Poetry is the Spirit of God, or, rather, it is primeval poetic substance, impersonal and common property; it floats in space like the cosmic essence of which Humboldt speaks, a kind of luminous matter, mother of old worlds, germ of worlds to come; indestructible, because it is incessantly being renewed, each element faithfully giving back to it that which it has borrowed.
Gradually, however, this matter settles round the great personalities, as clouds settle round great mountains, and in like manner as clouds dissolve into springs of living waters, spreading over plains, satisfying bodily thirst, so does this cosmic element resolve itself into poetry, hymns, songs and tragedies which satisfy the thirst of the soul. The inference to be drawn from the foregoing analogy is, that human genius creates and individual genius applies. Thus, when a critic happened to accuse Shakespeare of having taken a scene or phrase or idea from a contemporary writer, he said: "I have but rescued a child from evil company to put it among better companions." Again, Molière answered, even more naively still, when people made the same reproach with regard to him: "I take my treasure wherever I find it!" Now, Shakespeare and Molière were right: the man of genius—need I point out that I mean the great masters, not myself? (I am well aware that I shall not be of any importance until after my death!)—the man of genius, I repeat, does not steal, he conquers: he makes a colony, as it were, of the province he takes; he imposes his own laws upon it and peoples it with his own subjects; he extends his golden sceptre over it, and not a soul, seeing his fine kingdom, dares to say to him (except, of course, the jealous, who are subject to no one and will not recognise even genius as supreme ruler), "This portion of territory does not belong to your patrimony." It is an absurd notion that this arbitrary spirit should accord its protection to letters: it means that it prohibits foreign literature and discourages contemporary literature. In a country like France, which is the brain of Europe, and whose language is spoken throughout the whole world, owing to the equipoise of consonants and vowels, which disconcert neither northern nor southern nations, there ought to be a universal literature besides its national one. Everything of beauty that has been produced in the whole world, from Æschylus down to Alfieri, from Sakountala to Roméo, from the romancero of the Cid down to Schiller's Brigands,—all ought to belong to France, if not by right of inheritance, at least by right of conquest. Nothing that an entire people has admired can be without value, and everything that has a value ought to find its place in that vast casket entitled French intelligence. It is on account of this false system that there is a Conservatoire and an École at Rome. We have already, in connection with the mise-en-scène of Soulié's Juliette, said a few words about this Conservatoire, which has the unique object of teaching young men to scan Molière and to recite Racine's Corneille. We will now complete the sketch begun. As a result of the invariable programme, adopted by the government, every pupil of the Conservatoire, after three years' study, leaves the rue Bergère incapable of appreciating any modern or foreign literature; acquainted with the songe of Athalie, the récit of Théramène, the monologue of Auguste, the scene between Tartuffe and Elmire, that of the Misanthrope and Oronte, of Gros-René and Marinette; he is completely ignorant that there existed at Athens people of the names of Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes; at Rome, Ennius, Plautus, Terence and Seneca; in England, Shakespeare, Otway, Sheridan and Byron; in Germany, Goethe, Schiller, Uhland and Kotzebue; in Spain, Guillem de Castro, Tirso de Molina, Calderon and Lope de Vega; in Italy, Macchiavelli, Goldoni, Alfieri; that these men have left a trail of light across twenty-four centuries and among five different peoples, consisting of stars called Orestes, Alcestis, Œdipus at Colonus, The Knights, Aulularia, Eunuchus, Hippolytus, Romeo and Juliet, Venice Preserved, The School for Scandal, Manfred, Goetz von Berlichingen, Kabale und Liebe, les Pupilles, Menschenhass und Reue, The Cid, Don Juan, le Chien du Jardinier, le Médecin de son honneur, le Meilleur Alcade c'est le Roi, la Mandragora, le Bourra bienfaisant, and Philippe II. You will see that I only quote one masterpiece by each of these men; also that the pupils of the Conservatoire are utterly ignorant, behind the times and of no use on any stage except those which play Molière, Racine and Corneille. And, furthermore!... None of the great actors of our time have come from the Conservatoire; neither Talma, nor Mars, Firmin, Potier, Vernet, Bouffé, Rachel, Frédérick-Lemaître, Bocage, Dorval, Mélingue, Arnal, Numa, Bressant, Déjazet, Rose Chéri, Duprez, Masset, nor any prominent person whatsoever. What is to be said about a mill which goes round and says tic-tac but does not grind?
Ah! well, the same vice exists in the École of Rome as in the Conservatoire. If there is a changeable art it is that of painting. Each artist sees a colour which is not that of his neighbour; one calls it green, another yellow, another blue, another red: one inclines towards the Flemish School, another to the Spanish and yet another to the German. You would think they would send each student, according as his bent might be, to study Rubens at Anvers, Murillo at Madrid, Cornelius at Munich? Nothing of the sort! They all go to Rome to study Raphael or Michael Angelo! Not a painter, not a single original sculptor of our time was a pupil at Rome; neither Delacroix, nor Rousseau, Diaz, Dupré, Cabot, Boulanger, Müller, Isabey, Brascassat, Giraud, Barrye, Clésinger, Gavarni, Rosa Bonheur, nor ... upon my word, I was tempted to say—nor anybody! But as the institution is absurd it will still continue to exist. With half the money to spend they could turn out twice as many actors, painters and sculptors; only, they would turn them out capable instead of incapable.
We have travelled a long way from Trouville! What would you have me do? Fancy has the wings of Icarus, the horses of Hippolytus: she goes as far as she dare towards the sun, as near as she dare without dashing herself against the rocks. Let us return to Charles VII., the first cause of all this digression. Whatever may have been the cause; when I returned to Mother Oseraie's inn, at nine o'clock on the evening of 7 July, I wrote the first lines of that scene. By the following morning, the first hundred lines of the drama were done, and among them were the thirty-six or thirty-eight relating Yaqoub's lion hunt. They should rank among the few really good lines I have written. On the other hand, in order that an exact idea may be formed of the value I put upon my own poetry, I may be allowed to transcribe here a letter which I wrote, fifteen or sixteen years ago, to my son, who asked my advice on the poetry he ought to read and on the ancient and modern poets he ought to study.
"MY DEAR BOY,—Your letter gave me great pleasure, as every letter from you does which shows you are doing what is right. You ask me the use of the Latin verses—which you are forced to compose; they are not very important; nevertheless, you learn metre by so doing, and that enables you to scan properly and to understand the music of Virgil's poetry and the freedom and ease of Horace. Again, this habit of scanning will come in useful, if you ever have to talk Latin in Hungary, where every peasant speaks it. Learn Greek steadily and thoroughly, so as to be able to read Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes in the original, and you will then be able to learn modern Greek in three months. Practise yourself well in the pronunciation of German; later you will learn English and Italian. Then, when you know all these, we will decide together what career you shall follow. At the same time do not neglect drawing. Tell Charlieu to give you not only Shakespeare but Dante and Schiller as well. Do not place much reliance on the verses they make you read, at school: professor's verses are not worth a son! Study the Bible, as a religious book, a history and a poem; Sacy's translation, although very poor, is the best; look for the magnificent poetry contained beneath all those ambiguous veilings and obscurities; in Saul and Joseph, and especially in Job, a poem which is one long human wail. Read Corneille; learn portions of him by heart. Corneille is not always poetical, he is at times pettifogging; but he always uses fine, picturesque and concise language. Tell Charpentier, from me, to give you André Chénier: he is the poet of solitude and the night, akin to the nightingales. Charpentier lives in the rue de Seine; you can get his address from Buloz. Tell Collin to give you, through Hachette, four volumes entitled, Rome au Siècle d'Auguste; it is a dry but learned work on ancient times. Read all Hugo; read Lamartine, but only the Méditations and the Harmonies. Then write an essay on the passages you think beautiful and those you think bad; and show it to me on my return. Finally, always keep yourself occupied, and rest yourself by the variety of your occupations. Take care of your health and be wise. Good-bye, my dear lad. I told D to give you twenty francs for a New Year's gift. ALEXANDRE DUMAS"
P.S.—Tell Collin that, as soon as my piece is received, I will write to Buloz to arrange the business of his introduction to the Théâtre-Français. Go to Tresse, at the Palais Royal; get from him at my expense the poems of Hugo, and his dramas, and Molière of the Panthéon; the Lamartine I will give you on my return. Read Molière often, much, always; with Saint-Simon and Madame Sévigné he is the supreme type of the language of the time of Louis XIV. Learn by heart certain passages of Tartuffe, the Femmes savantes and the Misanthrope: there have been and there will be other masterpieces of style, but nothing will ever exceed these in beauty. Learn by heart the monologue of Charles Quint from Hernani, all Marion Delorme, the monologue of Saint-Vallier and that of Triboulet in Le Roi s'amuse, the speech of Angelo on Venice; in conclusion, although I have few things to mention in comparison with the works I have just pointed out to you, learn the recital of Stella, in my Caligula; Yaqoub's lion-hunt, as well as the whole scene between the Comte, the King and Agnes Sorel, in the third act of Charles VII. Read de Vigny's Othello and Roméo; read de Musset without being carried away by his great facility and his inaccuracy, which in him might almost be reckoned a virtue, but which, in another, would be a serious fault. These are the ancient and modern writers I advise you to study. Later you shall pass on from these to a wider range. Adieu, you see I am treating you as though you were a grown-up youth and reasoning with you. You will soon be fifteen, and what I have said is quite easy to understand—your health, your health before all things: health is the foundation of everything in your future, and especially of talent.
"A. D."
I hope the sincerity and impartiality of my opinion upon others will be believed, when it is seen with what sincerity and impartiality I speak of myself.
From that day our life began to assume the uniformity and monotony of the life of the waters. I bethought me that I ought to introduce myself to the mayor, M. Guétier, a brave and excellent man, who I believe played a somewhat active part in 1848, in the embarking of King Louis-Philippe. He gave me free leave to hunt over the communal marshes, which leave I took advantage of from that very day. The rising sun shot through the window of my room, and, although the curtains were drawn, it woke me in my bed. I opened my eyes, stretched out my hand for my pencil and set to work. At ten o'clock, Mother Oseraie came and told us breakfast was ready; at eleven, I took my gun and shot three or four snipe; at two, I began work again until four; at four, I went for a swim till five; and at half-past five dinner was ready for us; from seven until nine o'clock we went for a walk on the shore; at nine o'clock work was begun again and continued until eleven o'clock or midnight. Charles VII. advanced at the rate of a hundred lines per day. Undiscovered though Trouville was, nevertheless a few Normandy, Vendéan or Breton bathers came there. Among these was a charming woman, accompanied by her husband and her son; I remember nothing more about her than her name and face: she was gracious and prepossessing in expression, with a slightly aristocratic air; her name was Madame de la Garenne. From the day of her arrival, directly she knew I was living at the hotel, she began the preliminaries of making an acquaintanceship by boldly lending me her album. I had just finished the great scene in the third act between the Comte de Savoisy and Charles VII., and I copied it out for her, newly born from my brain. A good sort of young fellow had come with them, who concealed some degree of knowledge and great determination under the retiring air of a country gentleman. He was a sportsman, which similarity of tastes rapidly made us congenial companions if not exactly friends. He was the unfortunate Bonnechose, who was hung during the Vendéan insurrection of 1832. Whilst we were walking and hunting in the marsh lands round Trouville, Madame la Duchesse de Berry obtained permission from King Charles X. to make an attempt on France, under the title of regent; she left Edinburgh, went through Holland, stayed a day or two at Mayence, and the same at Frankfort, crossed the frontier of Switzerland and entered Piedmont; then, finally, under the name of the Comtesse de Sagana, she stopped at Sestri, a small town a dozen leagues from Genoa, in the provinces of King Charles-Albert. Thus, all unsuspected by Bonnechose, death was postponed for one year! Meantime, the report began to spread in Paris that a new seaport had been discovered between Honfleur and la Délivrande. The result was that from time to time a venturesome bather would arrive who would ask timidly, "Is there a village called Trouville about here, and is that it with the belfry tower?" And I would reply yes, to my great regret: for I foresaw the time when Trouville would become another Dieppe or Boulogne or Ostend. I was not mistaken. Alas! Trouville has now ten inns; and land which could be bought at a hundred francs the arpent,[1] to-day fetches five francs per foot. One day among these venturesome bathers, these wandering tourists, these navigators without compass, there arrived a man of twenty-eight to thirty years of age, who gave out that his name was Beudin and that he was a banker. On the very evening of his arrival I was bathing a long distance off in the sea, when about ten yards from me, on the crest of a wave, I perceived a fish which realised the dream of Marécot in the Ours et le Pacha—that is to say, it was a huge enormous fish such as one scarcely ever sees, the like of which many never have seen. Had I possessed a little more vanity, I might have taken it for a dolphin and imagined it had taken me for another Arion; but I simply took it for a fish of gigantic proportions, and, I confess, its proximity disturbed me—I set to work to swim to the shore as hard as I could. I was a good swimmer, in those days, but my neighbour, the fish, could swim still better; accordingly, without any apparent effort, it followed me, always keeping an equal distance from me. Two or three times, feeling fatigued—mostly from want of breath—I thought of taking to my feet, but I was afraid of becoming nervous if I found too great a depth of water beneath me. I therefore continued to swim until my knees ploughed into the sand. The other swimmers were looking at me in astonishment; my fish was following me as though I held it in leash. When I got to the point of touching the sand with my knees I stood up. My fish made somersault after somersault and seemed overjoyed with satisfaction. I turned round and looked at it more closely and calmly. I saw it was a porpoise. Instantly I ran to Mother Oseraie's house. I ran through the village just as I was, in my bathing drawers. Although Mother Oseraie was not very impressionable, she was not accustomed to receive travellers in so light a costume and she uttered a cry.
"Don't mind me, Mother Oseraie," I said to her, "I have come to get my gun."
"Good Lord!" she said, "are you going to hunt in the happy hunting fields?"
Had I been in less of a hurry, I would have stopped and complimented her on her wit; but I only thought of the porpoise. Upon the stairs I met Madame de la Garenne; the staircase was very narrow and I drew aside to let her pass. I thought of asking how her husband and son were, but I reflected that the moment for holding a conversation was ill-chosen. Madame de la Garenne passed by and I flew into my room and seized hold of my carbine. The chamber-maid was making my bed.