Chapter XI: Dissolution of the Theoretical Principle of Authority

In the lyric poetry of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, as in the prose of Chateaubriand, there was, in spite of the unconditioned assertion of the principle of authority, a hidden or germinating antagonism to that principle in _literature_, as demanding unqualified reverence for the past, its writers, and its forms.

It has already been remarked that the great political and social revolution in France did not affect literary _form_. As regarded this, there was no necessity to re-establish the principle of authority; it had never been overthrown. In no domain are the French less revolutionary than in that of literature. The Academy is the one institution of the country which has held its ground since the days of Richelieu, and to-day it has the same name, the same aims, and even the same number of members that it had then. In literature the principle of authority was known by the name of the classic spirit, and the Revolution, far from weakening the classic spirit, had strengthened it. The Revolution itself is a classic French tragedy. Like all other French tragedies, it clothes its heroes in Greek and Roman garb. In their style and language they imitate the republicans of ancient Rome, and it is significant that it is the most cultivated and literary revolutionary party, the Girondists, who adopt the antique "thou" and the antique designation of "citizen." The Jacobins are the direct descendants of Corneille--the same toga style of oratory, the same love of magnificent laconicism. With the same enthusiasm with which Cromwell's soldiers metamorphosed themselves into ancient Hebrews, adopting their names and singing their psalms, the Frenchmen of the Revolution metamorphosed themselves into ancient Romans; and when David, the Jacobin and intimate friend of Robespierre, left his seat in the Legislative Assembly to paint the Horatii or the Brutus exhibited in 1791, he simply took his associates as models; as painter he did not need to go a step beyond the boundaries of his own period.

Just as French tragedy, when it came into being, had refused to build upon the foundation of the history of its own country, had turned its back on French tradition and laid its scenes in far-away Rome in the far-off, dimly discerned past, now the Revolution, heedless of history, heedless of the France of its own day, took far-off, un-historically appreciated antiquity, with its republicans, evolved under such different conditions, as the model to be exactly imitated. The modern Gracchi and Horatii imitated the ancient. There is, as has often been remarked, a Roman loftiness of style in Madame Roland's letters to Buzot. The ladies of the Directory at times took Cornelia, and more frequently Aspasia, as their model, even in dress. In the language of some of Napoleon's earliest letters to Josephine the influence of Latin models is to be traced; and even when he no longer stands in need of a model, his style is as classic as his profile. His taste in literature was also classic; his attachment to "les règles" and his admiration of Corneille are matter of history. As long as he is the ruler of France, even those authors who make an attempt at a species of opposition, such as Raynouard, keep in the classic track. A comparison of Werner's _Söhne des Thals_ (Sons of the Vale) with Raynouard's _Les Templiers_ will show how differently the same subject can be approached. The German poet is as mysterious and incomprehensible, as extravagant and fantastic in his treatment of the theme as the Frenchman with his obligatory alexandrines, his king and his queen, his five acts and his three unities, is well-regulated and law-abiding. Raynouard's play represents a sort of lawsuit between church and state; the king conducts his case in a most orderly manner; the Knights Templar conduct theirs in an equally orderly manner, and are thereupon burnt in an orderly manner--orderly, for we see as little as possible of the execution and of what precedes it; we only hear of it all in one of those long concluding narrations which were in vogue as far back as the days of Euripides. And the metre is still the metre prescribed by Boileau, that father of evil. The meaning of the clause, which is cut in two by the cæsura, ends with the line, and the lines are as like each other as one penny bun is like another penny bun. There is neither harmony, nor animation, nor rhythm, nor rhyme in them, for _larmes_ and _armes, époux_ and _coups, souffrir_ and _mourir_ can hardly be called rhymes. They resemble molluscs, these lines; and one of the features they have in common with molluscs is, that it is possible to cut them in two without their showing any less sign of life because of it.

One consequence of this retention of the classic spirit is the exact resemblance between the style of some of the most eminent prose authors of this day and the style of their abhorred opponents, the philosophers of the eighteenth century. We have the most conspicuous instance of this in Joseph de Maistre. De Maistre's inability to comprehend history, his want of the critical faculty and of any deep religious feeling, his tendency to systematise, his argumentativeness, which tempted him to draw hard and fast conclusions--all this in combination, really deriving from the eighteenth century, found expression in the style of that century. Bonalds cold, argumentative style, his craze for reducing everything to formulas, his persuasion that he makes his positions mathematically obvious, show that he too is a child of the century which produced Condillac, and his work a product of the very spirit which he combated. The only difference is, that such a man as Condillac is as clear and consistent as Bonald is changeable and self-contradictory.

A distinguishing feature in both classic prose and poetry is _the domination of reason_. It is against this ruler that literature makes its first revolt in Madame de Staël's emotional style and Chateaubriand's richly coloured prose. Emotion and colour--these are the two great exiles who now return from a long banishment. And, curiously enough, it is not only his talents but his art theories which make of Chateaubriand a rebel against the principle of authority in literature, the very principle which it was his aim by means of literature to uphold. For classical poetry from its earliest days had sought its subjects and its inspiration in heathen antiquity and heathen mythology, and he was calling upon his fellow authors to open their own and their countrymen's eyes and ears to a poetry diametrically opposed to this, namely, the poetry of Christianity--was, in other words, _attacking literary tradition as the champion of Christian tradition_. His artistic principles show him to be of the new age, his political and social principles mark him as the man of the past; he is two-faced; he gives poetical expression to all the modern emotions, wearing a mask of unchangeable reverence for all the official authorities of the past. It is more especially his style which makes of him a Romanticist before the days of Romanticism. Hence, when first Lamartine and then Hugo follow his example, forsake heathen, and seek their themes in Christian mythology, society is for a time at a loss to know whether it is to recognise a conservative or a revolutionary spirit in these attempts to uphold the sacredness of religion in new ways. But by degrees the germ of revolt against the principle of authority latent in the new literary standpoint develops to such an extent that the countenance of the new school is changed.

It is interesting to trace the stages of this development in Victor Hugo's different prefaces to his _Odes_. In the first (of 1822), which consists of only a few lines, the young poet asserts that loyalty and Christian faith are the standards of true poetry. The nineteenth century, he declares, has first revealed to the world the truth that poetry _does not depend upon the form given to ideas, but upon the ideas themselves_. In his preface to the second edition (published the same year) he further observes that the poet's task now is to substitute for the faded, false colours of the heathen mythology those new and true ones which belong to the Christian conception of the origin of the universe. The ode ought now to speak the severe, the consolatory, the pious language of which an old society, quitting with trembling steps "the revels of atheism and anarchy" stands in such need.

He earnestly hopes that his readers will not think that he is so conceited as "to wish to strike out a new path or create a new literary style." In the preface of 1824 the same assurances are repeated, in very characteristic words; but we feel that the young poet is now the object of suspiciously observant criticism, and that the name "Romanticist," as synonymous with transgressor of the laws of classic art, is one which men will be very apt to apply to him. He is eager to prove his literary orthodoxy. What is needed, he says, is not novelty, but truth. It is this need which he aims at supplying. Taste, "which is neither more nor less than _authority_ in literature," shows him that works which are true as regards their matter ought also to be true as regards their style. This leads to the demand for "local colouring," a demand which the classic authors can hardly be said to have supplied. But it is an understood matter that the laws imposed upon the language by Boileau are to be _religiously_ observed. Of him Hugo writes: "Boileau shares with Racine the unique merit of having given its permanent form to the French language; this in itself is a sufficient proof that he too possessed _creative genius_!" Boileau a creative genius! With what derisive laughter will Victor Hugo, ere many years have passed, receive such an assertion!

Of the poet Hugo writes that it is his duty to lead the vanguard of the people like a pillar of fire, lead them back to the great principles of _order_, morality, and honour. The flaw in the literature of the century of Louis "the Great" is that its authors invoke the gods of heathendom instead of the God of Christianity. If in this matter, Hugo naïvely remarks, they had acted differently, the "triumph of the sophistical writings" of the eighteenth century would have been much impeded. What might not have been the fate of "philosophy," if the cause of God had been championed by genius instead of by virtue alone!

He vigorously objects to being called romantic. He affirms that he "has not the slightest idea of what is meant by classic and romantic literature." Refusing to be influenced by all the nonsense written on the subject at that time, he in the following sensible utterance declares the distinction to be an empty and meaningless one: "It is an acknowledged fact that every literature receives an impression, in some cases strong, in some weak, from the climate, customs, and history of the nation of which it is the expression. David, Homer, Virgil, Tasso, Milton, Corneille, men each one of whom represents a literature and a nation, have nothing in common but genius." It is impossible, therefore, to divide them into classical and romantic poets. He combats the assertion that the literary revival (evidently referring to Chateaubriand) is an outcome of the political revolution. "The literature of to-day may to a certain extent be the result of the Revolution, without on that account being its expression. Revolutionary society had its literature, _ugly and foolish as itself_. That society and that literature are dead and will never come to life again. _Order_ has revived in all the institutions of society; it is also reviving in literature.... Just as the Revolution originated in literature, so the literature of our day is _the anticipatory expression of the pious and loyal society_ which will most certainly arise from those ruins."

Hugo was mistaken; the literature in question was the exact expression of the intellectual mood of its day, and the attempts at reform which aroused such anxiety were really forerunners of a literary revolution. For they destroyed faith in authority as authority--in this particular case faith in Boileau. From the moment when it was discovered that there were spots even in this sun, it was not possible to confine doubt to the few points where it had first modestly and cautiously insinuated itself. Literary tradition was a principle; it had to be either accepted or rejected.

In reading Hugo's second last preface to the _Odes_ (1826) we feel that his thoughts, always turning upon _order_, that favourite idea of the day, are about to drive him from the shore of literature out on to the open sea. He has discovered that order is in reality something different from the regularity which is attained by discipline and coercion. Employing a simile which occurred naturally to a youth brought up in the neighbourhood of Versailles, with Chateaubriand's descriptions of the luxuriant landscape of North America as his leisure reading, he compares the gardens of Versailles and their carefully clipped, symmetrically trimmed trees with a forest in the New World, and exclaims: "We will not ask, Where here is splendour, where grandeur, or beauty? but simply, Where is _order_ and where _disorder?_" He recognises now that regularity concerns only the outward form of things, but that order lies at their very foundation, and is a result of the skilful arrangement of their elements. "A writer is not classic," he says, "because he _slavishly_ treads in the footprints which others have left on the road."

We have thus followed Hugo step by step along the path which leads him towards the final breach with the literary principle of authority. One year more, and he throws off the yoke, assumes the leadership of the Romantic School in France, and in its first manifesto, the preface to _Cromwell_ (October, 1827), declares that there is a tyranny of the past in literature exactly as there is in politics, and that this tyranny lies like a nightmare on the breast of the young generation: "The train of the eighteenth century still stretches into ours, but should not we young men who have seen Bonaparte be too proud to bear such a train?" Observe that he now, in direct antagonism to the spirit of the Restoration, invokes Napoleon as a species of liberator. And he writes of "that rouged, powdered and patched poetry, that literature of hoops and furbelows." He is aiming his first blow at Boileau.

New as Lamartine had seemed, both in style and matter, he had retained many of the classic circumlocutions. In spite of his aversion to the lyre, he often named it in his poetry, and in choosing his subjects he preferred the abstract to the concrete.

Victor Hugo was as yet almost equally cautious. "Granted that it is advantageous and at times necessary," he writes, "to renew a few worn-out expressions, to replace a few old phrases, and perhaps even to endeavour to improve our verse by increasing the sonority of its metre and the purity of its rhyme, it cannot be too often repeated that this must be the limit of all attempts at perfecting it. Every reform at variance with the natural accent and genius of our mother-tongue must be regarded as an attack on the first principles of taste."

Neither alteration of the rhythm, nor variability in the position of the cæsura, nor the continuation of the phrase from one line to another (changes all of which he afterwards vindicated), does he as yet consider permissible. In the _Odes_ he conforms to the old poetic court fashion (he does not, for instance, say _Convention_, but _Senate_, does not say _shawl_, but _drapery_ or _treasure of Kashmir_), only making a few cautious attempts at a change of metre, with the object of rendering the ode style less stiff and heavy.

That court fashion was of the following nature. A small collection had been made of refined expressions, of choice words--the elect, as it were, of language--which alone had admission into poetry. Poets did not say sword, but brand, did not say soldier, but warrior, and they never mentioned such things as guns or knives; just as Danish poetry for long acknowledged only roses, lilies, violets, woodruff, and at the outside a dozen other flowers as representatives of the whole floral world. The consequence of this was that the supply of words was extremely limited, that there were only a few hundred pairs of noble rhymes, and that the same expressions, which had to be constantly repeated, brought with them exactly the same thoughts and feelings. The poetic oratory of those days was very much on a par with the pulpit oratory of our own. Sublime was the adjective applied to the dignified flow of words in which things were spoken of as far as possible without ever calling them by their real names--and, be it observed, only things that reminded men as little as possible of their earthly nature, of the material side of their being. One result of this was that the direct, unambiguous mention of common things in any work which laid claim to the privilege of classic style at once produced a comic effect. When Lebrun's _Cid_ was acted, the word _chambre_ called forth a murmur of disapproval. It also explains how the attempt made about the time of the earliest experiments in the Romantic style to introduce Shakespeare into France created such consternation. Every one knows that _Othello_, acted in the translation of Alfred de Vigny at the Odéon--that is to say to an audience of students, the least prejudiced and least prudish of Parisian audiences--was hissed because of the occurrence in it of the word "pocket-handkerchief."

Count Alfred de Vigny, who was born in 1797, belonged to a family of ancient lineage, and was brought up a loyal adherent of monarchy by the grace of God. In 1814 he received a lieutenant's commission in the army of Louis XVIII, and he quickly developed into one of the most attractive and most independent literary characters of the day. In several branches of literature it was he who took the first step in the new direction, Hugo who followed. He wrote a historical novel in the style of Sir Walter Scott before Hugo did (_Cinq-Mars_, 1826), had a play acted before Hugo (the rhymed translation of _Othello_, 1829), the style of which created a great sensation, and he forestalled Hugo in introducing freedom and flexibility into lyric poetry. He was the Columbus of the new movement, Hugo the Amerigo Vespucci who gave the newly discovered continent its name.

It is not a matter for surprise that, at a time when authority was upheld on every side, Hugo should have begun by accommodating himself to existing literary rules, nay, by actually believing in them as real laws of poetry and language. But presently he commenced to experiment with them a little, to shake them a little, to doubt them a little, to interpret them in his own way, doing it all with the profoundest reverence, until it became no longer possible for him to observe them, upon which he overthrew them. In one of his poems (_Les Contemplations_, i., vii.) he gives a witty description of the revolution which he ended by making:

Je suis ce monstre énorme,
Je suis le démagogue horrible et débordé
Et le dévastateur du vieil ABCD;
Causons,
Quand je sortis du collège, du thème,
Des vers latins, farouche, espèce d'enfant blême
Et grave, au front penchant, aux membres appauvris;
Quand, tâchant de comprendre et de juger, j'ouvris
Les yeux sur la nature et sur Part, l'idiome
Peuple et noblesse, était l'image du royaume;
La poésie était la monarchie; un mot
Était un duc ou pair ou n'était qu'un grimaud;
Les syllabes, pas plus que Paris et que Londres,
Ne se mêlaient; ainsi marchent sans se confondre
Piétons et cavaliers traversant le pont Neuf;
La langue était l'État avant quatre-vingt-neuf;
Les mots, bien ou mal nés, vivaient parqués en castes;
Les uns, nobles, hantant les Phèdres, les Jocastes,
Les Méropes, ayant le décorum pour loi,
Et montant à Versaille aux carosses du roi;
Les autres, tas de gueux, drôles patibulaires,
Habitant les patois, quelques-uns aux galères
Dans l'argot; dévoués à tous les genres bas,
Déchirés en haillons dans les halles; sans bas,
Sans perruque; créés pour la prose et la farce.
* * * * *
Alors, brigand, je vins; je m'écriai: Pourquoi
Ceux-ci toujours devant, ceux-lâ toujours derrière?
Et sur l'Académie, aïeule et douairière,
Cachant sous ses jupons les tropes effarés,
Et sur les bataillons d'alexandrins carrés
Je fis souffler un vent révolutionnaire.
Je mis un bonnet rouge au vieux dictionnaire.
Plus de mot sénateur! plus de mot roturier!
Je fis une tempête au fond de l'encrier,
Et je mêlai parmi les ombres débordées,
Au peuple noir des mots l'essaim blanc des idées;
Et je dis; Pas de mot où l'idée au vol pur
Ne puisse se poser, tout humide d'azur!

But Hugo, even when he doubts, has not yet reached this stage. He still styles his poetry "cavalier" poetry, stamping himself by a word which recalls the restoration of royalty in England as the poet of the restoration of royalty in France. The rock on which he splits is the impossibility of harmonising religious and literary tradition. This is especially felt in the ballads. Hugo revives memories of the Middle Ages and feudalism. What could be more royalist? But the literature of the age of Louis XIV. had utterly rejected the Middle Ages and their memories--so what could be less classical? One of the ballads (_La ronde du sabbat_) describes a witches' dance, another treats of sylphs and fairies; the motley superstitions of the old popular legends are revived--Romanticism is not far off. And the tone is anything but classic; in France, as in Germany and Denmark, the style of the popular ballad supplants the dignified, literary style. There is, moreover, in these poems a new patriotic element (_Le géant, Le pas d'armes du roi Jean_) which turns from classic antiquity to the France of the far-off past. Of this national movement, too, Chateaubriand had been the leader; his description of the ancient Gauls in _Les Martyrs_ was the first attempt in the new direction; it made a powerful impression (according to his own confession) on such a man as Augustin Thierry, the future author of _The Age of the Merovingians_; we may safely say that it gave the impulse generally to a more graphic and animated historical style. But even this patriotic element was new and foreign to French poetry, was consequently a rebellion against tradition. The revival of old French subjects was accompanied by a revival of old French metres. Here also Chateaubriand led the way with that charming exile's song beginning with the beautiful lines:

Combien j'ai douce souvenance
Du joli lieu de ma naissance!
Ma sœur, qu'ils étaient beaux, ces jours
De France!

a song which was sung on the little rocky island in the Bay of St. Malo as he was laid to rest in the grave which he had hewn for himself there. And the tones of the days of Ronsard and the Pleiades are re-echoed simultaneously by Alfred de Vigny, the brothers Deschamps, Sainte-Beuve, and Hugo.

In May 1828 Alfred de Vigny published, in _Madame de Soubise_, lines like:

La voyez-vous croître,
La tour du vieux cloître?
Et le grand mur noir
Du royal manoir?
Entrons dans le Louvre.
Vous tremblez, je croi,
Au son du beffroi?
La fenêtre s'ouvre,
Saluez le roi.

In June he is followed and surpassed by Hugo in the admirable lines in _Le pas d'armes du roi Jean_:

Cette ville
Aux longs cris,
Qui profile
Son front gris.
Des toits frêles,
Cent tourelles,
Clochers grêles,
C'est Paris!

The metre, the picturesqueness, the melodiousness, and the concision which distinguish such verse were something quite new in French poetry.

It seemed at first as if the principle of authority had received new and powerful support from the re-engrafting of the traditions of Christianity and monarchy upon literature. But it soon became evident that religious and literary tradition could not thrive together. The former at first took refuge under the wings, in the very bosom of the latter, but the inherent antagonism soon revealed itself, and the principle of authority in its literary shape was set aside, nay, overthrown by the new spirit, which had all the appearance of sincerely desiring to uphold the practical, that is to say, the politico-religious principle of authority.

We have now to see how the practical principle of authority came to share the fate of the theoretical, the literary principle.[1]

[1] Victor Hugo, _Odes et Ballades; Cromwell_; A. de Vigny, _Poésies complètes_; Émile Deschamps, _Poésies_; Antony Deschamps, _Poésies_; Raynouard, _Les Templiers_.