Mathias Morhardt
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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| + | "Rodin's friend, [[Mathias Morhardt]], insisted that [[Paul Claudel]] was a "simpleton" who had "shut away" his sister [[Camille Claudel]]."--Sholem Stein | ||
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| - | ===CHAPTER III. SYMBOLISM. === | ||
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| - | A SIMILAR phenomenon to that which we observed in the case | ||
| - | of the pre-Raphaelites is afforded by the French Symbolists. | ||
| - | We see a number of young men assemble for the purpose of | ||
| - | founding a school. It assumes a special title, but in spite of all | ||
| - | sorts of incoherent cackle and subsequent attempts at mystifica- | ||
| - | tion it has, beyond this name, no kind of general artistic principle | ||
| - | or clear aesthetic ideal. It only follows the tacit, but definitely | ||
| - | recognisable, aim of making a noise in the world, and by attract- | ||
| - | ing the attention of men through its extravagances, of attaining | ||
| - | celebrity and profit, and the gratification of all the desires and | ||
| - | conceits agitating the envious souls of these filibusters of fame. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Shortly after 1880 there was, in the Quartier Latin in Paris, a | ||
| - | group of literary aspirants, all about the same age, who used to | ||
| - | meet in an underground cafe at the Quai St. Michel, and, while | ||
| - | drinking beer, smoking and quibbling late into the night, or | ||
| - | early hours of the morning, abused in a scurrilous manner the | ||
| - | well-known and successful authors of the day, while boasting | ||
| - | of their own capacity, as yet unrevealed to the world. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The greatest talkers among them were Emile Goudeau, a chatterbox unknown save as the author of a few silly satirical verses ; [[Maurice Rollinat]], the author of [[Les Névroses]] ; and Edmond Haraucourt, who now stands in the front rank of French mystics. They called themselves the ' Hydropaths,' an entirely meaningless word, which evidently arose out of an indistinct reminiscence of both ' hydrotherapy ' and ' neuropath/ | ||
| - | and which was probably intended, in the characteristic vague- | ||
| - | ness of the mystic thought of the weak-minded, to express only | ||
| - | the general idea of people whose health is not satisfactory, who | ||
| - | are ailing and under treatment. In any case there is, in the | ||
| - | self-chosen name, a suggestion of shattered nervous vitality | ||
| - | vaguely felt and admitted. The group, moreover, owned a | ||
| - | weekly paper Luthe, which ceased after a few issues.* | ||
| - | |||
| - | About 1884 the society left their paternal pot-house, and pitched their tent in the Café Francois I., [[Boulevard St. Michel]]. This café attained a high renown. It was the cradle of Symbolism. It is still the temple of a few ambitious youths, who hope, by joining the Symbolist school, to acquire that | ||
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| - | * A history of the commencement of this society has been written by one of the members, [[Mathias Morhardt]]. See '[[Les Symboliques]],' Nouvelle Revue du 15 Fe'vrier, 1892, p. 765. | ||
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| - | MYSTICISM ior | ||
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| - | advancement which they could not expect from their own abilities. It is, too, the [[Kaaba]] to which all foreign imbeciles make a pilgrimage, those, that is, who have heard of the new Parisian tendency, and wish to become initiated into its teachings and mysteries. A few of the Hydropaths did not join in the change of quarters, and their places were taken by fresh auxiliaries [[Jean Moreas]], [[Laurent Tailhade]], [[Charles Morice]], etc. These dropped the old name, and were known for a short time as the ' Decadents.' This had been applied to them by a critic in derision, but just as the ' Beggars ' of the Netherlands proudly and truculently appropriated the appellation bestowed in contempt and mockery, so the ' Decadents ' stuck in their hats the insult, which had been cast in their faces, as a sign of mutiny against criticism. Soon, however, these original guests ; of the Francois I. became tired of their name, and More"as invented for them the designation of ' Symbolistes,' under which they became generally known, while a special smaller group, who had separated themselves from the Symbolists, continued | ||
| - | to retain the title of ' Decadents.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | The Symbolists are a remarkable example of that group-pjr"" | ||
| - | forming tendency which we have learnt to know as a peculiarity | ||
| - | of ' degenerates.' They had in common all the signs of de- | ||
| - | generacy and imbecility : overweening vanity and self-conceit, ; | ||
| - | strong emotionalism, confused disconnected thoughts, garrulity | ||
| - | (the 'logorrhcea' of mental therapeutics), and complete incapa- | ||
| - | city for serious sustained work. Several of them had had a | ||
| - | secondary education, others even less. All of them were pro- | ||
| - | foundly ignorant, and being unable, through weakness of will | ||
| - | and inability to pay attention, to learn anything systematically, | ||
| - | they persuaded themselves, in accordance with a well-known | ||
| - | psychological law, that they despised all positive knowledge, and | ||
| - | held that only dreams and divinings, only ' intuitions,' were worthy | ||
| - | of human beings. A few of them, like Moreas and Guaita, who | ||
| - | afterwards became a ' magian,' read in a desultory fashion all | ||
| - | sorts of books which chanced to fall into their hands at the bou- | ||
| - | quinistes of the Quais, and delivered themselves of the snatched | ||
| - | fruits of their reading in grandiloquent and mysterious phrases | ||
| - | before their comrades. Their listeners thereupon imagined that | ||
| - | they had indulged in an exhausting amount of study, and in this | ||
| - | way they acquired that intellectual lumber which they peddled | ||
| - | out in such an ostentatious display in their articles and pam- | ||
| - | phlets, and in which the mentally sane reader, to his amused | ||
| - | astonishment, meets with the names of Schopenhauer, Darwin, | ||
| - | Taine, Renan, Shelley and Goethe ; names employed to label the | ||
| - | shapeless, unrecognisable rubbish-heaps of a mental dustbin, filled | ||
| - | with raw scraps of uncomprehended and insolently mutilated | ||
| - | propositions and fragments of thought, dishonestly extracted | ||
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| - | |||
| - | 102 DEGENERATION | ||
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| - | and appropriated. This ignorance on the part of the Symbolists, | ||
| - | and their childish flaunting of a pretended culture, are openly- | ||
| - | admitted by one of them. ' Very few of these young men," says- | ||
| - | Charles Morice,* ' have any exact knowledge of the tenets of | ||
| - | religion or philosophy. From the expressions used in the Church | ||
| - | services, however, they retain some fine terms, such as " mon- | ||
| - | strance," " ciborium," etc. ; several have preserved from Spencer, | ||
| - | Mill, Shopenhauer (sic /), Comte, Darwin, a few technical terms. | ||
| - | Few are those who know deeply what they talk about, or those | ||
| - | who do not try to make a show and parade of their manner of | ||
| - | speaking, which has no other merit than that of being a conceit | ||
| - | in syllables.' (Charles Morice naturally is responsible for this | ||
| - | last unmeaning phrase, not I.) | ||
| - | |||
| - | The original guests of the Francois I. made their appearance | ||
| - | at one o'clock in the day at their caf, and remained there till | ||
| - | dinner-time. Immediately after that meal they returned, and | ||
| - | did not leave their headquarters till long after midnight. Of | ||
| - | course none of the Symbolists had any known occupation. | ||
| - | These ' degenerates ' are no more capable of regularly fulfilling | ||
| - | any duty than they are of methodical learning. If this organic | ||
| - | deficiency appears in a man of the lower classes, he becomes a | ||
| - | vagabond ; in a woman of that class it leads to prostitution ; in | ||
| - | one belonging to the upper classes it takes the form of artistic | ||
| - | and literary drivel. The German popular mind betrays a deep | ||
| - | intuition of the true connection of things in inventing such a | ||
| - | word as 'day-thief (Tagedteb) for such aesthetic loafers. Pro- | ||
| - | fessional thieving and the unconquerable propensity to busy, | ||
| - | gossiping, officious idleness flow from the same source, to wit, | ||
| - | inborn weakness of brain. | ||
| - | |||
| - | It is true that the boon companions of the caf6 are not con- | ||
| - | scious of their mentally-crippled condition. They find pet names | ||
| - | and graceful appellations for their inability to submit themselves | ||
| - | to any sort of discipline, and to devote persistent concentration | ||
| - | and attention to any sort of work. They call it ' the artist | ||
| - | nature,' * genius roaming at large,' ' a soaring above the low | ||
| - | miasma of the commonplace/ They ridicule the dull Philistine, | ||
| - | who, like the horse turning a winch, performs mechanically a | ||
| - | regular amount of work ; they despise the narrow-minded loons | ||
| - | who demand that a man should either pursue a circumscribed | ||
| - | bourgeois trade or possess an officially acknowledged status, and | ||
| - | who profoundly distrust impecuniary professions.- They glory | ||
| - | in roving folk who wander about singing and carelessly begging, | ||
| - | and they hold up as their ideal the ' commoner of air,' who | ||
| - | bathes in morning dew, sleeps under flowers, and gets his clothing | ||
| - | from the same firm as the lilies of the field io the Gospel. | ||
| - | Richepin's La Chanson des Gueux is the most typical expression | ||
| - | * Charles Morice, La Literature de tout-fr-P heure. Paris, 1889, p. 274. | ||
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| - | MYSTICISM | ||
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| - | 103 | ||
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| - | of this theory of life. Baumbach's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen | ||
| - | and Spielmannslieder are analogous specimens in German litera- | ||
| - | ture, but of a less pronounced character. Schiller's Pegasus im | ||
| - | Jock seems to be pulling at the same rope as these haters of the | ||
| - | work society expects of them, but it is only apparently so. Our | ||
| - | great poet sides not with the impotent sluggard, but with that | ||
| - | overflowing energy which would fain do greater things than the | ||
| - | work of an office-boy or a night-watchman. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Moreover, the pseudo-artistic loafer, in spite of his imbecility | ||
| - | and self-esteem, cannot fail to perceive that his mode of life | ||
| - | runs contrary to the laws on which the structure of society and | ||
| - | civilization are based, and he feels the need of justifying himself | ||
| - | in his own eyes. This he does by investing with a high signi- | ||
| - | ficance the dreams and chatter over which he wastes his time, | ||
| - | calculated to arouse in him the illusion that they rival in value | ||
| - | the most serious productions. ' The fact is, you see/ says M. | ||
| - | Stephane Mallarme, ' that a fine book is the end for which the | ||
| - | world was made.'* Morice complains -f- touchingly that the | ||
| - | poetic mind ' should be bound to suffer the interruption of a | ||
| - | twenty-eight days' army drill between the two halves of a verse.' | ||
| - | ' The excitement of the streets,' he goes on, ' the jarring of the | ||
| - | Governmental engine, the newspapers, the elections, the changi | ||
| - | of the Ministry, have never made so much noise ; the storm | ||
| - | and turbulent autocracy of trade has suppressed the love of the | ||
| - | beautiful in the thoughts of the multitude, and industry has | ||
| - | killed as much silence as politics might still have permitted to | ||
| - | survive.' In fact, what are all these nothings commerce, | ||
| - | manufactures, politics, administration against the immense im- | ||
| - | portance of a hemistich ? | ||
| - | |||
| - | The drivelling of the Symbolists was not entirely lost in the | ||
| - | atmosphere of their cafe, like the smoke of their pipes and | ||
| - | cigarettes. A certain amount of it was perpetuated, and ap- | ||
| - | peared in the Revue Independante^ the Revue Contemporaine, and | ||
| - | other fugitive periodicals, which served as organs to the round | ||
| - | table of the Francois I. These little journals and the books | ||
| - | published by the Symbolists were not at first noticed outside the | ||
| - | cafe. Then it happened that chroniqueurs of the Boulevard | ||
| - | papers, into whose hands these writings chanced to fall, devoted | ||
| - | an article to them on days when ' copy ' was scanty, but only to | ||
| - | hold them up to ridicule. That was all the Symbolists wanted. | ||
| - | Mockery or praise mattered little so long as they got noticed. | ||
| - | Now they were in the saddle, and showed at once what un- | ||
| - | paralleled circus-riders they were. They themselves used every | ||
| - | effort to get into the larger newspapers, and when one of them | ||
| - | succeeded, like the smith of Jiiterbock in the familiar fairy tale, | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Jules Hurer, Enqnete sur revolution litteraire. Paris, 1891, p. 65. | ||
| - | f Charles Morice, op. cit.^ p. 271. | ||
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| - | 104 DEGENERATION | ||
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| - | in throwing his cap into an editor's office through the crack of | ||
| - | the door incautiously put ajar, he followed it neck and crop, | ||
| - | took possession of the place, and in the twinkling of an eye | ||
| - | transformed it into the citadel of the Symbolist party. In these | ||
| - | tactics everything served their turn the dried-up scepticism | ||
| - | and apathy of Parisian editors, who take nothing seriously, are | ||
| - | capable neither of enthusiasm nor 01 repugnance, and only know | ||
| - | the cardinal principle of their business, viz., to make a noise, to | ||
| - | arouse curiosity, to forestall others by bringing out something | ||
| - | new and sensational ; the uncritical gaping attitude of the | ||
| - | public, who repeat in faith all that their newspaper gossips to | ||
| - | them with an air of importance ; the cowardice and cupboard- | ||
| - | love of the critics who, finding themselves confronted by a closed | ||
| - | and numerous band of reckless young men, got nervous at the | ||
| - | sight of their clenched fists and angry threatening glances, | ||
| - | and did not dare to quarrel with them ; the low cunning of | ||
| - | the ambitious, who hoped to make a good bargain if they | ||
| - | speculated on the rise of shares in Symbolism. Thus the very | ||
| - | worst and most despicable characteristics of editors, critics, | ||
| - | aspiring authors, and newspaper readers, co-operated to make | ||
| - | known, and, in part, even famous, the names of the original | ||
| - | habitues of the Francois I., and to awaken the conviction in | ||
| - | very many weak minds of both hemispheres that their tendency | ||
| - | governed the literature of the day, and included all the germs of | ||
| - | the future. This triumph of the Symbolists marks the victory | ||
| - | of the gang over the individual. It proves the superiority of | ||
| - | attack over defence, and the efficacy of mutual-admiration-insur- | ||
| - | ance, even in the case of the most beggarly incapacity. | ||
| - | |||
| - | With all their differences, the works of the Symbolists have | ||
| - | two features in common. They are vague often to the point | ||
| - | of being unintelligible, and they are pious. Their vagueness | ||
| - | is only to be expected, after all that has been said here about | ||
| - | the peculiarities of mystic thought. Their piousness has | ||
| - | attained to an importance which makes it necessary to consider | ||
| - | it more in detail. | ||
| - | |||
| - | When, in the last few years, a large number of mysteries, | ||
| - | passion plays, golden legends, and cantatas appeared, when one | ||
| - | dozen after another of new poets and authors, in their first | ||
| - | poems, novels, and treatises, made ardent confessions of faith, | ||
| - | invoked the Virgin Mary, spoke with rapture of the sacrifice of | ||
| - | the Mass, and knelt in fervent prayer, the cry arose amongst | ||
| - | reactionists, who have a vested interest in diffusing a belief in | ||
| - | a reversion of cultured humanity to the mental darkness of the | ||
| - | past : ' Behold, the youth, the hope, the future of the French | ||
| - | people is turning away from science ; " emancipation " is | ||
| - | becoming bankrupt ; souls are opening again to religion, and | ||
| - | the Holy Catholic Church steps anew into its lofty office, as the | ||
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| - | MYSTICISM 105 | ||
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| - | teacher, comforter, and guide of civilized mankind.' The | ||
| - | Symbolistic tendency is designedly called ' neo-Catholic,' and | ||
| - | certain critics pointed to its appearance and success as a | ||
| - | proof that freethought was overthrown by faith. ' Even the | ||
| - | most superficial glance at the state of the world,' writes Edouard | ||
| - | Rod,* ' shows us that we are on all sides in the full swing of | ||
| - | reaction.' And, further, ' I believe in reaction in every sense | ||
| - | of the word. How far this reaction will go is the secret of | ||
| - | to-morrow.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | The jubilant heralds of the new reaction, in inquiring into | ||
| - | the cause of this movement, find, with remarkable unanimity, | ||
| - | this answer, viz. : The best and most cultivated minds return to | ||
| - | faith, because they found out that science had deceived them, | ||
| - | and not done for them what it had promised to do. 'The man | ||
| - | of this century,' says M. Melchior de Vogue"^ ' has acquired | ||
| - | a very excusable confidence in himself. . . . The rational/ | ||
| - | mechanism of the world has been revealed to him. ... In the | ||
| - | explanation of things the Divine order is wholly eliminated. . . . | ||
| - | Besides, why follow after doubtful causes, when the operations | ||
| - | of the universe and of humanity had become so clear to the | ||
| - | physicist and physiologist? . . . The least wrong God ever | ||
| - | wrought was that of being unnecessary. Great minds assured | ||
| - | us' of this, and all mediocre spirits were convinced of it. The | ||
| - | eighteenth century had inaugurated the worship of Reason. | ||
| - | The rapture of that millennium lasted but a moment. Then | ||
| - | came eternal disillusion, the regularly recurring ruin of all that | ||
| - | man had built upon the hollow basis of his reason. .... He had | ||
| - | to admit that, beyond the circle of acquired truths, the abyss of | ||
| - | ignorance appeared again just as deep, just as disquieting.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Charles Morice, the theorist and philosopher of the Symbolists, | ||
| - | arraigns Science on almost every page of his book, La Literature | ||
| - | de tout-a-F luure, for her great and divers sins. ' It is lament- | ||
| - | able,' he says in his apocalyptic phraseology, J 'that our learned | ||
| - | men have no idea how, in popularizing science, they were dis- | ||
| - | organizing it (?). To entrust principles to inferior memories, | ||
| - | is to expose them to the uncertainty of unauthorized interpre- | ||
| - | tations, of erroneous commentaries and heterodox hypotheses. | ||
| - | For the word that the books contain is a dead letter, and the | ||
| - | books themselves may perish, but the impact which they leave | ||
| - | behind them, the breath going forth from them, survives. And | ||
| - | what if they have breathed out storm and unloosed (!) darkness ? | ||
| - | But this is just what all this chaos of vulgarization has as its | ||
| - | most patent result. ... Is not such the natural consequence | ||
| - | of a century of psychological investigation, which was a good | ||
| - | training for the reason, but whose immediate and actual | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Huret, op. '/., p. 14. f V te E. M. de Vogii, op. tit., p. xix et seq. | ||
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| - | % Morice, op. cit., pp. 5, 163, 177. | ||
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| - | 106 DEGENERATION | ||
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| - | consequences must inevitably be weariness, and disgust, ay, | ||
| - | and despair of reason ? . . . Science had erased the word | ||
| - | mystery. With the same stroke of the pen she had expunged | ||
| - | the words beauty, truth, joy, humanity. . . . And now mys- | ||
| - | ticism takes from Science, the intruder and usurper, not only | ||
| - | all that she had stolen, but something also, it may be, of her | ||
| - | own property. The reaction against the shameless and miser- | ||
| - | able negations of scientific literature . . . has taken the form | ||
| - | of an unforeseen poetical restoration of Catholicism.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Another graphomaniac, the author of that imbecile book, | ||
| - | Rembrandt as Educator, drivels in almost the same way. | ||
| - | ' Interest in science, and especially in the once so popular | ||
| - | natural science, has widely diminished of late in the German | ||
| - | world. . . . There has been to a certain extent a surfeit of | ||
| - | induction ; there is a longing for synthesis ; the days of objec- | ||
| - | tivity are declining once more to their end, and, in its place, | ||
| - | subjectivity knocks at the door.' * | ||
| - | |||
| - | Edouara Hodf says : ' The century has advanced without | ||
| - | keeping all its promises ' ; and further on he speaks again of | ||
| - | 'this ageing and deluded century.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | In a small book, which has become a sort of gospel to | ||
| - | imbeciles and idiots, Le Devoir present, the author, M. Paul | ||
| - | Desjardins,J makes continual attacks on 'so-called scientific | ||
| - | empiricism,' and speaks of the ' negativists, the empiricists, and | ||
| - | the mechanists, whose attention is wholly taken up with physical | ||
| - | and inexorable forces/ boasting of his intention ' to render | ||
| - | invalid the value of the empirical methods.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Even a serious thinker, M. F. Paulhan, in his investigation | ||
| - | of the basis of French neo-mysticism, comes to the conclusion | ||
| - | that natural science has shown itself powerless to satisfy the | ||
| - | needs of mankind. ' We feel ourselves surrounded by a vast | ||
| - | unknown, and demand that at least access to it should be per- | ||
| - | mitted to us. Evolution and positivism have blocked the way. | ||
| - | . . . For these reasons evolution could not but show itself | ||
| - | incapable of guiding the mind, even if it left us great thoughts.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Overwhelming as may appear this unanimity between strong | ||
| - | minds commanding respect and weak graphomaniacs, it does | ||
| - | , not, nevertheless, contain the slightest spark of truth. To | ||
| - | assert that the world turns away from science because the | ||
| - | 'empirical,' which means the scientific, method of observation | ||
| - | and registration has suffered shipwreck, is either a conscious lie | ||
| - | or shows lack of mental responsibility. A healthy-minded and | ||
| - | honourable man must almost feel ashamed to have still to | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Rembrandt ah Erzieher. Leipzig, 1890, p. 2. | ||
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| - | j* Edouard Rod, Les Icties morales du Temps present. Paris, 1892, p. 66. | ||
| - | |||
| - | J, Paul Desjardins, Le Devoir present. Paris, 1892, pp. 5, 8, 39. | ||
| - | |||
| - | $ F. Faulhan, Le nouveau Mysticisme. Paris, 1891, p. 120. | ||
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| - | MYSTICISM 107 | ||
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| - | demonstrate this. In the last ten years, by means of spectrum | ||
| - | analysis, science has made disclosures in the constitution of the | ||
| - | most distant heavenly bodies, their component matter, their | ||
| - | degree of heat, the speed and direction of their motions ; it has | ||
| - | firmly established th~ essential unity of all modes of force, and | ||
| - | has made highly probable the unity of all matter ; it is on the | ||
| - | track of the formation and development of chemical elements, | ||
| - | and it has learnt to understand the building up of extremely | ||
| - | intricate organic combinations ; it shows us the relations of | ||
| - | atoms in molecules, and the position of molecules in space ; it | ||
| - | has thrown wonderful light on the conditions of the action of | ||
| - | electricity, and placed this force at the service of mankind ; | ||
| - | it has renewed geology and palaeontology, and disentangled the | ||
| - | concatenation of animal and vegetable forms of life ; it has | ||
| - | newly created biology and embryology, and has explained in a | ||
| - | surprising manner, through the discovery and investigation of | ||
| - | germs, some of the most disquieting mysteries of perpetual | ||
| - | metamorphosis, illness, and death ; it has found or perfected | ||
| - | methods which, like chronography, instantaneous photography, | ||
| - | etc., permit of the analysis and registration of the most fleeting | ||
| - | phenomena, not immediately apprehensible by human sense, | ||
| - | and which promise to become extremely fruitful for the know- | ||
| - | ledge of nature. And in the face of such splendid, such over- | ||
| - | whelmingly grand results, the enumeration of which could easily | ||
| - | be doubled and trebled, does anyone dare to speak of the | ||
| - | shipwreck of science, and of the incapacity of the empirical | ||
| - | method ? | ||
| - | |||
| - | Science is said not to have kept what she promised. When | ||
| - | has she ever promised anything else than honest and attentive | ||
| - | observation of phenomena and, if possible, establishment of the | ||
| - | conditions under which they occur ? And has she not kept this | ||
| - | promise ? Does she not keep it perpetually ? If anyone has | ||
| - | expected of her that she would explain from one day to | ||
| - | another the whole mechanism of the universe, like a juggler | ||
| - | explains his apparent magic, he has indeed no idea of the true | ||
| - | mission of science. She denies herself all leaps and flights, | ||
| - | She advances step by step. She builds slowly and patiently a | ||
| - | firm bridge out into the Unknown, and can throw no new arch | ||
| - | over the abyss before she has sunk deep the foundations of a | ||
| - | new pier in the depths, and raised it to the right height. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Meanwhile, she asks nothing at all about the first cause of | ||
| - | phenomena, so long as she has so many more proximate causes | ||
| - | to investigate. Many of the most eminent men of science go | ||
| - | so far, indeed, as to assert that the first cause will never become | ||
| - | the object of scientific investigation, and call it, with Herbert | ||
| - | Spencer, 'the Unknowable,' or exclaim despondingly with Du | ||
| - | Bois-Reymond, Ignorabinms. Both of -them in this respect are | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | ic DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | completely unscientific, and only prove that even clear thinkers | ||
| - | like Spencer, and sober investigators like Du Bois-Reymond. | ||
| - | stand yet under the influence of theological dreams. Science can | ||
| - | speak of no Unknowable, since this would presuppose that she | ||
| - | is able to mark exactly the boundaries of the Knowable. This, | ||
| - | however, she cannot do, since every new discovery thrusts back | ||
| - | that boundary. Moreover, lli^ acceptance of an Unknowable | ||
| - | involves the acknowledgment that there is something which we | ||
| - | cannot know. Now, in order to be able seriously to assert the | ||
| - | existence of this Something, either we must have acquired some | ||
| - | knowledge of it, however slight and indistinct, and this, there- | ||
| - | fore, would prove that it cannot be unknowable, since we | ||
| - | actually know it, and nothing then would justify us in declaring | ||
| - | beforehand that our present knowledge of it, however little it | ||
| - | may be, will not be extended and deepened ; or else we have no | ||
| - | knowledge, even of the minutest character, of the philosopher's | ||
| - | Unknowable, in which case it cannot exist for us. The whole | ||
| - | conception is based upon nothing, and the word is an idle | ||
| - | creation of a dreaming imagination. The same thing can be | ||
| - | said of Ignorabimus. It is the opposite of science. It is not a | ||
| - | correct inference from well-founded premises, it is not the result | ||
| - | of observation, but a mystical prophecy. No one has the right | ||
| - | to make communications with respect to the future as matters | ||
| - | of fact. Science can announce what she knows to-day ; she can | ||
| - | also mark off exactly what she does not know ; but to say what | ||
| - | she will or will not at any time know is not her office. | ||
| - | |||
| - | It is true that whoever asks from Science that she should give | ||
| - | an answer to all the questions of idle and restless minds with | ||
| - | unshaken and audacious certainty must be disappointed by her; | ||
| - | for she will not, and cannot, fulfil his desires. Theology and | ||
| - | metaphysics have an easier task. They devise some fable, and | ||
| - | propound it with overwhelming earnestness. If anyone does | ||
| - | not believe in them, they threaten and insult the intractable | ||
| - | client; but they can prove nothing to him, they cannot force | ||
| - | him to take their chimeras for cash. Theology and meta- | ||
| - | physics can never be brought into a dilemma. It costs them | ||
| - | nothing to add to their words more words, to unite to one | ||
| - | voluntary assertion another, and pile up dogma upon dogma. | ||
| - | It will never occur to the serious sound mind, which thirsts after | ||
| - | real knowledge, to seek it from metaphysics or theology. They | ||
| - | appeal only to childish brains, whose desire for knowledge, or, | ||
| - | rather, whose curiosity, is fully satisfied with the cradling croon | ||
| - | of an old wife's tale. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Science does not compete with theology and metaphysics. | ||
| - | If the latter declare themselves able to explain the whole | ||
| - | phenomenon of the universe, Science shows that these pretended | ||
| - | explanations are empty chatter. She, for her part, is naturally | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 109 | ||
| - | |||
| - | on her guard against putting in the place of a proved absurdity | ||
| - | another absurdity. She says modestly : ' Here we have a fact, | ||
| - | here an assumption, here a conjecture. 'Tis a rogue who gives | ||
| - | more than he has.' If this does not satisfy the neo-Catholics, | ||
| - | they should sit down and themselves investigate, themselves | ||
| - | find out new facts, and help to make clear the weird obscurity | ||
| - | of the phenomenon of the universe. That would be a proof of a | ||
| - | true desire for knowledge. At the table of Science there is | ||
| - | room for all, and every fellow-observer is welcome. But this | ||
| - | does not enter into even the dreams of these poor creatures, who | ||
| - | drivel about the ' bankruptcy of science.' Talk is so much | ||
| - | easier and more comfortable than inquiry and discovery ! | ||
| - | |||
| - | True, science tells us nothing about the life after death, of | ||
| - | harp-concerts in Paradise, and of the transformation of stupid | ||
| - | youths and hysterical geese into white-clad angels with rain- | ||
| - | bow-coloured wings. It contents itself, in a much more plain | ||
| - | and prosaic manner, with alleviating the existence of mankind | ||
| - | on earth. It lessens the average of mortality, and lengthens the | ||
| - | life of the individual through the suppression of known causes | ||
| - | of disease ; it invents new comforts, and makes easier the | ||
| - | struggle against Nature's destructive powers. The Symbolist, | ||
| - | who is preserved after surgical interference through asepsy from | ||
| - | suppuration, mortification, and death ; who protects himself by | ||
| - | a Chamberland filter from typhus ; who by the careless turning | ||
| - | of a button fills his room with electric light ; who through a | ||
| - | telephone can converse with someone beloved in far-distant | ||
| - | countries, has to thank this alleged bankrupt science for it all, | ||
| - | and not the theology to which he maintains that he wants to | ||
| - | return. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The demand that science should give not only true, if limited, | ||
| - | conclusions, and offer not only tangible benefits, but also solve | ||
| - | all enigmas to-day and at once, and make all men omniscient, | ||
| - | happy, and good, is ridiculous. Theology and metaphysics have | ||
| - | never fulfilled this demand. It is simply the intellectual mani- | ||
| - | festation of the same foolish conceit, which in material concerns | ||
| - | reveals itself in hankering after pleasure and in shirking work. | ||
| - | The man who has lost his social status, who craves for wine and | ||
| - | women, for idleness and honours, and complains of the consti- | ||
| - | tution of society because it offers no satisfaction to his lusts, | ||
| - | is own brother to the Symbolist who demands truth, and | ||
| - | reviles science because it does not hand it to him on a golden | ||
| - | platter. Both betray a similar incapacity to grasp the reality of | ||
| - | things, and to understand that it is not possible to acquire goods | ||
| - | without bodily labour, or truth without mental exertion. The | ||
| - | capable man who wrests her gifts from Nature, the industrious | ||
| - | inquirer who in the sweat of his brow bores into the sources of | ||
| - | knowledge, inspires respect and cordial sympathy. On the other | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | no DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | hand, there can be but little esteem for the discontented idlers | ||
| - | who look for riches from a lucky lottery ticket, or a rich uncle, | ||
| - | and for enlightenment from a revelation which is to come to | ||
| - | them without trouble on their part over the slovenly beer- | ||
| - | drinking at their favourite cafe". | ||
| - | |||
| - | The dunces who abuse science, reproach it also for having | ||
| - | destroyed ideals, and stolen from life all its worth. This accusa- | ||
| - | tion is just as absurd as the talk about the bankruptcy of science. | ||
| - | A higher ideal than the increase of general knowledge there | ||
| - | cannot be. What saintly legend is as beautiful as the life of an | ||
| - | inquirer, who spends his existence bending over a microscope, | ||
| - | almost without bodily wants, known and honoured by few, | ||
| - | working only for his own conscience' sake, without any other | ||
| - | ambition than that perhaps one little new fact may be firmly | ||
| - | established, which a more fortunate successor will make use of | ||
| - | in a brilliant synthesis, and insert as a stone in some monument | ||
| - | of natural science ? What religious fable has inspired with a | ||
| - | contempt of death sublimer martyrs than a Gehlen, who sank | ||
| - | down poisoned while preparing the arsenious hydrogen which | ||
| - | he had discovered ; or a Crocd-Spinelli, who was overtaken by | ||
| - | death in an over-rapid ascent of his balloon while observing the | ||
| - | pressure of the atmosphere ; or an Ehrenberg, who became | ||
| - | blind over his life's work ; or a Hyrtl, who almost entirely | ||
| - | destroyed his eyesight by his anatomical corrosive preparations ; | ||
| - | or the doctors, who inoculate themselves with some deadly | ||
| - | disease not to speak of the innumerable crowd of discoverers | ||
| - | travelling to the North Pole, and to the interior of dark conti- | ||
| - | nents? And did Archimedes really feel his life to be so worth- | ||
| - | less when he entreated the pillaging bands of Marcellus, ' Do | ||
| - | not disturb my circles ' ? Genuine healthy poetry has always | ||
| - | recognised this, and finds its most ideal characters, not in a | ||
| - | devotee, who murmurs prayers with drivelling lips, and stares | ||
| - | with distorted eyes at some visual hallucination, but in a | ||
| - | Prometheus and a Faust, who wrestle for science, i.e., for exact | ||
| - | knowledge of nature. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The assertion that science has not kept its promises, and that, | ||
| - | therefore, the rising generation is turning away from it, does not | ||
| - | for a moment resist criticism, and is entirely without foundation. | ||
| - | It is a senseless premise of neo-Catholicism, were the Symbolists | ||
| - | to declare a hundred times over that disgust with science had | ||
| - | made them mystics. The explanations which even a healthy- | ||
| - | minded man makes with respect to the true motives of his | ||
| - | actions are only to be accepted with the most cautious criticism ; | ||
| - | those proffered by the degenerate are completely useless. For | ||
| - | the impulse to act and to think originate, for the degenerate, in | ||
| - | the unconscious, and consciousness finds subsequent, and in some | ||
| - | measure plausible, reasons for the thoughts and deeds, the real | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM in | ||
| - | |||
| - | source of which is unknown to itself. Every book on suggestion | ||
| - | gives illustrations of Charcot's typical case : a hysterical female | ||
| - | is sent into hypnotic sleep, and it is suggested to her that on | ||
| - | awaking she is to stab one of the doctors present. She is then | ||
| - | awakened. She grasps a knife and makes for her appointed | ||
| - | victim. The blade is wrenched from her, and she is asked why | ||
| - | she wishes to murder the doctor. She answers without hesita- | ||
| - | tion, ' Because he has done me an injury.' Note that she | ||
| - | had seen him that day for the first time in her life. This person | ||
| - | felt when in a waking condition the impulse to kill the doctor. | ||
| - | Her consciousness had no presentiment that this impulse had | ||
| - | been suggested to her in a hypnotic state. Consciousness | ||
| - | knows that a murder is never committed without some motive. | ||
| - | Forced to find a motive for the attempted murder, consciousness | ||
| - | falls back upon the only one reasonably possible under the cir- | ||
| - | cumstances, and fancies that it got hold of the idea of murder in | ||
| - | order to avenge some wrong. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The brothers Janet* offer, as an explanation of this psycho- | ||
| - | logical phenomenon, the hypothesis of dual personality. ' Every | ||
| - | person consists of two personalities, one conscious and one | ||
| - | unconscious. Among healthy persons both are alike complete, | ||
| - | and both in equilibrium. In the hysteric they are unequal, and | ||
| - | out of equilibrium. One of the two personalities, usually the | ||
| - | conscious, is incomplete, the other remaining perfect.' The | ||
| - | conscious personality has the thankless task of inventing | ||
| - | reasons for the actions of the unconscious. It resembles the | ||
| - | familiar game where one person makes movements and another | ||
| - | says words in keeping with them. In the degenerate with dis- | ||
| - | turbed equilibrium consciousness has to play the part of an ape- | ||
| - | like mother finding excuses for the stupid and naughty tricks of | ||
| - | a spoiled child. The unconscious personality commits follies and | ||
| - | evil deeds, and the conscious, standing powerless by, and unable | ||
| - | to hinder it, seeks to palliate them by all sorts of pretexts. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The cause of the neo-Catholic movement, then, is not to be | ||
| - | sought in any objection felt by younger minds to science, or in | ||
| - | their having any complaint to make against it. A De Vogue, a | ||
| - | Rod, a Desjardins, a Paulhan, who impute such a basis to the | ||
| - | mysticism of the Symbolists, arbitrarily attribute to it an origin | ||
| - | which it never had. It is due solely and alone to the degener- | ||
| - | ate condition of its inventors. Neo-Catholicism is rooted in | ||
| - | emotivity and mysticism, both of these being the most frequent | ||
| - | and most distinctive stigmata of the degenerate. | ||
| - | |||
| - | That the mysticism of the degenerate, even in France, the | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Pierre Janet, ' Les Actes inconscients et le De'doublement de la Per- | ||
| - | sonalite,' Revue phtlosophigite, December, 1886. Paul Janet, ' L'Hystdrie et | ||
| - | 3'Hypnotisme d'apres laThe'orie de la double Personnalitd,' Revue scientijique % | ||
| - | 1888, i er vol., p. 616 | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | H2 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | land of Voltaire, has frequently taken the form of religious | ||
| - | enthusiasm might at first seem strange, but will be understood if | ||
| - | we consider the political and social circumstances of the French | ||
| - | people during the last decade. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The great Revolution proclaimed three ideals : Liberty, | ||
| - | Equality, and Fraternity. Fraternity is a harmless word which | ||
| - | has no real meaning, and therefore disturbs nobody. Liberty, | ||
| - | to the upper classes, is certainly unpleasant, and they lament | ||
| - | greatly over the sovereignty of the people and universal suffrage, | ||
| - | but still they bear, without too much complaint, a state of things | ||
| - | which, after all, is sufficiently mitigated by a prying administra- | ||
| - | tion, police supervision, militarism, and gendarmerie, and which | ||
| - | will always be sufficient to keep the mob in leash. But equality | ||
| - | to those in possession is an insufferable abomination. It is the | ||
| - | one thing won by the great Revolution, which has outlasted all | ||
| - | subsequent changes in the form of government, and has remained | ||
| - | alive in the French people. The Frenchman does not know | ||
| - | much about fraternity ; his liberty in many ways has a muzzle | ||
| - | as its emblem ; but his equality he possesses as a matter of fact, | ||
| - | and to it he holds firmly. The lowest vagabond, the bully of | ||
| - | the capital, the rag-picker, the hostler, believes that he is quite | ||
| - | as good as the duke, and says so to his face without the smallest | ||
| - | hesitation if occasion arises. The reasons of the Frenchman's | ||
| - | fanaticism for equality are not particularly elevated. The feel- | ||
| - | ing does not spring from a proud, manly consciousness and the | ||
| - | knowledge of his own worth, but from low envy and malicious | ||
| - | intolerance. There shall be nothing above the dead level ! | ||
| - | There shall be nothing better, nothing more beautiful or even | ||
| - | more striking, than the average vulgarity ! The upper classes | ||
| - | struggle against this rage for equalization with passionate | ||
| - | vehemence, especially and precisely those who have reached | ||
| - | their high position through the great Revolution. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The grandchildren of the rural serfs, who plundered and | ||
| - | destroyed the country seats of noblemen, basely murdered the | ||
| - | inmates, and seized upon their lands ; the descendants of town | ||
| - | grocers and cobblers, who waxed rich as politicians of street and | ||
| - | club, as speculators in national property and assignats, and as | ||
| - | swindlers in army purveyance, do not want to become identified | ||
| - | with the mob. They want to form a privileged class. They | ||
| - | want to be recognised as belonging to a more honourable caste. | ||
| - | They sought, for this purpose, a distinguishing mark, which | ||
| - | would make them at once conspicuous as members of a select | ||
| - | class, and they found it in belonging to the Church. | ||
| - | |||
| - | This choice is quite intelligible. The mass of the people in | ||
| - | France, especially in towns, is sceptical, and the aristocracy of | ||
| - | the ancien regime, who in the eighteenth century bragged about | ||
| - | free thought, had come out of the deluge of 1789 as very pious | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 11.3 | ||
| - | |||
| - | persons, comprehending or divining the inner connection between | ||
| - | all the old ideas and emblems of the Faith, of the Monarchy, | ||
| - | and of feudal nobility. Hence, through their clericalism, the | ||
| - | parvenus at once established a contrast between themselves and | ||
| - | the multitude from whom they wanted to keep distinct, and a | ||
| - | resemblance with the class into which they would like to smuggle | ||
| - | or thrust themselves. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Experience teaches that the instinct of preservation is often | ||
| - | the worst adviser in positions of danger. The man who cannot | ||
| - | swim, falling into the water, involuntarily throws up his arms, | ||
| - | and thus infallibly lets his head be submerged and himself be | ||
| - | drowned ; whereas his mouth and nose would remain above | ||
| - | water if he held his arms and hands quietly under the surface. | ||
| - | The bad rider, who feels his seat insecure, usually draws up | ||
| - | Tiis legs, and then comes the certainty of a fall ; whereas he | ||
| - | would probably be able to preserve his equilibrium if he left his | ||
| - | legs outstretched. Thus the French bourgeoisie, who knew that | ||
| - | they had snatched for themselves the fruits of the great upheaval, | ||
| - | and let the Fourth Estate, who alone had made the Revolution, | ||
| - | come out of it empty-handed, chose the worst means for retain- | ||
| - | ing their unjustly-acquired possessions and privileges, and for | ||
| - | escaping unnatural equalization when they made use of their | ||
| - | clericalism for the establishment of their social status. They | ||
| - | alienated, in consequence, the wisest, strongest, and most culti- | ||
| - | vated minds, and drove over to socialism many young men who, | ||
| - | though intellectually radical, were yet economically conservative, | ||
| - | and little in favour of equality, and who would have become | ||
| - | a strong defence for a free-thinking bourgeoisie, but who felt | ||
| - | that socialism, however radical its economic doctrines and | ||
| - | impossible its theories of equality, represented emancipation. | ||
| - | |||
| - | But I have not to judge here whether the religious mimicry | ||
| - | of the French bourgeoisie, which was to make them resemble | ||
| - | the old nobility, exerts the protection expected of it or not ; I | ||
| - | only set down the fact of this mimicry. It is a necessary con- | ||
| - | sequence that all the rich and snobbish parvenus send their | ||
| - | sons to the Jesuit middle and high schools. To be educated | ||
| - | by the Jesuits is regarded as a sign of caste, very much as is | ||
| - | membership of the Jockey Club. The old pupils of the Jesuits | ||
| - | form a ' black freemasonry,' which zealously advances their pro- | ||
| - | teges in every career, marries them to heiresses, hurries to their | ||
| - | assistance in misfortune, hushes up their sins, stifles scandal, etc. | ||
| - | It is the Jesuits who for the last decade have made it their care | ||
| - | to inculcate their own habits of thinking into the rich and | ||
| - | high-born youth of France entrusted to them. These youths | ||
| - | brought brains of hereditary deficiency, and therefore mystically | ||
| - | disposed, into the clerical schools, and these then gave to the | ||
| - | mystic thoughts of the degenerate pupils a religious content, | ||
| - | |||
| - | 8 | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | 114 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | This is not an arbitrary assumption, but a well-founded fact. | ||
| - | Charles Morice, the aesthetic theorist and philosopher of the | ||
| - | Symbolists, received his education from the Jesuits, according | ||
| - | to the testimony of his friends.* So did Louis le Cardonncl, | ||
| - | Henri de Regnier, and others. The Jesuits invented the phrase | ||
| - | ' bankruptcy of science,' and their pupils repeat it after them, | ||
| - | because it includes a plausible explanation of their pictistic | ||
| - | mooning, the real organic causes of which are unknown to them, | ||
| - | and for that matter would not be understood if they were | ||
| - | known. ' I return to faith, because science does not satisfy me,' | ||
| - | is a possible statement. It is even a superior thing to say, since | ||
| - | it presupposes a thirst for truth and a noble interest in great | ||
| - | questions. On the contrary, a man will hardly be willing to | ||
| - | confess, ' I am an enthusiastic admirer of the Trinity and the | ||
| - | Holy Virgin because I am degenerate, and my brain is in- | ||
| - | capable of attention and clear thought. 1 | ||
| - | |||
| - | That the Jesuitical argument as reported by MM. de Vogue*, | ||
| - | Rod, etc., can have found credit beyond clerical circles and | ||
| - | degenerate youth, that the half-educated are heard repeating | ||
| - | to-day, ' Science is conquered, the future belongs to religion,' is | ||
| - | consistent with the mental peculiarities of the million. They | ||
| - | never have recourse to facts, but repeat the ready-made pro- | ||
| - | positions with which they have been prompted. If they would | ||
| - | have regard to facts, they would know that the number of | ||
| - | faculties, teachers and students of natural science, of scientific | ||
| - | periodicals and books, of their subscribers and readers, of | ||
| - | laboratories, scientific societies and reports to the academies | ||
| - | increases year by year. It can be shown by figures that science | ||
| - | does not lose, but continually gains ground.-f- But the million | ||
| - | does not care about exact statistics. In France it accepts with- | ||
| - | out resistance the suggestion, that science is retreating before | ||
| - | religion, from a few newspapers, written mainly for clubmen | ||
| - | and gilded courtezans, into the columns of which the pupils of | ||
| - | the clerical schools have found an entrance. Of science itself, | ||
| - | of its hypotheses, methods, and results, they have never known | ||
| - | anything. Science was at one time the fashion. The daily | ||
| - | press of that date said, 'We live in a scientific age'; the news | ||
| - | of the day reported the travels and marriages of scientists ; the | ||
| - | fcuilleton-novels contained witty allusions to Darwin ; the in- | ||
| - | ventors of elegant walking-sticks and perfumes called their pro- | ||
| - | ductions 'Evolution Essence' or ' Selection Canes '; those who | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Morhardt, op. cit^ p. 769. | ||
| - | |||
| - | f See the Catalogue of Scientific Papers compiled and published by the | ||
| - | Royal Society. The first series of this catalogue, covering the time from 1800 | ||
| - | to 1863, comprises six volumes ; the second, dealing with the decade from | ||
| - | 1864 to 1873, comprises two volumes, equivalent to at least three of the first | ||
| - | series (1047 and 1310 pages); of the third series (1874 to 1883) only one | ||
| - | volume has been issued as yet, but it promises to outrun the second by at | ||
| - | least one half. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM U5 | ||
| - | |||
| - | affected culture took themselves seriously for the pioneers of | ||
| - | progress and enlightenment. To-day those social circles which | ||
| - | set the fashions, and tr^ papers which seek to please these | ||
| - | circles, decree that, not science is chic, but faith, and now the | ||
| - | paragraphs of the boulevard papers relate small piquant sayings | ||
| - | of preachers ; in the feuilleton-novels there are quotations from | ||
| - | the Imitation^ of Christ : inventors bring out richly-mounted | ||
| - | prie-dieus~arKrchc^ice rosaries, and the Philistine feels with | ||
| - | deep emotion the miraculous flower of faith springing up and | ||
| - | blossoming in his heart. Of real disciples science has scarcely | ||
| - | lost one. It is only natural, on the contrary, that the plebs of | ||
| - | the salons, to whom it has never been more than a fashion, should | ||
| - | turn their backs on it at the mere command of a tailor or a modiste. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Thus much on the neo-Catholicism which, partly for party | ||
| - | reasons, partly from ignorance, partly from snobbishness, is | ||
| - | mistaken for a serious intellectual movement of the times. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The pretension of Symbolism to be, not only a return to | ||
| - | faith, but a new theory of art and poetry, is what we must now | ||
| - | proceed to test. | ||
| - | |||
| - | If we wish to know at the outset what Symbolists understand | ||
| - | by symbol and symbolism, we shall meet with the same difficulties | ||
| - | we encountered in determining the precise meaning of the name | ||
| - | pre-Raphaelitism, and for the same reason, viz., because the | ||
| - | inventors of these appellations understood by them hundreds of | ||
| - | different mutually contradictory, indefinite things, or simply | ||
| - | nothing at all. A skilled and sagacious journalist, Jules Huret,* | ||
| - | instituted an inquiry about the new literary movement in France, | ||
| - | and from its leading representatives acquired information, by | ||
| - | which he has furnished us with a trustworthy knowledge of the | ||
| - | meaning which they connect, or pretend to connect, with the | ||
| - | expressions and phraseology of their programme. I will here | ||
| - | adduce some of these utterances and declarations. They will | ||
| - | not tell us what Symbolism is. But they may afford us some | ||
| - | insight into symbolist methods of thought. | ||
| - | |||
| - | M. Stephane Mallarme, whose leadership of the Symbolist | ||
| - | band is least disputed among the disciples, expresses himself as | ||
| - | follows : ' To name an object means to suppress three-quarters | ||
| - | of the pleasure of a poem i.e., of the happiness which consists | ||
| - | in gradually divining it. Our dream should be to suggest the | ||
| - | object. The symbol is the perfected use of this mystery, viz., | ||
| - | to conjure up an object gradually in order to show the condition | ||
| - | of a soul ; or, conversely, to choose an object, and out of it to | ||
| - | reveal a state of the soul by a series of interpretations.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | If the reader does not at once understand this combination of | ||
| - | vague words, he need not stop to solve them. Later on I will | ||
| - | translate the stammerings of this weak mind into the speech of | ||
| - | sound men. , | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Jules Huret, Enqnete sur I' Evolution littefaire. Paris, 1891. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | H6 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | M. Paul Vcrlainc, another high-priest of the sect, expresses | ||
| - | himself as follows : ' It was I who, in 4 .!ie year 1885, laid claim | ||
| - | to the name of Symbolist. The Parnassians, and most of the | ||
| - | romanticists, in a certain sense lacked symbols. . . . Thence | ||
| - | errors of local colouring in history, the shrinking up of the myth | ||
| - | through false philosophical interpretations, thought without the | ||
| - | discernment of analogies, the anecdote emptied of feeling.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Let us listen to a few second-rate poets of the group. ' I | ||
| - | declare art,' says M. Paul Adam, 'to be the enshrining of a | ||
| - | dogma in a symbol. It is a means of making a system prevail, | ||
| - | and of bringing truths to the light of day.' M. Re"my de Gour- | ||
| - | mont confesses honestly : ' I cannot unveil the hidden meaning | ||
| - | of the word " symbolism," since I am neither a theorist nor a | ||
| - | magician.' And M. Saint-Pol-Roux-le-Magnifique utters this | ||
| - | profound warning : ' Let us take care ! Symbolism carried to | ||
| - | excess leads to noinbrilisine, and to a morbid mechanism. . . . | ||
| - | This symbolism is to some extent a parody of mysticism. . . . | ||
| - | Pure symbolism is an anomaly in this remarkable century, re- | ||
| - | markable for militant activities. Let us view this transitional | ||
| - | I art as a clever trick played upon naturalism, and as a precursor | ||
| - | of the poetry of to-morrow.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | We may expect from the theorists and philosophers of the | ||
| - | group more exhaustive information concerning their methods | ||
| - | and aims. Accordingly, M. Charles Morice instructs us how | ||
| - | ' the symbol is the combination of the objects which have | ||
| - | aroused our sensations, with our souls, in a fiction [fiction]. | ||
| - | The means is suggestion ; it is a question of giving people a | ||
| - | remembrance of something which they have never seen.' And | ||
| - | M. Gustav Kahn says : ' For me personally, symbolic art con- | ||
| - | sists in recording in a cycle of works, as completely as possible, | ||
| - | the modifications and variations of the mind of the poet, who is | ||
| - | inspired by an aim which he has determined.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | In Germany there have already been found some imbeciles | ||
| - | and idiots, some victims of hysteria and graphomania, who affirm | ||
| - | that they understand this twaddle, and who develop it further in | ||
| - | lectures, newspaper articles and books. The cultured German | ||
| - | Philistine, who from of old has had preached to him contempt | ||
| - | lor ' platitude,' i.e., for healthy common-sense, and admiration | ||
| - | for 'deep meaning,' which is as a rule only the futile bubbling of | ||
| - | soft and addled brains incapable of thought, becomes visibly | ||
| - | uneasy, and begins to inquire if there may not really be some- | ||
| - | thing behind these senseless series of words. In France people | ||
| - | have not been caught on the limed twigs of these poor fools and | ||
| - | cold-blooded jesters, but have considered Symbolism to be what | ||
| - | in fact it is, madness or humbug. We shall meet with these | ||
| - | words in the writings of noted representatives of all shades of | ||
| - | literary thought. | ||
| - | |||
| - | "The Symbolists!' exclaims M. Jules Lemaitre, 'there are | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM n 7 | ||
| - | |||
| - | none. . . . They themselves do not know what they are or | ||
| - | what they want. There is something stirring and heaving under | ||
| - | the earth, but unable to break through. Do you understand ? | ||
| - | When they have painfully produced something, they would like | ||
| - | to build formulae and theories around it, but fail in doing so, | ||
| - | because they do not possess the necessary strength of mind. . . . | ||
| - | They are jesters with a certain amount of sincerity that I | ||
| - | grant them but nevertheless jesters.' M. Josephin Peladan | ||
| - | describes them as ' whimsical pyrotechnists of metrics and | ||
| - | glossaries, who combine in order to get on, and give themselves | ||
| - | odd names in order to get known.' M. Jules Bois is much more | ||
| - | forcible : ' Disconnected action, confused clamour, such are the | ||
| - | Symbolists. Cacophony of savages who have been turning over | ||
| - | the leaves of an English grammar, or a glossary of obsolete | ||
| - | words. If they have ever known anything, they pretend to | ||
| - | have forgotten it. Indistinct, faulty, obscure, they are never- | ||
| - | theless as solemn as augurs. . . . You, decadent Symbolists, | ||
| - | you deceive us with childish and necromantic formulae.' Ver- | ||
| - | laine^jTirnself, the co-founder of Symbolism, in a moment of | ||
| - | sincerity, calls his followers a ' flat-footed horde, each with his | ||
| - | own banner, on which is inscribed Reclame T M. Henri de | ||
| - | Regnier says apologetically : ' They feel the need of gathering | ||
| - | round a common flag, so that they may fight more effectually | ||
| - | against the contented.' M. Zola speaks of them as ' a swarm of | ||
| - | sharks who, not being able to swallow us, devour each other.' | ||
| - | M. Joseph Caraguel designates symbolical literature as ' a | ||
| - | literature of whining, of babbling, of empty brains, a literature | ||
| - | of Sudanese Griots [minstrels].'" Edmond Haraucourt plainly | ||
| - | discerns the aims of the Symbolists : ' They are discontented, | ||
| - | and in a hurry. They are the Boulangists of literature. We | ||
| - | must live ! We would take a place in the world, become | ||
| - | notorious or notable. We beat wildly on a drum which is not | ||
| - | even a kettledrum. . . . Their true symbol is " Goods by ex- | ||
| - | press." Everyone goes by express train. _Their destination | ||
| - | Fame.' M. Pierre Quillard thinks that under the title of | ||
| - | Symbolists ' poets of rare gifts and unmitigated simpletons | ||
| - | have been arbitrarily included.' And M. Gabriel Vicaire sees | ||
| - | in the manifestoes of Symbolists ' nothing but school-boy jokes.' | ||
| - | Finally, M. Laurent Tailhade, one of the leading Symbolists, | ||
| - | divulges the secret: 'I have never attached any other value to | ||
| - | this performance than that of a transient amusement. We | ||
| - | took in the credulous judgment of a few literary beginners with | ||
| - | the joke of coloured vowels, Theban love, Schopenhauerism, | ||
| - | and other pranks, which have since made their way in the | ||
| - | world.' Quite so ; just, as we have already said, in Germany. | ||
| - | |||
| - | To abuse, however, is not to explain, and although summary | ||
| - | justice is fit in the case of deliberate, swindlers, who, liko | ||
| - | quack-dentists, play the savage in order to entice money fro in | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | ii8 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | market-folk, yet anger and ridicule are out of place in dealing | ||
| - | with honest imbeciles. They are diseased or crippled, and as | ||
| - | such deserve only pity. Their infirmities must be disclosed, | ||
| - | but severity of treatment has been abolished even in lunatic | ||
| - | asylums since Pincl's time. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The Symbolists, so far as they are honestly degenerate and | ||
| - | imbecile, can think only in a mystical, i.e., in a confused way. | ||
| - | The unknown is to them more powerful than the known ; the | ||
| - | activity of the organic nerves preponderates over that of the | ||
| - | cerebral cortex ; their emotions overrule their ideas. When | ||
| - | persons of this kind have poetic and artistic instincts, they | ||
| - | naturally want to give expression to their own mental state. | ||
| - | They cannot make use of definite words of clear import, for | ||
| - | their own consciousness holds no clearly-defined univocal ideas | ||
| - | which could be embodied in such words. They choose, there- | ||
| - | fore, vague equivocal words, because these best conform to their | ||
| - | ambiguous and equivocal ideas. The more indefinite, the more | ||
| - | obscure a word is, so much the better does it suit the purpose of | ||
| - | the imbecile, and it is notorious that among the insane this | ||
| - | habit goes so far that, to express their ideas, which have become | ||
| - | quite formless, they ia^ent^newwords, which are no longer | ||
| - | merely obscure, but devoid of all meaning. We have already | ||
| - | seen that for the typical degenerate, reality has no significance. | ||
| - | On this point I will only remind the reader of the previously | ||
| - | cited utterances of D. G. Rossetti, Morice, etc. Clear speech | ||
| - | serves the purpose of communication of the actual. It has, | ||
| - | therefore, no value in the eyes of a degenerate subject. He | ||
| - | prizes that language alone which does not force him to follow | ||
| - | the speaker attentively, but allows him to indulge without | ||
| - | restraint in the meanderings of his own reveries, just as his own | ||
| - | language does not aim at the communication of definite | ||
| - | thought, but is only intended to give a pale reflection of the | ||
| - | twilight of his own ideas. That is what M. Mallarme' means | ||
| - | when he says: 'To name an object means to suppress three | ||
| - | quarters of the pleasure. . . . Our dream should be to suggest | ||
| - | the object' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Moreover, the thought of a healthy brain has a flow which is | ||
| - | regulated by the laws of logic and the supervision of attention. | ||
| - | It takes for its content a definite object, manipulates and ex- | ||
| - | hausts it. The healthy man can tell what he thinks, and his | ||
| - | telling has a beginning and an end. The mystic imbecile thinks | ||
| - | merely according to the laws of association, and without the red | ||
| - | thread of attention. He has fugitive ideation. He can never | ||
| - | state accurately what he is thinking about ; he can only denote | ||
| - | the emotion which at the moment controls his consciousness. | ||
| - | He can only say in general, ' I am sad/ ' I am merry,' ' I am | ||
| - | fond,' ' I am afraid.' His mind is filled with evanescent, floating, | ||
| - | cloudy ideas, which take their hue from the reigning emotion, as | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 119 | ||
| - | |||
| - | the vapour hovering above a crater flames red from the glow at | ||
| - | the bottom of the volcanic caldron. When he poetizes, there- | ||
| - | fore, he will never develop a logical train of thought, but will | ||
| - | seek by means of obscure words of distinctly emotional colouring | ||
| - | to represent a feeling, a mood. What he prizes in poetical | ||
| - | works is not a clear narrative, the exposition of a definite | ||
| - | thought, but only the reflected image of a mood, which awakens | ||
| - | in him a similar, but not necessarily the same, mood. The de- | ||
| - | generate are well aware of this difference between a work which | ||
| - | expresses strong mental labour and one in which merely emo- | ||
| - | tionally coloured fugitive ideation ebbs and flows ; and they | ||
| - | eagerly ask for a distinguishing name for that kind of poetry of | ||
| - | which alone they have any understanding. In France they have | ||
| - | found this designation in the word 'Symbolism.' The explana- | ||
| - | tions which the Symbolists themselves give of their cognomen | ||
| - | appear nonsensical ; but the psychologist gathers clearly fromi | ||
| - | their babbling and stammering that under the name 'symbol' | ||
| - | they understand a word (or series of words) expressing, not a | ||
| - | fact of the external world, or of conscious thought, but an am- | ||
| - | biguous glimmer of an idea, which does not force the reader to | ||
| - | think, but allows him to dream, and hence brings about no in- \ | ||
| - | tellectual processes, but only moods. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The great poet of the Symbolists, their most admired model, .-jf | ||
| - | from whom, according to their unanimous testimony, they have | ||
| - | received the strongest inspiration, is Paul Verlaine. In this man | ||
| - | we find, in astonishing completeness, all the physical and mental | ||
| - | marks of degeneration, and no author known to me answers so | ||
| - | exactly, trait for trait, to the descriptions of the degenerate given | ||
| - | by the clinicists his personal appearance, the history of his life, | ||
| - | his intellect, his world of ideas and modes of expression. M. Jules | ||
| - | Huret* gives the following account of Verlaine's physical ap- | ||
| - | pearance : ' His face, like that of a wicked angel grown old, | ||
| - | with a thin, untrimmed beard, and abrupt (?) nose ; his bushy, | ||
| - | bristling eyebrows, resembling bearded wheat, hiding deep-set | ||
| - | green eyes ; his wholly bald and huge long skull, misshapen by | ||
| - | enigmatic bumps all these give to his physiognomy a contra- | ||
| - | dictory appearance of stubborn asceticigm_and cyclopean appe- | ||
| - | tites.' As appears in these ludicrously laboured and, in part, | ||
| - | entirely senseless expressions, even the most unscientific observer 1 | ||
| - | has been struck with what Huret calls his ' enigmatic bumps.' | ||
| - | If we look at the portrait of the poet, by Eugene Carriere, of | ||
| - | which a photograph serves as frontispiece in the Select Poems of | ||
| - | Verlaine, f and still more at that by M. Aman-Jean, exhibited | ||
| - | in the Champs de Mars Salon in 1892, we instantly remark the | ||
| - | great asymmetry of the head, which LombrosoJ has pointed out | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Huret, op. '/., p. 6=5. | ||
| - | |||
| - | f Paul Verlaine, Choix de Poesies.- Paris, 1891. | ||
| - | |||
| - | j Lombrosj, U Uomo delinquente, p. 184. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | 120 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | among degenerates, and the Mongolian physiognomy indicated* | ||
| - | by the projecting cheek-bones, obliquely placed eyes, and thin | ||
| - | beard, which the same investigator* looks upon as signs of | ||
| - | degeneration. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Verlaine's life is enveloped in mystery, but it is known, from | ||
| - | his own r avowals, that he passed two years., in prison. In the | ||
| - | poem Ecrif en 1875^ he narrates in detail, not only without | ||
| - | the least shame, but with gay unconcern, nay, even with boast- | ||
| - | ing, that he was a true professional criminal : | ||
| - | |||
| - | 1 J'ai naguere habite* le meilleur des chateaux | ||
| - | Dans le plus fin pays d'eau vive et de coteaux : | ||
| - | . Quatre tours s'eMevaient sur le front d'autant d'ailes, | ||
| - | Et j'ai longtemps, longtemps habite' 1'une d'elles . . . | ||
| - | Une chambre bien close, une table, une chaise, | ||
| - | Un lit strict ou Ton put dormir juste a son aise, . . . | ||
| - | Tel fut mon lot durant les longs mois Ik passes . . . | ||
| - | . . . J'e'tais heureux avec ma vie, | ||
| - | Reconnaissant de biens que nul, certes, n'envie.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | And in the poem Un Conte he says : | ||
| - | |||
| - | . . . 'ce grand pdcheur cut des conduites | ||
| - | Folles a ce point d'en devenir trop maladroites, | ||
| - | Si bien que les tribunaux s'en mirent et les suites ! | ||
| - | Et le voyez-vous dans la plus e"troite des boites ? | ||
| - | |||
| - | Cellules ! prison humanitaires ! II faut taire | ||
| - | |||
| - | Votre horreur fadasse et ce progr^s d'hypocrisie ' . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | It is now known that a crime of a peculiarly revolting character | ||
| - | led to his punishment ; and this is not surprising, since the special | ||
| - | characteristic of his degeneration is a madly inordinate eroticism. | ||
| - | He is perpetually thinking of lewdness, and lascivious images fill | ||
| - | his mind continually. I have no wish to quote passages in which | ||
| - | this unhappy slave of his morbidly excited senses has expressed | ||
| - | the loathsome condition of his mind, but the reader who wishes | ||
| - | to become acquainted with them may be referred to the poems | ||
| - | Les Coquillages, Fille, and Auburn^ Sexual license is not his only | ||
| - | vice. He is also a dipsomaniac, and (as may be expected in a de- | ||
| - | generate subject) a paroxysmal dipsomaniac, who, awakened from | ||
| - | his debauch, is seized with deep disgust of the alcoholic poison | ||
| - | and of himself, and speaks of ' les breuvages execre"s ' (La Bonne | ||
| - | Chanson}, but succumbs to the temptation at the next oppor- | ||
| - | tunity. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Moral insanity, however, is not present in Verlaine. He sins | ||
| - | through irresistible impulse. He is an Impulsivist. The differ- | ||
| - | ence between these two forms of degeneration lies in the fact | ||
| - | that the morally insane does not look upon his crimes as bad, but | ||
| - | commits them with the same unconcern as a sane man would | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Lombroso, op. cit., p. 276. t Verlaine, op. at., p. 272. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ^ Veilaine, op. cit., pp. 72, 315, 3:7. . | ||
| - | |||
| - | perform any ordinary or virtuous act, and after his misdeed is quite contented with himself ; whereas the Impulsivist retains a full consciousness of the baseness of his deeds, hopelessly fights against his impulse until he can no longer resist it, and after the performance* suffers the most terrible remorse and despair. It is only an Impulsivist who speaks in execration of himself as a reprobate (' [[Un seul Pervers]],' in [[Sagesse]]), or strikes the dejected note which Verlaine touches in the first four sonnets of Sagesse .* | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' Hommes durs ! Vie atroce et laide d'ici has ! | ||
| - | :Ah ! que du moins, loin des baisers et des combats, | ||
| - | :Quelque chose demeure un peu sur la montagne, | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' Quelque chose du cceur enfantin et subtil, | ||
| - | :Bonte, respect ! car qu'est-ce qui nous accompagne, | ||
| - | :Et vraiment quand la mort viendra que reste-1-il ? . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' Ferme les yeux, pauvre ame, et rentre sur-le-champ : | ||
| - | :Une tentation des pires. Fuis 1'infame . . . | ||
| - | :Si la vieille folie e'tait encore en route ? | ||
| - | |||
| - | :Ces souvenirs, va-t-il falloir les retuer? | ||
| - | :Un assaut furieux, le supreme, sans doute ! | ||
| - | :O va prier contre 1'orage, va prier ! . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | :C'est vers le Moyen-Age enorme et delicat | ||
| - | :Qu'il faudrait que mon cceur en panne naviguat, | ||
| - | |||
| - | :Loin de nos jours d'esprit charnel et de chair triste . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' Et la que j'eusse part . . . | ||
| - | :... k la chose vitale, | ||
| - | :Et que je fusse un saint, actes bons, pensers droits, | ||
| - | |||
| - | :Haute thdologie et solide morale, | ||
| - | :Guide par la folie unique de la Croix | ||
| - | |||
| - | :Sur tes ailes de pierre, 6 folie Cathe"drale !' | ||
| - | |||
| - | This example serves to show that there is not wanting in Verlaine that religious fervour which usually accompanies morbidly intensified eroticism. This finds a much more decided expression in several other poems. I should wish to quote only from two."}* | ||
| - | |||
| - | :*O mon Dieu, vous m'avez blessd d'amour, | ||
| - | :Et la blessure est encore vibrante, | ||
| - | :O mon Dieu, vous m'avez blessd d'amour. | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' O mon Dieu, votre crainte m'a frappe", | ||
| - | :Et la brulure est encore Ik qui tonne | ||
| - | :O mon Dieu, votre crainte m'a frappe. | ||
| - | |||
| - | (Observe the mode of expression and the constant repetitions.) | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' O mon Dieu, j'ai connu que tout est vil, | ||
| - | :Et votre gloire en moi s'est instaliee, | ||
| - | :O mon Dieu, j'ai connu que tout, est vil. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Shortly, but not immediately after, the immediate result being a sense of | ||
| - | great relief and satisfaction. | ||
| - | |||
| - | :Noyez rnon ame aux flots de votre vin, | ||
| - | :Fondez ma vie au pain de votre table, | ||
| - | :Noyez mon ame aux flots de votre vin. | ||
| - | |||
| - | :Voici mon sang que je n'ai pas versd, | ||
| - | :Voici ma chair indigne"e de souffrance, | ||
| - | :Voici mon sang que je n'ai pas verseV | ||
| - | |||
| - | Then follows the ecstatic enumeration of all the parts of his body, which he offers up in sacrifice to God ; and the poem closes thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | :Vous conrtaissez tout cela, tout cela, | ||
| - | :Et que je suis plus pauvre que personne, | ||
| - | :Vous connaissez tout cela, tout cela, | ||
| - | :Mais ce que j'ai, mon Dieu, je vous le donne.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | He invokes the Virgin Mary as follows : | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' Je ne veux plus aimer que ma mere Marie. | ||
| - | :Tous les autres amours sont de commandement, | ||
| - | :Ndcessaires qu'ils sont, ma mere seulement | ||
| - | :Pourra les allumer aux cceurs qui 1'ont chdrie, | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' C'est pour Elle qu'il faut cherir mes ennemis, | ||
| - | :C'est poor Elle que j'ai voud ce sacrifice, | ||
| - | :Et la douceur de coeur et le zele au service. | ||
| - | :Comme je la priais, Elle les a permis. | ||
| - | |||
| - | :' Et comme j'e*tais faible et bien me'chant encore, | ||
| - | :Aux mains Inches, les yeux e"blouis des chemins, | ||
| - | :Elle baissa mes yeux et me joignit les mains, | ||
| - | :Et m'enseigna les mots par lesquels on adore.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | The accents here uttered are well known to the clinics of | ||
| - | psychiatry. We may compare them to the picture which | ||
| - | Legrain* gives of some of his patients. ' His speech continually | ||
| - | reverts to God and the Virgin Mary, his cousin.' (The case in | ||
| - | question is that of a degenerate subject who was a tramway con- | ||
| - | ductor.) ' Mystical ideas complete the picture. He tajks of God, | ||
| - | of heaven, crosses himself, kneels down, and says that he is follow- | ||
| - | ing the commandments of Christ.' (The subject under observa- | ||
| - | tion is a day labourer.) 'The devil will tempt me, but I see | ||
| - | God who guards me. I have asked of God that all people might | ||
| - | be beautiful,' etc. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The continual alternation of antithetical moods in Verlaine | ||
| - | this uniform transition from bestial lust to an excess of piety, | ||
| - | and from sinning to remorse has struck even observers who | ||
| - | do not know the significance of such a phenomenon. ' He is,' | ||
| - | writes M. Anatole France,* ' alternately devout and atheistical, | ||
| - | orthodox and sacrilegious.' These he certainly is. But why ? | ||
| - | Simply because he is a circulaire. This not very happy | ||
| - | expression, invented by French psychiatry, denotes that form | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Legrain, Du cUlire chez les ttegtntres, pp. 135, 140, 164. | ||
| - | f Huret, op. '/., p. 8. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 123 | ||
| - | |||
| - | of mental disease in which states of excitement and depression | ||
| - | follow each other in regular succession. The period of excite- | ||
| - | ment coincides with the irresistible impulses to misdeeds and | ||
| - | blasphemous language ; that of dejection with the paroxysms / | ||
| - | of contrition and piety. The circulaires belong to the worst | ||
| - | species of the degenerate. ' They are drunkards, obscene, vicious, | ||
| - | and thievish.'* They are also in particular incapable of any | ||
| - | lasting, uniform occupation, since it is obvious that in such a | ||
| - | condition of mental depression they cannot accomplish any | ||
| - | work which demands strength and attention. The circulaires | ||
| - | are, by the nature of their affliction, condemned to be vagabonds | ||
| - | or thieves, unless they belong to rich families. In normally | ||
| - | constituted society there is no place for them. Verlaine has | ||
| - | been a vagabond the whole of his life. He has loafed about all | ||
| - | the highways of France, and roamed as well through Belgium | ||
| - | and England. Since his release from prison he has spent most | ||
| - | of his time in Paris, where, however, he has no residence, but | ||
| - | resorts to the hospitals under the pretext of rheumatism, which | ||
| - | for that matter he may easily have contracted during the nights | ||
| - | which, as a tramp, he has spent under the open sky. The | ||
| - | administration winks at his doings, and grants him food and | ||
| - | shelter gratis, out of regard for his poetical capacity. Con- | ||
| - | formably with the constant tendency of the human mind to | ||
| - | beautify what cannot be altered, he persuades himself that his | ||
| - | vagrancy, which was forced upon him by his organic vice, is a | ||
| - | glorious and enviable condition ; he prizes it as something | ||
| - | beautiful, artistic, and sublime, and looks upon vagabonds with | ||
| - | especial tenderness. Speaking of them he | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | ' Leur jambes pour toutes montures, | ||
| - | Pour tous biens Tor de leurs regards, | ||
| - | Par le chemin des aventures | ||
| - | Us vont haillonneux et hagards. | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Le sage, indigne", les harangue ; | ||
| - | Le sot playit ces fous hasardeux } | ||
| - | Les enfants leur tirent la langue | ||
| - | Et les filles se moquent d'eux.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | We find in every lunatic and imbecile the conviction that the | ||
| - | rational minds who discern and judge him are 'blockheads.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' . . . Dans leurs prunelles | ||
| - | Rit et pleure fastidieux | ||
| - | L'amour des choses e"ternelles, | ||
| - | Des vieux morts et des anciens dieux ! | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Done, allez, vagabonds sans treves, | ||
| - | Errez, funestes et maudits, | ||
| - | Le long des gouffres et des greves, | ||
| - | Sous Pceil ferme des paradis ! | ||
| - | |||
| - | * E. Marandon de Montyel, ' De la Criminalke' et de la Dege'ne'rescence,' | ||
| - | Archives de V Anthropologie crtminelle, Mai, 1892, p. 287. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | 124 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' La nature i I'homme s'allie | ||
| - | Pour chaiier comme il le faut | ||
| - | L'orgueilleuse mdlnncolie | ||
| - | Qui vous fait marcher le front haut* | ||
| - | |||
| - | In another poem (Autre) he calls to his chosen mates: | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Aliens, frres, bons vieux voleurs, | ||
| - | Doux vagabonds | ||
| - | Filous en fleur | ||
| - | Mes chers, mes bons, | ||
| - | |||
| - | 'Fumons philosophiquement, | ||
| - | Promenons nous | ||
| - | Paisiblenient : | ||
| - | Rien faire est doux.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | As one vagabond feels himself attracted by other vagabonds, | ||
| - | so does one deranged mind feel drawn to others. Verlaine has | ||
| - | the greatest admiration for King Louis II. of Bavaria, that | ||
| - | unhappy madman in whom intelligence was extinct long before | ||
| - | death, in whom only the most abominable impulses of foul | ||
| - | beasts of the most degraded kind had survived the perishing of | ||
| - | the human functions of his disordered brain. He apostrophizes | ||
| - | him thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Roi, le seul vrai Roi de ce si&cle, salut, Sire, | ||
| - | Qui voulutes mourir vengeant votre raison | ||
| - | Des choses de la politique, et du de*lire | ||
| - | De cette Science intruse dans la maison, | ||
| - | |||
| - | *De cette Science assassin de 1'Oraison | ||
| - | |||
| - | Et du Chant et de PArt et de toute la Lyre, | ||
| - | Et simplement et plein d'orgueil et floraison | ||
| - | Tuates en mourant, salut, Roi, bravo, Sire ! | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Vous futes un poete, un soldat, le seul Roi | ||
| - | |||
| - | De ce siecle . . . | ||
| - | Et le martyr de la Raison selon la Foi. . . .' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Two points are noticeable in Verlaine's mode of expression. | ||
| - | First, we have the frequent recurrence t of the same word, of the | ||
| - | same turn of phrase, that chewing the cud, or rabachage (repeti- | ||
| - | tion), which we have learnt to know as the marks of intellectual | ||
| - | debility. In almost every one of his poems single lines and | ||
| - | hemistiches are repeated, sometimes unaltered, and often the | ||
| - | same word appears instead of one which rhymes. Were I to | ||
| - | quote all the passages of this kind, I should have to transcribe | ||
| - | nearly all his poems. I will therefore give only a few specimens, | ||
| - | and those in the original, so that their peculiarity will be fully | ||
| - | apparent to the reader. In the Crtpuscute du soir mystique the | ||
| - | lines, ' Le souvenir avec le crepuscule,' and ' Dahlia, lys, tulipe | ||
| - | et renoncules,' are twice repeated without any internal necessity. | ||
| - | In the poem Promenade sentimentale the adjective bleme (wan) | ||
| - | pursues the poet in the manner of an obsession or 'onomatomania,' | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 125 | ||
| - | |||
| - | and he applies it to water-lilies and waves (' wan waves '). The | ||
| - | Nuit du Walpurgis classique begins thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Un rythmique sabbat, rythmique, extre'mement | ||
| - | Rythmique.' . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | In the S/renadethe first two lines are repeated verbatim as the | ||
| - | fourth and eighth. Similarly in Ariettes onblties, VIII. : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Dans Tinterminable | ||
| - | Ennui de la plaine, | ||
| - | La neige incertaine | ||
| - | Luit comme du sable. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Le ciel est de cuivre, | ||
| - | Sans lueur aucune. | ||
| - | On croirait voir vivre | ||
| - | Et mourir la lune. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Comme des nudes | ||
| - | Flottent gris les chenes | ||
| - | Des forets prochaines | ||
| - | Parmi les bue"es. | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Le ciel est de cuivre, | ||
| - | Sans lueur aucune. | ||
| - | On croirait voir vivre | ||
| - | Et mourir la lune. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Corneille poussive, | ||
| - | Et vous, les loups maigres, | ||
| - | Par ces bises aigres | ||
| - | Quoi done vous arrive? | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Dans 1'interminable | ||
| - | Ennui de la plaine, | ||
| - | La neige incertaine | ||
| - | Luit comme du sable.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | The Chevaux de bois begins thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Tournez, tournez, bons chevaux de bois, | ||
| - | Tournez cent tours, tournez mille tours, | ||
| - | Tournez souvent et tournez toujours, | ||
| - | Tournez, tournez au son des hautbois.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | In a truly charming piece in Sagesse he says : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit, | ||
| - | |||
| - | Si bleu, si calme ! | ||
| - | Un arbre, par dessus le toit | ||
| - | Berce sa palme. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' La cloche, dans le ciel qu'on voit, | ||
| - | |||
| - | Doucement tinte. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Un oiseau, sur 1'arbre qu'on voit, | ||
| - | |||
| - | Chante sa plainte.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | In the passage in Amour, ' Les fleurs des champs, les fleurs 4- | ||
| - | innombrables des champs ... les fleurs des gens,' ' champs ' | ||
| - | and * gens' sound somewhat alike. Here the imbecile repetition | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | 126 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | of similar sounds suggests a senselessf pun, to the poet, and as | ||
| - | for this stanza ifTPierrot gamin : | ||
| - | |||
| - | 1 Ce n'est pas Pierrot en herbe | ||
| - | Non plus que Pierrot en gerbe, | ||
| - | C'est Pierrot, Pierrot, Pierrot. | ||
| - | Pierrot gamin, Pierrot gosse, | ||
| - | Le cerneau hors de la cosse, | ||
| - | C'est Pierrot, Pierrot, Pierrot !' | ||
| - | |||
| - | it is the language of nurses to babies, who do not care to make | ||
| - | sense, but only to twitter to the child in tones which give him | ||
| - | pleasure. The closing lines of the poem Mains point to a | ||
| - | complete ideational standstill, to mechanical mumbling : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Ah ! si ce sont des mains de reVe, | ||
| - | Tant mieux, ou tant pis, ou tant mieux.'* | ||
| - | |||
| - | / The second peculiarity of Verlaine's style is the other mark | ||
| - | of mental debility, viz., the combination of completely dis- | ||
| - | connected nouns and adjectives, which suggest each other, either | ||
| - | through a senseless meandering by way of associated ideas, or | ||
| - | through a similarity of sound. VVe have already found some | ||
| - | examples of this in the extracts cited above. In these we find | ||
| - | the ' enormous and tender Middle Ages' and the ' brand which | ||
| - | thunders.' Verlaine writes also of ' feet which glide with a pure | ||
| - | and wide movement/ of ' a narrow and vast affection,' of ' a slow | ||
| - | landscape,'t of 'a slack liqueur' ('jus flasque '), 'a gilded per- | ||
| - | fume,' a 'condensed' or 'terse contour' ('galbe succinct'), etc. | ||
| - | The Symbolists admire this form of imbecility, as 'the research | ||
| - | for rare and precious epithets ' (la recherche de 1'epithete rare et | ||
| - | precieuse). | ||
| - | |||
| - | Verlaine has a clear consciousness of the vagueness of his | ||
| - | thoughts, and in a very remarkable poem from the psychological | ||
| - | point of vi<tvr,Artpolftique t in which he attempts to give a theory | ||
| - | |||
| - | (of his lyric creation, he raises nebulosity to the dignity of a | ||
| - | fundamental method : | ||
| - | ' De la musique avant toute chose | ||
| - | Et pour cela prefere 1' Impair | ||
| - | Plus vague et plus soluble dans 1'air, | ||
| - | Sans rien en lui qui pese ou qui pose.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | The two verbs ' pese ' and 'pose' are juxtaposed merely on | ||
| - | account of their similarity of sound. | ||
| - | |||
| - | * II faut aussi que tu n'ailles point | ||
| - | Choisir les mots sans quelque me'prise ; " | ||
| - | Rien de plus cher que la chanson grise | ||
| - | Ou 1'Inddcis au Precis se joint. | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Ah ! it these are dream hands, | ||
| - | |||
| - | So much the better, or so much the worse, or so much the better. | ||
| - | |||
| - | f Virgil's 'lentus,' when applied to aspects of nature conveys a very | ||
| - | different meaning. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MfflCISM 127 | ||
| - | |||
| - | * C'est des beaux yeux derriere des voiles, | ||
| - | C'est le grand jour tremblant de midi, | ||
| - | C'est par un ciel d'automne attiedi, | ||
| - | Le bleu fouillis des claires e'toiles ! | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Car nous voulons la Nuance encor, | ||
| - | Pas la Couleur, rien que la nuance ! | ||
| - | Oh ! la nuance seule fiance | ||
| - | Le reve au reve et la flute au cor !' | ||
| - | |||
| - | (This stanza is completely delirious ; it places 'nuance* and | ||
| - | 'colour' in opposition, as though the latter were not contained | ||
| - | in the former. The idea of which the weak brain of Verlaine | ||
| - | had an inkling, but could not bring to a complete conception, | ||
| - | is probably that he prefers subdued and mixed tints, which lie | ||
| - | on the margin of several colours, to the full intense colour | ||
| - | itself.) | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Fuis du plus loin la Pointe assassine, | ||
| - | |||
| - | L'esprit cruel et le Rire impur, | ||
| - | |||
| - | Oui font pleurer les yeux de 1'Azur, | ||
| - | |||
| - | Et tout cet ail de basse cuisine !' | ||
| - | |||
| - | It cannot be denied that this poetical method in the hands | ||
| - | of Verlaine often yields extraordinarily beautiful results. There | ||
| - | are few poems in French literature which can rival the Chanson | ||
| - | <?Automne : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Les sanglots longs | ||
| - | Des violons | ||
| - | |||
| - | De 1'automne | ||
| - | , Blessent mon coeur | ||
| - | D'une langueur | ||
| - | |||
| - | Monotone. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Tout suffocant | ||
| - | Et bleme, quand | ||
| - | |||
| - | Sonne 1'heure, | ||
| - | ' Je me souviens | ||
| - | Des jours anciens, | ||
| - | Et je pleure. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Et je m'en vais | ||
| - | Au vent mauvais | ||
| - | |||
| - | Qui m'emporte | ||
| - | Dec,a, deJa, | ||
| - | Pareil a la | ||
| - | |||
| - | Feuille morte.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Even if literally translated, there remains something of the | ||
| - | melancholy magic of the lines, which in French are richly | ||
| - | rhythmical and full of music. Avant que tu ne t'm allies (p. 99) | ||
| - | and II pleure dans mon cceitr (p. 116) may also be called pearls | ||
| - | among French lyrics. | ||
| - | |||
| - | This is because the methods of a highly emotional, but | ||
| - | intellectually incapable, dreamer suffice for, poetry which deals | ||
| - | exclusively with moods, but this is the inexorable limit of his | ||
| - | power. Let the true meaning of mood be always present with | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | 128 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | us. The word denotes a state of mind, in which, through organic | ||
| - | excitations which it cannot directly perceive, consciousness is | ||
| - | filled with presentations of a uniform nature, which it elaborates | ||
| - | with greater or less clearness, and one and all of which relate to | ||
| - | those organic excitations inaccessible to consciousness. The mere | ||
| - | succession of words, giving a name to these presentations, the roots | ||
| - | of which are in the unknown, expresses the mood, and is able to | ||
| - | awaken it in another. It has no need of a fundamental thought, | ||
| - | or of a progressive exposition to unfold it. Verlaine often attains | ||
| - | to astonishing effects in such poetry of moods. Where, how- | ||
| - | ever, distinct vision, or a feeling the motive of which is clear to | ||
| - | consciousness, or a process well delimitated in time and space, | ||
| - | is to be poetically rendered, the poetic art of the emotional | ||
| - | imbecile fails utterly. In a healthy and sane poet even the | ||
| - | mood pure and simple is united to clear presentations, and is not | ||
| - | amere undulation of fragrance and rose-tinted mist. Poems like | ||
| - | OoethVs Ueber alien Gipfeln ist Ru/i, Der Fischer ; or Freudvoll und | ||
| - | leittiml, can never be created by the emotionally degenerate ; but, | ||
| - | on the other hand, the most marvellous of Goethe's poems are | ||
| - | not so utterly incorporeal, not such mere sighs, as three or four | ||
| - | of the best of a Verlaine. | ||
| - | |||
| - | We have now the portrait of this most famous leader of the | ||
| - | Symbolists clearly before us. We see a repulsive degenerate | ||
| - | subject with asymmetric skull and Mongolian face, an impulsive | ||
| - | vagabond and dipsomaniac, who, under the most disgraceful cir- | ||
| - | cumstances, was placed in gaol ; an emotional dreamer of feeble | ||
| - | intellect, who painfully fights against his bad impulses, and in | ||
| - | his misery often utters touching notes of complaint ; a mystic | ||
| - | whose qualmish consciousness is flooded with ideas of God and | ||
| - | saints, and a dotard who manifests the absence of any definite | ||
| - | thought in his mind by incoherent speech, meaningless expres- | ||
| - | sions and motley images. In lunatic asylums there are many | ||
| - | patients whose disease is less deep-seated and incurable than | ||
| - | is that of this irresponsible circulaire at large, whom only | ||
| - | ignorant judges could have condemned for his epileptoid crimes. | ||
| - | |||
| - | A second leader among the Symbolists, whose prestige is in | ||
| - | no quarter disputed, is M. St^phane Mallarme*. He is the most | ||
| - | curious phenomenon in the intellectual life of contemporary | ||
| - | France. Although long past fifty years of age, he has written | ||
| - | hardly anything, and the little that is known of him is, in the | ||
| - | opinion of his most unreserved admirers, of no account ; and | ||
| - | yet he is esteemed as a very great poet, and the utter infertility | ||
| - | of his pen, the entire absence of any single work which he can | ||
| - | produce as evidence of his poetical capacity, is prized as his | ||
| - | greatest merit, and as a most striking proof of his intellectual | ||
| - | importance. This statement must appear so fabulous to any | ||
| - | reader not deranged in mind, that he may rightly demand proofs | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 129 | ||
| - | |||
| - | <of these statements. M. Charles Morice* says of Mallarme: | ||
| - | * I am not obliged to unveil the secrets of the works of a poet | ||
| - | who, as he has himself remarked, is excluded from all partici- | ||
| - | pation in any official exposition of the beautiful. The fact itself | ||
| - | that these works are still unknown . . . would seem to forbid | ||
| - | our associating the name of M. Mallarme with those of men who | ||
| - | have given us books. I let vulgar criticism buzz without reply- | ||
| - | ing to it, and state that M. Mallarme', without having given us | ||
| - | books ... is famous a fame which, of course, has not been | ||
| - | won without arousing the laughter of stupidity in both petty | ||
| - | and important newspapers, but which does not offer public and | ||
| - | private . . . ineptitude that opportunity for showing its base- | ||
| - | ness which is provoked by the advent of a new wonder. . . . | ||
| - | The people, in spite of their abhorrence of the beautiful, and | ||
| - | especially of novelty in the beautiful, have gradually, and in | ||
| - | spite of themselves, come to comprehend the prestige of a legiti- | ||
| - | mate authority. They themselves, even they, feel ashamed of | ||
| - | their foolish laughter ; and before this man, whom that laughter | ||
| - | could not tear from the serenity of his meditative silence, | ||
| - | laughter became dumb, and itself suffered the divine contagion | ||
| - | of silence. Even for the million this man, who published no | ||
| - | books, and whom, nevertheless, all designated "a poet," became, | ||
| - | as it were, the very symbol of a poet, seeking, where possible, | ||
| - | to draw near to the absolute. . . . By his silence he has signified | ||
| - | that he ... cannot yet realize the unprecedented work of art | ||
| - | which he wishes to create. Should cruel life refuse to support | ||
| - | him in his effort, our respect nay, more, our veneration can | ||
| - | alone give an answer worthy of a reticence thus conditioned.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | The graphomaniac Morice (of whose ^iazy and distorted style | ||
| - | -of expression this literally translated example gives a very good | ||
| - | idea) assumes that perhaps Mallarm^ will yet create his ' unpre- | ||
| - | cedented work.' Mallarme himself, however, denies us the right | ||
| - | to any such hope. ' The delicious MallarmeY Paul Hervieu | ||
| - | relates,! ' told me one day ... he could not understand that | ||
| - | anyone should let himself appear in print. Such a proceeding | ||
| - | gave him the impression of an indecency, an aberration, re- | ||
| - | sembling that form of mental disease called " exhibitionism." | ||
| - | Moreover, no one has been so discreet with his soul as this in- | ||
| - | comparable thinker.' J | ||
| - | |||
| - | So, then, this 'incomparable thinker' shows 'a complete dis- | ||
| - | cretion as regards his soul.' At one time he bases his silence | ||
| - | on a sort of shamed timidity at publicity ; at another, on the | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Charles Morice, La Literature de tout-ci-Vheure, p. 238. | ||
| - | |||
| - | t Huret, op. '/., p. 33. | ||
| - | |||
| - | j Since these words were written, M. Mallarme" has decided to publish | ||
| - | his poems in one volume. This, far from invalidating what has been said, | ||
| - | is its best justification. | ||
| - | |||
| - | 9 | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | I 3 o DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | fact that he ' cannot yet realize the unprecedented work of art | ||
| - | which he wishes to create,' two reasons for that matter recipro- | ||
| - | cally precluding each other. He is approaching the evening of | ||
| - | his life, and beyond a few brochures, such as Les Dif.ux de la | ||
| - | Grhe and Uaprts-niidi d'un Fatine, together with some verses | ||
| - | and literary and theatrical criticisms, scattered in periodicals, | ||
| - | the lot barely sufficing for a volume, he has published nothing | ||
| - | but some translations from the English and a few school-books | ||
| - | (M. Mallarme is a teacher of English in a Parisian lycee), and | ||
| - | yet there are some who admire him as a great poet, as the one | ||
| - | exclusive poet, and they overwhelm the ' blockheads ' and the | ||
| - | ' fools ' who laugh at him with all the expressions of scorn that | ||
| - | the force of imagination in a diseased mind can display. Is not | ||
| - | this one of the wonders of our day ? Lessing makes Conti, in | ||
| - | Emilia Galotti, say that ' Raphael would have been the greatest | ||
| - | genius in painting, even if he had unfortunately been born with- | ||
| - | out hands.' In M. Mallarme 1 we have a man who is revered as | ||
| - | a great poet, although ' he has unfortunately been born without | ||
| - | hands,' although he produces nothing, although he does not | ||
| - | pursue the art he professes. During the period when in London | ||
| - | a great number of bubble-company swindles were being pro- | ||
| - | moted, when all the world went mad for the possession of the | ||
| - | least scrap of Stock Exchange paper, it happened that a few | ||
| - | sharp individuals advertised in the newspapers, inviting people to | ||
| - | subscribe for shares in a company of which the object was kept | ||
| - | a secret. There really were men who brought their money to | ||
| - | these lively promoters, and the historian of the City crisis regards | ||
| - | this fact as inconceivable. Inconceivable as it is, Paris sees it | ||
| - | repeated. Some persons demand unbounded admiration for a | ||
| - | poet whose works are his own secret, and will probably remain | ||
| - | such, and others trustingly and humbly bring their admiration | ||
| - | as required. The sorcerers of the Senegal negroes offer their | ||
| - | congregation baskets and calabashes for veneration, in which | ||
| - | they assert that a mighty fetich is enclosed. As a matter of | ||
| - | fact they contain nothing ; but the negroes regard the empty | ||
| - | vessels with holy dread, and show them and their possessors | ||
| - | divine honours. Exactly thus is empty Mallarme the fetich | ||
| - | of the Symbolists, who, it must be admitted, are intellectually | ||
| - | far below the Senegal negroes. | ||
| - | |||
| - | This position of a calabash worshipped on bended knees he | ||
| - | has attained by oral discourse. Every week he gathers round | ||
| - | him embryonic poets and authors, and develops his art theories | ||
| - | before them. He speaks just as Morice and Kahn write. He | ||
| - | strings together obscure and wondrous words, at which his | ||
| - | disciples become as stupid ' as if a mill-wheel were going round | ||
| - | in their heads,' so that they leave him as if intoxicated, and | ||
| - | with the impression that incomprehensible, superhuman dis- | ||
| - | closures have been made to them. If there is anything com- | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 131 | ||
| - | |||
| - | prehensible in the incoherent flow of Mallarme's words, it is | ||
| - | perhaps his admiration for the pre-Raphaelites. It was he who | ||
| - | drew the attention of the Symbolists to this school, and enjoined | ||
| - | imitation of it. It is through Mallarme that the French | ||
| - | mystics received their English mediaevalism and neo-Catholicism. | ||
| - | Finally, it may be mentioned that among the physical features | ||
| - | of Mallarme are ' long pointed faun-like ears.'* After Darwin, | ||
| - | who was the first to point out the apish character of this | ||
| - | peculiarity, Hartmann,f Frigerio.j and Lombroso, have firmly | ||
| - | established the connection between immoderately long and | ||
| - | pointed external ears and atavism and degeneration ; and they | ||
| - | have shown that this peculiarity is of especially frequent occur- | ||
| - | rence among criminals and lunatics. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The third among the leading spirits of the Symbolists is Jean | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | Moreas, a Franco-Greek poet, who at the completion of his | ||
| - | thirty-sixth year (his friends assert, it may be in friendly malice,, | ||
| - | that he makes himself out to be very much younger than he is) | ||
| - | has produced in toto three attenuated collections of verses, of | ||
| - | hardly one hundred to one hundred and twenty pages, bearing | ||
| - | the titles, Les Syrtes, Les Cantilenes, and Le Pelerin passionne'. | ||
| - | The importance of a literary performance does not, of course, | ||
| - | depend upon its amplitude, if it is otherwise unusually signifi- | ||
| - | cant. When, however, a man cackles during interminable caf6 | ||
| - | seances of the renewal of poetry and the unfolding of a new art | ||
| - | of the future, and finally produces three little brochures of | ||
| - | childish verses as the result of his world-stirring effort, then the | ||
| - | material insignificance of the performance also becomes a subject | ||
| - | for ridicule. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Moreas is one of the inventors of the word ' Symbolism.' | ||
| - | For some few years he was the high -priest of this secret | ||
| - | doctrine, and administered the duties of his service with | ||
| - | requisite seriousness. One day he suddenly abjured his self- | ||
| - | founded faith, and declared that ' Symbolism ' 'had always | ||
| - | .been meant only as a joke, to lead fools by the nose withal; | ||
| - | and that the true salvation of poetry was in Romanism | ||
| - | (romanisme). Under this new word he affirms a return to the | ||
| - | language, versification and mode of feeling of the French poets | ||
| - | at the close of the Middle Ages, and of the Renaissance period ; | ||
| - | but it were well to adopt his declarations with caution, since in | ||
| - | two or three years he may be proclaiming his ' romanisme ' as | ||
| - | much a tap-room joke as his 'symbolism.' The appearance of | ||
| - | the Pelerin passionne' in 1891 was celebrated by the Symbolists | ||
| - | as an event which was to be the beginning of a new era in | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Huret, op. tit., p. 55. | ||
| - | |||
| - | f Hartmann, Der Gorilla. Leipzig, 1881, p. 34. | ||
| - | |||
| - | J Dr. L. Frigerio, L'Oreille externe : Etude cPAnthropologie criminelle. | ||
| - | Lyon, 1889, pp. 32 and 40. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Lombroso, L'Uomo delinqttcnte^ p. 255. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | I 3 a DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | poetry. They arranged a banquet in honour of Mordas, and in | ||
| - | the after-dinner speeches he was worshipped as the deliverer from | ||
| - | the shackles of ancient forms and notions, and as the saviour | ||
| - | who was bringing in the kingdom of God of true poetry. And | ||
| - | the same poets who sat at the table with More'as, and delivered | ||
| - | to him rapturous addresses or joined in the applause, a few weeks | ||
| - | after this event overwhelmed him with contumely and contempt | ||
| - | ' More'as a Symbolist !' cried Charles Vignier.* ' Is he one | ||
| - | through his ideas ? He laughs at them himself 1 His thoughts! | ||
| - | They don't weigh much, these thoughts of Jean More'as !' | ||
| - | 1 More'as ?' asks Adrien Remacle,t ' we have all been laughing at | ||
| - | him. It is that which has made him famous.' Rene* Ghil calls | ||
| - | his Ptterin passionnt ' doggerel written by a pedant,' and Gustav | ||
| - | KahnJ passes sentence on him thus : ' More'as has no talent. . . . | ||
| - | He has never done anything worth mentioning. He has his own | ||
| - | particular jargon.' These expressions disclose to us the com- | ||
| - | plete hollowness and falseness of the Symbolistic movement, | ||
| - | which outside France is obstinately proclaimed as a serious | ||
| - | matter by imbeciles and speculators, although its French in- | ||
| - | ventors make themselves hoarse in trying to convince the world | ||
| - | that they merely wanted to banter the Philistine with a tap- | ||
| - | room jest and advertise themselves. | ||
| - | |||
| - | After the verdict of his brethren in the Symbolist Parnassus, | ||
| - | I may really spare myself the trouble of dwelling longer on | ||
| - | More'as ; I will, however, cite a few examples from his Pttenn | ||
| - | fassionnt, in order that the reader may form an idea of the | ||
| - | softness of brain which displays itself in these verses. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The poem Agnes'^ begins thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | * II y avait des arcs ou passaient des escortes | ||
| - | Avec des bannieres de deuil et du fer | ||
| - | Lace" (?) des potentats de toutes sortes | ||
| - | II y avail dans la cite" au bord de la mer. | ||
| - | Les places e'taient noires, et bien pave"es, et les portes, | ||
| - | Du c&re" de I'est et de 1'ouest, hautes ; et comme en hiver | ||
| - | La foret, de'pe'rissaient les salles de palais, et les porches, | ||
| - | Et les colonnades de belve*der. | ||
| - | |||
| - | C'e"tait (tu dois bien t'en souvenir) c'e"tait aux plus beaux jours de ton | ||
| - | adolescence. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Dans la cite" au bord de la mer, la cape et la dague lourdes | ||
| - | De pierres jaunes, et sur ton chapeau des plumes de perroquets, | ||
| - | Tu t'en venais, devisant telles bourdes, | ||
| - | Tu t'en venais entre tes deux laquais | ||
| - | Si bouffis et tant sots en verite", des happelourdes ! | ||
| - | Dans la cite au bord de la mer tu t'en venais et tu vaguais | ||
| - | Parmi de grands vieillards qui travaillaient aux felouques, | ||
| - | Le long des moles et des quais. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Ce*tait (tu dois bien t'en souvenir) c'dtait aux plus beaux jours de ton | ||
| - | adolescence. | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Huret, op. cit., p. 102. f Ibid., p. 106. \ Ibid., p. 401. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Jean Moreas, Le Pilerin passionnt. Palis, 1891, p. 3. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 133 | ||
| - | |||
| - | And thus the twaddle goes on through eight more stanzas, and | ||
| - | in every line we find the characteristics of the language used by | ||
| - | imbeciles and made notorious by Sollier (Psychologie de F Idiot ft | ||
| - | de f Imbecile), the ' ruminating/ as it were, of the same ex- | ||
| - | pressions, the dreamy incoherence of the language, and th$ | ||
| - | insertion of words which have no connection with the subject | ||
| - | Two Ctuotsotts* run thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Les courlis dans les roseaux ! | ||
| - | (Faut-il que je vous en parle, | ||
| - | Des courlis dans les roseaux ?) | ||
| - | O vous joli' Fee des eaux. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Le porcher et les pourceaux ! | ||
| - | (Faut-il que je vous en parle, | ||
| - | Du porcher et des pourceaux ?) | ||
| - | O vous joli' Fee des eaux. | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Mon coeur pris en vos reseaux ! | ||
| - | (Faut-il que je vous en parle, | ||
| - | De mon coeur en vos reseaux ?) | ||
| - | O vous joli' Fee des eaux. | ||
| - | |||
| - | 1 On a march sur les fleurs au bord de la route, | ||
| - | Et le vent d'automne les secoue si fort, en outre. | ||
| - | |||
| - | 1 La malle-poste a renvers la vieille croix au bord de la route ; | ||
| - | Elle tait vraiment si pourrie, en outre. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' L'idiot (tu sais) est mort au bord de la route, | ||
| - | Et personne ne le pleurera, en outre.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | The stupid artifice with which Moreas here seeks to produce a | ||
| - | feeling of wretchedness by conjuring up the three associated | ||
| - | figures of crushed flowers, dishevelled by the wind, an over- | ||
| - | turned and mouldering cross, and a dead, unmounted idiot, | ||
| - | makes this poem a model of the would-be profound production | ||
| - | of a mad-house ! | ||
| - | |||
| - | When More"as is not soft of brain, he develops a rhetorical | ||
| - | turgidity which reminds us of Hofmann von Hofmannswaldau | ||
| - | in his worst efforts. Only one examplef of this kind, and we | ||
| - | have done with him : | ||
| - | |||
| - | 1 J'ai tellement soif. 6 mon amour, de ta bouche, | ||
| - | Que j'y boirais en baisers le cours detourne" | ||
| - | Du Strymon, FAraxe et le Tana'is farouche ; | ||
| - | Et les cent meandres qui arrosent Pitan, | ||
| - | Et 1'Hermus qui prend sa source ou le soleil se couche, | ||
| - | Et toutes les claires fontaines dont abonde Gaza, | ||
| - | Sans que ma soif s'en apaisat.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Behind the leaders Verlaine, Mallarme", and Moreas a troop | ||
| - | of minor Symbolists throng, each, it is true, in his own eyes the | ||
| - | one great poet of the band, but whose illusions of greatness do | ||
| - | not entitle them to any special observation. Sufficient justice | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Moreas, op. '/., pp. 21 and 2. t /$'</., P- 43- | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | I 3 4 DEGENERATION- | ||
| - | |||
| - | IS dealt them if the spirit they are made of be characterized by | ||
| - | quoting a few lines of their poetry. Jules Laforgue, l unique | ||
| - | not only in his generation, but in all the republic of literature,'* | ||
| - | cries : ' Oh, how daily \guotidienne\ is life !' and in his poem | ||
| - | Pan et la Syrinx we come upon lines like the following : | ||
| - | |||
| - | 1 O Syrinx ! voyez et comprenez la Terre et la merveille de cette matinde et | ||
| - | |||
| - | la circulation de la vie. | ||
| - | Oh, vous la ! ct moi, ici ! Oh vous ! Oh, moi ! Tout est dans Tout !'f | ||
| - | |||
| - | Gustav Kahn.one of the sestheticists and philosophers of Sym- | ||
| - | bolism, says in his Nuit sur la Lande : ' Peace descends from | ||
| - | thy lovely eyes like a great evening, and the borders of slow | ||
| - | tents descend, studded with precious stones, woven of far-off | ||
| - | beams and unknown moons.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | In German, at least, ' borders of slow tents which descend ' is | ||
| - | completely unintelligible nonsense. In French they are also | ||
| - | unintelligible ; but in the original their meaning becomes | ||
| - | apparent. ' Et des pans de tentes lentes descendent,' the line | ||
| - | runs, and betrays itself as pure echolalia, as a succession of | ||
| - | similar sounds, as it were, echoing each other. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Charles Vignier, ' the beloved disciple of Verlaine,' says to his | ||
| - | mistress : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' La-bas c'est trop loin, | ||
| - | Pauvre libellule, | ||
| - | Reste dans ton coin | ||
| - | Et prends des pilules . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | * Sois Edmond About | ||
| - | Et d'humeur coulante, | ||
| - | Sois un marabout | ||
| - | Du Jardin des Plantes.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | Another of his poems, Une Coupe de Thule, runs thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Dans une coupe de Thuld | ||
| - | Oil vient palir 1'attrait de Pheure, | ||
| - | Dort le sdnile et dolent leurre | ||
| - | De 1'ultime rfive aduld. | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' Mais des cheveux d'argent file* | ||
| - | |||
| - | Font un voile a celle qui pleure, | ||
| - | |||
| - | Dans une coupe de Thuld | ||
| - | |||
| - | Oit s'est dteint 1'attrait de Pheure. | ||
| - | 4 Et Pon ne sait quel jubild | ||
| - | |||
| - | Cdlebre une harpe mineure | ||
| - | |||
| - | Que le hautain fantdme eflleure | ||
| - | |||
| - | D'un lucide doigt fuseld ! . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | Dans une coupe de Thuld !' | ||
| - | |||
| - | * MordAs, op, at., p. 31 1. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Othou, there! 'and I, here! O fhou ! o' me I All is in All 1' | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | 135 | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | These poems remind us so forcibly of thoe doggerel rhymes | ||
| - | at which in Germany jovial students are often wont to try their | ||
| - | skill, and which are known as 'flowery [lit. blooming] nonsense,' | ||
| - | that, in spite of the solemn assurance of French critics, I am | ||
| - | convinced that they were intended as a joke. If I am right in | ||
| - | my supposition, they are really evidences, not of the mental | ||
| - | status of Vignier, but of his readers, admirers, and critics. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Louis Dumur addresses the Neva in the following manner : | ||
| - | |||
| - | j'jJrl lp Jut-xntiob-.- | ||
| - | |||
| - | Puissante, magmfique, illustre, grave, noble reme 1 | ||
| - | O Tsaristsa [sicf] de glace et de fastes Souveraine ! | ||
| - | Matrone liieratique et solennelle et ve'ne're'e ! . . . | ||
| - | Toi qui me forces a rever, toi qui me deconcertes, | ||
| - | Et^toi surtout que j'aime, Email, Beaute", Poeme, Femme. | ||
| - | Neva ! j'evoque ton spectacle et 1'hymne de ton ame !' | ||
| - | |||
| - | And Rene Ghil, one of the best-known Symbolists (he is | ||
| - | chief of a school entitled ' evolutive-instrumentiste '), draws from | ||
| - | his lyre these tones, which I also quote in French ; in the first | ||
| - | place because they would lose their ring in a translation, and, | ||
| - | secondly, because if I were to translate them literally, it is | ||
| - | hopeless to suppose that the reader would think I was serious : | ||
| - | |||
| - | 1 Ouis ! oui's aux nues haut et nues ou | ||
| - | Tirent-ils d'aile immense qui vire . . . | ||
| - | |||
| - | et quand vide | ||
| - | et vers les grands petales dans 1'air plus aride | ||
| - | |||
| - | *(Et en le lourd venir grandi lent stridule, et | ||
| - | Titilie qui n'alentisse d'air qui dure, et ! | ||
| - | Grandie, erratile et multiple d'eVeiis, stride | ||
| - | Mixte, plainte et splendeur ! la plenitude aride) | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' et vers les grands pdtales d'agitations | ||
| - | Lors eVanouissait un vol ardent qui stride. . . , | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' (des saltigrades doux n'iront plus vers les mers. . . .)' | ||
| - | |||
| - | One thing must be acknowledged, and that is, the Symbolists | ||
| - | have an astonishing gift for titles. The book itself may belong | ||
| - | to pure mad-house literature ; the title is always remarkable. | ||
| - | We have already seen that Moreas names one of his collection | ||
| - | of verses Les Syrtes. He might in truth just as well call it the | ||
| - | North Pole, or The Marmot, or Abd-el-Kader, since these have | ||
| - | just as much connection with the poems in the little volume as | ||
| - | Syrtes ; but it is undeniable that this geographical name calls | ||
| - | up the lustre of an African sun, and the pale reflection of classic | ||
| - | antiquity, which may well please the eye of the hysteric reader. | ||
| - | Edouard Dubus entitles his poem, Quand les Violons sont partis ; | ||
| - | Louis Dumur, Lassitudes ; Gustave Khan, Les Palais nomades ; | ||
| - | Maurice du Plessis, La Peau de Marsyas ; Ernest Raynaud, | ||
| - | Chairs profanes and Le Signe; Henri de Regnier, Sites e | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | J3 6 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | Episodes-. Arthur Rjmbaud, Les Illuminations; Albert Saint Paul, | ||
| - | L'Echarjx a" Iris; Vidte-Griffin, Ancceus ; and Charles Vignier r | ||
| - | Ctnton. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Of the prose of the Symbolists, I have already given some | ||
| - | examples. I should further like to cite only a few passages- | ||
| - | from a book which the Symbolists declare to be one of their | ||
| - | most powerful mental manifestations, La Literature de tout-a- | ||
| - | f/uure, by Charles Morice. It is a sort of bird's-eye view of the | ||
| - | development of literature up to the present time, a rapid critique | ||
| - | of the more and most recent books and authors, a kind of | ||
| - | programme of the literature of the future. This book is one | ||
| - | of the most astonishing which exists in any language. It | ||
| - | strongly resembles Rembrandt as Educator, but is far beyond | ||
| - | that book in the utter senselessness of its concatenations | ||
| - | of words. It is a monument of pure literary insanity, of | ||
| - | ' graphomania'; and neither Delepierre in his Litttrature def | ||
| - | Fous, nor Philomnestes (Gustave Brunet) in his Fous Littfraires, | ||
| - | quotes examples of more complete mental dislocation than are | ||
| - | visible in every page of this book. Notice the following confes- | ||
| - | sion of faith by Morice :* ' Although in this book treating only | ||
| - | of aesthetics although of aesthetics based upon metaphysics | ||
| - | we shall remember to refrain, as far as possible, from pure | ||
| - | philosophizing, we must approximately paraphrase a word | ||
| - | which will more than once be made use of, and which, in the | ||
| - | highest sense here put upon it, is not incapable of being para- | ||
| - | phrased. God is the first and universal cause, the final and | ||
| - | universal end ; the bond between spirits ; the point of intersec- | ||
| - | tion where two parallels would meet ; the fulfilment of our | ||
| - | inclinations ; the fruition which accords with the glories of our | ||
| - | dreams ; the abstraction itself of the concrete ; the unseen and | ||
| - | unheard and yet certain ideal of our demands for beauty in | ||
| - | truth. God is, par excellence, THE very word tile very word, | ||
| - | that is to say, that unknown certain word of which every author | ||
| - | has the incontrovertible, but undiscernible idea, the self-evident | ||
| - | but hidden goal which he will never reach, and which he | ||
| - | approaches as near as possible. In, so to say, practical aesthetics | ||
| - | He is the atmosphere of joy in which the mind revels victorious, | ||
| - | because it has reduced irreducible mystery to imperishable | ||
| - | symbols.' I do not for a moment doubt that this incomparable | ||
| - | jumble will be quite intelligible to theologians. Like all mystics,. | ||
| - | ihey discover asense in every sound ; that is, they persuade* | ||
| - | Themselves and others that the nebulous ideas which the sound | ||
| - | awakens in their brains by association are the meaning of that | ||
| - | sound. But anyone who demands of words that they should | ||
| - | be the media of definite thoughts, will perceive in the face of | ||
| - | this twaddle that the author was not thinking anything at all | ||
| - | * Morice. op. cit., p. 30. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 137 | ||
| - | |||
| - | when he wrote, although he was dreaming of many things. | ||
| - | 'Religion' is for Morice (p. 56), 'the source of art, and art in | ||
| - | its essence is religious ' an affirmation which he borrows from | ||
| - | Ruskin, although he does not acknowledge it. ' Our scholars, | ||
| - | our thinkers . . . the luminous heads of the nineteenth century,' | ||
| - | are ' Edgar Poe, Carlyle, Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Auguste | ||
| - | Comte, Claude Bernard, Berthelot ' (p. 57). Edgar Poe by the | ||
| - | side of Spencer, Darwin, and Claude Bernard ! never have ideas | ||
| - | danced a crazier fools' quadrille in a disordered brain. | ||
| - | |||
| - | And this book, of which the passages we have cited give a | ||
| - | sufficiently correct idea, was, in France (just as Rembrandt as | ||
| - | Educator was in Germany), pronounced by thoroughly re- | ||
| - | sponsible critics to be ' strange, but interesting and suggestive.' | ||
| - | A poor degenerate devil who scribbles such stuff, and an imbecile | ||
| - | reader who follows his twaddle like passing clouds, are simply | ||
| - | to be pitied. But what words of contempt are strong enough | ||
| - | for the sane intellectual tatterdemalions who, in order not to | ||
| - | offend or else to give themselves the appearance of possessing a | ||
| - | remarkable faculty of comprehension, or to affect fairness and | ||
| - | benevolence even towards those whose opinions they in part do | ||
| - | not share, insist that they discover in books of this kind many | ||
| - | a truth, much wit along with peculiar whims, an ideal of fervour | ||
| - | and frequent lightnings of thought? | ||
| - | |||
| - | The word ' Symbolism ' conveys, as we have seen, no idea to its | ||
| - | inventors. They pursue no definite artistic tendency ; hence it | ||
| - | is not possible to show them that their tendency is a false one. | ||
| - | It is otherwise with some of their disciples, who joined their | ||
| - | ranks, partly through a desire to advertise themselves, partly | ||
| - | because they thought that, in the conflicts between literary | ||
| - | parties, they were fighting on the side which was the stronger | ||
| - | and the more sure of victory, and partly, also, through the folly | ||
| - | of fashion, and through the influence exerted by any noisy | ||
| - | novelty over uncritical minds. Less weak-brained than the | ||
| - | leaders, they felt the need of giving the word ' Symbolism ' a | ||
| - | certain significance, and, in fact, drew up a number of axioms | ||
| - | which, according to their profession, serve to guide them in | ||
| - | their creations. These axioms are sufficiently defined to allow of | ||
| - | discussion. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The Symbolists demand greater freedom in the treatment of | ||
| - | French verse. They fiercely rebel against the old alexandrines, | ||
| - | with the caesura in the middle, and the necessary termination of | ||
| - | the sentence at the end ; against the prohibition of the hiatus ; | ||
| - | against the law of a regular alternation of masculine and | ||
| - | feminine rhymes. They make defiant use of the 'free verse,' | ||
| - | with length and rhythm ad libitum, and false rhymes. The | ||
| - | foreigner can only smile at the savage gestures with which this | ||
| - | conflict is canied on. It is a schoolboys' war against some | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | ijg DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | hated book, which is solemnly torn in pieces, trodden under | ||
| - | foot, and burned. The whole dispute concerning prosody and | ||
| - | the rules of rhyme is, so to speak, an inter-Gallic concern, and | ||
| - | is of no consequence to the literature of the world. We have | ||
| - | long had everything which the French poets are only now seek- | ||
| - | ing to obtain by barricades and street massacres. In Goethe's | ||
| - | Proniet/itits, Mahomet's Gcsang, Harzreise im Winter, in Heine's | ||
| - | Xordstc Cyklus, etc, we possess perfect models of free verse ; | ||
| - | we alternate the rhymes as we will ; we allow masculine and | ||
| - | feminine rhymes to follow one another as seems good to us ; | ||
| - | we do not bind ourselves to the rigid law of old classic metres, | ||
| - | but suffer, in the cradling measure of our verse, anapaests to | ||
| - | alternate with iambics and spondees, according to our feeling | ||
| - | for euphony. English, Italian and Sclavonic poetry have gone | ||
| - | equally far, and if the French alone have remained behind, and | ||
| - | have at last found a need for casting aside their old matted, | ||
| - | moth-eaten periwig, this is quite reasonable ; but to anyone but | ||
| - | a Frenchman they merely make themselves ridiculous when | ||
| - | they trumpet their painful hobbling after the nations who are | ||
| - | far in front of them, as an unheard-of discovery of new paths | ||
| - | and opening up of new roads, and as an advance inspired by | ||
| - | the ideal into the dawn of the future. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Another aesthetic demand of the Symbolists is that the line | ||
| - | should, independently of its sense, call forth an intended | ||
| - | emotion merely by its sound. A word should produce an | ||
| - | effect, not through the idea which it embodies, but as a tone, | ||
| - | language becoming music. It is noteworthy that many of the | ||
| - | Symbolists have given their books titles which are intended to | ||
| - | awaken musical ideas. We find Les Gamines (The Scales), | ||
| - | by Stuart Merrill ; Les Cantilenes, by Jean Moreas ; Cloches dans | ||
| - | la Nuit t by Adolphe Rett6 ; Romances sans Paroles, by Paul | ||
| - | Verlaine, etc. To make use_pf language as a musical instru- | ||
| - | ment for the producfion~oTpure tone effects is the delirious idea | ||
| - | of a mystic. We have seen that the pre-Raphaelites demand | ||
| - | of the fine arts that they should not represent the concrete | ||
| - | plastically or optically, but should express the abstract, and | ||
| - | therefore simply undertake the rdle of alphabetic writing. | ||
| - | Similarly, the Symbolists displace all the natural boundary lines | ||
| - | of art, and impose upon the word a task which belongs to | ||
| - | musical signs only. tfut while the pre-Raphaelites wish to | ||
| - | raise the fine arts to a nigher rank than is suited to them, the | ||
| - | Symbolists greatly degrade the word. In its origin sound is | ||
| - | musical. It expresses no definite idea, but only a general | ||
| - | emotion of the animal. The cricket fiddles, the nightingale | ||
| - | trills, when sexually excited. The bear growls when stirred by | ||
| - | the rage of conflict ; the lion roars in his pleasure when tearing | ||
| - | a living prey. In proportion as the brain develops in the | ||
| - | animal kingdom, and mental life becomes richer, the means of | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 139 | ||
| - | |||
| - | vocal expression are evolved and differentiated, and become | ||
| - | capable of making perceptible to the senses not only simple | ||
| - | generic emotions, but also presentative complexes of a more | ||
| - | restricted and definitely delimitated nature nay, if Professor | ||
| - | Garner's observations concerning the language of apes are | ||
| - | accurate, even tolerably distinct single presentations. Sound, | ||
| - | as a means of expressing mental operations, reaches its final | ||
| - | perfection in cultivated, grammatically articulated language, | ||
| - | inasmuch as it can then follow exactly the intellectual working | ||
| - | of the brain, and make it objectively perceptible in all the | ||
| - | minutest details. To bring the word, pregnant with thought, | ||
| - | back to the emotional sound is to renounce all the results | ||
| - | of organic development, and to degrade man, rejoicing in | ||
| - | the power of speech, to the level of the whirring cricket | ||
| - | or the croaking frog. The efforts of the Symbolists, then, | ||
| - | result in senseless twaddle, but not in the word -music they | ||
| - | intend, for this simply does not exist. No word of any single | ||
| - | human language is, as such, musical. Many languages abound | ||
| - | in consonants ; in others vowels predominate. The former | ||
| - | require more dexterity in the muscles employed in speaking ; | ||
| - | their pronunciation, therefore, counts as more difficult, and they | ||
| - | seem less agreeable to the ears of foreigners than the languages | ||
| - | which are rich in vowels. But this has nothing to do with the | ||
| - | musical side of the question. What remains of the phonetic | ||
| - | effect of a word if it is whispered, or if it is only visible as a | ||
| - | written character ? And yet in both cases it is able to awaken | ||
| - | the same emotions, as if it had reached consciousness full-toned | ||
| - | through the sense of hearing. Let anyone have read aloud to | ||
| - | him the most cleverly chosen arrangement of words in a | ||
| - | language completely unknown to him, and try to produce in | ||
| - | himself a definite emotion through the mere phonetic effect. In | ||
| - | every case it will be found impossible. The meaning of a word, | ||
| - | and not its sound, determines its value. The sound is as such | ||
| - | neither beautiful nor ugly. It becomes so only through the | ||
| - | voice which gives it life. Even the first soliloquy in Goethe's | ||
| - | Iphigenie would be ugly coming from the throat of a drunkard. | ||
| - | I have had the opportunity of convincing myself that even the | ||
| - | Hottentot language, spoken in a mellow, agreeable contralto | ||
| - | voice, could be pleasing. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Still more gracked is the craze of a sub-section of the Sym- | ||
| - | bolists, the ' Instrumentalists,' whose spokesman is Rene Ghil. | ||
| - | They connect each sound with a definite feeling of colour, and | ||
| - | demand that the word should not only awaken musical emotion, | ||
| - | but at the same time operate aesthetically in producing a colour- | ||
| - | harmony. This mad idea has its origin in a much-quoted sonnet | ||
| - | by Arthur Rimbaud, Les Voydles (Vowels), of which the first | ||
| - | line runs thus : | ||
| - | |||
| - | ' A black, e white, i red, u green, o blue.' | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | I40 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | Moricc declares* explicitly (what in any case no one in a sane | ||
| - | state of mind would have doubted) that Rimbaud wished to | ||
| - | make one of those silly jokes which imbeciles and idiots are in | ||
| - | the habit of perpetrating. Some of his comrades, however, took | ||
| - | the sonnet in grim earnest, and deduced from it a theory of art. | ||
| - | In his Trait* du Verbe Ren Ghil specifies the colour-value, not | ||
| - | only of individual vowels, but of musical instruments. ' Harps | ||
| - | establish their supremacy by being white. And violins are blue, | ||
| - | often softened by a shimmer of light, to subdue paroxysms. | ||
| - | (It is to be hoped the reader will duly appraise these combina- | ||
| - | tions of words.) ' In the exuberance of ovations, brass instru- | ||
| - | ments are red, flutes yellow, allowing the childlike to proclaim | ||
| - | itself astonished at the luminance of the lips. And the organ, | ||
| - | synthesis of all simple instruments, bewails deafness of earth | ||
| - | and the flesh all in black. . . .' Another Symbolist, who has | ||
| - | many admirers, M. Francis Poictevin, teaches us, in Demiers | ||
| - | Songes, to know the feelings corresponding to colours. ' Blue | ||
| - | goes without more of passion from love to death ; or, more | ||
| - | accurately, it is a lost extreme. From turquoise blue to indigo, | ||
| - | one goes from the most shame-faced influences to final ravages.' | ||
| - | Wiseacres were, of course, at once to the fore, and set up a | ||
| - | quasi-scientific theory of 'colour-hearing.' Sounds are said to | ||
| - | awaken sensations of colour in many persons. According to | ||
| - | some, this was a gift of specially finely organized nervous natures ; | ||
| - | according to others, it was due to an accidental abnormal con- | ||
| - | nection between the optic and acoustic brain-centres by means | ||
| - | of nerve filaments. This anatomical explanation is entirely | ||
| - | arbitrary, and has not been substantiated by any facts. But | ||
| - | colour-hearing ' itself is by no means confirmed. The most | ||
| - | complete book hitherto published on this subject, the author of | ||
| - | which is the French oculist, Suarez de Mendoza.t collects all | ||
| - | the available observations on this alleged phenomenon, and | ||
| - | deduces from them the following definition : ' It is the faculty | ||
| - | of associating tones and colours, by which every objective | ||
| - | acoustic perception of sufficient intensity, nay, even the memory- | ||
| - | image of such a perception, arouses in certain persons a luminous | ||
| - | or non-luminous image, which is always the same for the same | ||
| - | letters, the same tone of voice or instrument, and the same | ||
| - | intensity or pitch of tone.' Suarez well hits the truth- when he | ||
| - | says, 'Colour-hearing ' (he calls it pseudo-photesthhie) ' is often a | ||
| - | consequence of an association of ideas established in youth . . . | ||
| - | and often of a special action of the brain, the particular nature | ||
| - | of which is unknown to us, and may have a certain similarity | ||
| - | to sense-illusion and hallucination.' For my part, I have no | ||
| - | |||
| - | Morice, op. cit % p. 321. | ||
| - | |||
| - | f Dr. F. Suam de Mendoza, L Audition colorle: jttude tur les fausses | ||
| - | Stnsations semndaires physivlogiques. Paris, 1892. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 141 | ||
| - | |||
| - | doubt that colour-hearing is always the consequence of associa- | ||
| - | tion of ideas, the origins of which must remain obscure, because | ||
| - | the combination of certain presentations of colour with certain | ||
| - | sensations of sound may possibly depend upon the very evan- | ||
| - | escent perceptions of early childhood, which were not powerful | ||
| - | enough to arouse the attention, and have therefore remained | ||
| - | undiscerned in consciousness. That it is a question of purely | ||
| - | individual associations brought about by the accident of asso- | ||
| - | ciated ideas, and not of organic co-ordinations depending upon | ||
| - | definite abnormal nervous connections, is made very probable | ||
| - | by the fact that every colour-hearer ascribes a different colour to | ||
| - | the same vowel or instrument. We have seen that to Ghil the | ||
| - | flute is yellow, to L. Hoffmann (whom Goethe cites in his | ||
| - | Farbenlehre) this instrument is scarlet. Rimbaud calls the letter | ||
| - | ' a ' black. Persons whom Suarez mentions heard this vowel | ||
| - | as blue, and so on. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The relation between the external world and the organism | ||
| - | is originally very simple. Movements are continually occurring | ||
| - | in nature, and the protoplasm of living cells perceives these | ||
| - | movements. Unity of effect corresponds to unity of cause. | ||
| - | The lowest animals perceive of the outer world only this, that | ||
| - | something in it changes, and possibly, also, whether this change | ||
| - | is marked or slight, sudden or slow. They receive sensations | ||
| - | differing quantitatively, but not qualitatively. We know, for | ||
| - | example, that the proboscis, or syphon, of the P kolas dactylus, | ||
| - | \vhich contracts more or less vigorously and quickly at every | ||
| - | excitation, is sensitive to all external impressions light, noise, | ||
| - | touch, smell, etc. This mollusc sees, hears, feels and smells, | ||
| - | therefore, with this simple organ ; his proboscis is to him at | ||
| - | once eye, ear, nose, finger, etc. In the higher animals the pro- | ||
| - | toplasm is differentiated. Nerves, ganglia, brain and sense- | ||
| - | apparatus are formed. The movements of nature are now per- | ||
| - | ceived in a variety of ways. The differentiated senses transform | ||
| - | the unity of the phenomenon into the diversity of the percept. | ||
| - | But even in the highest and most differentiated brain there still | ||
| - | remains something like a very distant and very dim remembrance | ||
| - | that the cause which excites the different senses is one and the | ||
| - | same movement, and there are formed presentations and con- | ||
| - | ceptions which would be unintelligible if we could not concede | ||
| - | this vague intuition of the fundamental unity of essence in all | ||
| - | perceptions. We speak of ' high ' and ' deep ' tones, and thus | ||
| - | give to sound-waves a relationship in space which they cannot | ||
| - | have. In the same way we speakof tone-colour, and, conversely, | ||
| - | of colour-tones, and thus confound the acoustic and optic pro- | ||
| - | perties of the phenomena. ' Hard ' and ' soft ' lines or tones, | ||
| - | ' sweet ' voices, are frequent modes of expression, which depend | ||
| - | on a transference of the perception of one sense to the impres- | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | I 4 3 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | sions of another. In many cases this method of speech may no | ||
| - | doubt be traced to mental inertia. It is more convenient to | ||
| - | designate a sense-perception by a word which is familiar, though | ||
| - | borrowed from the province of another sense, than to create a | ||
| - | special word for the particular percept. But even this loan for | ||
| - | convenience' sake is possible and intelligible only if we admit | ||
| - | that the mind perceives certain resemblances between the im- | ||
| - | pressions of the different senses resemblances which, although | ||
| - | they are often to be explained by conscious or unconscious asso- | ||
| - | ciation of ideas, are oftener quite inexplicable objectively. It | ||
| - | only remains for us to assume that consciousness, in its deepest | ||
| - | substrata, neglects the differentiation of phenomena by the | ||
| - | various senses, passes over this perfection attained very late in | ||
| - | organic evolution, and treats impressions only as undifferentiated | ||
| - | material for the acquirement of knowledge of the external world | ||
| - | without reference to their origin by way of this or that sense. | ||
| - | It thus becomes intelligible that the mind mingles the percep- | ||
| - | tions attained through the different senses, and transforms them | ||
| - | one into another. Binet* has established, in his excellent essays, | ||
| - | this transposition of the senses in hysterical persons. A female | ||
| - | patient, whose skin was perfectly insensible on one half of her | ||
| - | body, took no notice when, unseen by herself, she was pricked | ||
| - | with a needle. But at the moment of puncture there arose in | ||
| - | her consciousness the image of a black (in the case of another | ||
| - | invalid, of a bright) point Consciousness thus transposed an | ||
| - | impression of the nerves of the skin, which, as such, was not | ||
| - | perceived, into an impression of the retina, of the optic nerve. | ||
| - | |||
| - | In any case, it is an evidence of diseased and debilitated | ||
| - | brain-activity, if consciousness relinquishes the advantages of | ||
| - | the differentiated perceptions of phenomena, and carelessly con- | ||
| - | founds the reports conveyed by the particular senses. It is a | ||
| - | retrogression to the very beginning of organic development It | ||
| - | is a descent from the height of human perfection to the low | ||
| - | level of the mollusc To raise the combination, transposition | ||
| - | and confusion of the perceptions of sound and sight to the rank | ||
| - | of a principle of art, to see futurity in this principle is to | ||
| - | |||
| - | rs.gnate as progress the return from the consciousness of man | ||
| - | to that of the oyster. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Moreover, it is an old clinical observation that mental decay | ||
| - | |||
| - | 5 ac I c m P amed b y colo ,ur mysticism. One of Legrain'sf mental | ||
| - | |||
| - | invalids 'endeavoured to recognise good and evil by the | ||
| - | |||
| - | Terence of colour, ascending from white to black when he | ||
| - | was reading .words had (according to their colour) a hidden | ||
| - | meaning, which he understood.' LombrosoJ cites 'eccentric | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | Mfrcd Binet, 'Recherche sur les alterations de la | ||
| - | hystcnques,' Rtvue philosopkique, 1889, 27* vol., p. 16? | ||
| - | \ Legrain, op. *., p. 162. | ||
| - | J Lorabroso G<me und Irrsinn. German edition, p. | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | conscience chez les | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | MYSTICISM 143 | ||
| - | |||
| - | persons' who, 'like Wigman, had the paper for their books | ||
| - | specially manufactured with several colours on each page. . . . | ||
| - | Filon painted each page of the hooks he wrote in a different | ||
| - | colour.' Barbey d'Aurevilly, whom the Symbolists venerate as | ||
| - | a pioneer, used to write epistles in which each letter of a word | ||
| - | was coloured with a different tint. Most alienists know similar | ||
| - | cases in their experience. | ||
| - | |||
| - | The more reliable Symbolists proclaim their movement as ' a | ||
| - | reaction against naturalism.' Such a reaction was certainly | ||
| - | justified and necessary ; for naturalism in its beginnings, as | ||
| - | long as it was embodied in De Goncourt and Zola, was morbid, | ||
| - | and, in its later development in the hands of their imitators, | ||
| - | vulgar and even criminal, as will be proved further on. Never- | ||
| - | theless Symbolism is not in the smallest degree qualified to | ||
| - | conquer naturalism, because it is still more morbid than the | ||
| - | latter, and, in art, the devil cannot be driven out by Beelzebub. | ||
| - | |||
| - | Finally, it is affirmed that Symbolism connotes ' the inscribing | ||
| - | of a symbol in human form.' Expressed unmystically, this | ||
| - | means that in the poems of the Symbolists the particular human | ||
| - | form should not only exhibit its special nature and contingent | ||
| - | destiny, but also represent a general type of humanity, and | ||
| - | embody a universal law of life. This quality, however, is not | ||
| - | the monopoly of Symbolistic poetry, but belongs to all kinds of | ||
| - | poetry. No genuine poet has yet been impelled to deal with | ||
| - | an utterly unprecedented and unique case, or with a monstrous | ||
| - | being whose likeness is not to be found in mankind. That | ||
| - | which interests him in men and their destiny is just the intimate | ||
| - | connection between the two and the universal laws of human | ||
| - | life. The more the government of universal laws is made | ||
| - | apparent in the fate of the individual, the more there is embodied | ||
| - | in him that which lives in all men, so much the more attractive | ||
| - | will this destiny and this man be to the poet. There is not in | ||
| - | all the literature of humanity a single work of recognised im- | ||
| - | portance which in this sense is not symbolic, and in which the | ||
| - | characters, their passions and fortunes, have not a typical | ||
| - | significance, far transcending the particular circumstances. It | ||
| - | is, therefore, a piece of foolish arrogance in the Symbolists to | ||
| - | lay claim to the sole possession of this quality in the works of | ||
| - | their school. They show, moreover, that they do not under- | ||
| - | stand their own formulae ; for those theorists of the school who | ||
| - | demand of poetry that it should be 'a symbol inscribed in | ||
| - | human form,' assert at the same time that only the ' rare and | ||
| - | unique case ' (le cas rare et unique) deserves the attention of the | ||
| - | poet, i.e., the case which is significant of nothing beyond itself, | ||
| - | and consequently the opposite of a symbol.* | ||
| - | |||
| - | * I may here be allowed to remind my readers that in the year 1885, and, | ||
| - | accordingly, before the promulgation of the professed symbolistic programme, | ||
| - | I laid down in my Paradoxe (popular edition, part ii., p. 253) the principle | ||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | |||
| - | I44 DEGENERATION | ||
| - | |||
| - | We have now seen that Symbolism, like English pre- | ||
| - | Raphaclilism (from which it borrowed its catch-words and | ||
| - | opinions), is nothing else than a form of the mysticism of weak- | ||
| - | minded and morbidly emotional degeneration. The efforts of | ||
| - | some followers of the movement to import a meaning into the | ||
| - | stammering utterances of their leaders, and falsely to ascribe to | ||
| - | them a sort of programme, do not for a moment withstand | ||
| - | criticism, but show themselves to be graphomaniat and delirious | ||
| - | twaddle, without the smallest grain of truth or sound reason | ||
| - | A young Frenchman, who is certainly not adverse to rational | ||
| - | innovation, Hugues Le Roux,* describes the group of Symbolists | ||
| - | quite correctly in saying of them : ' They are ridiculous cripples, | ||
| - | each intolerable to the other ; they live uncomprehended by the | ||
| - | public, several by their friends as well, and a few by themselves. | ||
| - | As poets or prose writers they proceed in the same way : no | ||
| - | material, no sense, and only juxtapositions of loud-sounding | ||
| - | musical (?) words ; teams of strange rhymes, groupings of unex- | ||
| - | pected colours and tones, swaying cadences, hurtlings, hallucina- | ||
| - | tions and evoked suggestions.' | ||
| + | '''Mathias Morhardt''', né le 15 mai 1863 à Plainpalais (aujourd'hui quartier de Genève) et mort le 9 avril 1939 à Capbreton (Landes), est un homme de lettres franco-suisse. He wrote "[[Les Symboliques]]". | ||
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Mathias Morhardt, né le 15 mai 1863 à Plainpalais (aujourd'hui quartier de Genève) et mort le 9 avril 1939 à Capbreton (Landes), est un homme de lettres franco-suisse. He wrote "Les Symboliques".
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