Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866», sayfa 7

SAINTE-BEUVE

The lives of French men of letters, at least during the last two centuries, have never been isolated or obscure. Had Rousseau been born on the borders of Loch Lomond, he might have proved in his own person, and without interruption, the superiority of the savage state; and after his death the information in regard to him would have been fragmentary and uncertain. But born on the shores of Lake Leman, centralization laid its grasp upon him, drew him into the vortex of the "great world," and caused his name to figure in all the questions, the quarrels, and the scandals of his day.

The truth is, that literature is a far more important element of society in France than elsewhere. We seldom think of a French author, without recalling the history and the manners of his time. In reading a French play, though it be a tragedy of Racine or a comedy of Molière, we are reminded of the spectators before whom it was brought out. In reading a French book, though it be Pascal's "Thoughts" or the "Characters" of La Bruyère, our minds are continually diverted from the matter of the work to the circumstances under which it was written and the public for whom it was intended.

Generally, indeed, the author, however full of his subject, has evidently been thinking of his readers. His tone is that of a speaker with his audience before him. Madame de Staël actually composed in conversation, and her works are little more than imperfect records of her eloquent discourse. Innumerable productions have been read aloud, or handed round in private coteries, before being revised and published. The very excellence of the workmanship, if nothing else, shows that the article is "custom made." Even if the matter be poor, the writing is almost sure to be good. French literature abounds, beyond every other, in readable books,—books such as are welcomed by the mass of cultivated persons. It excels, in short, as a literature of the salon, rather than of the study.

As a natural corollary, criticism occupies a more distinct and prominent place in the literature of France than in that of any other nation. Every writer is sure of being heard, sure of being discussed, sure of being judged. This may not always have been favorable to originality. A fixed standard,—which is a necessary consequence,—though the guardian of taste, is a bar to innovation. When, however, the bar has been actually crossed, when encroachment has once obtained a footing, French criticism is swift to adjust itself to the new conditions imposed upon it, to widen its sphere and to institute fresh comparisons.

The present position of French criticism, its connection with the general course of literature and of society from the fall of the first Empire to the establishment of the second,—a period of remarkable effervescence and even fertility,—will be best illustrated by a sketch of the writings and career of M. Sainte-Beuve. He is, it is true, one of a group, compromising such critics as Villemain, Cousin, Vinet, Planche, Taine, and Scherer; but his name is more intimately associated than any of these with the progress and fluctuations of opinion and of taste. His notices of his contemporaries have been by far the most copious and assiduous. His literary life, extending over forty years, embraces the rise and the decline of what is known as the Romantic School; and during all this period his course, whether we regard it as that of a leader or of a follower, has harmonized singularily with the tendencies of the age.

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve was born at Boulogne—a town not fruitful in distinguished names—on the 23d of December, 1804. His father, who had held an employment under the government, died two days before the birth of the son. His mother was the daughter of an Englishwoman,—a circumstance which has been thought to account for the appreciation he has shown of English poetry. The notion would be more plausible if there were any poetry which he has failed to appreciate. But when it is added that she was a woman of remarkable intelligence and sensibility, we recognize a fact of which the influence can neither be doubted nor defined.

After several years of prepatory instruction at a boarding-school in his native place, he was sent to Paris, when thirteen years old, and entered successively in several of the educational establishments which had succeeded to the ancient University. His studies, everywhere crowned with honors, were completed by a second course of rhetoric at the Collége Bourbon, in 1822. He afterwards, however, attended the lectures of Guizot, Villemain, and other distinguished professors at the Sorbonne. A hostile critic, though seven years his junior, professes to retain a distinct recollection of him at this period: "Among the most assiduous and most attentive auditors was a young man whose face, irregular in outline but marvellously intelligent, reflected every thought and image of the speaker, almost as rivers reflect the landscape that unrolls itself along their banks. When I add that the volatile waves incessantly efface what they have just before reflected, the comparison will appear only the more exact." To an impartial inquirer it might appear singularly inexact; but having picked up the shaft, we shall not at present stop to examine whether it be poisoned.

On quitting college, M. Sainte-Beuve made choice of medicine as his profession. He threw himself with enthusiasm into the study of anatomy, and soon qualified himself for an appointment as externe at the Hospital of Saint Louis. This ardor, however, far from indicating the particular bent of his mind, proceeded from that eager curiosity which is ready to enter every avenue and knock at every door by which the domain of knowledge can be approached. With the faculties he was endowed with, and the training he had received, it was impossible that he should lose in any special pursuit his interest in general literature. His fellow-townsman and former master in rhetoric, M. Dubois, having become the principal editor of the newly founded "Globe," invited his co-operation. Accordingly, in 1824, he began to contribute critical and historical articles to that journal; and three years later he resigned his post at the hospital, with the purpose of devoting himself exclusively to literary pursuits.

The period was in the highest degree favorable to the development and display of his talent. The literary revolution, which in Germany and England had already passed through its principal stages, had as yet scarcely penetrated into France. It had been heralded, indeed, by Chateaubriand, at the beginning of the century; and Madame de Staël, some few years later, had come into contact with the reigning chiefs of German literature, and had made known to her countrymen their character and activity. But the energies of France were then absorbed in enterprises of another kind. It was not till peace had been restored, and a new generation, ardent, susceptible, as eager for novelty as the veterans were impatient of it, had come upon the stage, that the requisite impulse was given. Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Mérimée, Alfred de Vigny, and other young men of genius, were just opening the assault on the citadel of classicisme. Conventional rules were set at defiance; the authorities that had so long held sway were summoned to abdicate; nature, truth, above all passion, were invoked as the sources of inspiration, the law-givers of the imagination, the sole arbiters of style. As usual, the movement extended beyond its legitimate sphere. Not only the forms, but the ideas, not only the traditions, but the novelties, of the eighteenth century were to be discarded. In fact, the period, though favorable to literary development, was, on the surface at least, one of political and religious reaction; and reaction often assumes the aspect of progress, nay, in some cases is identical with progress. Most of the poets, dramatists, and other writers of the Romantic School were, either by affinity or predilection, legitimists and neo-Catholics. Gothic art, mediæval sentiment, the ancient monarchy and the ancient creed, were blended in their programme with the abrogation of the "unities," and a greater license of poetical expression.

Imbued with the precepts of a former age, and fresh from the study of its masterpieces, M. Sainte-Beuve was at first repelled by the mutinous attitude of the new aspirants. He made his début in an attack upon the "Odes and Ballads" of Victor Hugo. But his opposition quickly yielded to the force of the attraction. Nature had given him a peculiar mobility of temperament, and a strong instinctive sense of beauty under every diversity of form. Moreover, resistance would have been useless and Quixotic. In literature, as in politics, dynasties perish through their own weakness. The classical school of France had no living representative around whom its adherents could have rallied. Its only watchword was "The Past," which is always an omen of defeat.

Properly speaking, therefore, M. Sainte-Beuve began his career, not as an opponent, but as the champion of the new school. He entered into personal and intimate relations with its leaders, joined, as a member of the Cénacle, in the discussion of their plans, attended the private readings of "Cromwell" and other works by which the breach was to be forced, and took upon himself the task of justifying innovation, and securing its reception with a hesitating public. Hence his criticism at this period was, as he himself has styled it, "polemical" and "aggressive." It was, however, neither violent nor sophistical. On the contrary, it was distinguished by the candor and the suavity of its tone. Goethe, who watched from afar a movement which, directly or indirectly, owed much to German inspiration, was particularly struck with this trait. "Our scholars," he remarked to Eckermann, "think it necessary to hate whoever differs from them in opinion; but the writers in the Globe know how to blame with refinement and courtesy."

At home many, without being converted, were propitiated, and some, while still hostile or indifferent to the new literature, became warmly interested in its advocate. At the suggestion of Daunou, one of the most distinguished among the survivors of the Revolutionary epoch, he undertook a work on early French literature, with the intention of competing for a prize offered by the Academy. But his plan soon deviated from that which had been assigned; and his researches, more limited in their scope, but far deeper and more minute, than had been demanded, gave birth to a volume, published in 1828, under the title of Tableau historique et critique de la Poésie française et du Théâtre français au seizième Siécle. It was received with general favor. Some of the author's principles were strenuously disputed; but he was admitted to have made many discoveries in literary history, and to have introduced an entirely new method of criticism. Perhaps it would be more correct to say, that he had carried the torch of an enlightened judgment into a period which the brilliancy of succeeding epochs had thrown into obscurity.

In 1829 M. Sainte-Beuve published a volume of poetry, Poésies de Joseph Delorme, followed, in 1830, by another, entitled Consolations, and some years later by a third, Pensées d'Août. Although different degrees of merit have been assigned to these productions, their general character is the same. They exhibit, not the fire and inspiration of the true poetical temperament, but the experiments of a mind gifted with delicacy of sentiment and susceptible of varied impressions, in quest of appropriate forms and a deeper comprehension of the sources from which language derives its power as a vehicle of art. The influence of Wordsworth is observable in a studied familiarity of diction, as well as in the tendency to versify every thought or emotion suggested by daily observation. These peculiarities, coupled with the frequency of bold ellipses, provoked discussion, and seemed to promise a fresh expansion of poetical forms, in a somewhat different direction from that of the Romanticists. But it was not in this department that M. Sainte-Beuve was destined to become the founder of a school. His poetical talent, though unquestionable, had been bestowed, not as a special attribute, but as an auxiliary of other faculties granted in a larger measure. He has himself not only recognized its limits, but shown an inclination to underrate its value. "I have often thought," he remarks in one of his later papers, "that a critic who would attain to largeness of view would be better without any artistic faculty of his own. Goethe alone, by the universality of his poetical genius, was able to apply it in the estimation of what others had produced; in every species of composition he was entitled to say, 'Had I chosen, I could have given a perfect specimen of this.' But one who possesses only a single circumscribed talent should, in becoming a critic, forget it, bury it, and confess to himself that Nature is more bountiful and more varied than she showed herself in creating him. Incomplete artists, let us strive for an intelligence wider than our own talent,—than the best we are capable of producing."

To the same period—perhaps to the same spirit of investigation and experiment—belongs the single prose work of fancy which has proceeded from his pen. It is a species of romance, bearing the title of Volupté, and designed to exhibit the struggle between the senses and the soul, or, more strictly speaking, the effect upon the intellectual nature of an early captivity to the pleasures of sense. The hero, Amaury, after a youth of indulgence, finds himself in the prime of his manhood, with his powers of perception and of thought vigorous and matured, but incapable of acting, of willing, or of loving. He inspires love, but cannot return it; he feels, he admires, but he shrinks from any step demanding resolution or self-devotion. Hence, instead of conferring happiness, he makes victims,—victims not of an active, but of a merely passive and negative egotism. A conjunction of circumstances brings him to a sudden and vivid realization of his condition and its results. Instead of escaping by suicide, as might be expected,—and as would probably have been the case if Werther had not forestalled him,—he breaks loose from his thraldom by a supreme effort, and finds in the faith and sacrifices of a religious life the means of restoration and of permanent freedom. He enters a seminary, is ordained priest, and performs the funeral rites of the woman whose affection for him had been the most ardent and exalted, and whom his purified heart could have best repaid.

In form, the work is an autobiography. The thoughts with which it teems are delicate and subtile; the style, somewhat labored and over-refined, is in contrast with that of the Poésies, while it betrays the same struggle for a greater amplitude and independence. In point of art the book appears to us a failure. The theme is not objectionable in itself. It is similar to that of many works which have sprung from certain phases of individual experience. But if such experience is to be idealized, its origin should disappear. Shakespeare may have undergone all the conflicts of doubt and irresolution represented in "Hamlet"; but in reading "Hamlet" we think, not of Shakespeare's conflicts, but of our own. Volupté is too palpably a confession. The story is not a creation; it has been simply evolved by that process of thought which transports a particular idiosyncrasy into conditions and circumstances where it becomes a kind of destiny and a subject of speculation. Reality is wanting, for the very reason that the Imagination, after being called into play, has proved too feeble for her office. Herein Amaury differs widely from René. Apart from the difference of power, Chateaubriand had poured out his entire self; he had transcended the limits of his actual life, but never those of his mental experience. M. Sainte-Beuve had felt only a part of what he sought to depict; the rest he had conjectured or borrowed. The pages which describe the hero's impressions and emotions in consecrating himself to the service of the Church were written by Lacordaire. They are a faithful transcript from nature, but from a nature not at all resembling that to which they have been applied. The circumstances under which the book was composed will exhibit the difference. The author was then intimate with Lamennais, whose eloquent voice, soon afterwards to be raised in support of the opposite cause, was proclaiming the sternest doctrines of a renovated Catholicism. A spell which acted so widely and so marvellously could not be altogether unfelt by a mind whose peculiar property it was to yield itself to every influence in order to extort its secret and comprehend its power. Beyond this point the magic failed. "In all my transitions,"—thus he has written of himself,—"I have never alienated my judgment and my will; I have never pledged my belief. But I had a power of comprehending persons and things which gave rise to the strongest hopes on the part of those who wished to convert me and who thought me entirely their own." Thus Lamartine, in a rapturous strain, had congratulated himself on having been the instrument of saving his friend from the abysm of unbelief. When Lamennais was forming the group of disciples who retired with him to La Chesnaye, M. Sainte-Beuve was invited to join them. While declining the proposal, he imagined the position in which he might have been led to embrace it, and—wrote Volupté.

The revolution of 1830, with the events that led to it, marks a turning-point in literary as well as in political history. The public mind was in a state of ebullition very unlike that of an ordinary political contest, in which one party pulls while the other applies the drag, one seeks to maintain, the other to destroy. All parties were pulling in different directions; all sought to destroy, in order to reconstruct; principles, except with the extremists, were simply expedients, adopted to-day, abandoned on the morrow. Nor is this to be explained, as English writers generally explain it, by the mere volatility of the French temperament. In England, an established basis of political power is slowly but constantly expanding; privilege crumbles and wears away under the gradual action of democracy; concession on the one side, moderation on the other, are perfectly feasible, and obviate the necessity for sudden ruptures and violent transitions. But in France the question created by past convulsions, and left unsolved by recent experiments, was this: What is the basis of power? Privilege had been so shorn that those who desired to make that the foundation were necessarily not conservatives, but reactionists. On the other hand, if popular power were to be accepted in its widest sense, then a thousand questions, a thousand differences of opinion in regard to the mode, the form, the application, would naturally spring up. Besides, would it not be safer, wiser, to modify ideas by experience, to look abroad for patterns, to seek for an equilibrium, a juste milieu? Thus there was a diversity of systems, but all contemplative of change. No one was in favor of standing still, for there was nothing to stand upon. In a word, the agitation was not so much one of measures, of principles, or of prejudices, as of ideas.

Now in an agitation of this kind, literary men—that is to say, the men whose business is to think—are likely to be active, and in France, at least, are apt to become prominent and influential. But they, of all men, by the very fact that they think, are least under the control of party affinities and fixed doctrines, the most liable to be swayed by discussion and reflection. Hence the spectacle, so frequent at that time and since, of men distinguished in the world of letters passing from the ranks of the legitimists into those of the republicans, from the advocacy of papal supremacy in temporal affairs to that of popular supremacy in religious affairs, from the defence of a landed aristocracy to the demand for a community of property; and afterwards, in many instances, returning with the backward current, abjuring freedom and embracing imperialism.

In the case of M. Sainte-Beuve the changes were neither so abrupt nor so complete as in that of many others. But his course was still more meandering, skirting the bases of opposite systems, abiding with none. Never a blind adherent or a vehement opponent, he glided almost imperceptibly from camp to camp. He consorted, as we have seen, with legitimists and neo-Catholics, and allowed himself to be reckoned as one of them. Through the columns of the Globe, which had now become the organ of the Saint-Simonians, he invited the Romanticists to "step forth from the circle of pure art, and diffuse the doctrines of a progressive humanity." On the advent of Louis Philippe, he was inclined to accept the constitutional régime as the triumph of good sense, as affording a practical solution and a promise of stability. But he appears soon to have lost his faith in a government too narrow in policy, too timid in action, too vulgar in aspect, to satisfy a cultivated Parisian taste.

A similar flexibility will be noticed in his literary judgments. Shall we then pronounce him a very chameleon in politics and in art? Shall we say, with the critic already quoted, M. de Pontmartin, that his mental hues have been simply reflections, effaced as rapidly as they were made? On the contrary, we believe that he, of all men, has retained the various impressions he has once received. Unlike so many others, who, in changing their views, have contradicted all their former utterances, disowned their former selves, undergone a sort of bisection into two irreconcilable halves, M. Sainte-Beuve has linked one opinion with another, modified each by its opposite, and thus preserved his continuity and cohesion. "Everything has two names," to use his own expression, and he has never been content with knowing only one of them. Guided by a sympathetic intelligence, adopting, not symbols, but ideas, he has, by force of penetration and comprehension, extracted the essence of each doctrine in turn. His changes therefore indicate, not superficiality, but depth. He is no more chargeable with volatility than society itself. Like it he is a seeker, listening to every proposition, accepting what is vital, rejecting what is merely formal. There is not one of the systems which have been presented, however contrasted they may appear, but has left its impress upon society,—not one but has left its impress on the mind and opinions of M. Sainte-Beuve.

In one particular—the most essential, in reality, of all—his constancy has been remarkable. He has remained true to his vocation. At the moment when his literary brethren, availing themselves of the opening we have noticed, were rushing into public life,—scholars and professors becoming ambassadors and ministers of state, poets and novelists mounting the tribune and the hustings, historians descending into the arena of political journalism,—M. Sainte-Beuve settled himself more firmly in the chair of criticism, concentrating his powers on the specialty to which they were so peculiarly adapted. His opportunities for doing this more effectively were themselves among the results of the events already mentioned. A greater freedom and activity of discussion demanded new and ampler organs. Cliques had been broken up; co-workers, brought together by sympathy, separated by the clash of opinions and ambitions, had dispersed; both in literature and in politics a wider, more inquisitive, more sympathetic public was to be addressed. Already in 1829, Véron, one of those shrewd and speculative—we hardly know whether to call them men of business or adventurers, who foresee such occasions, had set up the Revue de Paris, on a more extended plan than that of any previous French journal of the kind. The opening article of the first number was from the pen of M. Sainte-Beuve. But this undertaking was subsequently merged in that of the Revue des Deux Mondes, which, after one or two abortive beginnings, was fairly started in January, 1831, and soon assumed the position it has ever since retained, at the head of the publications of its class. It enlisted among its contributors nearly all the leading writers of the day, none of whom was so regular and permanent, none of whom did so much to build up its reputation and confer upon it the stamp of authority, as M. Sainte-Beuve. His connection with it extended over seventeen years, the period between the last two revolutions. His papers seem to have averaged five or six a year. They form, with those which had been previously inserted in the Revue de Paris, a series of Portraits, now embraced in seven volumes, and divided, somewhat arbitrarily, into Portraits littéraires, Portraits contemporains, and Portraits de Femmes. The names included, which with few exceptions are those of French writers, belong to different epochs, different schools, and different departments of literature. Many are famous; some are obscure; not a few, which had before been overlooked or overshadowed, owe the recognition they have since received to their admission into a gallery where the places have been assigned and the lights distributed by no partial or incompetent umpire.

In the case of any kind of literature, but especially in that of criticism, it is interesting to have an author's own ideas of his office and art. The motto of the Edinburgh Review—"Judex damnatur cum nocens absolvitur"—was a very good indication of the spirit of its founders, whose legal habits and aspirations naturally suggested the spectacle of a court, in which the critic as judge was to sit upon the bench, and the author as prisoner was to stand at the bar. Had Jeffries, instead of Jeffrey, presided over the assizes, they could not have been gayer or bloodier. It is interesting to remember that among the criminals sentenced without reprieve were the greatest poet and the most original thinker of the time. A journal which has earned something of the prestige that attached to the youthful Edinburgh takes a not very different view of its own functions. "An author may wince under criticism," say the writers of the Saturday Review; "but is the master to leave off flogging because the pupil roars?" Here, too, the notion of the relative position of author and critic is perfectly natural. Young gentlemen, with a lively recollection of their own construings and birchings, are only too happy in the opportunity of sitting with bent brows and uplifted rod, watching for a false quantity or similar peccadillo, which may justify a withering rebuke or a vigorous flagellation. If we add, that these writers exhibit that accuracy of statement which usually accompanies the assumption of infallibility, and that their English is of that prim and painful kind, common to pedagogues, which betrays a constant fear of being caught tripping while engaged in correcting others, the comparison—to cite once more M. de Pontmartin—"will appear only the more exact." We forbear to descend to a far lower class, judges who know nothing of law, masters who have never been scholars, truly "incomplete artists" who cannot "forget or bury" their own extremely "circumscribed talent," but who are perfectly willing to bury, and would fain induce the world to forget, that of every suspected rival.

Had M. Sainte-Beuve entered upon his task with similar conceptions and associations, his early anatomical studies would perhaps have suggested the patient under the scalpel as an appropriate device. But we are in danger of dishonoring him by the mere supposition. Scattered through his works—beginning with the earliest and coming down to the latest—we find such sentences as the following: "The critical spirit is in its nature facile, insinuating, mobile, and comprehensive; it is a great and limpid river, which winds and spreads itself around the productions and the monuments of genius." "The best and surest way to penetrate and to judge any writer, any man, is to listen to him,—to listen long and intently: do not press him; let him move and display himself with freedom, and of himself he will tell you all about himself; he will imprint himself upon your mind. Be assured that in the long run no man, no writer, above all no poet, will preserve his secret." "It is by virtue of an exquisite analogy that the word 'taste' has prevailed over the word 'judgment.' Judgment! I know minds which possess it in a high degree, but which are yet wanting in taste; for taste expresses what is finest and most instinctive in an organ which is at once the most delicate and the most complex." "To know how to read a book, judging it as we go along, but never ceasing to taste it,—in this consists almost the whole art of criticism." "What Bacon says as to the proper mode of educing the natural meaning from Scripture may be applied to ancient writings of all kinds, or even to the most modern. The best and sweetest criticism is that which exudes from a good book, not pressed as in a wine-press, but squeezed gently in a free reading. I love that criticism should be an emanation from the book." "Whenever I speak of a writer, I prefer to exhibit him in the brightest and happiest hour of his talent, to place him, if possible, directly under the rays." "The greatest triumph of criticism is when it recognizes the arrival of a power, the advent of a genius." "I cannot admit that the best mode of correcting a talent which is in process of development is to begin by throwing an inkstand at its head." "I am almost frightened at seeing to what an extent literary criticism becomes difficult, when it refrains from arrogance and from insult, claiming for itself both an honest freedom of judgment and the right to participate largely in the bestowment of deserved praise, as well as to maintain a certain cordiality even in its reservations." "If Diderot was as far as possible from being a dramatic poet, if he was destitute of that supreme creative power which involves the transformation of an author's own personality, he possessed, on the other hand, in the highest degree, that faculty of demi-metamorphosis which is the exercise and the triumph of criticism, and which consists in putting one's self in the the place of the author, occupying the point of view to the subject under examination, and reading every writing in the spirit by which it was dictated."