Death.
Die, then!
[He gathers up the shroud, lying beside him on the ground, and bears away Nero, wrapped in its folds.]
RABELAIS[B]
[B] The manuscript of this essay, unlike all other early manuscripts of Gustave Flaubert, bears no date. It belongs to the earliest of his writing, a time when there was a far from unanimous opinion among the literary cognoscenti regarding the work of Rabelais.
NO NAME in literature has been more generally cited than that of Rabelais; and never, perhaps, has one been cited with so much ignorance and injustice. Thus, to some minds he is merely a drunken, cynical old monk, with a mind disordered and fantastic, as obscene as it is ingenious, dangerous in its ideas and revolting in their expression. To others he is a practical philosopher, gentle and moderate; sceptical, certainly, but, after all, an honest man of reputable life. He has been alternately loved and despised, misunderstood and rehabilitated; and ever since his prodigious genius first launched at the world his biting and all-embracing satire, in the form of the colossal mocking glee of giants, creatures of his imagination, each century has puzzled over his meaning, and has interpreted in a thousand fashions this long enigma, apparently so trivial, gross and merry, but in reality profound and true.
Rabelais’ work is a historical achievement, in itself so important that it belongs to and illumines the thought of each age. Thus, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, when first given to the world, it was in reality an open revolt, a moral pamphlet. It had the importance of actuality and the controlling power of a revolution. Rabelais may be regarded as a Luther in his own way. His sphere was that of laughter, but his power over men was such that with titanic mockery he demolished more of evil than the good man of Wittenberg, with all his anger. He managed everything so well—wielded so cleverly the sharp chisel of satire—that his laughter became a terror. His work is the embodiment of the grotesque; it is as eternal as the world.
Rabelais was the father of the frank and naïve literature of the seventeenth century—of Molière and La Fontaine,—all were immortals, geniuses, in spirit the most essentially French of Gallic writers. All three regarded poor human nature with a smile at once good-natured and cynical; all were frank, free and easy in their language, men in every sense of the word: careless of philosophers, of sects, of religions, they were of the religion of mankind itself, and well they understood it. They turned it over, analysed and dissected it; one in a strange story full of gross obscenities, bursting with laughter and blasphemy; the second, on the stage, in deftly constructed dialogue, full of truth and wisdom and a naïveté almost sublime—more of a philosopher in the simple laughter of his Mascarille, in the good sense of Philinte, or in the bilious spleen of Alceste, than any other philosopher that ever lived; and the third, in fables for children with morals for men, in verses full of good-nature and kindly humour, in words and phrases, wherein rests something of sublimity; in crystalline sonnets, in all the poetic gems that deck his name with splendid ornaments.
But Rabelais is to-day a subject of serious study, the favourite author of those rare minds that rise superior to the ordinary limitations of intelligence. Besides those men whose names we cite, La Bruyère studied and appreciated his work with the utmost impartiality. The great romancer was not sufficiently correct to please the scrupulous taste of Boileau, or to accord with the reserve and purity of Racine. That prudish age, governed by Madame de Maintenon, so well typified in the flat and angular garden at Versailles, was ashamed of literature at once so frank and open, nude and picturesque. This giant made them fear. They seemed instinctively to feel that they were placed between two terrible epochs: the sixteenth century, which produced a Luther and a Rabelais, and the Revolution, which was to give a Mirabeau, a Robespierre. First the demolishers of faith, then the demolishers of life: two abysses, ‘twixt which they stood firm in the adoration of themselves!
In the eighteenth century things were still worse. Philosophers then were of a high moral tone, and would have none of Rabelais. The poor curate of Meudon would have found himself much out of place in the salons of the witty and beautiful marquises, or in the intellectual society of Madame du Deffand or Madame Geoffrin. Never would they have comprehended the flashing darts of wit, the bubbling spirits, the whirlwind, the poetic mind, throbbing with adventures, inventions, travel, and extravagances. The petty and affected tastes, the cold and formal manners of the age, were horrified at aught that might be called licentiousness of mind. The “Precieuses” probably preferred to have it in their manners! Voltaire, for instance, could pardon Rabelais because he ridiculed the Church; but of his style, of his meaning, Voltaire had scarce an idea, although he claimed to have a key to the great work, which he summed up in vicious epigram: “A mass of the grossest refuse ever vomited by a drunken monk.”
It is quite natural that this should have been his opinion. The glory and value of Rabelais, as in the case of all great men, all illustrious names, have long been vigorously disputed. His genius is unique, exceptional; its product stands alone among the histories of the literatures of the world. Where is his rival to be found?
To go back to antiquity, shall we cite Petronius or Apuleius, with their studied and premeditated art, their classic style, their scholarly conceptions?
Passing to the Middle Ages, shall we compare the epics of the twelfth century, the comic and the morality plays? No, certainly not; and although much of the comic material in the work of Rabelais is characteristic of the grotesque humour and manners of the Middle Ages, we do not find its predecessor in any literary document.
Coming down to modern times, his closest imitator, Béroald of Verville, author of L’Art de Parvenir, is so far removed from his model in style and power that it is scarcely worth while to make a comparison. Sterne attempted to reproduce the style of Rabelais, but his affectation and over-refined sensibility destroyed the parallel.
No, Rabelais is unique because he himself expresses the traits and characteristics of an entire century. His work possesses the highest significance in literature, politics, morals and religion. Certain geniuses appear from time to time, to create new literatures, or to resuscitate old ones; they deliver their message to the world, express the sentiment of their own generation, and we hear from them no more.
Homer sang the glories of the martial life, of the valiant and warlike youth of the world, the vernal season when the trees put forth new sprouts. In Virgil’s day civilisation was already old; we find him full of tears, of shadows, sentiment and delicacy. Dante is sombre and radiant at the same time; he was the Christian poet, the bard of death and of hell, full of melancholy and of hope also. In olden times, if satiety overtook a people, if doubt entered into all hearts, if all beautiful dreams, all illusions, all Utopian yearnings fell, one by one, destroyed by stern realities, by science, reason, and analysis, what did the poet do? He retired within himself; he had sublime flights of pride and enthusiasm, and moments of poignant despair. He sang the agonies of the heart and the vagaries of fancy. Then, all the griefs that compassed him, the sobs that rang in his ears, the maledictions that he heard on every side, resounded in his soul—which God had made great, responsive, all-embracing—and issued thence through the voice of genius, to mark forever in history an epoch in a nation’s life, to record its sorrows, and carve indelibly the names of its unfortunates. In our own day Lord Byron has done this. For this reason, the true poet is more accurate than the historian, and indeed most poets are more strictly truthful than historians. Great writers, then, may be compared, in the realms of thought, to the capitals of kingdoms. They absorb the brains of every province and every individuality; mingling those qualities of each that are distinctively personal and original, they amalgamate them, arrange them, and after a time the result is seen in the form of art.
Rabelais was born in 1483, the year that Louis XI. died. Luther had just become known. The king had overthrown the ancient feudalism; the monks were about to attack the Papacy: this situation describes the history of the Middle Ages—a period divided between the wars of Nations and of the Church. But the people, weary of both, would have no more of either. They realised that the men of arms devoured their substance and ruined them; they knew the priests made use of them for their own selfish purposes, besides deceiving them. For some time the people contented themselves with inscribing satires and scurrilities on the stones of the cathedrals, with making songs against the seigneurs, or publishing, broadcast, biting criticisms of the ruling power or of the nobility, as in the Romance of the Rose. But something more was wanted: a revolt, a reform. Symbols were old, and so were mystery plays and poems; and there was a general feeling that an entirely new form of attack was desirable. Science was needed, even in poetry and philosophy.
In 1473, a caricature representing the Church, with the body of a woman, the legs of a chicken, the claws of a vulture, and the tail of a serpent, was circulated throughout Europe. It was the epoch of Comines, of Machiavelli, of Arétin. The Papacy had lately had Alexander VI.; now it had Leo X., who was no better. An intellectual orgy had set in, destined to be long, and to end with blood. During the eighteenth century this was repeated, and the termination was the same.
In the chaotic conditions belonging to this epoch lived Rabelais. We are not surprised that, in the midst of this society, corrupt from its debaucheries and tottering on its foundations, and being witness to such ruin and devastation, the genius of this wonderful man prompted him to reveal, by means of withering sarcasm, the frightful past of the Middle Ages, the effects of which were still felt in his own century, which looked back upon that past with horror.
In my opinion, those who have claimed to possess a key to Rabelais, to be able to understand his allegories, and to translate each jest into its real significance, do not understand him in the least. His satire is general and universal, not at all personal or local. A careful reading of his work should prove the fallacy of such pretensions.
Shall I cite all that was done in this respect in the sixteenth century, and tell of all the abuse poured by that century upon the Middle Ages, of which it was the outcome? For instance, without saying anything of Ariosto, are not Falstaff, Sancho Panza, and Gargantua a grotesque trilogy forming a bitter satire on the old society?
Falstaff belongs wholly to England; he is John Bull bloated with beer and pork; fat, sensual, running away from the dead, eternally drawing from his pocket a flask of old Spanish wine. He possesses none of the terrible grotesqueness of Iago, or of the deliberate immorality of Schiller’s Hassan, the Moor. His greatest passion was self-love; he carried it to the highest degree; it was even sublime. He was egotism personified, with a certain facility in analysis and a strain of ridicule, by which he managed to turn everything to his own advantage.
As for peaceful Sancho Panza, mounted on his lazy, tawny ass, snoring all night and sleeping all day, a poltroon, not able to understand the meaning of heroism, full of proverbs, the prosaic man par excellence,—is not his base blood the crying reason why he endeavours with all his power to stop Don Quixote from tilting at the windmills, which the worthy knight takes for giants? The man of gentle birth attacks them, nevertheless, but he breaks his arm and wounds his head. His helmet is a barber’s basin, his horse, Rosinante, and a labourer’s donkey brays at the sight of his coat-of-arms.
Placed between these two figures, that of Gargantua is vaguer, less precise. His characterisation is ampler, freer, and grander. Gargantua is less gluttonous, less sensual than Falstaff, and not so lazy as Sancho Panza; but he is a greater drinker, a heartier laugher, and makes a louder clamour. He is terrible and monstrous in his gaiety.
One more reflection: the satire of Rabelais does not apply to his own day only. He denounces, for all time, all abuses, crimes, and everything that is ridiculous. Perhaps he was able to foresee a better state of the body politic and a society whose moral laws should be purified. Existing conditions aroused his pity, and, to employ a trivial expression, all the world was a farce. And he made himself a part of the farce.
Since his time, what has been done? Everything has changed. Reform has come, with independence of thought. We have had the Revolution. We possess material independence. And what besides all this?
Thousands of questions have been discussed,—sciences, arts, philosophies, theories,—how many questions even during the last twenty years! What a whirlwind of thoughts and ideas! Where will they lead us?
Let us see. Where are we? Are we in the twilight or in full dawn? We have no more Christianity. What have we? I ask. Railways, factories, chemists, mathematicians. To be sure, our bodies are better off, we suffer less in the flesh, but the heart still bleeds! Do you not feel the perturbation of your soul, although its outward covering seems calm and happy? It is plunged in the abyss of universal scepticism; it is overcome by that deadly ennui that seizes upon our race even in the cradle. Meanwhile, politicians babble, poets have scarcely time to rhyme their fancies and scribble them hastily on ephemeral sheets of paper; and the suicidal bullet is heard in every garret and every palace where dwell misery, pride, or satiety!
Material questions have been settled. But others—have they also been solved? Answer me that! And the longer you delay in filling this yawning chasm in the soul of mankind, the more I mock at your efforts to be happy, and laugh at your miserable sciences, that are worth no more than a blade of grass.
Now is the time for another genius like Rabelais to arise. Let him be without anger, without hatred, without grief. What could he laugh at? Not at kings—there are no more; nor at God, because although we may have lost our faith, yet a certain fear remains; nor at the Jesuits, for they are an old story.
What could he laugh at, then? The material world has improved, or at least it is on the road to improvement.
But the other? He would have fine sport with that. And if such a poet could conceal his tears and laugh instead, I assure you his book would be the most terrible and the most sublime that ever has been written!
Preface to the Last Songs
(POSTHUMOUS POEMS)
OF
L O U I S B O U I L H E T.
IT WOULD perhaps make criticism easier, if, before giving our opinion, we should make known our preferences. To omit this preliminary distinction is a great injustice, as every book contains a peculiarity pertaining to the writer himself, which, independently of the execution, will charm or irritate us according to our preferences. We are never completely charmed unless a book appeals to our feelings and our intellect at the same time.
First, let us discuss the object of the book. “Why this novel, this drama? Of what use is it? etc.” Instead of following the author’s idea, instead of pointing out to him where he failed of his aim, and how he should have gone about to attain it, we bicker with him on a thousand things outside of his subject, always declaring the contrary of what he meant to express. If a critic’s sphere extends beyond the author’s province, he should first of all look to the æsthetics and the moral.
It is impossible for me to warrant either of these concerning the poet in questions. As for writing his life, it has been linked so closely with mine, that I shall be brief on this subject; individual memoirs belong only to great men. Besides, has not research been exhausted? History will soon absorb all literature. In studying too closely what makes up the author’s atmosphere, we fail to give the originality of his genius due consideration. In La Harpe’s time, when a masterpiece appeared, we were convinced,—thanks to certain rules!—that it was under no obligation whatsoever; whereas now, after we have examined everything about it, we still wish to discover its right to exist.
I have another scruple. I do not wish to betray the modesty that my friend constantly maintained. At an epoch when insignificant mediocrity aspired to fame, when typography was the medium of all affectations, and the rivalry of the most insipid personalities became a public pest, he was proud of being modest. His photograph was never displayed on the boulevards. No article, no letter, not a single line from him, was ever published in the papers. He did not even belong to the academy of his province. Yet no life is more deserving of praise than his. He lived nobly and labouriously. Though poor, he remained free. He was as strong as a blacksmith, mild as a child, intellectual without being paradoxical, noble without affectation; and those who knew him well will say that I have not praised him enough.
Louis Hyacinthe Bouilhet was born at Cany (Seine Inférieure), the 27th day of May, 1822. His father, chief of ambulances in the campaign of 1812, swam the Bérésina, carrying on his head the regiment’s chest, and died quite young from wounds received. His maternal grandfather, Pierre Hourcastremé, dabbled in legislation, poetry, and geometry, received congratulations from Voltaire, corresponded with Turgot and Condorcet, spent nearly all his money buying shells, produced Les Aventures de Messire Anselme, an Essai sur la Faculté de Penser, Les Etrennes de Mnémosyne, etc., and after being a lawyer in Pau, a journalist in Paris, administrator of the navy at Havre, and a schoolmaster at Montvilliers, died almost a centenarian, bequeathing to his grandson the memory of a strange but charming old man, who powdered his hair, wore knee-breeches and cultivated tulips.
The child was sent to Ingouville, to a boarding-school on a high cliff, and went to the college of Rouen at twelve, where he was usually at the head of his class. He was not a model pupil, however; this term applies to mediocre natures and a calmness of spirit which was rare in those days.
I do not know what students admire nowadays, but our dreams were wildly imaginative. The most enthusiastic dreamt of violent courtships, with gondolas, and fainting ladies carried away in stagecoaches by masked ruffians. Some, more gloomily disposed (admirers of Armand Carrel, a countryman), preferred the clash of the press and the court-room, or the glory of conspiracy. A rhetorician wrote an Apologie de Robespierre, which reached a certain gentleman and so scandalised him that it brought on an exchange of notes, followed by a challenge to a duel, in which the said gentleman did not play a very creditable part. One good-natured fellow always wore a red cap; another swore to live as a Mohican; one of my intimate friends aspired to the honour of serving under Abd-el-Kader. Apart from being troubadours, insurgents and Orientals, we were, above all, artists. After studies, we wrote, and read novels till late in the night. Bar ..., declaring he was tired of life, shot himself; and And ... hanged himself with his cravat. We certainly deserved little praise for our follies; but we hated platitudes; our minds soared towards noble things. How we revered the masters! How we admired Victor Hugo!
Among this group was Bouilhet, the elegist, the poet of moonlight and ruins. When he was nearly twenty, this affectation disappeared, to give place to a virulent democracy, so genuine that he was about to join a secret society.
He received his bachelor’s degree, and was told to choose a profession. He chose medicine, settled his small income on his mother, and taught for a living. His life became painfully labourious; he combined the duties of poet, tutor and saw-bones. Two years later, he was appointed interne at l’Hôtel Dieu in Rouen, under my father’s orders. As he could not attend during the day, his turn came oftener than others for night watch. He did not mind it, however, as he had no other time in which to write. All his poems of love, flowers and birds were written in those winter nights, amidst the sick and suffering, or on Sundays in summer, while the patients walked under his window. Those years of sadness were not useless; the contemplation of suffering humanity, the dressing of wounds, the dissecting-table, gave him a better knowledge of mankind. Some would have given way under the strain, the disgust, the torture of having to follow a vocation unsuited to him; but, thanks to his physical and mental health, he stood it cheerfully. Some still remember meeting in the streets of his native city, this handsome though somewhat timid youth, with flowing blond hair, who always carried a note-book, in which he wrote his verses as they came to him; sometimes while teaching, at a friend’s house, in a café, during an operation, anywhere. Poor in worldly wealth, but rich in hope, he gave them away. He was a real poet in the classical sense of the word.
When we met again after four years’ separation, he read to me three of his plays. The first, entitled Le Déluge, described a lover clinging to his beloved, while he watched with anguish the ruins of the fast disappearing world: “Hark to the crashing of the palm-trees on the heights, and to the agonizing cries of Earth!” It was somewhat prolix, and too emphatic, but was replete with force and passion. The second, a satire against the Jesuits, was more resolute and in an entirely different style: “Smile, priests of the boudoir and gather poor feminine souls in your golden nets!” “Charming ministers in the confessional, inflicting penance with love-words on their lips! Heroes of the Gospel, impleading the Lord with flowery language, and treading each day, holy martyrs! on soft carpets the via crucis!” “These merchants, at the foot of the cross, casting lots and dividing, piece by piece, O Lord, Thy robe and Thy cloak! These fakirs of holy relics, selling, oh, wonder! Thy heart as amulets, and phials of Thy blood.”
We must not forget the disturbances of the times, and must remember that the author was only twenty-two. The play was dated 1844.
The third was an invective to “An author who sold his poems”:
Why seek a famished passion to revive?
After thy rustic love through green fields strive
On flowery banks beside the rosy stream
Archangel, drink to drunkenness the sunny beam,
Under the willows chant etotic dreams,
Though Brutus’ sins upon thy shoulders weigh
Doubtless thy simple soul and heart inveigh
Against the Destiny that took from thee.
“ ’Tis the greedy Plutus, with his purse full, who quotes smiling, human honesty!”
“Destiny is the bag full of gold into which we plunge our greedy hands with rapture! It is corruption which flaunts before our eyes its alluring breast! It is fear, the silent spectre that disturbs the coward in the hour of danger!”
“Your prudent Apollo, no doubt, passed through the stock exchange to reach the Parnassus? We often see, in the political sky, the morning sun die out before night. Look through your telescope, do you not see Guizot waning and Thiers coming to light? Do you base your changeable faith and your flexible probity on the mobility of the weather?”
“Avaunt! Greek, whose servile words lauded Xerxes the night before Thermopylæ!” He continued in the same rough tone against the administration. He sent his play to the Reforme, hoping they would print it; but they refused peremptorily, not wishing to expose themselves to a law suit—for mere literature.
It was near the end of 1845, when my father died, that Bouilhet gave up the practice of medicine. But he continued to teach, and, with the aid of a partner, obtained bachelorships for their pupils. The events of 1848 disturbed his republican faith. He now became a confirmed littérateur, fond of metaphors and comparisons, but indifferent to all else.
His thorough knowledge of Latin (he wrote as fluently in Latin as in French) inspired the few Roman sketches, as in Festons et Astragales and the poem Melœnis, published in the Revue de Paris, on the eve of a political crisis. The moment was badly chosen. The public’s fancy and courage were considerably cooled, and it was not disposed, neither were the powers, to accept independent genius; besides, individual style always seems insurrectionary to governments and immoral to commoners. The exaltation of vulgarism, the banishment of poetry, became more than ever the rage. Wishing to show good judgment, they rushed headlong into stupidity; anything above the ordinary bored them.
As a protest, he took refuge in forgotten places and in the far East; and thence came the Fossiles and different Chinese plays.
However, the provincial atmosphere stifled him; he needed a vaster field; and severing his connections, he came to Paris; but at a certain age one can no longer acquire the Parisian judgment; the things that seem simple to a native of the boulevards, are impracticable to a man of thirty-three arriving in the great city, having few acquaintances and no income, and unaccustomed to solitude. Then his bad days began.
His first book, Madame de Montarcy, received on approval at the Théâtre Français, and refused at the second reading, lingered for two years and was only accepted at the Odéon in November, 1856. The first performance was a rousing success. The applause often interrupted the action of the play; a whiff of youth permeated the atmosphere; it was a reminiscence of 1830. That night he became known; his success was assured. He could have collaborated, and made money with his name; but he preferred the quietness of Mantes, and went to live in a little house near an old tower, at the turn of the bridge, where his friends visited him on Sundays.
As soon as his plays were written, he took them to Paris; but the whims and fancies of the managers, the critics, the belated appointments, and the loss of time, caused him much weariness. He did not know that art, in a question of art, held such a trifling place! When he joined a committee against the unfair dealings at the Théâtre Français, he was the only member that did not complain of the rates of authors’ royalties.
With what pleasure he returned to his daily distraction, the study of Chinese! He pursued it ten years, merely as a study of the race, intending to write a grand poem on the Celestial Empire. Days when his heart was too full, he relieved himself by writing lyrical verses on the restrictions of the stage. His luck had turned, but with the Conjuration d’Ambroise it returned, and it lasted all winter.
Six months later he was appointed conservator of the municipal library of Rouen; and his old dream of leisure and fortune was realized at last! But soon afterward a dullness seized him—the exhaustion from too long a struggle. To counteract this he resumed the Greek tragic style and rapidly composed his last play, Mademoiselle Aïssé, which he never corrected. An incurable disease, long neglected, was the cause of his death, which took place on the 18th of July, 1869. He passed away without pain, in the presence of a friend of his youth and her child, whom he loved as if he were his own son. Their affection had increased towards the last, but two other persons marred their happiness. It seems that in a poet’s family there are always bitter disappointments. Annoying quarrels, honeyed sarcasms, direct insults to art, the million and one things that make your heart bleed,—nothing was spared him while he lived, and these things followed him to his death-bed.
His fellow-countrymen flocked to his funeral as if he had been a public man; even the less educated knowing full well that a superior intellect had passed away. The whole Parisian press joined in this universal sorrow; even the most hostile expressed their regrets; a Catholic writer alone spoke disparagingly. No doubt the connoisseurs in verse deplore the loss of such a poetical spirit; but those in whom he confided, who knew his powerful spirit, who benefited by his advice, they alone know to what height he might have risen.
He left, besides Aïssé, three comedies in prose, a fairy-scene, and the first act of Pélerinage de Saint-Jacques, a drama in verse, in ten tableaux. He had outlined two short poems: Le Bœuf, depicting the rustic life of Latium; and Le Dernier Banquet, describing the Roman patricians poisoning themselves at a banquet the night the soldiers of Alaric are entering Rome. He wished also to write a novel on the heathen of the fifth century, the counterpart of the Martyrs; but above all, he desired to write his Chinese tale, the scenes of which are completely laid out. It was his supreme ambition to recapitulate modern science, to write the De natura rerum of our age!
Who has the right to classify the talents of his contemporaries, and, thinking himself superior to all, say: “This one comes first, that one second, and this other third”? Fame’s sudden changes are numerous. There are irretrievable failures; some long, obscure periods, and some triumphant reappearances. Was not Ronsard forgotten before Sainte-Beuve? In days gone by, Saint-Amant was considered inferior as a poet to Jacques Delille. Don Quixote, Gil Blas, Manon Lescaut, La Cousine Bette and other masterpieces, have never had the success of Uncle Tom. In my youth, I heard comparisons made between Casimir Delavigne and Victor Hugo, and it seems that “our great national poet” was declining. Let us then be careful, or posterity will misjudge us—perhaps laugh at our bitterness—still more, perhaps, at our adulations; for the fame of an author does not spring from public approbation, but from the verdict of a few intellects, who, in the course of time, impose it upon the public.
Some will say that I have given my friend too high a place; but they know not, no more do I, what place he will retain. Because his first book is written in stanzas of six lines each, with triple rhymes, like Naouma, and begins like this: “Of all the men that ever walked through Rome, in Grecian buskins and linen toga, from Suburra to the Capitoline hill, the handsomest was Paulus,” somewhat similar to this: “Of all the libertines in Paris, the first, oldest and most prolific in vice, where debauchery is so easily found, the lewdest of all was Jacques Rolla,” without more ado, and ignoring the dissimilarity of execution, poetry, and nature, it was declared that the author of Melœnis imitated Alfred de Musset! He was condemned on the spot; a farce—it is so easy to label a thing so as to be able to put it aside.
I do not wish to be unfair; but where has Musset, in any part of his works, harmonized description, dialogue, and intrigue in more than two thousand consecutive rhymes, with such results of composition, such choice of language, in short, where is there a work of such magnitude? What wonderful ability was needed to reproduce Roman society, without affectation, yet keeping within the narrow confines of a dramatic fable!
If you look for the primitive idea, the general element in Louis Bouilhet’s poems, you will find a kind of naturalism that reminds you of the Renaissance. His hatred of commonplace saved him from platitudes; his inclination towards the heroic was tempered by his wit—he was very witty. This part of his talent was almost unknown; he kept it somewhat in the shadow, thinking it of no consequence; but now nothing hinders me from acknowledging that he excelled in epigrams, sonnets, rondeaux and other jests, written for distraction or pastime, and also through sheer good-nature. I discovered some official speeches for functionaries, New-Year verses for a little girl, some stanzas for a barber, for the christening of a bell, for the visit of a king. He dedicated to one of our friends, wounded in 1848, an ode on the patron of The Taking of Namur, where emphasis reached the pinnacle of dullness. To another who killed a viper with his whip he sent a piece entitled: The struggle of a monster and a genius, which contained enough imperfect metaphors and ridiculous periphrasis to serve as a model or as a scarecrow. But his best was a masterpiece, in Béranger’s style, entitled The Nightcap! His intimate friends will always remember it. It praised glory, the ladies, and philosophy so highly,—it was enough to make all the members of the Caveau burst with the desire of emulating him.
He had the gift of being entertaining—a rare thing for a poet. Compare his Chinese with his Roman plays, Neera with Lied Norman, Pastel with Clair de Lune, Chronique de Printemps with Sombre Eglogue, Le Navire with Une Soirée, and you will see how productive and ingenious he was.
He has dramatised all human passions; he has written about the mummies, the triumphs of the unknown, the sadness of the stones, has unearthed worlds, described barbaric peoples and biblical scenes, and written lullabies. The scope of his imagination is sufficiently proven in Les Fossiles, which Théophile Gautier called “the most difficult subject ever attempted by any poet!” I may add that it is the only scientific poem in all French literature that is really poetical. The stanzas at the end, on the future man, show how well he understood the most transcendent utopias. Among religious works, his Colombe will perhaps live as the declaration of faith of the nineteenth century. His individuality manifests itself plainly in Dernière Nuit, A Une Femme, Quand vous m’avez quitté, Boudeuse, etc., where he is by turns dismal and ironical; whereas in La fleur rouge it bursts out in a singularly sharp and almost savage manner.
He does not look for effect; follows no school but his own individual style, which is versatile, fluent, violent, full of imagination and always musical. He possesses all the secrets of poetry; that is the reason that his works abound with good lines, good all the way through, as in Le Lutrin and Les Châtiments. Take, for instance: “Is long like a crocodile, with bird-like extremities.” “A big, brown bear, wearing a golden helmet.” “He was a muleteer from Capua.” “The sky was as blue as a calm sea.” “The thousand things one sees when mingling with a crowd.”
And this one of the Virgin Mary: “Forever pale from carrying her God.”
In one sense of the word, he is classical. His l’Oncle Million is written in the most excellent French. “A poem! Make rhymes! It is insanity! I have seen saner men put into a padded cell! Zounds! Who speaks in rhymes? What a farce! Am I imaginative? Do I make verses? Do you know, my boy, what I have had to endure to give you the extreme pleasure of watching, lyre in hand, which way the winds blow? Wisely considered, these frivolities are well enough at odd moments. I myself knew a clerk that wrote verses.”
Then further: “I say Léon is not even a poet! He a poet, come! You are joking. Why, I saw him when he was no higher than that! What has he out of the ordinary? He is a rattle-brained, stupid fool, and I warrant you he will be a business man, or I will know the reason why!”
This style goes straight to the point. The meaning comes out so clearly that the words are forgotten; that is, while clinging to it, they do not impede or alter its purport.
But you will say these accomplishments are of no use for the stage; that he was not a successful playwright. The sixty-eight performances of Montarcy, ninety of Hélène Peyron, and five hundred of La Conjuration d’Ambroise, prove the contrary. One must really know what is suitable for the stage, and, above all things, acknowledge that the dominant question is spontaneous and lucrative success. The most experienced are at sea, not being able to follow the vagaries of public taste. In olden times, one went to the theatre to hear beautiful thoughts put into beautiful language. In 1830, furious and roaring passion was the rage; later, such rapidity of action, that the heroes had not time to speak; then, thesis; after that, witty sallies; and now the reproduction of stupid vulgarism appears to monopolize the public favour.
Bouilhet cared nothing for thesis; he hated insipid phrases, and considered what is called “realism” a monstrosity. Stunning effects not being acquired by mild colouring, he preferred bold descriptions, violent situations—that is what made his poems really tragic. His plots weakened sometimes towards the middle, but, for a play in verse, were it more concise, it would crowd out all poetry. La Conjuration d’Ambroise and Mademoiselle Aïssé show some progress in this respect; but I am not blind; I censure his Louis XIV. in Madame de Montarcy as too unreal; in l’Oncle Million the feigned illness of the notary; in Hélène Peyron the too prolix scene in the fourth act, and in Dolorès the lack of harmony between vagueness and precision. In short, his personages are too poetical. He knew how to bring out sensational effects, however. For instance, the reappearance of Marcelline at Dubret’s, the entrance cf Dom Pedro in the third act of Dolorès, the Countess of Brissot in the dungeon, the commander in the last act of Aïssé, and the ghostly reappearance of Cassius before the Empress Faustine. This book was unjustly criticised; nor was the atticism understood in l’Oncle Million, it being perhaps the best written of all his plays, as Faustine is the most labouriously contrived. They are all very pathetic at the end, filled with exquisite things and real passion. How well suited to the voice his poems are! How virile his words, which make one shiver! Their impulsion resembles the flap of a great bird’s wings!
The heroic style of his dramas secured them an enthusiastic reception; but his triumphs did not turn his head, as he knew that the best part of a work is not always understood, and he might owe his success to the weaker. If he had written the same plays in prose, perhaps his dramatic talent would have been extolled; but, unfortunately, he used a medium that is generally disliked. “No comedy in verse!” was the first cry, and later, “No verses on the stage!” Why not confess that we desire none at all?
He never wrote prose; rhymes were his natural dialect. He thought in rhymes, and he loved them so that he read all sorts with equal attention. When we love a thing we love every part of it. Play-goers love the green-room; gourmands love to smell cooking; mothers love to bathe their children. Disillusion is a sign of weakness. Beware of the fastidious, for they are usually powerless!
Art, he thought, was a serious thing, its aim being to create a vague exaltation; that alone being its morality. From a memorandum I take the following notes:
“In poetry, one need not consider whether the morals are good, but whether they adapt themselves to the person described; thus will it describe with equal indifference good and bad actions, without suggesting the latter as an example.”—Pierre Corneille.
“Art, in its creations, must strive to please only those who have the right to judge it; otherwise it will follow the wrong path.”—Goethe.
“All the intellectual beauties and details of a tale (if it is well written) are so many useful facts, and are perhaps more precious to the public mind than the main points that make up the subject.”—Buffon.
Therefore art, being its own motive, must not be considered an expedient. No matter how much genius we might use in the development of a story used as an example, another might prove the contrary. A climax is not a conclusion. We must not infer generalities from one particular case; those who think themselves progressive in doing so are working against modern science, which demands that we gather all the facts before proclaiming a law.
Bouilhet did not like that moralising art which teaches and corrects; he liked still less the frivolous art, which strives to divert the mind or stir the feelings; he did not follow democratic art, being convinced that, to be accessible to all, it must descend to the lowest level; as, at this civilised period, when we try to be artless we become silly. As to official art, he refused all its advantages, not wishing to defend causes that are so short-lived.
He avoided paradoxes, oddities, and all deviations; he followed a straight road; that is, the generous feelings, the immutable side of the human soul. As “thoughts are the foundation of language,” he tried to think well so as to write well. Although he wrote emotional dramas, he never said: “If Margot wept, the melodrama is good,” as he did not believe in replacing emotion by trickery. He hated the new maxim that says, “One must write as one speaks.” It is true, the old way of wasting time in making researches, the trouble taken when bringing out a book, would seem ridiculous nowadays; we are above all those things, we overflow with fluency and genius!
Not that he lacked genius, however; he often made corrections while a rehearsal was in progress. Inspiration, he held, cannot be made, but must come naturally. He followed Buffon’s advice, expressing each thought by an image, and made his conceptions as vivid as possible; but the bourgeois declared that “atmosphere” was too material a thing to express sentiment; and fearing their sound French judgment might be disturbed and carried beyond its limits, they exclaimed “too much metaphor”!—as if they had any to spare!
Few authors take such pains in choosing their words, in phrasing. He did not give the title of author to those who possess only certain elements of style. Many of the most praised would have been unable to combine analysis, description, and dialogue!
He loved rhythm, in verse as well as in prose. He considered that language without rhythm was tedious, and unfit to stand the test of being read aloud. He was very liberal; Shakespeare and Boileau were equally admired by him; he read Rabelais continually, loved Corneille and La Fontaine, and, although very romantic, he praised Voltaire. In Greek literature, he preferred first of all the Odyssey, then Aristophanes; in Latin, Tacitus and Juvenal. He had also studied Apuleius a great deal.
He despised public speeches, whether addressed to God or to the people; the bigot’s style, as that of the labourer; all things that reek of the sewer or of cheap perfume. Many things were unknown to him; such as the fanaticism of the seventeenth century, the infatuation for Calvin, the continuous lamentations on the decline of the arts. He cared little for M. de Maistre, nor did Prudhon dazzle him. In his estimation, sober minds were nothing else than inferior minds; he hated affected good taste, thinking it more execrable than bad; and all discussions on the arts, the gossip of the critics. He would rather have died than write a preface. The following page, taken from a note-book and entitled Notes et Projets, will give a better idea: “This century is essentially pedagogic. There is no scribbler, no book, be they never so paltry, that does not press itself upon the public; as to form, it is outlawed. If you happen to write well, you are accused of lacking ideas. Heavens! One must be stupid indeed to want for ideas at the price they bring! By simply using these three words future, progress, society, no matter who you are, you are a poet. How easy to encourage the fools and console the envious! Mediocre, profitable poetry, school-room literature, æsthetic prattle, economical refuse, scrofulous products of an exhausted nation, oh! how I detest you all from the bottom of my heart! You are not gangrene, you are putrescence!”
The day after his death Théophile Gautier wrote: “He carried with pride the old tattered banner, which had seen so many battles; we can make a shroud of it, the valiant followers of Hernani are no more.” How true! He devoted his entire life to ideals, loving literature for itself; as the last fanatic loves a religion nearly or quite extinct.
“Second-rate genius,” you will say; but fourth-rate ones are not so plentiful now! We are getting wide of the mark. We are so engrossed in stupidity and vulgarism that we shun delicacy and loftiness of mind; we think it a bore to show respect to great men. Perhaps we shall lose, with literary tradition, that ethereal element which represented life as more sublime than it really is; but if we wish our works to live after us, we must not sneer at fame. By cultivating the mind we acquire some wit. Witnessing beautiful actions makes us more noble.
If there should be somewhere two young men who spend their Sundays reading poetry together, telling each other what they have written and what they would like to write, and, while indifferent to all else, conceal this passion from all eyes—if so, my advice to them is this:
Go side by side, through the woods, reciting poetry; mingle your souls with the sap of the trees and the eternity of God’s creations; abandon yourselves to reverie and the torpors of sublimity! Give up your youth to the Muse; it will replace all other loves. When you have experienced the world’s miseries; when everything, including your own existence, seems to point towards one purpose; when you are ready for any sacrifice, any test,—then, publish your works. After that, no matter what happens, you will look on the wretchedness of your rivals without indignation, and on their success without envy. As the less favoured will be consoled by the other’s success, the one with a stouter heart will encourage the weaker one; each will contribute his particular gift; this mutual help will avert pride and delay declination.
When one of you dies—as we must all die—let the other treasure his memory; let him use it as a bulwark against weakness, or, better, as a private altar where he can open his heart and pour out his grief. Many times, in the stillness of night, will he look vainly for his friend’s shadow, ready to question him: “Am I doing right? What must I do? Answer me!”—and if this memory be a constant reminder of his sorrow, it will at least be a companion in his solitude.
LETTER TO THE
MUNICIPALITY OF ROUEN
ON THE SUBJECT OF A MEMORIAL
TO
LOUIS BOUILHET.
Gentlemen:—
BY A majority of two votes—thirteen votes against eleven (including that of the mayor and his six clerks)—you refused the offer I made you to erect free of cost, at any place you might choose in your city, a small fountain ornamented with the bust of Louis Bouilhet.
As I am spokesman for the persons who contributed their money for this purpose, I must protest in their name against this decision—that is, I must reply to the objections uttered in your meeting of the 8th of December last, an account of which appeared in the newspapers of Rouen on the 18th of the same month.
The four principal objections were:
1.—That the subscription committee changed the destination of the monument;
2.—That the municipal budget would be imperilled;
3.—That Bouilhet was not born in Rouen;
4.—That his literary talent is inadequate.
First objection (I use the words as they were printed): “Can the committee modify the intention and substitute a fountain for a tombstone? Will all the subscribers accept the substitution?”
We have modified nothing, gentlemen! the monument (a vague expression, not precisely designating a tombstone) was suggested by M. Ernest Leroy, ex-prefect of the “Seine-Inférieure,” on the day of Bouilhet’s funeral.
I immediately started a subscription, on which figured the names of an imperial highness, George Sand, Alexandre Dumas, the great Russian author Tourgeneff, Harrisse, a New York journalist, etc. Some subscribers from the Comédie Française are: Mmes. Plessy, Favart, Brohan and M. Bressant; from the Opéra, M. Fauré and Mlle. Nilsson; in short, after six months, we had about 14,000 francs at our disposal; besides this, the marble was to be given to us by the Beaux-Arts administration, and the sculptor chosen by us refused to accept any remuneration.
Surely, all those people, known or unknown, did not give their time, talent, or money, for the erection in a cemetery (which very few would ever visit) of so costly a tombstone; one of those grotesque constructions that are adverse to all religious feeling, to all philosophies, whose derisive pride insults eternity!
No, gentlemen, what they desired was something less useful—and more moral: that when passing Bouilhet’s statue each one could say: “There was a man who, in this avaricious century, devoted his whole life to the worship of literature. This mark of respect is but justice to him, and I have contributed my share to this reparation.” This was their idea; nothing else. Besides, how do you know? Who asked you to defend them?
The municipal council say: “As we understand it to be a tombstone, we will give ten metres of ground and subscribe 500 francs.” As this decision implies a recrimination, let them keep their 500 francs! As to the ground, we are willing to buy it. What is your price? But enough on your first objection.
The second is dictated by excessive caution: “If the subscription committee have made a mistake in their estimate, the city could not leave it (the monument) unfinished; and we must even now foresee that, if need be, we should have to make up the deficit.”
Our estimate was submitted to your architect; as to our funds, if they had been insufficient, rest assured the committee would have made an appeal to the subscribers, or rather, would have supplied them out of their own pockets. Thank heaven! we are rich enough to keep our word! Your excessive anxiety seems somewhat rude.
Third objection: “Bouilhet was not born in Rouen!” Yet, M. Decorde says in his report: “He is one of us”; and after the first performance of La Conjuration d’Ambroise, M. Verdrel, ex-Mayor of Rouen, at a banquet given in honor of Bouilhet, complimented him in the most flattering terms; calling him “one of the geniuses of Rouen.” For some years, it was quite a fad of the smaller Parisian publications to ridicule the enthusiasm of the people of Rouen for Bouilhet. In the Charivari, a caricature represented the people of Rouen offering their respects to Hélène Peyron in the shape of bonbons and cakes; in another, I was represented dragging the “Rouenese float.”
But no matter. According to you, gentlemen, if an illustrious man is born in a village consisting of thirty shanties, the monument must be erected in that village, and not in the county seat? Then why not erect it in the street, house, or even room where he was born? Suppose his birthplace were unknown (history is not always decisive on this point),—what would you do? Nothing. Am I right?
Fourth objection:—“His literary merit!”
I find in the report many big words on this subject: “Propriety”; “principles.” “It must be risky.” “It would be a great distinction; an extreme honour; a supreme homage; which must be granted only with extreme caution”; lastly, “Rouen is too large a pedestal for his genius!” Really, such praise was not bestowed even upon the excellent M. Pottier, “whose services to the city library were more conspicuous” (no doubt, because it was your library). Nor, secondly, on Hyacinthe Langlois! I knew him, gentlemen, better than all of you. Do not revive this painful recollection! Never speak of this noble man! His life was a disgrace to his countrymen! You call him “a great Norman celebrity,” and, dispensing fame in fantastic manner, you quote among the celebrities of which our city can boast (you can, but do not always) Pierre Corneille! Corneille a celebrity? Really, you are severe! Then, in the same breath, you mention Boieldieu, Lemonnier, Fontenelle, and, gentlemen, you forget Gericault, the dean of modern painting; Saint-Amant, the great poet; Boisgilbert, the first economist of France; De La Salle, who discovered the mouth of the Mississippi; Louis Poterat, inventor of porcelain in Europe,—and others!
That your predecessors should have forgotten to pay high, immoderate, sufficient tribute, or even no tribute at all, to these “celebrities” (Samuel Bochart, for instance, whose name adorns one of the streets of Caen) is an indisputable fact! But does a previous injustice authorise subsequent wrongs?
It is true, nothing has been erected to the memory of Rabelais, Montaigne, Ronsard, Pascal, La Bruyère, Le Sage, Diderot, Vauvenargues, Lamennais, Alexandre Dumas, and Balzac, in their native cities. On the other hand, there is a statue of General de Saint-Pol at Nogent-le-Rotrou; one of General Blanmont at Gisors; one of General Leclerc at Pontoise; one of General Valhubert at Avranches; one of M. Vaisse at Lyons; one of M. Billault at Nantes; one of M. de Morny at Deauville; one of Ancelot at Havre; one of Ponsard at Valence; in a public park at Vire, an enormous bust of Chênedollé; at Séez, in front of the cathedral, a magnificent statue of Conté, etc.
This is all well enough, if the public purse has not suffered. Let those who desire fame pay for it; let those who wish to pay tributes to others, do so at their own cost. This is exactly what we wished to do.
So long as you were subject to no financial risks, your duty was to demand of us a guaranty of execution. Besides the right to choose the spot for our fountain, you had that of rejecting our sculptor and choosing one yourselves. But you are too engrossed in the hypothetical success of Mademoiselle Aïssé! “If this drama is not a success, might not the erection of a public monument to his literary talent [Bouilhet’s] be looked upon with disfavour?”
M. Nion (who has special charge of the fine arts) thinks that if by chance this drama should be a failure, the adoption of the proposed plan would be “rashness” on the part of the municipal council. So, it would seem that the bone of contention is the financial success of the piece! If it is a success, Bouilhet is a great man; if a failure, he is not! What a noble theory! The immediate success of a drama has nothing to do with its literary value. There are numerous examples: Molière’s L’Avare ran four nights; Racine’s Athalie and Rossini’s Barbier de Seville were hooted. But rest easy, Mademoiselle Aïssé was a great success. It does not seem to matter to M. Decorde, your reporter, who says: ‘Bouilhet’s talent is not proof against criticism’; and: ‘His reputation is not sufficiently established.’ M. Nion says: ‘His method is more remarkable than his scenic conceptions! He is not original, not a first-class author!’ M. Decorde calls him ‘an imitator of Alfred de Musset, who was sometimes successful’! Really, my dear sir, you are not as indulgent as you should be towards a contemporary,—you who, artfully scoffing at this very city of Rouen, whose literary morals you defend so well, have stigmatized Saint-Tard as ‘a progressive borough.’[C] A nice little place, where, “Despite the city toll, against which they grumble, liquor-shops and cafés flourish.”
[C] Read at a public meeting of the Academy of Rouen, Aug. 7th, 1867.
If you had been asked for money, I should have understood your reluctance.
“Here is another thing; we are continually taxed for the least reason.” ’Tis true the bourgeois of Saint-Tard are not much given to generosity!
We expected better of you after your treatment of modern slang in your epistle Des importations Anglaises[D] in which are these lines: “I read in a paper that at Boulogne-sur-Mer a fashionable cricket-club had arranged a match. And having so poorly aped fashion, can lay claim to admiration.” Attractive lines, but these are better: “I have read somewhere that a miser of Rennes, knowing no better way to avoid giving presents, had died on the New Year.”
[D] Read at the Academy of Rouen, at a public meeting, Aug. 7th, 1865. (See analytical summary of the works of the Academy of Rouen.)
You are really versatile—whether you praise photograph collections: “It is a pleasant pastime, and everyone has a large collection,” or Saint-Ouen Park: “Your fate is that of the great stream once so sought after, and you in your turn are deserted.”[E] Or dancing: “As everything must follow the fashion, Terpsichore has submitted to the law of exchange. Ignoring prohibition, the Lancers have already reached us from Albion.”[F] Or dinners in town: “You must not expect me to divulge what the menu consists of; but from the beginning the dessert adorns the table. Alas! those pleasures are not had for nothing; a winter in the city is more costly than one thinks!”[G] Or the marvels of modern industry: “And now, thanks to special trains, we can visit Belgium or Switzerland in eight days, and at much less cost. And when De Lesseps has at last made a passage through the Suez Canal, the tourist can take a pleasure trip to India or the extreme Orient as easily as travelling through France.”[H]
[E] Letter of condolence to Saint-Ouen park.—Meeting of June 2, 1865. (See analytical summary of the Academy of Rouen.)
[F] Winter in the city. (Letter.—Meeting of Aug. 6th, 1863.)
[G] Winter in the city. (Letter.—Meeting Aug. 6th, 1863.)
[H] Vacations. (Familiar letter.—Meeting of Aug. 6th, 1861.)
Do not stop, by any means! Write dramas even, you who have such a keen conception of dramatic form! And rest assured, honourable sir, that if your “reputation were sufficiently established,” and although like Louis Bouilhet’s, your “talent” is not “proof against criticism,” you are not “original” not “a first-class author,” you will never be called “an imitator,” even “sometimes successful,” of Alfred de Musset!
Besides, your memory is at fault on this point. Did not one of your colleagues of the Academy of Rouen, at the meeting of Aug. 7th, 1862, praise Louis Bouilhet in flattering terms? He praised him so highly as a dramatic author, and denied so energetically that he was an imitator of Alfred de Musset, that when I wrote the preface to Dernières Chansons, I simply copied the words of my old friend, Alfred Nion, brother of M. Emile Nion, the gentleman that lacked boldness!
What was the gentleman “who has special charge of the fine arts” afraid of? Of obstructing your public by-ways? Poets like this one (begging your pardon) are not precisely innumerable. Since you have refused to accept his statue, notwithstanding our gift of a fountain, you have lost one of your colleagues, M. Thubeuf. I do not wish to speak unbecomingly, or to insult a sorrowful family I have not the honour of knowing, but it seems to me that Nicholas-Louis-Juste Thubeuf is at the present moment as forgotten as if he never had existed, while Bouilhet’s name is known over all Europe. Aïssé is being played in St. Petersburg and London. His plays and verses will be printed in six, twenty, even a hundred years hence, and perhaps beyond that. A man is seldom remembered unless he has been amusing or serviceable. You are not able to be the former; grant us the latter. Instead of devoting your time to literary criticism, a pastime that is beyond your powers, attend to more serious things such as: the construction of a bridge; the construction of a bonded-warehouse; the widening of the Rue du Grand-Pont; the opening of a street, running from the Court-House to the docks; the much delayed completion of the spire of the cathedral, etc. Queer collection, indeed! It might be called “Museum of deferred projects.”
You are so afraid of compromising yourselves, so afraid to act, that each outgoing administration hands its caution down to its successor. You think caution such a virtue that it would be a crime for you to act. Mediocrity is not detrimental, you think, but one must avoid being enterprising. When the public clamours, a committee is at once appointed; and from that time nothing is done. “We can do absolutely nothing; we await the committee’s decision.” Invincible argument to soothe public impatience!
Sometimes, however, you are bold enough to act; but it almost creates a scandal: as when the ex-Rue de l’Impératrice, now the Rue Jeanne-Darc, and the Square Solferino were opened in Rouen. Still: “Public parks are the style now, and Rouen must have one!”[I]
[I] M. Decorde’s poetry. (Letter of condolence to Saint-Ouen Park, already cited.)
But the most important, though the most neglected, of all your projects is the distribution of water throughout the city. Take Saint-Sever, for example, where there is great need of it. What we proposed was, to erect, at any street corner, a small fountain adorned with a statue. Several of you had formally promised that our fountain should be erected; we were therefore greatly surprised at your decision, inasmuch as you are sometimes generous in these matters. The statue to Napoleon I. on the Place Saint-Ouen is an instance. You gave, for the erection of this masterpiece, which had cost 160,000 francs or thereabouts, the small sum of 30,000 francs! The council had appropriated the first time 10,000 francs; the second time, 8,000; and the third time, 5,000, as indemnity to the sculptor, because his maquette had casually been overthrown by the committee—always the committee! What aptitude for art! For the statue of Pierre Corneille, proposed in 1805 and erected twenty-nine years later, 1834, you spent 7,037.38 francs—not a cent more. True, he was a great poet, and you are so considerate that you prefer to deprive yourselves of a necessity, rather than honour a second-rate poet!
Permit me to ask two questions: If this fountain, this useful public monument which we offered, had represented anything but Louis Bouilhet’s bust, would you have refused it? If it had been intended for one of the capitalists of our district, whose fortune runs into the millions, would you have refused it? I doubt it.
Be careful, or you will be accused of despising those who cannot boast of a fortune! For such cautious men, who consider success the main object, you have sadly erred, gentlemen! The Moniteur Universel, l’Ordre, the Paris-Journal, the Bien Public, the XIXème Siècle, l’Opinion Nationale, the Constitutionnel, the Gaulois, the Figaro, in fact, nearly all the papers, were against you. To convince you, we will simply quote a few lines from the dean of modern critics, Jules Janin:
“When the time came for definitive compensation, the last hope of Louis Bouilhet’s friends was dashed to the ground; they encountered all sorts of obstacles. His statue was refused a place in a city that his fame had made illustrious! His friends proposed in vain to erect a much needed fountain, so that the statue ornamenting it might not be thought the main object of this good deed. But how can unjust men understand the cruelty of such a refusal? They might erect a statue to war, but to a poet, never!”
Of the twenty-four composing the committee, eleven sided with us; and Messrs. Vaucquier du Traversin, F. Deschamps and Raoul Duval spoke eloquently in our favour. This affair is trifling in itself, but it may be noted as a characteristic feature of the century—of your class.
“I address myself to you no longer, gentlemen, but to all the bourgeoisie. Therefore I say: Conservators who conserve nothing, it is time to follow a different path. You speak of decentralizing, regenerating,—if so, rouse yourselves. Be active! Originate! French nobles lost their prestige for having had, during two centuries, the feelings of menials. The end of the bourgeois is at hand, because their feelings are those of the rabble. I do not see that they read different papers, or hear different music, or that their pleasures are more refined. In one as in the other, it is the same love of money; the same wish to destroy idols; the same hatred of superior minds; the same meanness; the same crass ignorance.”
Of the seven hundred members of l’Assemblée Nationale, how many are there who could name six kings of France, who know the first rudiments of political economy, who have even read Bastiat? The whole municipality of Rouen, who disowned a poet’s talent, no doubt are ignorant of the rules of versification. They do not need to know them, so long as they do not meddle with poetry.
To be respected by those beneath us, we must respect those above us! Before educating the rabble, educate yourselves! Enlightened people, enlighten yourselves! Because of your disdain for superiority, you think you have abundant good sense, you are positive, you are practical. One is never really practical unless he carries it a little farther.... You would not enjoy the benefits of industry if your ancestors of the eighteenth century had had other ideals than common usefulness. How we scoffed at Germany—at her dreamers, her ideologists, her ethereal poets! Our milliards compensated her for the time well employed in perfecting plans. It seems to me, it was the dreamer Fichte who reorganized the Prussian army after Jena; and that the poet Koërner sent a few Uhlans against us about 1813!
You practical? Come! You cannot even hold a pen or a gun! You let convicts rob, imprison, and slaughter you! You have lost even the brute’s instinct of defence; and when not only your life, but your purse (which ought to be dearer to you), is in danger, you lack the energy to drop a ballot into a box! With all your capital, all your wisdom, you never can form an association equal to l’Internationale! All your intellectual efforts consist of trembling for the future. Think! Hasten! or France, between a hideous demagogy and a stupid bourgeoisie, will sink lower and lower!
Gustave Flaubert.
SELECTED
C O R R E S P O N D E N C E
OF
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
WITH AN
INTIMATE STUDY OF THE AUTHOR
BY
CAROLINE COMMANVILLE
SIMON P. MAGEE
PUBLISHER
CHICAGO, ILL.
Copyright, 1904, by
M. WALTER DUNNE
——
Entered at Stationers’ Hall, London