Chapter IX: Part 9

And how can we wonder at it? In mental culture, as in all other things, the thread of destiny was in the keeping of good society. At the cost of living and dying ignorant, it was necessary to be fashionable, first in the _ruelles_, then in the circles and entertainments of social life. Poets, orators, historians, or moralists, under the influence of the court during the reign of Louis XIV., who honored them increasingly with his notice, but who always kept them at a proper distance, became all-powerful under his successor, so as to be in some sort a fourth order in the state, astonishing at that time France and Europe by the boldness of their thoughts and the ascendency of their talent: they were not ashamed to affect the lofty airs of nobles of high rank, and the petty dignities of coxcombs. {246} Thus the writers of France have always ruled the life of men of the world, and have by their intrigues gained successes in society, degraded their genius to the limits of its narrow and confined atmosphere, and flattered those very whims which they professed to ridicule. No country has shown itself more fertile in men of great mind than ours; no country has, so much as our own, compelled these minds, whether they like it or not, to muffle themselves up in the livery of respectability. We may find even books of the greatest literary weight which seem, like their authors, to have adopted the fineries of the time, in order to adorn their exterior. Can we forbear smiling, for example, when we see the illustrious Montesquieu sometimes decking his great work with spangles, and oftener still using epigrams for the purpose of giving smartness to it; and all in order that the leaves of his immortal work might enjoy the rare advantage of being turned over by flippant spirits, and read aloud at ladies' toilets.

And then, what immeasurable importance was attached to light literature! What an event was the publication of a new piece, or of a collection of fugitive poems! What a hit for some election to a chair, or for some green-room intrigues! What a swarm of poetasters of all dimensions! What a herd of pretentious prose-writers on all subjects of interest! And what a conviction on the part of all these, that the human race ought, laying aside every other occupation, to fix its eyes upon them alone; and that the world had been created, five or six thousand years before, merely that it might enjoy their small productions, assist in their small triumphs, and take part in their small controversies!

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The French Revolution cast down the whole of this social edifice; and it has, so to speak, razed it to the ground!

Whether this is an evil or a good, each man must determine for himself. Certain it is that we owe to this revolution the restitution of men to their proper ranks, and of things to their appropriate places; this it is that has restored the true relation of names and things. Henceforth the serious is serious, the frivolous is frivolous. Conventionalities have given place to realities.

The French are equal among themselves; they have their individual rights to carry out; and they have duties to fulfill toward the state. All honorable professions are honored; each leads to a worthy end. No longer are there legal distinctions which are not derived from any diversity of rights and functions; no longer are there social distinctions which rest upon no superior merit, education, or enlightenment. Ambition is obliged to exhibit its titles, and to show itself in open daylight; depraved habits must seek concealment; crime must shelter itself under excuses.

In presence of such a new condition of men and things, that which was formerly denominated the great world must consent that its star should decline. It has finished as the monarchy of the great King Louis has finished; it has abdicated as did the Emperor Napoleon, who regarded the great king as his predecessor, and neglected no means of reviving the state that existed in his time. We have seen this great world pass away, with its fantastic prohibitions and its immoral indulgences, with its flimsy proprieties and its scrupulous injunctions, with its heroes of good fortune and its jurisdiction of old women. {248} Our court is now only a coterie, if, indeed, it can claim even to be so much as that; a thousand other coteries share the town among them; each city of any considerable extent has its own coteries; all these partial societies are independent of each other, and make no foolish pretensions to mutual domination or remonstrance; every one amuses himself where and how he can, and no one finds fault with him; and, accordingly, no one attempts to extract glory out of his pleasures, and to believe himself on this account a great man.

With a change of manners there has been a change of tastes. General life has become simple and active, laborious and animated. Every man occupies his place, has a distinct aim, and aims at that which is worth the labor he bestows upon it. Public discussions and a free press afford an uninterrupted stream of information concerning the greatest human and national interests. The bloodless, but ardent and vehement, struggles of the tribune divide, excite, irritate, or enliven every day, and carry us onward from fear to hope, from triumph to defeat.

In order to beguile the attention of the public from these powerful attractions, literature must present something else besides distractions which it no longer needs; and must afford a means of passing the time which shall not impose any extra burden. Literature must either attract or instruct--it must raise man from himself and from all around him, or it must powerfully urge him to reflection and meditation. The rivalries of poets are no longer any thing to him; academic disputes lie out of his world. He has no disposition to engage in the controversy which would determine,

"Des deux Poinsinet lequel fait le mieux les vers;"

nor to subsist for a fortnight on that which is worth no more than one of Chamfort's epigrams, one of Panard'a songs, or one of Dorat's heroics.

{249}

Accordingly, for the last twelve or fifteen years, that is to say, since the time when France first began to breathe quietly again after the horrors of anarchy and the confusions of conquest, while we see all that small, affected literature which had its summer of _Saint Martin_ under the empire, fall into insignificance and disrepute, at the same time that we see genteel garbs, court manners, and beautiful monarchical principles abandoned, we also see springing up on all sides a taste for whatever is solid and true. Erudition is being restored; there is a more real appreciation of the ancients now than there ever was in any former time; the knowledge of foreign languages is being extended every day; voyages are being multiplied; scientific and literary correspondence is being extended on all sides; central institutions for intellectual pursuits are established in our departments, and are beginning to undertake laborious inquiries respecting our national antiquities. The Normal School glittered only for a season, but it has left permanent memorials of its existence; it has founded, for example, a philosophical school, which now occupies a foremost position in Europe, which does not swear by the words of any master, which does not despise the labors of any of its predecessors, which does not blink any of the great problems of the world and of humanity; while it neither arrogantly attempts to decide them by a few phrases, nor infatuatedly dismisses them with disdain. Side by side with this philosophical school, a historical school has arisen, in which a union is often effected between that vast erudition which allows no details to escape it, and that powerful imagination, we would willingly say, that half-creative imagination, which knows how to revive times and men that have passed away, and presents them before us glowing with the colors of life and of truth {250} The admirable romances of the most original and fertile genius of our period, so riveting and instructive, filled at once with reality and poetic invention, with the idiosyncrasy of the writer and the erudition of the schools, with ability and gracefulness--these romances all testify, by their immense popularity, to the not less popularity of that mental disposition which they inspire. For, in fact, the delight felt by the upper classes, and the admiration expressed for them by those of high culture is but a small part of their success; they penetrate into counting-houses, they descend into shops, answering a universal and imperious necessity, and affording it an aliment which entertains without completely satisfying it.

Can we seriously believe that, in this general forward movement, the theatre will remain stationary? Can it be that the public will bring to the drama other ideas, other tastes, other dispositions than those which it carries into all other places and all other things?

The play must, in these times, address itself to the public; it must interest and excite them; no longer is it designed to relieve the monotony of a couple of hours for a select number of languid, lounging, fashionable gentlemen, or to supply materials for conversation to four or five recognized cliques and their dozens of humbler imitators who may frequent the coffee-houses. And this change must inevitably influence, sooner or later, the general tone of all dramatic writings. Those immortal beauties-- beauties for all times and all places--with which our theatre abounds, have not, thank Heaven! lost their power over our minds; but where, henceforth, will an audience be found to relish the precious metaphysical gallantry, the comic or tragic balderdash, the philosophical and sentimental declamation which so often disfigure it?

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Can we really think, for instance, that if the great Corneille were to return to earth, the Romans which he might exhibit would not be somewhat sensible of the increased efficiency of our colleges? Can we believe that the illustrious Racine, if he should revisit us, would still make Achilles talk like a French chevalier, and put madrigals into the mouth of Pyrrhus, Mithridates, or Nero? Can we believe that Voltaire, the brilliant and pathetic Voltaire, if he should once again take his place among us, would make Zaire profess indifference to all matters of religion, and declaim to the savages of America on toleration --that he would represent Mohammed employing the inflated periods of a Tartuffe, and depict Gengis-Khan under the guise of a faded libertine and a philosopher disappointed with human greatness? No! Emphatically No! Every thing in its place and time! Voltaire himself was the first to ridicule the heroes who preceded him--_tender, mild, and discreet;_ he was the first to hold up to scorn the ridiculous fashion of describing

"Caton galant et Brutus dameret."

He has attempted tragedies in which there are no love scenes; he has proposed to restore to us, once for all, the Greeks of Greece and the Romans of Rome; and the reason why he did not completely succeed was only that he was not sufficiently acquainted with them. Chenier, in his turn, has thought good to remodel Voltaire's "Œdipe." Still, Voltaire was the first who attempted to appeal to national sentiments and popular recollections, and many others since his time have followed in his track. We might trace back to a time considerably anterior to the beginning of this century, a confused sense of the necessity for a reform in the theatre, a dim consciousness how much there was in the existing state of the theatre that was formal, narrow, and contemptible. {252} Grimm's correspondence indicates this in every page. More than seventy years ago, Collé lampooned the French tragedy in a satiric poem full of wit, in which great good sense is contained beneath an inexhaustible vein of drollery. And if this want was felt thus strongly at this period, what must be the case now, when authors, as we have just said, have to do no longer with a fictitious, but with a real public? when that same public has, for more than forty years, taken its part in all the great realities of public as well as private life.

Indeed, we ourselves, who are now occupying the scene, have taken part in terrible events; we have witnessed the fall and rise of empires: and how can we be persuaded that such revolutions are accomplished by some six or seven persons, whose two or three uninteresting confidants bustle and declaim in a space of fifty square feet? We have known, and that personally, great men--conquerors, statesmen, conspirators--men of flesh and blood: powerful by their arms, by their genius, and by their eloquence; and, in order to be interested, we must be pointed to men equally real, to men who resemble them in all respects.

Still, if our actually existing poets were men of the stamp of Racine and Voltaire--if, like those great men, they knew how to animate a deplorably withered frame by lavishing upon it all the treasures of sentiment and of poetry--if, imitating the noble birds of the days of chivalry, they could, like them, although carried on the hand, release themselves from time to time from the straitness of their position, and soar into the clouds with a brilliant and rapid flight, they might win some success. But it is not so; and this is exactly the one inconvenience of a style which flourished a hundred years ago, with which we, the public of to-day, are obliged to remain contented and happy.

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Tragedies have been almost all fashioned after one model--all cast so very nearly in the same mode, that any one rather experienced in theatrical progression might boldly foretell the scheme of each scene as it arrived. In the first act there is the narrative of the dream or the storm; the second contains the declaration, the third the recognition, and so on. The Alexandrines march on in stately order, and seem, most of them, to belong to the stock of theatrical properties, as much as the decorations and costumes. The personages have their parts and movements appropriated and determined like the pieces in a game of chess; so much so, that we might call them, for the sake of convenience, by some generic name; for example, the king, the tyrant, the queen, the conspirator, the confidant--almost, as Goëthe has entitled the interlocutors in one of his dramas, the father, the mother, the sister, and so on. What, for instance, does it matter whether the queen, who has killed her husband, be called Semiramis, Clytemnestra, Joan of Naples, or Mary Stuart; whether the royal legislator is called Minos or Peter the Great; whether the usurper is called Artaban, Polyphontes, or Cromwell--when their words and actions, their thoughts and feelings, are always the same, or very nearly so? when they are only so many variations on one necessary plot?

It is said that a young poet, whose name we have forgotten, having borrowed the subject of his tragedy from the history of Spain, and finding himself on this account brought into collision with the censor of the press, took it into his head to transport the scene, by two strokes of his pen, from Barcelona to Babylon, and to carry the events back from the sixteenth century to a period somewhere near the time of the deluge; a plan which succeeded to his heart's content, besides that, as _Babylone_ rhymes to the same words as _Barcelone_, and is composed of exactly the same number of syllables, there was but little necessity for changing the most vigorous and lofty speeches. We do not guarantee the truth of the story, but we do not think it at all improbable.

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Doubtless, this insupportable monotony--the evils and puerilities of so much conventional apparatus--the disgust, the weariness, the satiety which it all excites in such a public as ours--the despondency at seeing nothing true produced for the stage--these causes have constantly led the way to all kinds of innovation. Our public is not to be captivated either by system or by caprice; it is no despiser of really excellent productions; it has no disposition to blaspheme the demi-gods of past times; but, like the little girl, it says, "My good friend, I have seen the sun so often!" Like the grand Condé, it says, "I am quite ready to forgive the Abbé D'Aubignac for not having observed the rules, but I can not forgive the rules which have made him produce such an execrable piece."

In the midst of this perplexity, not knowing what saint to invoke, who can deliver them from this

"Race d'Agamemnon qui ne finit jamais,"

these everlasting bores who, if they are hissed down today in the toga, will reappear to-morrow hooded with a turban; in this perplexity, certain talented critics make their appearance, writers of the rarest ability and of the greatest sagacity, who, with a good-natured smile, address the public in some such terms as these:

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"Can you not see what all this weariness under which you groan is owing to? and whence arises this monotony which sickens you? In a given time and space only a certain number of things are possible; and the more circumscribed the space, the more limited the time, the fewer events can be brought before you. Names may be changed, costumes may be changed, but no further change is possible. And much more must this be the case if you multiply arbitrary prescriptions and prohibitions; if you demand, for instance, that the individual who weeps shall do nothing but weep, and that the laugher shall do nothing but laugh; if you forbid him who has once spoken in verse from speaking afterward in prose, or _vice versâ_, or if you forbid him who has once spoken in a verse of twelve syllables from ever making use of a verse of rather smaller dimensions; and if you determine it to be beneath the dignity of tragedy to employ any colloquial forms of expression. Bind a man hand and foot--as you please; put a mask on his countenance--very good; condemn him to recite litanies to the Virgin in a style of passive imperturbability--be it so; but do not then demand of him variety in his movements, flexibility in his physiognomy, or diversity in his language."

And the public must confess that this is very plausible reasoning.

Accordingly, when young poets, encouraged by favorable circumstances, advance timidly before the people, and humbly beg them to hold them, for a time, free from consecrated rules and cruelly rigorous fetters, promising, in return for this indulgence, to move them, to interest them, to show them living and real events--the public answers them, "Make the attempt, we will listen attentively."

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This is the secret of that which is transpiring at the present day. Are not we then, in France, in danger of being betrayed into some rash procedures? For forty years, established usages have been attacked which appeared more solid than our theatrical system; things which seemed more sacred even than Aristotle's precepts have been looked at with bold defiance.

If, at this crisis, a great dramatic poet should arise among us--if this great dramatic poet would take part with the innovators, all difficulties would very soon be overcome. But, unfortunately, we have no such dramatist; as far as talent is concerned, the authors of the new school have not hitherto had a very decided advantage over their brethren of the old school. Their works certainly possess more interest, more movement, more variety; but these merits belong to the school to which they have attached themselves, and this is the reason why their works have drawn crowds, while the productions of their more old-fashioned brethren are abandoned. But their works are indicative rather of reminiscence than of invention; more of an honest disposition to create than of a creative genius. The execution betrays absence of power and groping after effect, rather than native vigor and genuine originality. The blame rests with the individuals; and this is the reason why the public is as yet undecided which of the two opposed systems it shall finally adopt, and shows itself much more disposed to thank them for their efforts than to award them the palm of triumph.

How long, then, is this feeble flight of dramatic talent, this sterility of true genius, with which, to our great regret, the new school--that school which has hardly existed more than four or five years--has been stricken: how long is this to last? {257} The answer to such a question must remain unknown to man, and must be, left to Providence; our fervent wish, both for the credit of art and the honor of our country, is that it may not be delayed very long. Meanwhile, is it graceful, and, above all, is it just, for the partisans of the old system in literature to exult over this fact, as they too often do? Are they reasonable in asking us, with an air of raillery, what master-pieces the new theatrical system can boast of? Have they any right to say to the critics who have expounded and displayed it, "You know not whereof you are speaking; and, as a proof of this, nothing that has been done under your auspices at all corresponds to your magnificent promises?"

We might even agree with them; for if, by way of reprisal, we should afterward ask, concerning Aristotle's _Poetics_, what tragedies of worth it succeeded in inspiring in Greece; concerning Horace's _Ars Poetica_, what illustrious monuments of its truthfulness remain from the theatre of the Latins; concerning La Harpe's _Cours de Littérature_, what master-pieces we may thank it for? the answer would not be very much to their advantage.

Nature alone creates great poets; by her sole agency the world has been gifted, at long intervals, with a Sophocles, a Shakspeare, a Racine, a Molière; and after each such effort, the repose is long and protracted. No human endeavors can be so successful as to supply the lack of that which nature alone can give; and any theory for the creation of great men--any pompous _megalanthropogenesy_--is an insane imposition, either in literature or any where else. We will even go further; what is true of genius is equally true of talent: however little of it may exist, yet in whatever degree it is to be found, nature alone has all the honor. Criticism does for it nothing more than it does for every one else; it has no formula of talent ready made; it has no receipts for the manufacture of good tragedies and amusing comedies.

{258}

Nothing is, in fact, more common than thus to misapprehend the design and nature of certain things.

When the _Organon_ of the Stagyrite philosopher was rediscovered in the Middle Ages, those who first studied it thought they had met with a kind of enchantment, and certainly they had good reason for so thinking; for this _Organon_, this admirable logical system, is one of the most wonderful monuments of the greatness and power of the human mind that exists. But immediately they started to the conclusion that the aim of logic was to teach men reasoning, and that reasoning was, if not the only, yet certainly the principal means of attaining truth--that whosoever should thoroughly master the syllogism could never again be deceived in any thing, and would have reached the utmost boundaries of human knowledge. This was a great mistake; no one can estimate the follies and sophistries, the strifes and subtleties, which this has cost us. Logic teaches man nothing which he could not already do alone, and without its assistance; the syllogistic procedure is the natural and spontaneous method; it need not be formally learned in order to its being employed. There are, besides, other conditions for good reasoning--a clear vision and an adequate conception of the subject, a just regard to all the conditions implied in the problem to be solved, and the faculty of retaining them firmly during the whole course of the deduction. And these things are all given by nature; logic can not impart the secret of acquiring them. Must we, then, on the other hand, conclude, as some philosophers have concluded, that logic is good for nothing? By no means; this would be to rush blindly to the opposite extreme. {259} The design of logic is not to teach men to reason, but to teach them how they actually do reason; it is a branch of mental philosophy; it discloses to us the nature of one of our most remarkable mental processes; it explains to us its laws, its action, its mechanism; it reveals the human mind to itself. He who studies it properly will always study it advantageously; he will rise from this study with a more enlightened and practiced, a stronger and more dexterous mental organ--more fitted, in one word, for all things, not even excepting reasoning itself; for never is it in any respect fruitless to develop human intelligence, and to enlarge and purify the judgment.

The same must be said of criticism. It also is a branch of mental philosophy. It also enlightens the mind with regard to its own operations, and shows it in reflection the method of its own activity; but it neither confines it within the limits of the schools, nor subjects it to a dwarfing and lasting pupillage.

The beautiful exists; it exists in the external world and in the soul of man, in the phenomena of nature and in the events in which humanity displays itself. Sometimes it is manifested entirely in these regions; but oftener it gives only a glimpse and a hint of its presence. Genius seizes it and makes it its own possession; it receives the impression, and then gives it out in a purer and more vivid state than that in which it first appeared; it is surprised by the vision, and it surprises in its turn by the presentation of it. Thus genius acts under the influence of an inspiration; unconsciously, yet most spontaneously, it avails itself of the processes of art. The eagle flies because it is an eagle; the stag bounds because it is a stag.

{260}

What, then, is the province of criticism? Its position is that of a mediator between the master-pieces of art and the minds which are desirous of appreciating them; between the man of talent and the readers whom he addresses; sometimes between him and the man of genius. Whether we be small or great, gifted with insight or not, it initiates us into the secret of these marvelous beauties; it displays before us their delicate processes, their hidden relations, their mystic laws. This is its work; neither more nor less.

But now is the time for the approach of ratiocinative mediocrity; it advances with lofty assumption, bearing the staff of office, availing itself of these expositions in order to erect, by means of them, a clumsy structure of exact formulas--burlesquing these delicate and cautious explanations by resolving them into pedantic precepts, and appealing to lesser spirits to experiment upon their select list of instructions, practical precepts, and petty routines. At its bidding, the laborers set to work. Equipped with their rule and compass, they draw the lines and measure out the compartments, they dissect most methodically the mighty productions of men of genius, plundering on the right hand and on the left, pillaging from one a posture, from another a stroke of sentiment, from a third an idea, from a fourth a poetic touch, and, readjusting all these bits according to the best of their ability, they at length produce a sorry, complicated piece of mosaic, dressed in truly harlequin gear. Hence arises, in all languages which have received a small amount of culture, a deluge of bastard productions, which are neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither interesting nor ridiculous, and which have no other fault than the irremediable one of corresponding to nothing whatever that exists either in Man or nature, neither in the mind of the would-be poet nor in that of his unfortunate reader. {261} Hence, for example, the amusement which so many poets of the last century gave themselves, of composing tens of thousands of pastoral verses, which gave no indication that during the whole period of their existence they had so much as cast a glance upon any tree in the Tuileries, or watched the course of any river in the Gobelins. Hence arose, in a word, all that rendered literature dull and poetry fantastic.

Criticism that is worthy of the name--true criticism, indeed--has nothing to do with this foolish attempt to construct the agreeable and the beautiful into a fabric. Its aim is not to teach how beautiful things may be made, but to exhibit before all eyes, and help all minds to understand the lustre of those things which are beautiful. Its aim is to increase the number of lofty and refined spirits--minds of liberality and sagacity, of delicacy and enlightenment; it is to prepare for men of genius and of talent, whenever nature may please to inspire such, a public worthy of receiving them, whose admiration may animate them, and whose severe taste may calm and moderate their too exuberant activity.

This being granted, may we say that the new criticism, that criticism to which has been imputed, whether advisedly or not--or, rather, we would question whether or not it is fitting to impute to this criticism alone and entirely--the revolution which has been declared in our theatre, may we say that this criticism has entirely failed in its object? If it has not, by one stroke of any magic wand, transformed men of moderate talent into great poets, may it not have smoothed the way before great poets who may yet arise? If it has not caused beautiful works of art to spring forth from the bosom of the earth, may it not have opened many eyes, and unstopped many deafened ears? May it not, to a certain extent, have so prepared the way for great works, if ever Heaven shall grant them to us, that they may, on their arrival, find an audience disposed to appreciate them and qualified to estimate them?

{262}

Far are we from thinking that, in this respect, its labors have been entirely unavailing. On the contrary, we are much more disposed to suspect that, in more than one relation, and we will by no means limit ourselves to unimportant relations, the new criticism has succeeded beyond its expectations, and perhaps even beyond its desires; we are disposed to suspect that it has made something which is of greater value than itself--that it has involuntarily disencumbered us of more shackles than it was itself aware of, of more even than it had estimated. What is, in fact, the error of criticism in general--we mean of all criticism that has any weight (the smaller species are not worth our notice)--a kind of error from which the new criticism is not exempt to any great extent?

It is, as it seems to us, a certain absence of mental liberty when absorbed in the contemplation of things which the mind either approves or condemns; a certain impulsive, passionate, intolerant disposition, which prevents it from reproving with the severity of justice any thing faulty in that which it admires, and of admiring with generous self-abandonment whatever may be excellent in the productions which it condemns.

The ancients, for example, are admired every where--and unquestionably they are entitled to be so: they are admired in France, in Germany, in England; they are admired from very different motives, sometimes from motives contradictory to one another, and certainly this admiration rests upon very different principles in different cases. {263} But, in truth, where have they as yet been judged? where have they been appreciated without conventional enthusiasm, without an unquestioning devotion? Will not the man who shall first venture openly to expose their defects, whatever respect he may retain for them, stand a chance of being browbeaten, and abused as a Barbarian and a Goth? We ourselves, who dare to hint such an insinuation--what a storm of wrath may possibly be preparing to burst over our head?

The great masters of our language have been very ably appreciated, analyzed, and commented upon by La Harpe--for La Harpe was no vulgar critic--but, on the one hand, he would not have deemed that sufficient homage had been shown to Racine and Voltaire, had he not fastened Shakspeare by the heels to their triumphal car, and dragged him along in the mud; and, on the other hand, he can not venture, except at rare intervals, and with faltering accents, to expose any trifling imperfection in the objects of his adoration; the enormous defects of our drama do not at all shock him; he does not even seem to have perceived them.

On the other hand, let us take, as representative of the new criticism, the man who is undeniably its glory and ornament--the man who, by the extent and variety of his knowledge, by the profundity and originality of his views, by the lively appreciation of the beautiful, which ever animates him, and by that ingenious sagacity which never forsakes him, has had the greatest influence on the ideas and opinions of his contemporaries--Wilhelm Schlegel. He will be found to exhibit the obverse side of the medal.

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He admires Shakspeare most thoroughly; he has translated him with all the fondness of a pupil for a master; he has also a passionate admiration for Calderon and the Spanish drama. But, in order to balance his excesses in these directions, he habitually judges our drama with something more than rigor; to the admirable unaffectedness and comic vein of Molière he is entirely insensible; he deprecates the "Phedre" of Racine as much inferior to the "Phædra" of Euripides; to many of our merits he frequently grants neither sympathy nor justice; to our most venial defects he is mercilessly severe. He admires Shakspeare, and, in his enthusiasm, not only is Shakspeare perfect in all respects, but all that appertains, either immediately or more remotely to Shakspeare, participates in the perfection of this ideal.

According to his judgment, the period in which Shakspeare flourished was not only a great and remarkable period, but a period of taste and politeness; it was not only learned, but refined; urbanity, grace, and refined pleasantry were its most prominent and characteristic features.

Shakspeare himself is not only a great poet, but a profound philosopher, whose thoughts have sounded, down to their lowest depths, all the mysteries of the world, and all the intricacies of the human soul. Not only are his pieces in the highest degree effective, but they are composed with a marvelous and irreproachable art; every thing, whether it be great or small, finds its proper place and its just estimate in his writings. The gross obscenities with which he abounds are bursts of native humor; the puns, quips, and quibbles which are to be met with at every step, even in the most pathetic passages, are sallies of the most irreproachable taste; his anachronisms have their merits; his errors in geography, in history, in the portraiture of men and manners, all have their explanations.

The same idolatry, the same superstitious ardor is shown for the Spanish drama.

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It must be admitted that those of our French critics who were the first to adopt the doctrines of Schlegel have taken care not to go quite so far as he. They were sensible of his exaggerations. They have maintained their former admiration for Racine side by side with their more recent admiration for Shakspeare; and they have persisted in throwing the blame of the mistakes of Shakspeare himself upon the times in which he lived, and upon the rare genius with which Heaven endowed him.

But we must confess, also, that this wisdom has been neither general nor of long duration. To see how the leaders of our modern school express themselves when speaking of the English and the Germans--of Schiller, of Shakspeare, and of Goëthe--we may easily perceive that they occupy, with reference to these writers, the same mental posture which La Harpe occupied with reference to Racine or Voltaire; that while they are quite willing to express censure on a point of trifling importance, they do so on the implied condition that nothing of a serious or fundamental character shall be questioned by them.

For example, in the attempt to present "Othello" in its complete form for the Théâtre Français (an attempt which, moreover, we will applaud from the very bottom of our heart), in this attempt to reproduce "Othello," verse by verse, without any abridgment, except of a part which the police would not have suffered to pass--the part of a girl of vicious life, a part besides which is quite useless, and a crowd of indecent equivoques and disgusting obscenities--who could be persuaded to see in all this a design to offer to the public, not a spectacle interesting on account of its novelty, or curious because of the period to which it carries us back, but an accomplished model of art--a work perfect in all its features?

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Well! we will venture to assert that the time for these exaggerations has already passed in France; we will venture to predict that there is in the general good sense of the people--a good sense which the controversies that have been going on for the last fifteen or twenty years have developed and prepared--something which will prove an invincible obstacle to these adorations of individuals, and will prevent them from ever so gaming ground as to become common opinions and recognized doctrines. We have, with some trouble, emancipated ourselves from one extreme--we will not allow ourselves to run heedlessly into its opposite. We have disencumbered ourselves from some thousands of small prejudices--we will not allow ourselves to be swathed in a host of prejudices of another kind.

Every time that the attempt which has just been made at the Théâtre Français shall be renewed (and we hope it may be often renewed--this will be a much more worthy thing than the presentation before us of new and mediocre pieces), the problem which has already been once offered will be repeated--whether the public will consent to abandon the freedom of its judgment in favor of any thing, by whatever sanctions it may be supported--whether many of the things which it is asked to admire it will be contented only to tolerate--whether other things, similarly presented, it will condemn--whether others will be received with admiration, but from new motives, of a more immediate and personal character--whether, so far at least as impartiality is concerned, it will show itself to be superior to its leaders--and whether it will regard what is presented to it from a point of view more elevated than theirs.

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We say that this has already been once realized; and we say so, not only because the mass of the public refused to take a decided stand either with the detractors of Shakspeare or with his enthusiastic admirers--this neutrality was rather owing, as we have already explained, to the unsettled state of its ideas and doctrines than to the fear lest they should be compromised--but because the impression which the piece made, in its general effect and in its details, appeared to us to involve a true judgment, an unconscious, not a premeditated judgment, which could only be read on the countenances of the audience, a judgment which did not always square (far from it) with those ideas which the most accredited critics endeavor to give us on the English work, but which was more original, and, in our judgment, more worthy of respect than theirs.

The drama in question is divided into two nearly equal parts; in the first part, which comprises the first two acts and some scenes of the third, the comic element is most conspicuous; the tragic, or to speak more exactly, the dignified, the serious, element only appears once for a brief space; in the second part, on the contrary, the tragic element predominates, the comic only appears in transient flashes.

This distinction is made with such precision in the original, that, in general, the comic part is written in prose, while the tragic part is written almost uniformly in verse; a kind of mixture which Shakspeare ordinarily used with most marvelous dexterity, but which the French translator has not ventured to introduce upon our stage.

The comic part appeared to be long and rather overdrawn; the general effect which it produced was a feeling of disapprobation and impatience.

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To what is this to be attributed? Was it merely the effect of the admixture of comedy and tragedy? a feeling of the incompatibility of these equally simultaneous impressions? Doubtless the majority of the audience would thus have interpreted what they felt. But suppose the comic part had been of a different character--that it had been better managed, disposed more judiciously, distributed according to a juster proportion--would the same effect have been produced? There was nothing to indicate that it would; and the favor with which some salient points were received, and the universal laughter which they excited, may even induce a contrary opinion.

The idea of allotting an equal, or nearly an equal share of attention to two opposite elements, appears to us a violation of due proportions, and to rest upon a false principle. We are not usually sticklers for the unities; still, however, we believe that a certain fundamental unity is, in every case, a condition under which the beautiful is manifested here below. The effect, the legitimate effect of the beautiful, whatever it may be, is to raise the soul above itself, to transport it, by a kind of magic enchantment, into a sphere where all its transitory interests disappear, and to abolish for a time the sentiment of its individuality. Now the soul of man, as it is at present constituted, can not entirely abandon itself; it can not forget itself, and lose itself, either in simultaneous, or in two successive impressions of a precisely opposite character and of equal force. To attempt this is to do violence to its constitution.

If the subject of "Othello" had been perfectly unknown to the public, if the public could have freely allowed itself to be carried unresistingly along with the constant mysteriousness that is connected with Roderigo, the surprise and the wrath of Brabantio, the drunkenness of Cassio, and the ill-natured jokes of the buffoon, uttered in a strain of mere pleasantry, it would from the first have ascended to the proper elevation of gladness and hilarity; but the shock could not but be unpleasant to them when they were so soon to pass abruptly from this gay and playful disposition to the terrible pathos of the gigantic scenes of jealousy which terminate the third act.

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But as they, on the contrary, had entered the theatre with their expectations directed entirely to those scenes of jealousy, and to other scenes not less terrible, which were to grow out of these, as they were anxiously looking forward to the catastrophe, two or more acts full of sarcasms, facetiæ, and jokes appeared to the public a severe trial, a somewhat grim preparation; they saw in it something not merely contrary, but opposed and shocking to their tastes, something which overshot the mark, whatever that mark may be.

Were they wrong? Was this mere prejudice? We, for our part, can hardly think so.

The mixture of comedy and tragedy is not, or certainly ought not to be, a purely arbitrary thing. The two are not brought together merely for the sake of the union. Opposition, antithesis, in works of art, is not in itself a merit, has no intrinsic value. They are brought together when a certain kind of beauty results naturally from their juxtaposition; they are united because, in the vicinity of those events which change and reverse an entire life, there are the world, society, and the crowd of indifferent egotists who move on without caring for these events, whose movements are neither disturbed nor disarranged by them, who pursue their individual interests, ruled by their habits, abandoned to selfishness; and because the contrast between situations of such an opposite character, and sentiments so unlike to one another, after it has compelled us to smile, opens to us a point of view from which human life is seen shaded with a fanciful and melancholy tinge. {270} Comedy and tragedy are blended, because a flash of unpremeditated gayety sometimes crosses the minds of those who are corroded by remorse or stricken by despair, and restores them for an instant to a state which is lost to them--irremediably and hopelessly lost--leaving them immediately afterward, as a ray of light which only glittered for a moment to exhibit more clearly the depth of the abyss:

Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.

The two are blended, because the same fact often presents varying aspects, and the waning light, which exhibits the one, brings the other into bolder relief. Lastly, they are blended, because an accidental link is often found to connect a terrible misfortune with a fantastic incident--some singular relation which involuntarily and unexpectedly takes hold upon us, and which our spirit not unwillingly grasps as if to find some kind of unbending to regain its equilibrium and recover breath.

Never should the contrast be allowed unless under the condition that the dominant impression, which is chiefly to be regarded, should be developed and not destroyed, should not be lost sight of, but rendered more lasting and profound. No one knew this better than Shakspeare, no one has illustrated it by more numerous and beautiful examples. But we confess we can not find them in "Othello." In this play the comic element is purely arbitrary; it is, in some sort, appended to the tragic, while there is no intimate relation between the one and the other, no common aim, no alliance to be ratified by the deep experiences of the soul.

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Let Roderigo be eliminated from the piece--a genuine melodramatic simpleton, who only appears that he may serve as a butt to Iago, to be beduped and befooled by him; you can do so; what Roderigo does might be done quite as well by any one else; no one, Iago excepted, would know or care for his absence. Let Brabantio, the firm and prudent senator, full of ability and self-possession, dignified and respected, be true to his proper character; let him not be transformed, during the two whole scenes, merely to suit the whim of the author, into a Géronte or a Sganarelle. Let Cassio fall into disgrace with his general from some more worthy motive than that supplied by taking a glass of wine at an unseasonable time, which would also be much more in keeping both with his good qualities, and with the defects which are attributed to him. Lastly, erase entirely the part of the clown, a part so false that the French imitator, though he has in general adhered most conscientiously to the original, did not think himself bound to preserve it; all that is comic in the piece will have disappeared, it will have disappeared without being observed at all by any of the essential characters, without producing any chasms in the representation of the principal positions; it may be detached, as two objects are separated which have nothing in common but the circumstance of their both being in the same vessel. This is assuredly quite sufficient to explain the impression produced upon the spectators; they might, without any injustice, have shown a greater degree of severity, and doubtless they would have done so if they had had to express themselves upon the work as one entirely unknown to them. But they were placed, as we have already said, in a more rational point of view than that occupied by the French translator; they had come, not to behold a marvel, but to study, with a true and living sympathy, an ancient and renowned work. {272} They were unpleasantly surprised at first, but they showed patience, and gave due credit. One circumstance, we think, proves most convincingly the freedom of their minds and the docility of their attention, the fact that this deluge of tiresome pleasantries did not at all injure the effect of the three beautiful scenes in the first act--the scene in which Othello calmly meets the violent passion of Desdemona's father; that in which he explains to the Senate how he managed to conquer the young girl's heart; and that in which Desdemona herself appears, and demands to be permitted to follow the Moor, as her lord and master, to Cyprus.

The effect of Othello's narration was irresistible. This portion of the play is translated into all languages--its beauty is perfectly entrancing, its originality is unequaled. Even La Harpe could not refuse to it the tribute of his admiration. But perhaps the scene which precedes and that which follows are even still more adapted to exhibit Shakspeare in all his greatness. How wonderful a painter of human nature was this man! How true is it that he has received from on high something of that creative power which, by breathing on a little dust, can transform it into a creature of life and immortality!

In the interview with Brabantio, Othello only utters some fifteen lines; before the Senate, Desdemona only about thirty; and yet already both Othello and Desdemona stand before us as complete characters: there they both are, showing themselves without any constraint, in all the gracefulness and singularity of their characters, in all their native and imperishable individuality. Suppress the rest of the piece, you can never efface Desdemona and Othello from your memory; place them, if you please, in another order of circumstances, use your utmost, but do not think you can obliterate them; we know them, and we know beforehand what they must do and say.

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And yet what complexities, what contrasts, what delicate shades, belong to these characters!

In Othello there are two individualities: in the first place, there is the savage, who has for a long time remained alone; who has for a long time lived the life of a brute, and who abandons himself, without even the smallest indication of an internal struggle, to the first effervescence of passion which crosses his soul; a man who is yet furnished with that interior goodness, that native generosity which the instinct of our poetic fictions has been pleased to attribute to the lion, the monarch of the deserts. In the second place, there is the civilized man, who has become such by war, and by war alone, by the greatness of his courage, by that self-possession which is educated and disciplined by constant, habitual, and regular familiarity with danger. In the amenities of a peaceful life the civilized man is naturally and spontaneously uppermost; Othello is calm, confident in the superiority of his character, in the haughtiness of his spirit, in the magnitude of his services; but he obeys the first signal, he marches at the first word of command--his discipline is that of the soldier, his moderation is that of the tamed animal. He has captivated Desdemona's young heart by an unexpected turn of fortune, the very possibility of which belongs solely to the region of poetry, the reality of which is inconceivable by vulgar minds: as Iago says, "What delight shall she have to look on the devil?" But this stroke of fortune appeared quite simple to him, an unreflecting and unsuspicious being; it has not cost him one step, not one moment of disquietude: he has not stopped to think of his age, his appearance, or the rudeness of his manners. {274} He possesses Desdemona as his property, as he possesses his good sword, not imagining that his claims to her can be disputed in any other way than by brute force. He is, therefore, at rest. If, however, he gives himself up to love; love is yet only an accident of his existence; war is his life, his element, the stage on which his character really acts; love can only thwart his true destiny; meanwhile, he neither knows how to rule it, nor how thoroughly to receive its influence.