoolmasters. When -he went to the universities, he said he was -spending his time in discovering the best -means of teaching instead of in learning -what was usually taught in such places. His -professorship was a symbol of his life, and -he only resigned it to sit on mountain -tops and teach. No man since Plato has -had such a boundless dream of education. -Milton desiring his pupils to be good for -peace and for war, strong men behind their -bows, skilful with the lute, learning to -“repair the ruins of their first parents by -regaining to know God aright,” until “they -have confirmed and solidly united the whole -body of their perfected knowledge, like the -last embattling of a Roman legion”: Ascham -with his longer list of exercises, “not only -comely and decent, but also very necessary -for a courtly gentleman to use,” and his -more detailed scheme of learning: neither -of these looked so far as he, neither of them -hoped to educate more than men of a city<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">124</span> -or of a nation, and for the service of that -limited community. Nietzsche dreamed of -the education of mankind in its highest -men, and, where Milton and Ascham feared -for lack of teachers, he feared nothing so -much as the scarcity of worthy pupils. -“Companions did the creating one seek, -and children of <em>his</em> hope, and lo, it turned -out that he could not find them, except he -himself should first create them.”</p> - -<p>In his early dissatisfaction with the educational -methods of the German universities, -there was more than a mere pedagogic discontent. -In his attack on the pseudo-culture -of such men as Strauss, in his -exposure of the abuse of history, in his -farewell to “Schopenhauer as Educator,” he -learnt more and more clearly what it was -that he was seeking. He sought to educate -“higher men” to be themselves, to free -them from impediments to their growth, and -failing that, to let them perceive the impediments -and attack them, and so weaken the -enemies long trained to devour them should -they show themselves. For his “higher -men,” and for no others, he found the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">125</span> -ballast of the idea of Eternal Recurrence, -to replace the misleading strings of the -morality of the downtrodden. For their -sakes he destroyed the divine right of the -judgments of good and of evil; theirs was to -be the Amor Fati, the cheerful acceptance of -life, theirs the Dionysian ecstasy, and theirs -the Apollonian calm. For them he invented -his watchword: “Man is something that is -to be surpassed.” He did not expect to -find such pupils, but only to make their -advent possible, to prevent them from being -strangled at birth. In the meantime he -spoke on to the empty benches, and, however -extravagant, daring, impossible his dream -may have been, it is yet a privilege for us -to sit and listen in that school of phantom -Titans.</p> - -<p>I shall close this essay with a quotation -that seems to me to sum up in its final -sentences all that is best in Nietzsche’s -teaching, the ultimate advice on which all -his work is a commentary:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“Ah! I have known noble ones who lost their highest -hope. And then they disparaged all high hopes.</p> -<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">126</span> -<p>Then lived they shamelessly in temporary pleasures, -and beyond the day had hardly an aim.</p> - -<p>‘Spirit is also voluptuousness,’ said they. Then broke -the wings of their spirit; and now it creepeth about -and defileth where it gnaweth.</p> - -<p>Once they thought of becoming heroes; but sensualists -are they now. A trouble and a terror is a hero to -them.</p> - -<p>But by my love and hope I conjure thee: cast not -away the hero in thy soul! Maintain holy thy highest -hope!”</p> -</div> - -<p>The man who wrote this has been called -irreverent, because his choice of things to -revere was not identical with his accuser’s. -But in these sentences there is proof of -his reverence for something more profound, -more important to mankind, than churches, -than submissions to authority, a thing that -men are not accustomed openly, if at all, to -reverence, that quest of the Holy Grail -on which all men set out, though most turn -back, and very few pursue it till they die. -It is a quest whose goal is in each moment -of seeking. Of this he was indeed reverent, -of the glowing cheek and kindled eye of -intellectual youth, of unsoiled ambition, of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">127</span> -the flame alight before the altar of the -potential hero, who is alive for a little -while in every man, and whose continuance -of life is the measure of each man’s -nobility.</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1912.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">129</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_129" class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">130</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">WALTER PATER</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">131</span></p> -<h2>WALTER PATER</h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">Walter Pater</span> was brought up at Enfield, -where he was near London, and knew from -his earliest years “those quaint suburban -pastorals” that gather “a certain quality of -grandeur from the background of the great -city, with its weighty atmosphere, and portent -of storm in the rapid light on dome and -bleached stone steeples.” Something of that -weighty atmosphere, and with it something -of that rapid light, I find in his work, whether -he is writing of the Italians of the Renaissance, -of Montaigne, of the Greek philosophers, -of the Dutch van Storck, or the -German Carl of Rosenmold.</p> - -<p>The external facts of his life may be shortly -dismissed. He “was fond,” as a child, “of -organising little processional pomps,” and a -meeting with Keble strengthened for a time his -boyish resolve to enter the Church. That -part of his temperament which sought satisfaction -in such a course found it, perhaps, in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">132</span> -the hieratic character of his prose. He read -Ruskin when he was nineteen, but his appreciations -were too independent of Ruskin’s -sanction to allow us to recognise the deep -influence that is popularly attributed to the -older man. Ruskin believed that he had -“discovered” Botticelli, but he first spoke of -him in the Oxford lectures of 1871, and -Pater’s essay had been published in the -<i>Fortnightly Review</i> the year before. Pater -went from the King’s School at Canterbury -to Queen’s College, Oxford, took a Second -Class in the Final Classical Schools, and, in -1864, was elected to a fellowship at Brasenose. -He lived at Oxford thenceforward, -with only occasional periods of residence in -London. In different long vacations he knew -Heidelberg, Dresden, and various parts of -France, and, in 1869, four years before the -publication of <i>The Renaissance</i>, travelled in -Italy. He died at Oxford after a life of -unhurried labour on July 30, 1894.</p> - -<p>There are some words that one would -never use in speaking of him. “Joy” is one of -them; “despair” is another. They would be -represented by the less exuberant “pleasure,” -and the less violent “regret.” His was a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">133</span> -personality in half tones, lit by the pallid glow -of a heavy sky, or by the “peculiar daylight” -he noticed in the church at Canterbury, that -daylight which “seemed to come from further -than the light outside.” Yet his mind was not -without intensity, though this was expressed -more by its freedom of invasion than by any -obvious hardness of line or brilliance of colour. -When he said, “I should be afraid to read -Kipling, lest he should come between me and -my page next time I sat down to write,” he -was confessing an unnecessary carefulness. -But his very fear was not due to uncertainty -of himself. It was that of the jealous -acolyte who will not expose the sacred -glimmer of a votive lamp to even momentary -comparison with a flash of limelight, sure as -he may be of the lamp’s superior persistence, -dignity, and, for him, significance. Pater -set a high value on his own personality, -which in a world of relative truth, was -perhaps the only thing that he could trust. -He tended it, protected it from undue disturbance, -even from the contagion of others, -fed it from time to time with victories ... -his essays are the carefully prepared conquests -of other personalities by his own ... and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">134</span> -strengthened it always in the habit of a -private supremacy, a supremacy that neither -sought nor needed external acknowledgment.</p> - -<p>It would be difficult to exaggerate the -influence of his work, or, more exactly, of the -mental attitude reflected in his work, on the -literature of the end of the last century and -of the beginning of our own. He was a landmark -in the history of consciously rhythmical -prose, the first English preacher (though very -quietly) of the doctrine of art for art’s sake, -the exponent of an unusually precise technique, -the first example of a man whose life -was consciously lived for art’s sake; a man -who, though he disguised the fact by many -professions of hedonism, found in art the -finest means of living, and preferred, with -something of his childish love for processional -pomps, to meet life only when it came to him, -decorous, arranged, unified to single purposes, -instead of with the medley of motives from -which the artist disentangles it.</p> - -<p>His ideas have come to be more noticeable -in other books than in his own. He seemed to -deprecate too exuberant agreement. He did -not like to stir his audience to an unbecoming -enthusiasm. This is, perhaps, one reason<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">135</span> -why he has seldom been considered as a -thinker. But another reason was more potent. -“The sensible vehicle” of his expression -almost annulled his abstract thought. Pater -is the best illustration of the way in which -ideas can be obliterated by the personality of -which they were a part. He has never been -compared to Nietzsche. Yet no student of -Pater’s <em>ideas</em> could avoid such a comparison, -fantastic as it may seem to those to whom it -has not occurred to refuse, for critical purposes, -to adopt his attitude towards thought; -to refuse, that is, “to assign very little to the -abstract thought and much to its sensible -vehicle or occasion.” Even this attitude, if -we examine it closely, is not unlike the Nietzschean -demand for the personal touch in a -theory before the theory itself. Elsewhere -the resemblance is clearer. In <cite>Plato and -Platonism</cite> he says: “Still in the discussion -even of abstract truths it is not so much what -he thinks as the person who is thinking, that -after all really tells.” In smaller things he -offers a parallel, strange from one who lived -as he lived, to Nietzsche’s outburst against -sedentary thinking: “It might seem that -movement, after all, and any habit that promoted<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">136</span> -movement, promoted the power, the successes, -the fortunate parturitions of the mind.” -In more important things—things more important -to Nietzsche—Pater offers a similar -aloof parallel, as if from another planet. -Before <i>The Birth of Tragedy</i> was written, -Pater had distinguished Apollo and Dionysus, -for his own purposes and in his own way, -as the particular deities of opposed artistic -tendencies. At one with Nietzsche in his -conception of the relative nature of truth, -though he shrank from carrying it to battle -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">à l’outrance</i>, he says almost what Nietzsche -says of the evil influence of “the ideal,” “the -absolute,” on European thought, though, -more eclectic, incapable of partisanship, he -does not let it disturb his admiration of Plato. -Mildly, as if it did not matter, he murmurs -what Nietzsche shouted: “The European -mind will never be quite sane again....” -And he traces its insanity, as Nietzsche might -have traced it, through the Neo-Platonists, -<i>The Imitation</i>, Spinoza, Descartes, Malebranche, -Leibnitz, Berkeley. “By one and -all it is assumed, in the words of Plato, that -to be colourless, formless, impalpable, is the -note of the superior grade of knowledge and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">137</span> -existence, evanescing steadily, as one ascends -towards that perfect (perhaps not quite unattainable) -condition of either, which in truth -can only be attained by the suppression of -all the rule and outline of one’s own actual -experience and thought.” And, in his criticism -of the Sophists, he shows that he is -aware, smilingly perhaps, of the theory of -two moralities, one of the ruler and another -of the ruled. He says of the Sophists: -“And if old-fashioned principle or prejudice -be found in the way, who better than they -could instruct one, not how to minimise, or -violate it—that was not needed, nor perhaps -desirable, regarding what was so useful for -the control of others—not that; but, to apply -the intellectual solvent to it, in regard to one’s -self? ‘It will break up—this or that ethical -deposit in your mind, ah! very neatly, very -prettily, and disappear, when exposed to the -action of our perfected method. Of credit -with the vulgar as such, in the solitary chamber -of the aristocratic mind such presuppositions, -prejudices or principles, may be made very -soon to know their place.’” This may seem -like ironic criticism of Nietzsche before the -fact, but it has not been noticed as such, even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">138</span> -by Nietzscheans, and that is a proof of the -completeness with which Pater made negligible -what he said, beside the manner, the -personal quality, of himself saying it.</p> - -<p>Yet these and many other neglected ideas -were of real importance to the personality -that obscures them now. Pater owed much -of the slow rhythm of his mind to his careful -observation of his own philosophic attitude. -It is easy to talk of a battle in his mind between -metaphysic and art; but no such battle -was fought. Pater never lost his interest in -philosophies, and that interest never interfered -with his interest in art, but was rather -its ally, an essential element in the mental -temper of all his work. He shared Nietzsche’s -dislike of dialectic, because in approaching -the condition of mathematical -speculation philosophy denudes itself of personality. -He disliked, for example, Spinoza’s -Euclidean demonstrations, “the dry bones of -which rattle in one’s ears,” but was enabled to -use finely, in <i>Sebastian van Storck</i>, that one -of Spinoza’s sayings in which the man seems -to be epitomised: “Whoso loveth God truly -must not expect to be loved by him in return.” -“Philosophic truth,” for him, “consists in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">139</span> -the philosophic temper.” He finds that “perhaps -the chief offence in Coleridge is an excess -of seriousness, a seriousness arising not from -any moral principle, but from a misconception -of the perfect manner. There is a certain -shade of unconcern, the perfect manner of -the eighteenth century, which may be thought -to mark complete culture in the handling of -abstract questions.... Humanity cannot -afford to be too serious about them.” That -was said in the first of his printed papers. -In the last book of his that was published in -his lifetime, he says of the essay: “It provided -him (Montaigne) with precisely the literary -form necessary to a mind for which truth itself -is but a possibility, realisable not as a general -conclusion, but rather as the elusive effect of -a particular personal experience; to a mind -which, noting faithfully those random lights -that meet it by the way, must needs content -itself with suspension of judgment, at the end -of the intellectual journey, to the very last -asking: <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Que scais-je?</i> Who knows?—in the -very spirit of that old Socratic contention, -that all true philosophy is but a refined sense -of one’s ignorance.” The essay, we must not -forget, was the form chosen by himself.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">140</span></p> - -<p>Nowhere does he better illustrate his conception -of philosophic truth, of the philosophic -temper, than in that harmony of essays, written -for delivery as lectures, and printed as <i>Plato -and Platonism</i>. Philosophy clothes herself -with humanity, or rather retains the clothes -of which dialectic would deprive her, and we -watch her as a human being, are nervous for -her in the difficult places, as she threads her -way through the lives of men and the history -of a nation. Pater is engaged in portraiture, -not in exposition, so humane has his subject -become. The three philosophers whose images -are impressed upon the theories of “the flux,” -of “the one,” and of “number,” Heraclitus, -Parmenides, Pythagoras, are no longer outline -drawings, like illustrations in a classical -dictionary, but coloured and modelled with -something of Blake’s enthusiastic vision, -softened and quieted, till the enthusiasm is -like summer lightning behind the hills, clear -and bright but without menace for his general -intention. Their portraits, inset in the -“Plato” like the vignettes that encircle the -central picture in those old engraved frontispieces, -are curiously suggestive of paragraphs -of Nietzsche’s <i>Early Greek Philosophy</i>. They<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">141</span> -are ruled by just such a conception of truth, -but are without the spirit of proselytism, so -inconsistent with it, and yet so characteristic -of the man who preached rather than denounced -his version of the Eternal Recurrence. -It is hard to know which is most admirable—the -delicate disentangling of Socrates from -Plato, the clearly visualised picture of the -Sophists (there never was a book on philosophy -so full of concrete vision), the synthesis -of Plato’s personality, lover, seer, observer, -“who has lingered too long in the brazier’s -workshops” to be able to speak of “dumb -matter,” or the beautiful appreciation of the -method of the dialogues and of the often -travestied aims of Socratean talk, which -represent both the “demand for absolute -certainty, in any truth or knowledge worthy -of the name,” and Plato’s method of learning -and teaching, the essential quality of these -conversations with himself being their endlessness. -Then there is the dream, to the making -of which has gone so much knowledge content -to be hidden by the perfection of its -service, of the city of Lacedaemon in Sparta, -so necessary a prelude to the account of -Plato’s dreamed republic. Finally, perhaps<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">142</span> -because dearest to himself, there is the chapter -on Plato’s aesthetics, which, to Pater, were -not what some have made them, but of immediate -import to men living their lives, -and suggested a purpose, a hope “to get -something of that irrepressible conscience -of art, that spirit of control, into the general -course of life, above all into its energetic or -impassioned acts.” It is, in a sense, a white -heat of decorum for which he asks, a scrupulousness, -a patience which is “quite as much -as fire, of the mood of all true lovers.” He is -really asking for self-conscious life, for the -kind of life that is only given by art, whether -by the contemplation of the work of artists or -by the private acts of artistic creation, which -we all perform, more or less often, and which -are indeed processes of becoming conscious -acts of scrupulous, observant and comprehensive -living. I can think of no book better -fitted to lead a student into philosophy, and I -am not sure that it is not also the best book -with which to begin the study of Walter -Pater. It is certainly the book that made the -most various demands upon his personality.</p> - -<p>More than any other writer of his time he -was justified in speaking of “the irrepressible<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">143</span> -conscience of art.” For many he is, I suppose, -chiefly interesting as the man who brought -into English literary workshops the craftsman’s -creed of Flaubert. This importation of -his was not a mere translation and expansion -of the few sentences from Flaubert that appear -in his essay on “Style.” Those sentences and -his comments upon them, do but form, in the -structure of that essay, a pendant to, an illustration -of, Pater’s original remarks, which are -themselves a complete, if resolutely non-technical, -exposition of his own clearly comprehended -methods. It is possible that Pater saw, -a little more circumspicuously than he, what it -was that Flaubert believed. At any rate that -belief is here unified with the suggestions of -earlier writers, and given corollaries whose -implication in it Flaubert never troubled to -see. The theory is, briefly stated, as follows: -Literature will fulfil the condition of all good -art “by finding its specific excellence in the -absolute correspondence of the term to its -import.” Its first, indeed, accurately speaking, -its only object is truth, the exact fitting -of words to meaning, which involves the -watchfulness over the whole that will guard -details from being made inexact by the reflected<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">144</span> -light of other details; and this involves -also a loving scholarship in the precise meanings -and implications of the words used.</p> - -<p>He accepts De Quincey’s distinction between -“the literature of power and the literature -of knowledge,” with the comment, “in the -former of which the composer gives us not -fact, but his peculiar sense of fact, whether -past or present.” In the fine art of literature, -the identity sought between words and meaning -is an identity between words and the -thing they represent in its private atmosphere, -with its particular meaning to the particular -mind that thinks it. Throughout his works -is scattered evidence of the importance that -Pater attributed to this particularity of -thought, dependent on the thinker and his -circumstances, the personality of thought -which is really the guarantee of its uniqueness, -and in a sense, not only of its truth but -of its artistic rightness. In <cite>The Child in the -House</cite>, for example:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“In later years he came upon philosophies which occupied -him much in the estimate of the proportion of the -sensuous and the ideal elements in human knowledge, the -relative parts they bear in it; and, in his intellectual -scheme, was led to assign very little to the abstract -thought, and much to its sensible vehicle or occasion.”</p> -</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">145</span></p> - -<p>And, in the essay on “Style” we are considering:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“... just in proportion as the writer’s aim, consciously -or unconsciously, comes to be the transcribing, -not of the world, not of mere fact, but of his sense of it, -he becomes an artist, his work <em>fine</em> art....”</p> - -<p>“Literary art, that is, like all art which is in any way -imitative or reproductive of fact—form, or colour, or -incident—is the representation of such fact as connected -with soul, of a specific personality, in its preferences, its -volition and power.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Let me attach to these another quotation -from the same essay, to illustrate his use of -the word “soul,” the keyword of his belief:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“Mind and soul;—hard to ascertain philosophically, -the distinction is real enough practically, for they often -interfere, are sometimes in conflict, with each other. Blake, -in the last century, is an instance of preponderating soul -embarrassed, at a loss, in an era of preponderating mind. -As a quality of style, at all events, soul is a fact, in -certain writers—the way they have of absorbing language, -of attracting it into the peculiar spirit they are of, with -a subtlety which makes the actual result seem like some -inexplicable inspiration.”</p> -</div> - -<p>When we talk of words it is, if possible, -better to talk in terms of speech than thus -indirectly in terms liable to debate, of the -nature of man, which, in this case at least, -have led a careful writer into inaccuracy.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">146</span> -Blake was neither embarrassed nor at a loss. -He thought all the rest of the world was. A -sort of diffidence would not allow Pater to -admit that he was thinking neither of soul -nor of mind but of a quality in Blake’s -language, a quality markedly less evident -in the work of his contemporaries. Whenever -Pater uses the word soul in this sense -he is thinking of the magical power in contradistinction -from the practical power of -words. Blake’s words say more by what -they carry with them in suggestive atmosphere, -than by what they say. His speech -is highly <em>potential</em>; and when Pater talks of -soul in literature he is talking of the potential -element in the language of literature, the -element so noticeable in the language of his -own works. His insistence on truth, not -only in the merely kinetic speech, the thing -said, but also in the potential speech that -gives the thing said its atmospherical particularity, -distinguished his own work, and -deeply influenced the writers who followed -him—Wilde, Dowson, perhaps Mr. Yeats, at -least in his prose, certainly Mr. Arthur -Symons. It was an indigenous spring of -the tendency that, in France, has been called<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">147</span> -Symbolist, with which the last of the younger -writers I have mentioned definitely allied -himself. Pater’s expressed admirations for -modern French books are only such as -suggest his ignorance of the best writers -in a later generation than that of Flaubert, -who was, of course, not twenty years his -senior. He does not seem to have read -those younger men whose ideas so closely -resembled his own, so closely that Frenchmen -often claim Pater’s most obvious disciple<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> -for a pupil of the school of Mallarmé.</p> - -<p>With his care in the use of words, he -had also a care for structure, and for similar -reasons. He says, as in a cruder way Poe -had said long before, but not with such -close significance:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“The term is right, and has its essential beauty, when -it becomes, in a manner, what it signifies, as with the -names of simple sensations. To give the phrase, the -sentence, the structural member, the entire composition, -song, or essay, a similar unity with its subject and with -itself:—style is in the right way when it tends towards -that.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Those words embody in technical wisdom -the profoundest understanding of the aims of -art and of the nature of artistic creation.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">148</span></p> - -<p>His practice was not quite on the level -of his theory. His details sometimes fail -to preserve a unity of tone and rhythm -with the whole of which they are a part. -Sometimes too, the effort to preserve that -unity compels the whole to a chafing monotone. -An over-zealous pursuit of accuracy -sometimes allowed those careful sentences to -encumber themselves with adjectival burs, -and a too visual method of composition -sometimes cost them their harmony with -the music it was their business to maintain, -and even brought that music to an abrupt -stop. “Pater,” Mr. Benson says, who knew -him, “when he had arranged his notes, -began to write on ruled paper, leaving the -alternate lines blank; and in these spaces -he would insert new clauses and descriptive -epithets. Then the whole was re-copied, -again on alternate lines, which would again -be filled; moreover, he often had an essay -at this stage set up at his own expense in -print, that he might better be able to judge -of the effect....” Such a method, however -careful the writer might be to make -continual appeal to his ear, could not but -allow the eye to assume too great a share<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">149</span> -in that collaboration in which ear should be -the sole dictator and eye the ear’s obedient -servant. It would make it difficult to reject -pleasant, exact phrases put in on those alternate -lines, even if they made the sentences -top-heavy with their own distinguished, highly -specialised meaning. They would make this -top-heaviness hard to perceive, and, if perceived, -erroneously attributable to the visible -crowding and elaboration of the written page. -The setting up in print, while useful as a -guide to the general outline, would only confirm -these sentences in their condition. Nobody -who has tried to read Pater aloud can -be without instances when the reading became -difficult, breathless, impossible, even while the -words demanded admiration for their subtle -accuracy and perfect choice. Let me give no -more than two examples of the awkward constructions -Pater allowed himself. I shall take -them from the least decorative of his works, -from a book actually written for oral delivery. -On page 35 of <cite>Plato and Platonism</cite><a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> there is -this sentence:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“From Xenophanes, as a critic of the polytheism of -the Greek religious poets, that most abstract and arid of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">150</span> -formulæ, <em>Pure Being</em>, closed in indifferently on every side -upon itself, and suspended in the midst of nothing, like a -hard transparent crystal ball, as he says; ‘The Absolute’; -‘The One’; passed to his fellow-citizen Parmenides, seeking, -doubtless in the true spirit of philosophy, for the -centre of the universe, of his own experience of it, for -some common measure of the experience of all men.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Now there are 37 words in 8 clauses, needing -5 commas and 3 semi-colons to make up -the subject of that sentence. The underlining -of the words <em>Pure Being</em> seems to me a manifest -concession to the eye.</p> - -<p>On page 32 of the same book there is a -characteristic construction partly due to a -wish to preserve in his writing, tapestried -as it might be, a flavour of conversational -speech, and, for all that, dependent on the -visibility of print, demanding a swift review -of the beginning of the sentence as the reader -arrives at its end:</p> - -<div class="blockquot"> - -<p>“That which <em>is</em>, so purely, or absolutely, that it is -nothing at all to our mixed powers of apprehension:—Parmenides -and the Eleatic School were much preoccupied -with the determination of the thoughts, or of -the mere phrases and words, that belong to that.”</p> -</div> - -<p>Such sentences are blemishes, not because -of inaccuracy, for their accuracy is their<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">151</span> -excuse, but because they trouble our reception -of the whole, as a whole, by drawing -too much attention to themselves.</p> - -<p>With all his care for shapely building, for -unity of impression, he could not avoid occasional -over-insistence on details, rather pleasant -than otherwise, unlike the troubling -halts of his failures in sentence-making. -Indeed, I am not sure that we can describe -as a fault what was characteristic of a whole -manner of vision, and due not to carelessness -but to the peculiar gift of a rare intimacy -of imagination. In his imaginary portraits -(which include not only the book of that -name, but “Emerald Uthwart,” “The Child -in the House,” “Apollo in Picardy,” “Gaston -de Latour,” “Marius the Epicurean,” and, less -obviously, most of his critical work) we can -observe his way of laying hold of small, separate -facts, and expanding them, as Gaston -expanded the poems of Ronsard, “to the full -measure of their intention.” His was never -a sweeping, large-rhythmed, narrative imagination; -I fancy, even, that Pater felt a danger -of losing himself when he had to say that -something happened, and more than once, -when his characters were compelled to significant,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">152</span> -visible action, he did indeed lose himself -... for a sentence or two it is as if not -Pater spoke but another. There was a danger -of things happening in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Gaston de Latour</i>, -the most lovable of his books. For seven -chapters Pater put them off, and then, as -they crowded up on the horizon, and became -imminent, he laid the story aside before they -could overwhelm him and carry him off his -feet.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">9</a></p> - -<p>Pater’s imagination loved not action but -intellectual circumstance, and the significance -not of deeds but of the promise of deeds yet -unperformed. The story of Marius, the story -of Gaston, as far as it had been carried, was -the story of exceptional character in particular -intellectual environment; and for us, -perhaps, the interest lies as much in the one -as in the other. When I think of the second -of those two books, I think less of that scrupulous, -finely strung youth than of Montaigne, -whose portrait, in the old tower above his -open house, seems to me at least equally<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">153</span> -important. Now to offer the reader a choice -between the part and the whole is not the -way of the perfect artist. Again, it is idle -to say that the narrative of “Marius the -Epicurean” is broken by the inclusion of -that lovely rendering of the tale of Cupid and -Psyche. It is idle to point to that tale as an -interruption, when there is nothing for it -to interrupt, nothing that is not already in -repose. In Pater’s books it is the reader -who moves from one contemplation to another, -and, in “Marius,” quite naturally, from Pisa -and the boy’s education there, and his friendship -with Flavian, to the tale they read -together on hot Italian afternoons.</p> - -<p>In a way the inclusion of that tale is an -illustration on a large scale of Pater’s invariable -manner of using detail. It was the work -of another man, and, before placing it in his -book, Pater made it his own by translating it -into a prose which, if purposely and also -necessarily a little different from that of the -rest of the book, was yet his. Just so smaller -details, fragments of observation of external -nature, for example, are not directly set upon -the page, with no more than the imprint of -the hands that plucked them to give them a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">154</span> -spurious unity with the rest. They are all -translated, idiomatically, until they are so -wholly his that it seems he has looked within -for them and not without. The light through -the arched windows of the old church, the -spires of London, the burial vault of the -Dukes of Rosenmold: these things are so intimately -imagined, so completely veiled in -Pater’s mood that when we recognise them in -life we accuse ourselves of plagiarism because -we cannot see them other than as he saw -them, and they come to us, almost, as remembered -sentences.</p> - -<p>“The Golden Book” takes its place in -“Marius” as a single touch in the portrait of -a time: a fragment, carefully chosen, of the -local colour of ideas. Just so Pater uses -details more minute. Irrelevant as they may -seem, to a careless observer, irrelevant as perhaps -they were before he had translated them, -they help in the painting of the mood of a -man, as that story in the painting of a mood -of the ancient world, in each case a mood of -Pater’s own, half borrowed from, half lent to, -man or world. This mutual creation is like -that which happens in the contemplation of a -work of art. It is criticism, and, even when<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">155</span> -Pater is not criticising what are known as -works of art, he is criticising not the world, -or a period or a man, but works of art he has -already made, privately, for himself. He used -“the finer sort of memory, bringing its object -to mind with a quiet clearness, yet, as sometimes -happens in dreams, raised a little above -itself, and above ordinary retrospect.” He -believed that criticism was a form of creation: -for him it was often a second stage of creation, -for he had given artistic form to his material -before, in contemplation of it, he began the -criticism that he offers us in its place. I do -not know that this is, accurately speaking, -possible, but it is at least a fable that very -fairly represents the process whereby, in -Pater’s books, life comes to seem at once so -ordered, so tapestried, so aloof and yet so -intimately known.</p> - -<p>I speak there of life in general, of the flux -without, a turmoil until it has been arrested -by one of those personal acts of artistic creation -which it is the function of art to make -more frequent, more habitual. The turbulent -nature of the flux itself is disguised alike in -his critical and his more obviously imaginative -work. For his critical essays tend always to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">156</span> -become imaginary portraits, no less than his -studies in Greek mythology. They are not -portraits of men as Pater believed them to be, -but reproductions of their aspect in sudden -side-lights that change them, specialise them, -and for those readers who are vainly looking -for a general view, simplify them a little too -far. But what sometimes seems to be the -reduction of a complex personality to a simple -formula—Michelangelo, for example, to the -repeated <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">ex forti dulcedo</i>—is not so intended. -It is rather the reduction of a personality to -the expression of a single mood. There is -warp and woof in Pater’s essays, and the -shuttle must thread parallel lines and not -a maze as it weaves what is meant less as the -portrait of a man than as the pattern of a -mood. Pater never sacrificed his own personality -to his nominal subject. He sacrificed -his sitter, not himself. Nothing is more -remarkable in <i>Marius the Epicurean</i> (where -it would have been easier to disclaim the -writer’s own time, to waive the centuries that -separated him from his supposed material) -than Pater’s resolute modernity. He will not -allow us to forget the distinction in circumstances -that makes so subtle the relation<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">157</span> -between subject and object. He will strip -off nothing that has been brought him by the -years between Marius and himself. Deliberately, -he sees Marius with eyes enriched by -those centuries, and, with the later knowledge -that can compare Apuleius to Swift or to -Théophile Gautier, takes pleasure in a reference -to Wilhelm Meister and remarks that -Marius thinks in the vein of St. Augustine. -And so, caring more for the point of view -from which he sees them than for the actual -objects, that can be seen a thousand ways, he -has no wish to “say the last word” on Lamb, -on Pico, on Sir Thomas Browne. He does -say it, however, on those men in those moods, -or, more truly, on the moods in which he saw -them. We often leave an essay of Pater’s -with a new appreciation of someone else; but -that is not because Pater has told us anything, -but because, in reproducing the mood -of his essay we have given ourselves a mood -in which that other, Botticelli, Ronsard, -Giorgione, can be more than usually significant.</p> - -<p>Thus, though it is as a critic that Pater -lives and will live, it is as a critic of a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">158</span> -kind that he may almost be said to have -invented. His criticism is aesthetic and personal. -Though compelled to offer a profusion -of theories, he is impatient of them, submits -himself to a work of art, and criticises that -work not by showing what he feels, but by a -reproduction of the mood which that work induces -in him. His criticism, always indirect, -is always creative, since the reproduction of a -mood, unlike the recording of opinions, is -itself a work of art. It has the validity of his -own temperament and circumstances, lyrical -as opposed to abstract truth. We can never -say of him that he was wrong, unless in the -theories that he could not avoid but considered -unimportant. We can only say that -he was different—from ourselves, from someone -else. We read this critic as we read a -poet, collaborating with him in the reproduction -of a mood, in the searching knowledge of -the fragment of life that was coloured for him -by this or that book or picture. The book or -picture becomes a secondary matter, and the -first is the rapid light, the weighty atmosphere -that he had made his own. After reading -him I remember his words on Montaigne:<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">159</span> -“A mind for which truth itself is but a possibility, -realisable not as a general conclusion, -but rather as the elusive effect of a particular -personal experience.”</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1912.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">161</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_161" class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">162</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">REMY DE GOURMONT</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">163</span></p> -<h2>REMY DE GOURMONT</h2> - -<h3>I</h3> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">M. de Gourmont</span> lives on the fourth floor of -an old house in the Rue des Saints-Pères. A -copper chain hangs as bell-rope to his door. -The rare visitor, for it is well known that for -many years he has been a solitary and seldom -receives even his friends, pulls the chain and -waits. The door opens a few inches, ready -to be closed immediately, by a man of middle -size, in a monk’s brown robe, with a small, -round, grey felt cap. The robe is fastened -with silver buckles, in which are set large -blue stones. The admitted visitor walks -through a passage into a room whose walls -are covered with books. In the shadow at -the back of the room is a loaded table. -Another table, with a sloping desk upon it, -juts out from the window. M. de Gourmont -sits in a big chair before the desk, placing -his visitor on the opposite side of the table,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">164</span> -with the light falling on his face so that he -can observe his slightest expression. In conversation -he often disguises his face with his -hand, but now and again looks openly and -directly at his visitor. His eyes are always -questioning, and almost always kindly. His -face was beautiful in the youth of the flesh, -and is now beautiful in the age of the mind, -for there is no dead line in it, no wrinkle, no -minute feature not vitalised by intellectual -activity. The nose is full and sensitive, with -markedly curved nostrils. There is a little -satiric beard. The eyebrows lift towards the -temples, as in most men of imagination. -The eyes are weighted below, as in most -men of critical thought. The two characteristics -are, in M. de Gourmont, as in his work, -most noticeable together. The lower lip, -very full, does not pout, but falls curtain-like -towards the chin. It is the lip of a sensualist, -and yet of one whose sensuality has not -clogged but stimulated the digestive processes -of his brain. Omar might have had such a -lip, if he had been capable not only of his -garlands of roses, but also of the essays of -Montaigne.</p> - -<p>He was born in a château in Normandy on<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">165</span> -4th April 1858. Among his ancestors was -Gilles de Gourmont, a learned printer and -engraver of the fifteenth century. He has -himself collected old woodcuts, and in -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">L’Ymagier</i> amused himself by setting the -most ancient specimens of the craft, among -which he is proud to show some examples -of the work of his family, side by side with -drawings by Whistler and Gauguin. He -came to Paris in 1883, when he obtained a -post in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Huysmans -was “sous-chef de bureau à la direction -de la Sûreté générale,” and M. de Gourmont, -who made his acquaintance through the -dedication of a book, used to call for him -between four and five of the afternoon, and -walk with him across the river to a café, -that has since disappeared, where he listened -to the older man’s rather savage characterisations -of men, women, movements and books. -A few years later he was held to be lacking -in patriotism, and relieved of his post on -account of an article urging the necessity of -Franco-German agreement. He wrote incessantly. -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Merlette</i>, a rather naïve and -awkward little novel, published in 1886, -did not promise the work he was to do.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">166</span> -It was no more than an exercise, well -done, but no more, the work of a good -brain as yet uncertain of its personal impulse. -But about this time he was caught in the -stream of a movement for which he had been -waiting, for which, indeed, the art of his -time had been waiting, the movement that -was introduced to English readers by Mr. -Arthur Symons’s admirable series of critical -portraits.<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> In 1890 he published <i>Sixtine</i>, -dedicated to Villiers de l’Isle Adam, who -had died the year before. In 1892 appeared -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Latin Mystique</i>, a book on the Latin -poets of the Middle Ages. He has always -been “a delicate amateur of the curiosities -of beauty,” though the character that Mr. -Symons gave him has since become very -inadequate. He edited Gérard de Nerval, -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Aucassin et Nicolette</i>, and Rutebeuf’s <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">La -Miracle de Théophile</i>, and wrote <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Lilith</i>, 1892, -and <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Théodat</i>, a dramatic poem in prose that -was produced by my friend M. Paul Fort -at the Théâtre d’Art on December 11th of -the same year. Several other curious works -of this period were united later in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Pèlerin -du Silence</i>. I extract from the bibliography<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">167</span> -by M. van Bever, printed in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Poètes d’aujourd’hui</i>, -a list of the more important books that -have followed these very various beginnings: -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Livre des Masques</i>, 1896; <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Les Chevaux -de Diomède</i>, 1897; <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le II<sup>me</sup> Livre des -Masques</i>, 1898; <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Esthétique de la langue -française</i>, 1899; <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">La Culture des Idées</i>, 1900; -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Chemin de Velours</i>, 1902; <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Problème -du Style</i>, 1902; <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Physique de l’Amour</i>, 1903; -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Une Nuit au Luxembourg</i>, 1906; besides -four volumes of literary and philosophical -criticism, and four volumes of comment -on contemporary events.</p> - -<p>All this mass of work is vitalised by a -single motive. Even the divisions of criticism -and creation (whose border line is very -dim) are made actually one by a desire -common to both of them, a desire not -expressed in them, but satisfied, a desire for -intellectual freedom. The motto for the -whole is written in <cite xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Une Nuit au Luxembourg</cite>: -“L’exercice de la pensée est un jeu, mais il -faut que ce jeu soit libre et harmonieux.” -I am reminded of this sentence again and -again in thinking of M. de Gourmont and -his books. There must be no loss of self-command, -none of the grimaces and the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">168</span> -awkward movements of the fanatic, the man -with whom thought plays. The thinker -must be superior to his thought. He must -make it his plaything instead of being sport -for it. His eyes must be clear, not hallucinated; -his arms his own, not swung with the -exaggerated gestures of the preacher moved -beyond himself by his own words. M. de -Gourmont seems less an artist than a man -determined to conquer his obsessions, working -them out one by one as they assail him, -in order to regain his freedom. It is a -fortunate accident that he works them out -by expressing them, twisting into garlands -the brambles that impede his way.</p> - -<h3>II</h3> - -<p>M. de Gourmont almost immediately left -the half-hearted realism of <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Merlette</i>, and, -just as in his scientific writings he is more -profoundly scientific than the men of science, -so in his works of this period he carried to -their uttermost limits the doctrines of the -symbolists. In his critical work the historian -must look for the manifestoes and polemics -of the group that gathered in Mallarmé’s -rooms in the Rue de Rome. The theories<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">169</span> -are in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Idéalisme</i>, published in 1893, and in -such essays as his defence of Mallarmé, -written in 1898, and included in the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Promenades -Littéraires</i>. Of their practice he supplies -plenty of examples. “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Nommer un -objet, c’est supprimer les trois quarts de la -jouissance du poème qui est faite du bonheur -de deviner peu à peu; le suggérer voilà le -rêve.</span>” Mallarmé wrote that in 1891, and -during the ’nineties Remy de Gourmont -was publishing mysterious little books of -poetry and prose, of which small limited -editions were issued on rare paper, in curious -covers, with lithographed decorations as reticent -as the writing. There is the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Histoire -tragique de la Princesse Phénissa expliquée -en quatre épisodes</i>, a play whose action -might be seen through seven veils, a play -whose motive, never stated directly, is, perhaps, -the destruction of the future for the -sake of the present. There is <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Fantôme</i>, -the story of a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">liaison</i> between a man and -a woman if you will, between the intellect -and the flesh if you will, that begins with -such an anthem as might have been sung -by some of those strange beings whom Poe -took “into the starry meadows beyond Orion,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">170</span> -where, for pansies and violets and heartsease, -are the beds of the triplicate and triple-tinted -suns.” The man—is it a man?—who -tells the story, ends with a regret for -something too real to be visible, something -that is seen because it is not visible: “Je -me sentais froid, j’avais peur—car je la -voyais, sans pouvoir m’opposer à cette transformation -doloureuse—je la voyais s’en aller -rejoindre le groupe des femmes indécises -d’où mon amour l’avait tirée—je la voyais -redevenir le fantôme qu’elles sont toutes.” -There is <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Livre des Litanies</i>, with its -elaborate incantation, from which I take the -beginning and end:</p> - -<div class="blockquot" xml:lang="fr" lang="fr"> - -<p>“Fleur hypocrite,</p> - -<p>“Fleur du silence.</p> - -<p>“Rose couleur de cuivre, plus frauduleuse que nos joies, -rose couleur de cuivre, embaume-nous dans tes mensonges, -fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.</p> - -<div class="tb">* * * * *</div> - -<p>“Rose améthyste, étoile matinale, tendresse épiscopale, -rose améthyste, tu dors sur des poitrines dévotes et -douillettes, gemme offerte à Marie, ô gemme sacristine, -fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.</p> - -<p>“Rose cardinale, rose couleur du sang de l’Eglise -romaine, rose cardinale, tu fais rêver les grands yeux des -mignons et plus d’un t’épingla au nœud de sa jarretière, -fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">171</span></p> - -<p>“Rose papale, rose arrosée des mains qui bénissent le -monde, rose papale, ton cœur d’or est en cuivre, et les -larmes qui perlent sur ta vaine corolle, ce sont les pleurs -du Christ, fleur hypocrite, fleur du silence.</p> - -<p>“Fleur hypocrite,</p> - -<p>“Fleur du silence.”</p> -</div> - -<h3>III</h3> - -<p>These, and other things like them, made -it possible for M. de Gourmont to proceed -in the discovery of himself. He drank his -mood to the dregs, leaving no untried experiment -to clog his mind with a regret as he -moved on. “I have always been excessive,” -he says; “I do not like to stop half-way.” -He follows each impulse as far as it will -take him, lest, by chance, he should leave -some flower untasted in a bypath he has -seen but not explored. Unlike most authors, -he never has to copy himself, and does not -feel bound, because he has written one book -whose prose is malachite green, to produce -another of the same colour. “Un artiste,” -said Wilde, “ne recommence jamais deux -fois la même chose ... ou bien c’est qu’il -n’avait pas réussi.” The surest way to fail -in an experiment is to make it with a faint -heart. M. de Gourmont always burns his boats.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">172</span></p> - -<p>Some preoccupations, however boldly attacked, -are not to be conquered at a blow. -The preoccupation of sex is unlike that of -a theory of art. Conquered again and again -by expression, it returns with a new face, -a new mystery, a new power of building -the intellect, a new Gorgon to be seen in -the mirror of art and decapitated. As the -man changes so does Medusa vary her attack, -and so must he vary the manner of her death. -Now he will write a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Physique de l’Amour</i>, -and, like Schopenhauer, relieve himself of -the problem of sex by reducing it to its -lowest terms. Now he will conquer it by -the lyrical and concrete expression of a -novel or a poem. Sex continually disturbs -him, but the disturbance of the flesh is -always, sooner or later, pacified by the -mind. All his later novels are, like <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Sixtine</i>, -“romans de la vie cérébrale.” <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Sixtine</i> is -the story of a writer’s courtship of a woman -no more subtle than himself, but far more -ready with her subtlety. It displays the -workings of a man’s mind and the states -of emotion through which he passes, by -including in the text, as they were written, -the stories and poems composed under the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">173</span> -influence of the events. The man is intensely -analytic, afterwards. Emotion blurs -the windows of his brain, and cleans hers -to a greater lucidity. He always knows -what he ought to have done. “Nul n’avait -à un plus haut degré la présence d’esprit -du bas de l’escalier.” More than once the -woman was his, if he had known it before -he left her. Finally, she is carried off by -a rival whose method he has himself suggested. -The book is a tragedy of self-consciousness, -whose self-conscious heroine -is a prize for the only man who is ignorant -of himself, and, in the blindness of that -ignorance, is able to act. But there is no -need to analyse the frameworks of M. de -Gourmont’s novels. Frameworks matter very -little. They are all vitalised by an almost -impatient knowledge of the subtlety of a -woman’s mind in moments of pursuit or -flight, and the impotence of a man whose -brain seeks to be an honest mediator -between itself and his flesh. His men do -not love like the heroes of ordinary books, -and are not in the least likely to suggest -impossible ideals to maidens. They are -unfaithful in the flesh nearly always. They<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">174</span> -use one experience as an anaesthetic for the -pain they are undergoing in another. They -seek to be masters of themselves by knowledge, -and are unhappy without thinking of -suicide on that account. Unhappiness no -less than joy is a thing to be known. They -fail, not getting what they want, and are -victorious in understanding, with smiling -lips, their non-success.</p> - -<h3>IV</h3> - -<p>One afternoon, in the Rue des Saints-Pères, -M. de Gourmont confirmed the impression -already given me by his books and -his eyebrows. “I have always been both -<em>romanesque</em> and <em>critique</em>.” Side by side he -has built separate piles of books. While -writing the curiosities of symbolism that are -collected in <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Pèlerin du Silence</i>, he was -preparing the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Livres des Masques</i>, two series -of short critical portraits of the writers of -his time, which, in the case of those who -survive, are as true to-day as when they -were written. It has been so throughout. -In the one pile are little volumes of poetry -like <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Les Saintes du Paradis</i>, and such -romances as those we have been discussing;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">175</span> -in the other are works of science like the -<i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Physique de l’Amour</i>, books benevolently -polemical like <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Problème du Style</i>, and -collections of criticism in which an agile -intelligence collaborates with a wakeful -sense of beauty.</p> - -<p>In this critical work, as in what is more -easily recognised as creative, M. de Gourmont -builds for freedom. He will be bound -neither by his own preoccupations nor by -other men’s thoughts. It is characteristic -of him that his most personal essays in -criticism are “Dissociations of Ideas.” The -dissociation of ideas is a method of thought -that separates the ideas put into double -harness by tradition, just as the chemist -turns water into hydrogen and oxygen, with -which, severally, he can make other compounds. -This, like most questions of thought, -is a question of words. Words are the -liberators of ideas, since without them ideas -cannot escape from the flux of feeling into -independent life. They are also their gaolers, -since they are terribly cohesive, and married -words cling together, binding in a lover’s -knot the ideas they represent. All men -using words in combination abet these marriages,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">176</span> -though in doing so they are making -bars of iron for the prisons in which they -speculate on the torn fragment of sky that -their window lets them perceive. Nothing -is easier than, by taking words and their -associations as they are commonly used, -to strengthen the adherence of ideas to -each other. Nothing needs a more awakened -intelligence than to weaken the bonds of such -ideas by separating the words that bind them. -That is the method of M. de Gourmont. He -separates, for example, the idea of Stéphane -Mallarmé and that of “decadence,” the idea -of glory and that of immortality, the idea of -success and that of beauty. It is, too, a -dissociation of ideas when he inquires into -the value of education, these two ideas of -worth and knowledge being commonly allied. -The method, or rather the consciousness of -the method, is fruitful in material for discussion, -though this advantage cannot weigh -much with M. de Gourmont, whose brain -lacks neither motive power nor grist to grind. -It is, for him, no more than a recurrent -cleaning of the glasses through which he -looks at the subjects of his speculation.</p> - -<p>He speculates continually, and, if questions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">177</span> -are insoluble, is not content until he has so -posed them as to show the reason of their -insolubility. He prefers a calm question -mark to the more emotional mark of exclamation, -and is always happy when he can -turn the second into the first. He is extraordinarily -thorough, moving always in mass -and taking everything with him, so that he -has no footsteps to retrace in order to pick -up baggage left behind. Unlike Theseus, he -unrolls no clue of thread when he enters the -cavern of Minotaur. He will come out by -a different way or not at all. The most -powerful Minotaur of our day does not -dismay him. Confident in his own probity, -he will walk calmly among the men of -science and bring an <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Esthétique de la langue -française</i>, or a <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Physique de l’Amour</i>, meat -of unaccustomed richness, to lay before their -husk-fed deity.</p> - -<p>In criticism, as in creation, he does not -like things half-done. The story of the -origin of one of these books is the story of -them all. There is a foolish little work by -M. Albalat, which professes to teach style -in twenty-seven lessons. M. de Gourmont -read it and smiled; he wrote an article,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">178</span> -and still found something to smile at; he -wrote a book, <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Le Problème du Style</i>, in -which, mocking M. Albalat through a hundred -and fifty-two courteous pages, he showed, -besides many other things, that style is not -to be taught in twenty-seven lessons, and, -indeed, is not to be taught at all. Then -he felt free to smile at something else.</p> - -<p>M. de Gourmont is careful to say that he -brought to the <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Esthétique de la langue -française</i>, “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">ni lois, ni règles, ni principes -peut-être; je n’apporte rien qu’un sentiment -esthétique assez violent et quelques notions -historiques: voilà ce que je jette au hasard -dans la grande cuve où fermente la langue -de demain.</span>” An aesthetic feeling and some -historical notions were sufficiently needed in -the fermenting vat where the old French -language, in which there is hardly any -Greek, is being horribly adulterated with -brainless translations of good French made -by Hellenists of the dictionary. M. de -Gourmont is in love with his language, but -knows that she is rather vain and ready to -wear all kinds of borrowed plumes, whether -or not they suit her. He would take from -her her imitation ostrich feathers, and would<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">179</span> -hide also all ribbons from the London market, -unless she first dye them until they fall -without discord into the scheme of colour -that centuries have made her own. Why -write “high life,” for example, or “five -o’clock,” or “sleeping”? Why shock French -and English alike by writing “Le Club de -Rugby” on a gate in Tours? A kingfisher -in England flies very happily as martin-pêcheur -in France, and the language is not -so sterile as to be unable to breed words -from its own stock for whatever needs a -name.</p> - -<p><i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Physique de l’Amour; Essai sur l’instinct -sexuel</i>, “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">qui n’est qu’un essai, parce que la -matière de son idée est immense, représente -pourtant une ambition: on voudrait agrandir -la psychologie générale de l’amour, la faire -commencer au commencement même de -l’activité mâle et femelle, situer la vie sexuelle -de l’homme dans le plan unique de la -sexualité universelle.</span>” It is a book full of -illustration, a vast collection of facts, and -throws into another fermenting vat than that -of language some sufficiently valuable ideas. -It lessens the pride of man, and, at the -same time, gives him a desperate courage,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">180</span> -as it shows him that even in the eccentricities -of his love-making he is not alone, that -the modesty of his women is a faint hesitation -beside the terrified flight of the she-mole, -that his own superiority is but an -accident, and that he must hold himself -fortunate in that nature does not treat him -like the male bee, and toss his mangled -body disdainfully to earth as soon as he -has done her work. M. de Gourmont’s -books do not flatter humanity. They clear -the eyes of the strong, and anger the weak -who cannot bear to listen to unpalatable -truths.</p> - -<h3>V</h3> - -<p>M. de Gourmont’s most obvious quality -is versatility, and though, as I have tried -to point out, it is not difficult to find a -unity of cause or intention in his most -various expressions, his lofty and careless -pursuit of his inclinations, his life of thought -for its own sake, has probably cost him a -wide and immediate recognition. That loss -is not his, but is borne by those who depend -for their reading on the names that float -upward from the crowd. Even his admirers<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">181</span> -complain: some that he has not given them -more poems; others that his <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Physique de -l’Amour</i> stands alone on its shelf; others -that a critic such as he should have spent -time on romances; others, again, that a -writer of such romances should have used -any of his magnificent power in what they -cannot see to be creative work. M. de -Gourmont is indifferent to all alike, and sits -aloft in the Rue des Saints-Pères, indulging -his mind with free and harmonious play.</p> - -<p>In one of his books, far more than in the -others, two at least of his apparently opposite -activities have come to work in unison. All -his romances, after and including <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Sixtine</i>, -are vitalised by a never-sleeping intellect; -but one in particular is a book whose essence -is both critical and romantic, a book of -thought coloured like a poem and moving -with a delicate grace of narrative. <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Une Nuit -au Luxembourg</i><a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> was published in 1906, and -is the book that opens most vistas in -M. de Gourmont’s work. A god walks in -the gardens behind the Odéon, and a winter’s -night is a summer’s morning, on which the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">182</span> -young journalist who has dared to say “My -friend” to the luminous unknown in the -church of Saint-Sulpice, hears him proclaim -the forgotten truth that in one age his -mother has been Mary, and in another -Latona, and the new truth that the gods -are not immortal though their lives are -long. Flowers are in bloom where they -walk, and three beautiful girls greet them -with divine amity. Most of the book is -written in dialogue, and in this ancient form, -never filled with subtler essences, doubts are -born and become beliefs, beliefs become -doubts and die, while the sun shines, flowers -are sweet, and girls’ lips soft to kiss. Where -there is God he will not have Love absent, -and where Love is he finds the most stimulating -exercise for his brain. Ideas not new but -gathered from all the philosophers are given -an aesthetic rather than a scientific value, and -are used like the tints on a palette. Indeed, -the book is a balanced composition in which -each colour has its complement. Epicurus, -Lucretius, St. Paul, Christianity, the replenishment -of the earth by the Jews; it is -impossible to close the book at any page -without finding the mind as it were upon<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">183</span> -a springboard and ready to launch itself in -delightful flight. There are many books -that give a specious sensation of intellectual -business while we read them. There are -very few that leave, long after they are laid -aside, stimuli to independent activity.</p> - -<h3>VI</h3> - -<p><span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">“Il ne faut pas chercher la vérité; mais -devant un homme comprendre quelle est sa -vérité.</span>” We must not seek in a man’s work -for the truth, since there are as many truths -as brains; but it is worth while to define an -answer here and an answer there out of the -many. What is the answer of Remy de -Gourmont? <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Quelle est sa vérité?</i> Of what -kind is his truth? Does he bring rosemary -for remembrance or poppy for oblivion? Not -in what he says, but in the point from which -he says it, we must look for our indications. -His life, like <i xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Sixtine</i>, is a “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">roman de la vie -cérébrale</span>.” It is the spectacle of a man -whose conquests are won by understanding. -For him the escape of mysticism was inadequate, -and an invitation to cowardice. -He would not abdicate, but, since those<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">184</span> -empires are unstable whose boundaries are -fixed, conquer continually. The conquests -of the mind are not won by neglect. It is -not sufficient to refuse to see. The conqueror -must see so clearly that life blushes before -his sober eyes, and, understood, no longer -dominates. Remy de Gourmont has suffered -and conquered his suffering in understanding -it. He would extend this dominion. He -would realise all that happens to him, books, -a chance visitor, a meeting in the street, the -liquid bars of light across the muddy Seine. -He would transmute all into the mercurial -matter of thought, until, at last impregnable, -he should see life from above, having trained -his digestive powers to the same perfection -as his powers of reception. Although one of -the Symbolists, he has moved far from the -starting-point assigned to that school by Mr. -Symons. His books are not “escapes from -the thought of death.” The thought of -death is to him like any other thought, a -rude playfellow to be mastered and trained -to fitness for that free and harmonious game. -The life of the brain, the noblest of all -battles, that of a mind against the universe -which it creates, has come to seem more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">185</span> -important to him than the curiosities of -beauty of which he was once enamoured. -It has, perhaps, made him more of a thinker -than an artist. In his desire to conquer his -obsessions he has sometimes lost sight of the -unity that is essential to art, a happy accident -in thought. His later books have been the -by-products of a more intimate labour. He -has left them by the road whose end he has -not hoped to reach, whose pursuit suffices -him. They wake in the reader a desire -which has nothing to do with art. This -desire—a desire for intellectual honesty—and -with that, perhaps, for intellectual gaiety, is -the characteristic gift of his work. It is -never offered alone. He accompanies it -with criticism, with witty epilogues, serious -dissertations, and licentious little stories; -but it is not so much for the sake of these -things as for the stimulus of that desire -that we turn, and seldom in vain, to M. de -Gourmont’s books.</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1911.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">187</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_187" class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">188</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">THE POETRY OF YONE -NOGUCHI</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">189</span></p> -<h2>THE POETRY OF YONE -NOGUCHI</h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">So-shi,</span> a Chinese philosopher, dreamed that -he was a butterfly, and, in the moment of -waking, asked himself: “Are you So-shi -who has dreamed that he was a butterfly, or -are you a butterfly who is dreaming that he -is So-shi?” That question is continually -repeated in the works of Yone Noguchi, who -seems, indeed, to have the freedom of two -worlds, and to find reality as often in one as -in the other. Noguchi is for ever in doubt of -his own existence, suspicious of appearances, -and searching for the reality in things -beyond touch or description. “My soul,” -he writes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“My soul, like a chilly winged fly, roams about the sadness-walled body, hunting for a casement to fly out.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lo, suddenly, an inspired bird flies upright into the atom-eyed sky!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Alas, his reflection sinks far down into the mileless bottom of the mirrory rivulet!</div><span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">190</span> - <div class="verse indent0">Is this world the solid being?—or a shadowy nothing?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Is the form that flies up the real bird? or the figure that sinks down?”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“The world is not my residence to the end!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Alas, the moon has lost her way, harassed among the leaf-fellows on the darkling hill-top!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Isn’t there chance for my flying out?”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">The world is not too much with this poet of -Japan who writes in our language, and it is -interesting to compare this symbolist of a -nation of conscious symbolists with the few -men who in France and England have turned -an unconscious but almost universal practice -into a theory of poetry.<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">12</a></p> - -<p>But I must not, in my care for his work, -pretend that the poet is the immaterial -floating fairy that he almost seems to be.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">191</span> -“I have cast the world,” he says, “and -think me as nothing,</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Yet I feel cold on snow-falling day,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And happy on flower day.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Let me, before saying more, set down such -facts as I know about his physical existence.</p> - -<p>Yone Noguchi was born in Japan about -1876. He was in America before he was -twenty, and, in company with a few other -Japanese students, suffered extreme poverty, -and the starvation which those who have not -tried it consider so efficacious a stimulant -to the soul. He made some friends among -American writers, and stayed for a time with -Joaquin Miller. In 1897 he published <i>Seen -and Unseen: or Monologues of a Homeless -Snail</i>, and in the next year <i>The Voice of the -Valley</i>, a little book inspired by a stay in the -Yosemite. In 1902 he came to England, -and lived with Mr. Yoshio Markino (who had -not then realised himself and London in his -water-colours) in poor lodgings in the Brixton -Road. From these lodgings he issued a -sixteen-page pamphlet of verse printed on -brown paper, which drew such notice that -the Unicorn Press (an unfortunate little firm<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">192</span> -that published some very good books, some -bad ones, and died) produced a volume, -called, like the pamphlet, <i>From the Eastern -Sea</i>, and containing, besides those sixteen -pages of poetry, other verses from the -American books and a number of new -pieces. The cover of this edition was designed -by Mr. Yoshio Markino. I knew -Noguchi at this time, and often walked -with him along the Embankment in the -evenings, or under those “lamp-lights of -web-like streets bathed in the opiate mists,” -that he and Yoshio Markino have used so -delicately in their several arts. I remember -him as a small man, though perhaps not -noticeably small by Japanese standards, with -black hair less orderly and geometrical in -growth than most Japanese hair, and a face -of extraordinary sensitiveness, high-browed -but with broadly set eyes, and a mouth like -a woman’s, like that of a woman controlling -some almost tearful emotion. Even in the -handling of a cigarette, whose end he stripped -of its paper so that the tobacco might serve -in the making of another (we were almost -penniless in those days), there was a delicacy -that made it impossible not to recognise that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">193</span> -he was a man who lived more finely than -most. His conversations were of poetry, of -the principles of the particular poetry he held -that it was his to write, and of the works of -those English poets he had read. “I hate -your Longfellow,” he said, “and I love your -Keats,” and in contrasting the two he was, -perhaps, defining to himself an important -tendency of his own.</p> - -<p>He left London in 1903, and went to New -York and then to Japan. He had some -difficulties there, difficulties, I believe, of -misunderstanding on the part of his own -countrymen. He crossed to the mainland -and travelled in China for a year, and -perhaps longer. In 1906 he published <i>The -Summer Cloud</i> in Tokio, and, in June last -year, he sent me a two-volume book in a blue -case with small ivory fastenings, printed by -the Valley Press in Kamakura. This book, -<i>The Pilgrimage</i>, has been issued in England -by Mr. Elkin Mathews.</p> - -<p>These five books do not contain a large -body of verse, but they contain verse whose -interest for us is not concentrated in the -nationality of the writer. The title of the -brown-paper pamphlet published in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">194</span> -Brixton Road is <i>From the Eastern Sea</i>, “by -Yone Noguchi (<i>Japanese</i>),” but though that -word aroused a careless curiosity, the curiosity -was turned into something more valuable by -qualities less incidental. The imagery of -Noguchi’s verse is Japanese in feeling, just -as the imagery in Synge’s plays is Irish, -and that of Verlaine’s poetry French, but the -imagery in any one of these three cases would -have been worthless if the man who used it -had been merely Japanese, Irish, or French, -and not a man of genius with the gift of -setting words free with living breath. Our -concern is not with the nationality of this -writer, but with his conception of the poet, -and with his poetry.</p> - -<p>Noguchi wrote his first book in 1896, -and so had not read Mr. Arthur Symons’ -<i>The Symbolist Movement in Literature</i>, which -was issued three years later. He would have -found there an account of poets not unlike -himself, and of a poetry nearer than Keats’ to -his own, and further removed than Keats’ -from that of the hated Longfellow.</p> - -<p>Symons, writing of Verlaine, says: “Is -not his whole art a delicate waiting upon -moods, with that perfect confidence in them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">195</span> -as they are, which is a large part of ordinary -education to discourage in us, and a large -part of experience to repress? But to Verlaine, -happily, experience taught nothing; or -rather it taught him only to cling the more -closely to those moods in whose succession -lies the more intimate part of our spiritual -life.” Noguchi lives almost continuously in -those moods; experience with him is momentary -rather than cumulative; and his aim, -expressed more than once in his verse, is -only to keep himself a vessel as clear as -possible for the unsullied transference of -those moments from the bowl of life to -that of art. It will not be difficult to make -from his verses a portrait of his ideal poet, -and, in writing of a man not yet very widely -known, I believe I shall best be doing my -duty by him in quoting his own words as -often as I can. In <cite>The Poet</cite> he says:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“The roses live by the eating of their own beauty and then die.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">His song is the funeral chant for his own death of every moment.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">And again, of himself:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“I sing the song of my heart-strings, alone in the eternal muteness, in the face of God.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> -<p class="in0"><span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">196</span></p> -<p>And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“The God-beloved man welcomes, respects as an honoured guest, his own soul and body in his solitude.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lo! the roses under the night dress themselves in silence, and expect no mortal applaud—content with that of their voiceless God.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“O, wash me and wash me again with thy light,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And burn my body to a flame of soul!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It is this moment that I conquer the intervention of flesh,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And its rebellions that worked in me at unexpected time.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">It’s not too much to say I am a revelation or a wonder,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Winging as a falcon into the breast of loveliness and air.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">And again:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent13">“... What a bird</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dreams in the moonlight is my dream,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What a rose sings is my song.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">“O, to lose the world and gain a song,” he -cries, and then, “I am glad to be no-man -to-day, with the laughter and dance of the -sea soul.” His thoughts fall like leaves in -autumn “on the snowy cheeks of his paper.” -His is the poetry of self-abnegation, of identification<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">197</span> -of himself with the world. His -soul dances “on the silver strings” of the -rain. “We,” he sings, are “happy to be -biographers of each other, I and a bird.” -He flies himself as a kite, to be lifted or -let fall by the winds that do not move at -all those whose pride is in their sage and -measured footsteps on the ground.</p> - -<p>In the last of his volumes there are a few -specimens of Japanese seventeen-syllabled -verse, <em>hokku</em>, and in a note Noguchi writes -that such a poem “in Japanese mind, might -be compared with a tiny star, I dare say, -carrying the whole sky at its back. It is -like a slightly open door, where you may -steal into the realm of poesy. Its value -depends on how much it suggests. The -Hokku poet’s chief aim is to impress the -reader with the high atmosphere in which -he is living.” The Hokku poet, like Noguchi, -never writes of the thing about which he is -writing. The emotions he wishes to express -are too subtle for description in words, and -can only be written of in the spaces between -the lines, just as between the petals of a -flower we may find dreams that the flower -has never known, and the suggestions of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">198</span> -something less ponderable than the earth -in which it had its roots. An example of -Hokku poetry will illustrate the method of -all Noguchi’s:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Where the flowers sleep,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Thank God! I shall sleep to-night.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Oh, come, butterfly.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">That is valuable as a talisman rather than as -a picture. It is a pearl to be dissolved in -the wine of a mood. Pearls are not wine, -nor in themselves to be thought of as drink, -but there is a kind of magic in the wine -in which they are dissolved.</p> - -<p>In Noguchi’s poems there is the co-operation -between silence and speech of which -Carlyle was thinking when he wrote: “In -a Symbol there is concealment and yet -revelation: here therefore by Silence and -Speech acting together, comes a double -significance. And if both the Speech be -itself high, and the Silence fit and noble, -how expressive will their union be!” In -many poems of the French symbolists the -Speech is almost meaningless, except in the -Silence that is covered by its melody. In -Noguchi both Speech and Silence are full<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">199</span> -of a charm that we can scarcely find in life -but in fortunate rare moods. He writes:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“I am stirring the waves of Reverie with my meaningless but wisdom-wreathed syllables.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">But he is incapable of denying his own -charm to the carefully-worded accompaniment -of the Silence with which he is really -concerned. He sees the world with eyes too -guileless not to make it alive, even when -using it as an invocation. He sees ideas -too clearly not to make them, even in a -spell, independently vivid for his listeners. -For an example of the one take this -picture:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Alas, the mother cow, with matron eyes, utters her bitter heart, kidnapped of her children by the curling gossamer mist!”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">For an example of the other, this idea:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“The Universe, too, has somewhere its shadow; but what about my songs?</div> - <div class="verse indent0">An there be no shadow, no echoing to the end—my broken-throated lute will never again be made whole.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>He is a poet whose flame has been so -scrupulously tended as to flicker with the -slightest breath. He is as many-mooded as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">200</span> -the combinations between sunshine and -shadow. His poetry actually <em>is</em> the thing -that has induced a mood in him, trimmed -of all that he has had to remove for himself, -and so made into something between -nature and that pure elevation of mind -from which Noguchi feels. This quality of -pale flame-like emotion is common to all -his poems, extraordinarily various as they -are.</p> - -<p>Sometimes he speaks with grandeur, as -in these lines:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“When I am lost in the deep body of the mist on a hill,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The universe seems built with me as its pillar!</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Am I the God upon the face of the deep, nay deepless deepness in the beginning?”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Sometimes wistfully:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Alas! my soul is like a paper lantern, its paste wetted off under the rain.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><em>My love, wilt thou not come back to-night?</em></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Lo, the snail at my door stealthily hides his horns.</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><em>Oh, put forth thy honourable horns for my sake!</em></div> - <div class="verse indent0"><em>Where is Truth? Where is Light?</em>”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">Sometimes questioning:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“My poetry begins with the tireless songs of the cricket, on the lean grey-haired hill, in sober-faced evening.</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And the next page is Stillness——</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And what then, about the next to that?</div> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">201</span></p> - <div class="verse indent0">Alas, the God puts his universe-covering hand over its sheets!</div> - <div class="verse indent0"><em>Master, take off your hand for the humble servant!</em></div> - <div class="verse indent0">Asked in vain:——</div> - <div class="verse indent0">How long for my meditation?”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p>But it is impossible with the quotations -permissible in an article to give an adequate -presentment of a poet whose poems are so -separate that a hundred of them do not -suffice for his expression. Noguchi has, like -Verlaine, escaped the wisdom of experience; -his latest moods are as sky-clear as his first, -different though they are in technique and -in feeling. Each one of them is a glint of -light from a diamond; it is impossible, but -in seeing innumerable glints together, satisfactorily -to perceive the diamond itself.</p> - -<p>Noguchi’s technique is his own, though -it would be possible to find in reminiscent -phrases suggestions of influence. A man -using English words with something of the -surprising daring of the Irish peasants on -whose talk Mr. Synge modelled his prose, -using them, too, like a foreigner who has -fallen in love with them, he is able to give -them a morning freshness newer and stranger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">202</span> -than is given them (though the words of all -fine writers are newly discovered) by men -whose ancestors have bandied them about. -He uses them in short and long lines that, -in his later books, learn more and more of -rhythm. Rhyme he has not attempted, and it -would, I think, have hampered the butterfly-flash -of his verse from thought to thought. -In <i>The Summer Cloud</i> many of the poems of -his early books are altered to prose simply -by the plan of their printing. The type is -differently set on the page and they are -called prose poems. I do not know what -led Noguchi to make this experiment, but -it proved that the irregular, broken lines in -which his poems were originally published -had a real power over the effect the words -produced. The spaces between the lines -were a kind of thought punctuation, and -the mind needed these moments between -the little, breathless, scarcely-worded sighs -that make his poems. In reading them -aloud it becomes clear that the ritual of -the line-spacing was more important than -that of commas or full-stops. Noguchi’s -songs are like bird flights, timing themselves -with the pulse of the mind that follows<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">203</span> -them. His ideal is a poetry of pure -suggestion whose melody shall be of thought, -capricious and uncertain as the mind, but -only with the mind’s caprice, the mind’s uncertainty. -The following poem was printed -as prose in <i>The Summer Cloud</i>, and as it -stands here in <cite>The Pilgrimage</cite>.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Little Fairy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Little Fairy by a hearth,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Flight in thine eyes,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Hush on thy feet,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall I go with thee up to Heaven</div> - <div class="verse indent0">By the road of the fire-flame?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Little Fairy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Little Fairy by a river,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dance in thy heart,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Longing at thy lips,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall I go down with thee to “Far-Away,”</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Rolling over the singing bubbles?</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Little Fairy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Little Fairy by a poppy,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Dream in thy hair,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Solitude under thy wings,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Shall I sleep with thee to-night in the golden cup</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Under the stars?”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">It is easy, in reading it aloud, to recognise -that its form is not accidental, but follows,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">204</span> -breath for breath, the movements of the -mind.</p> - -<p>But who shall analyse charm, or separate -the tints of the opal? In writing of Noguchi, -I am writing of something that can only -be defined by itself. I can only take shred -after shred from the cloak of gossamer he -has woven for himself, and only hope in -doing so to persuade other readers to buy -his books and find for themselves a hundred -shreds as beautiful as these. The frontispiece -to <i>The Pilgrimage</i> is a reproduction -of a drawing by Utamaru, a thing of four -pale colours and a splash of black, and made -as light as wind by curves as subtle and as -indefinable as those traced by worshipping -stars round the object of their adoration. -I had forgotten that it is the picture of a -girl, and that fact is, indeed, as immaterial -as the titles of Noguchi’s poems. In looking -at it, I forget not only its subject, but the -book in which it is, for this art, of poet -or painter, Verlaine, Noguchi, Utamaru, -Whistler, frees us, infecting us with its own -freedom, from the world which is too much -with us, for the exploration of that other -world of dream which, unless we, too, are<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">205</span> -children, is with us so fitfully, and so -seldom.</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Beckoned by an appointed hand, unseen yet sure, in holy air</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We wander as a wind, silver and free,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">With one song in heart, we, the children of prayer.</div> - </div> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indent0">Our song is not of a city’s fall;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">No laughter of a kingdom bids our feet wait;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Our heart is away, with sun, wind, and rain:</div> - <div class="verse indent0">We, the shadowy roamers on the holy highway.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="pubdate">1909.</p> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">207</span></p> - -<hr /> - -<div id="toclink_207" class="chapter"> -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">208</span></p> -<h2 class="nobreak">KINETIC AND POTENTIAL -SPEECH</h2> -</div> - -<hr class="narrow" /> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">209</span></p> -<h2>KINETIC AND POTENTIAL -SPEECH</h2> - -<p class="in0"><span class="firstword">Definitions,</span> like mythologies, wear out. It -is then important to replace them. Aladdin’s -wife had a choice, but we have none. We -must change our old lamps for new, or sit -in the dark. A natural philosopher who -retained the mythological definition of thunder -could not speak of lightning to young men -who had learnt of electricity without an air -of irrelevance of which he might be quite -unconscious. Not so his listeners, who -would brush his explanations impatiently -aside as soon as they knew the beliefs on -which he based them. Whenever historians -or critics seem irrelevant, we are safe in -assuming a difference between their definitions -and our own. When they seem irrelevant -to many people beside ourselves, we -can go further and assume that their definitions -are either worn out or not yet accepted.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">210</span> -Sometimes, of course, they are without definitions -either old or new, but then they -need not trouble us, for they disappear like -cuttle-fishes in the darkness of their own ink. -There is at the present day a widespread -dissatisfaction with historians of literature. -It is impossible not to feel that their dicta -do not matter, that their sense of perspective -is wrong or uncertain, that their books are -of no use to us except as bibliographies. A -new definition of literature is needed, that -shall give them some scale, some standard to -which they can refer. For without such -standard or scale, they can do no more than -gossip, or judge poetry by its passion, by -its sense, by its smoothness, or by any other -half-remembered scrap from a definition that -is no longer adequate.</p> - -<p>If we would get rid of these irrelevancies, -and write histories of literature that shall -deal with the matter of which they propose -to treat, we must find a new standard of -values, and to find that we must make a -new definition. We must have a statement -of the nature of literature applicable not to -the books of one nation of one time only, -but to those of all nations and of all times.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">211</span> -It must supply us with terms in which we -can state the aims of widely different schools -and writers, with regard to their medium and -not to any accidental quality. If it is to -do that we must escape from the prejudices -of our own time (which may be invisible to -us) by seeking our formula in a definition -of the medium common to all writers, a -statement of the function of words in combination.</p> - -<p>To make such a statement I have borrowed -two epithets from the terminology of physical -science. Energy is described by physicists -as kinetic and potential. Kinetic energy is -force actually exerted. Potential energy is -force that a body is in a position to exert. -Applying these terms to language, without -attempting too strict an analogy, I wish to -define literature, or rather the medium of -literature, as a combination of kinetic with -potential speech. In this combination the -two are coincident. There is no such thing -in literature as speech purely kinetic or -purely potential. Purely kinetic speech is -prose, not good prose, not literature, but -colourless prose, prose without atmosphere, -the sort of prose that M. Jourdain discovered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">212</span> -he had been speaking all his life. It says -things. An example of purely potential -speech may be found in music. I do not -think it can be made with words, though -we can give our minds a taste of it in -listening to a meaningless but narcotic incantation, -or a poem in a language that we -do not understand. The proportion between -kinetic and potential speech and the energy -of the combination varies with different works -and the literature of different ages. There is -no literature to which it is impossible to -apply the formula. Let us try to clarify it -by example and particularisation.</p> - -<p>It may be asked, what of ballad poetry in -which there is much so stated as to approach -purely kinetic speech? Does not the admitted -power of a sea-song, a song whose -words are utterly trivial, disprove our assertion? -It does not; for to such songs or -chanties the music to which they are sung -has given a quality of potential speech, -without which they would be worthless and -speedily forgotten. In that case the words -and the melody respectively represent kinetic -and potential speech. It has been very -truly said that a prima-donna can turn the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">213</span> -alphabet to poetry by the emotional power -of her voice.</p> - -<p>It may further be asked by any one who -has not clearly apprehended my meaning (and -this would be more than excusable), Do I -mean to suggest that literature is not literature -unless it contains a double meaning? -and, if so, do I not find in allegory the most -perfect example of the simultaneous existence -of kinetic and potential speech? This would -indeed be a <i xml:lang="la" lang="la">reductio ad absurdum</i>. I must -answer, that allegory (though it may represent -the result of an early guess at the nature -of art) is not necessarily poetry. There -is, indeed, a gross and obvious duality of -meaning in such a work as <i>The Faërie -Queene</i>. The tale written on the paper -enables us to reconstruct another. But that -other might have been written with no -greater difficulty. It does not aid, and may -clog with external preoccupations, the tale -that we sit down to read. It is an impertinent -shadow, a dog that keeps too closely -at our heels. Hazlitt rebukes those who -think that the allegory of <i>The Faërie Queene</i> -will bite them. We are more afraid that it -will lick our hands, and all we ask is, that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">214</span> -it will allow itself to be forgotten. An -acrostic sonnet may be a good sonnet, but -we are not likely to perceive its excellence -if we are intent upon the initial letters of -the lines. No; allegory may be a rude -attempt to copy in things said the duality -of poetic speech. The old delight in conscious -allegory may be comparable to the -modern delight in conscious symbolism. But -we must not forget for a moment that the -resemblance is only one of analogy. When -Spenser writes of Mammon’s cave:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Both roof, and floor, and walls were all of gold</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But overgrown with rust and old decay,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">And hid in darkness that none could behold</div> - <div class="verse indent0">The hue thereof; for view of cheerful day</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Did never in that house itself display,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">But a faint shadow of uncertain light;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Such as a lamp whose life doth fade away;</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Or as the moon clothéd with cloudy night,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Does show to him that walks in fear and sad affright.”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">When he writes thus, we do not, in our -search for potential speech, have to remember -that he is writing of the love of money. -Away with such tedious recollections. The -stanza is like a picture by Rembrandt of an -alchemist’s laboratory, where dusty alembic<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">215</span> -and smouldering fire mean far more than -themselves. The lines say something, but -we hear much for which they have not -words. “The moon clothéd with cloudy -night,” is not richer in suggestion than that -same description. Not in the allegory but -in the words themselves, their order and -their melody, must we find, if they are to be -literature, that combination of kinetic and -potential speech.</p> - -<p>Let me take another example of fine poetry, -and show that it does perform in itself this -dual function of language. Let us examine -the first stanza of Blake’s “The Tiger”:</p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poetry"> - <div class="stanza"> - <div class="verse indentq">“Tiger! Tiger! burning bright</div> - <div class="verse indent0">In the forests of the night,</div> - <div class="verse indent0">What immortal hand or eye</div> - <div class="verse indent0">Could frame thy fearful symmetry?”</div> - </div> -</div> -</div> - -<p class="in0">It is impossible to deny the power of suggestion -wielded by those four lines, a power -utterly disproportionate to what is actually -said. The kinetic base of that stanza is only -the proposition to a supposed tiger of a -difficult problem in metaphysics. But above, -below, and on either side of that question, -completely enveloping it, is the phosphorescence<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">216</span> -of another speech, that we cannot -so easily overhear. And who shall speak -in fit terms of its potentiality? That glowing -image, that surprised address; not in the -enumeration of such things shall we come -upon its secret.</p> - -<p>The test of a formula is, that it shall fit. -It must enable us to co-ordinate scattered -knowledge, and throw into a clear perspective -the jumble of loose statements and scraps of -information whose value we cannot but -recognise, although they have remained outside -previous schemes and done little more -than disturb the equilibrium of once-established -theories. It is a comfort and a joy -to a thinker when he can say that a formula -of his has almost been proposed by minds -that have approached his problem along roads -other than his own. When he can find -statements, true in themselves but inadequate, -pegging out, as it were, the ground from -which his formula has been dug, he can -feel that it is no mere chance that has given -it a momentary appearance of usefulness. -He can speak of it with the solid confidence -that it has behind it the collaboration of his -predecessors.</p> - -<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">217</span></p> - -<p>We can bring such confidence to the use -of this formula of kinetic and potential -speech, for to whatever problem of literary -theory or phenomenon of the history of -literature we apply it, we find that it has -been almost stated by those who have -separately considered that problem or phenomenon. -It smelts the ore that they have -dug, and forges a weapon for the attack -not of one problem, but of all.</p> - -<p>For example; though kinetic speech may -be translated without loss from one language -to another, potential speech would not be -potential but kinetic if we were able to -express it otherwise than by itself. This is -what Shelley means when he denies the -possibility of the translation of poetry, -though he does not perceive the full reason, -but only that the poetic quality of a poem -is partly dependent on a succession of inimitable -sounds. His statement, incomplete -though it is, is a recognition of the duality -of poetic speech. He does not for a moment -contend that we cannot render the meaning; -he sees that the meaning is not all. The -body is one thing and the soul is another. -If we leave the soul behind we have nothing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">218</span> -but dead matter, fit for manure or food. Life, -or poetry, delicate-footed, mysterious, gracious -with knowledge of her mystery, is passed -away and we cannot recapture her.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, indeed, she goes without our -interference, and disappears only because of -our neglect. There are poems that many -men cannot perceive to be poetry. There are -others, once poetry, now no longer so. Let -us apply our formula to these phenomena, -and first to the varying popularity of poetry, -since our solution of this question will help -us in solving the other. We shall find that -the nearer poetry approaches to kinetic -speech, the more easily is it apprehended -by the multitude. Kinetic speech secures its -effects by the presentation of facts, situations -and stories, which are stuff not so fine as to -slip through the coarse meshes of the general -understanding. This explains the immediate -and wide popularity of such poets as Longfellow, -Scott, and Macaulay. Because prose, -as a rule, depends more nearly on its kinetic -than on its potential utterance, it is, as a -rule, the more widely read. When, as in the -hands of some nineteenth century writers, it -emphasizes the potential element of speech it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">219</span> -correspondingly narrows its public. Whenever -poetry of high potentiality is read by a -large public it will be found that its potential -speech is condoned for them or hidden from -them by more than usually vigorous kinetic -speech. For potential speech secures its -effects by suggestion. There is a bloom on -its wings that a callous retina does not -perceive. It is like a butterfly that has -visited flowers and scatters their scent in its -flight. The scent and the fluttering of its -bloom-laden wings are more important than -the direction or speed of its flying. It is -always easier for the public to say, how fast, -or where it is going than to notice these -delicate things. The kinetic speech of a -poem is understood by all; the potential -depends for its apprehension upon the taste -and knowledge of the reader. Words must -have for us the associations that they had for -the poet. We must be able to see them with -his eyes, hear them with his ears, and taste -their scents with nostrils not dissimilar to his. -In time these things change. Unpopular -poetry becomes quite popular, and indeed, -no longer poetry, as it loses, through usage -or forgetfulness, its proximity to the condition<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">220</span> -of potential speech. Accents are shifted -from one to another syllable, and we should -be deaf to the melody if we were unable -to replace them. New meanings gather -round the words, and they come back from -later travels disguised in strange perfumes. -The kinetic speech may be disturbed, but -the potential has disappeared in a jargon of -new sounds, a quarrel of new memories, and -a chaos of new odours. Sometimes indeed, -it is as if it had never existed.</p> - -<p>In this light it is easy to understand the -curious business of criticism, and to formulate -an account of what occurs when poetry dies, -or falls asleep like the princess in the wood, -to be awakened after two centuries by a -critic’s kiss. The Elizabethan dramatists lost -their potential and were judged only by their -kinetic speech during the eighteenth century. -They were considered coarse and bloody-minded, -because there is rapine and murder -in their plays. Lamb restored to them the -potentiality they had lost and turned bleak -rock to flowering country. Spenser had -become a mere monger of allegory, until -Hazlitt and Leigh Hunt reconstituted him -poet by discovering for themselves and others<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">221</span> -the attitude that restores to his kinetic its -lost potential speech. Writers of Wordsworth’s -generation realised, at least subconsciously, -that a poem is not independent -of knowledge. They tried to help us by -printing at the head of a poem information -about the circumstances of its conception. -When a poet tells us that a sonnet was -composed “on Westminster Bridge” or “suggested -by Mr. Westell’s views of the caves, -&c. in Yorkshire,” he is trying to ease for us -the task of aesthetic reproduction to which -his poem is a stimulus. He is trying to -ensure that we shall approach it as he did, -and hear as well as the kinetic the potential -speech that he values. There is a crudity -about such obvious assistance, and it would -be quite insufficient without the wider knowledge -on which we draw unconsciously as we -read. But the crudity of those pitiable scraps -of proffered information is not so remarkable -as the dulness of perception that can allow a -man to demand of a poem that it shall itself -compel him accurately to enjoy it. It is -possible that much of the old poetry that -now seems to us no more than direct speech -was once wrapped in a veil of suggestion. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">222</span> -is the critic’s business to rediscover those -forgotten veils and to restore to the kinetic -the magic of potential speech.</p> - -<p>The formula of kinetic and potential speech -illumines not only the critic’s business but -also that of the historian. It enables him to -link together in a single scheme the prose of -Goldsmith with that of Pater and the poetry -of the eighteenth century with poetry, like -that of the Symbolists of the nineteenth, so -different as to seem completely unrelated. It -enables him to explain a phenomenon that -he has usually alluded to as a mere curious -accident, the fact that there have been ages -when poetry has been popular and others -in which it has been the possession of a few. -It will, I think, be found that this periodicity -coincides with a general variation between -kinetic and potential speech. In the eighteenth -century, when poetry was often rhymed -prose, when the common standard of poetry -was good sense, when she gave advice and -said things, and did not seem to realise that -there were things she could not say, when, -in short, the kinetic almost overwhelmed the -potential, then poetry was a popular form -of literature. In other ages, when poetry<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">223</span> -has approached the condition of potential -speech and so has needed for its appreciation -such knowledge as that lately discussed, it -has not swelled the publisher’s purse so -swiftly as forms of literature that happened -to be more nearly kinetic and so more easily -enjoyed.</p> - -<p>The eighteenth century poets and the Symbolists -alike come under our definition and -can be classed by the formula that depends -upon it. I have suggested that the eighteenth -century poets cared mostly for kinetic speech, -and, indeed, carried their appreciation of it so -high as sometimes to forget that poetry could -do anything but speak wisely and well. Few -schools have suffered a greater variety of -imperfect and bungling definitions than that -of Symbolism. The Symbolist aims have -been described as “an escape from the -thought of death,” and “intimacy with -spiritual things.” Nowhere has there been -a definition that has shown their relation -to the aims of poetry in general. But, when -Mallarmé says: “<span xml:lang="fr" lang="fr">Nommer un objet, c’est -supprimer les trois quarts de la jouissance -du poème qui est faite du bonheur de deviner -peu à peu; le suggérer, voilà le rêve</span>,” he is<span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">224</span> -saying, in other words, that poetry depends -on potential speech. The Symbolists sought -to write poetry that should be purely potential, -and in the revision of certain of his poems -Mallarmé tried to eliminate bit by bit the -whole structure of kinetic speech that had -been in them. The eighteenth century aims -carried to their extreme would have meant -bad prose; the Symbolist aims carried to -their extreme would have meant (as they -sometimes did) unintelligibility. Poetry is -made by a combination of kinetic with -potential speech. Eliminate either and the -result is no longer poetry.</p> - -<p>I do not propose the words kinetic and -potential as terms of abuse or praise, though -in different ages there have been artists who -would have used them so. The eighteenth -century poets would have used kinetic as a -term of praise; the Symbolists would have -used it as a term of abuse. The fact that -different schools would have set different -values on the words is itself a proof that -they may be serviceable to historians and -critics. Literature does indeed vary between -these extremes, its kinetic quality preserving -it from nonsense, its potential quality separating<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">225</span> -it from bad prose. Some sort of relevancy -would be discoverable in any history that set -itself to trace these variations. Some sort -of relevancy is obvious in all criticism that -attempts (as all good criticism does) the -enhancement of the potential and the clarification -of the kinetic element in such -literature as happens to be its subject. In -any case, an adoption of the definition of -literature that this essay upholds would make -ridiculous the classification of books by their -subjects and of writers by their opinions, on -which so many intellects have wasted time -and vitality worthy of a more profitable -employment.</p> - -<p class="pubdate">1911.</p> - -<p class="p2 center smaller vspace"> -Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson & Co</span>.<br /> -Edinburgh & London -</p> - -<div class="chapter"><div class="footnotes"> -<h2 class="nobreak">FOOTNOTES</h2> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="fnanchor">1</a> After passing this note for press, I learn that this essay -has been reprinted at Tokyo in a new edition of Mr. Noguchi’s -<i>The Pilgrimage</i>.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="fnanchor">2</a> For the reputation of Breughel d’Enfer is based on his imitations -of his father, Breughel le Vieux, to whom is attributed -the <i>Temptation of St. Anthony</i> at Genoa.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="fnanchor">3</a> A piece of money coined by Charles VIII.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="fnanchor">4</a> Figures that strike the hour on the clock-tower at Dijon.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="fnanchor">5</a> The quotations in this essay are taken from Dr. Oscar Levy’s -admirable English edition of Nietzsche, translated by Drs. W. -A. Haussmann and M. A. Mügge, Messrs. Paul V. Cohn, -Thomas Common, J. M. Kennedy, A. M. Ludovici and H. B. -Samuel, and Miss Helen Zimmern: eighteen volumes published -by Mr. T. N. Foulis.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="fnanchor">6</a> Clarendon Press. 1910.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="fnanchor">7</a> Oscar Wilde.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="fnanchor">8</a> These references are to the page-numbers in Messrs. -Macmillan’s library edition.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn1"><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="fnanchor">9</a> His inability to tell a story was perhaps the reason of, or, at -least supplies a commentary upon, his readiness to admire the -narratives of M. Filon, Octave Feuillet, Mrs. Humphry Ward, -and to admire them, quite ingenuously, for the story’s sake, like -the ordinary reader of novels.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="fnanchor">10</a> <cite>The Symbolist Movement in Literature</cite>, 1899.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="fnanchor">11</a> An English translation was published in 1912 by Messrs. -Stephen Swift.</p> - -</div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p class="fn2"><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="fnanchor">12</a> When I wrote this article I was still hypnotised, like the -symbolists themselves, with the idea that symbolism was a -method. My later article on kinetic and potential speech -contains what I believe to be a more accurate account of the -significance of what is called the “symbolist movement.” It -did not turn a practice into a theory, but merely emphasized -one of the two inseparable functions of words when combined -in poetic speech, and emphasized it at the expense of the other.</p> - -<p>Japanese poets have always insisted on the potential element -in poetic speech. Its intensity has always been for them the -test of a poem. Noguchi, except in that he is a Japanese poet -who happens to write in English, is not an innovator but the -heir to a long Japanese tradition.</p> - -</div> -</div></div> - -<div class="chapter"><div class="transnote"> -<h2 class="nobreak">Transcriber’s Notes</h2> - -<p>Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made -consistent when a predominant preference was found -in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.</p> - -<p>Inconsistent use of accent marks has not been remedied.</p> - -<p>Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced -quotation marks were remedied when the change was -obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.</p> -</div></div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PORTRAITS AND SPECULATIONS ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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