So my questioner left me with a shrug of his shoulders, as much as to say, "There goes another to destruction!" Am I lost, or have I, as I said Raphael did to Perugino, taken romance from the hands of Walter Scott to give him a push forward? Have I taught a little of the history of my country to my contemporaries by causing them to read la Comtesse de Salysbury, le Bâtard de Mauléon, Isabeau de Bavière, Jehanne la Pucelle, Ascanio, la Reine Margot, la Dame de Montsoreau, les Quarante-Cinq, les Trois Mousquetaires, Vingt ans après, le Vicomte de Bragelonne, le Chevalier d'Harmental, la Fille du Régent, Balsamo, le Collier de la Reine, Ange Pitou, la Comtesse de Charny et le Chevalier de Maison-Rouge? The future must decide. In any case, the metamorphosis of the dramatic poet into a romance-writer dates from 1833, and the probable cause was the failure of the Fils de l'Émigré.
[CHAPTER III]
Condition of the Théâtre-Français in 1832 and 1833—Causes which had led to our emigration from the Théâtre-Français—Reflections concerning the education of dramatic artists
Condition of the Théâtre-Français in 1832 and 1833—Causes which had led to our emigration from the Théâtre-Français—Reflections concerning the education of dramatic artists
In one of the preceding volumes of these Souvenirs, we amused ourselves by enumerating the plays that the Théâtre-Français acted in 1830 to 1834, whilst the Porte-Saint-Martin was playing Antony, Marion Delorme, Richard, La Tour de Nesle, Lucrèce Borgia, Marie Tudor and Angèle. Two of these plays were to pass to the Théâtre-Français without any other advertisement except their failure. They were Guido Reni and Le Presbytère. Caïus Gracchus, by Théodore Dartois, and Clarisse Harlowe, by Denain, my collaborator in Richard Darlington, had followed the first two dramas without turning the ill-fortune which seemed to be attached to the theatre. There was genuine despair in the rue de Richelieu: the last days of Mademoiselle Mars were wasted in failures. She had, indeed, acted in Guido Reni and in Clarisse Harlowe without being able to give more than a few touches of life to these two works. In other ways there began, between the dramatic school of 1828 and the Théâtre-Français, the spirit of antagonism which has lasted until to-day, even after my having given my Henri III. and Hugo his Hernani to the Théâtre-Français. This stupid opposition, which we felt to be permanently against us, half arising from the administration and half from society itself, had induced us to desert it. In fact, with the restrictive conditions by which the Théâtre-Français was bound, it could play neither Christine nor Richard, nor La Tour de Nesle, nor Lucrèce Borgia. Now, why could these plays not be acted? It is a difficult matter to explain. Why cannot certain plants which flourish splendidly in other latitudes grow in such or such another kind of climate? They need atmosphere.
Well! it must be admitted that the Théâtre-Français has its own atmosphere, in which certain forms of art, the picturesque and the poetic, cannot thrive. Now this very picturesque and poetic side, which was unable to accommodate itself to the jog-trot routine of the theatre of the rue de Richelieu, was just what constituted the splendid efflorescence of dramatic art. It must be admitted that, before the rise of the Modern School, this side of dramatic art was totally unknown in France; it came from abroad. It had its origins in Æschylus, its development in Shakespeare and Goethe and Schiller. As we have seen, it rose again to the fore at the beginning of the dramatic world. We felt instinctively that something would be eternally missing in French art so long as it did not manage to graft upon itself this exotic art. It was the same as with the gardens in our parks, the authorities of which, when they had transformed them after the periods of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., were no longer satisfied with lime-trees cut in arcades, yews cut in pyramids, chestnut trees cut in lines like a chess-board, but felt the need for designing them on new plans, and of adding to the classical and national trees the American magnolia, the sumachs of Japan, the paulownia of China. What we wanted to do, in short, in dramatic art, was something after the style of the garden of the Petit-Trianon, as opposed to the Versailles. Winding paths, massive trees of all shades of foliage and flower, running water, as in the Alps or Pyrenees, lawns and mossy places as in England and Ireland. Then, instead of eternally following the regular path which, without episode or surprise, leads straight to the end foreseen from the first step, one could lose oneself, find one's way again and, in fact, pass through every emotion of that art which is all the greater in that it conceals itself behind nature to the point of making believe that it does not exist. Imagine gardeners who were capable of endowing your horizons with palms with moving plumes, banana trees with huge leaves, bamboos with flexible slender stems, to whom you refused entrance to your gardens because the stateliness of your oaks, the serious look of your limes and the proud bearing of your yews could not endure the proximity of the new-comers; would not those gardeners thus repulsed by you have the right to make their winter gardens elsewhere? Very well! that is just the very situation in which we found ourselves with regard to the Théâtre-Français. The vicinity of Molière, that lime-tree with sweet scented flowers, hovered over by numbers of humming bees; Corneille, the majestic oak which covers the seventeenth century with its shade; and Racine, that agreeable, evergreen yew, cut to suit the taste of the Court of Louis XIV., was, they said, degraded by us. Being gods as jealous as Jehovah, they wanted to keep their sky pure from contact with those other gods, by name Shakespeare, Calderon, Schiller and Goethe. Hence arose the administrative opposition, supported in its absolutism by literary criticism. Nothing is so repugnant to literary criticism as admiration for the living. Remember the dialogue reply to criticism which Molière gives, and Corneille's humble prefaces apropos of Nicomède. Think of Racine's bitter recriminations with respect to Andromaque. Well then, the three men who stand for the dramatic trinity in the religion of modern art, these men who, with good reason, were held to be as gods equal to the Roman Cæsars, could apparently only become divine by dying. Now criticism said to the young poets—Outside the art of Louis XIV. is no salvation. Criticism well knew that that art was dead, because, indeed, it was exhausted by having borne such splendid fruits as Tartufe, Horace, Britannicus. It knew full well that the scathing spirit of Molière against a state of society which no longer exists could not be met with again; nor the thoughtful style of Corneille, son of the League and of the Fronde; nor the suave complacency of Racine, rewarded by a glance from Lavallière, or punished by a word from Louis XIV.—these could none of them be revived. It knew that all this had died with the men themselves, and could not be revived after them in other individualities, placed in contact with other epochs, customs and men. Because it knew that all this spirit was dead, entirely dead, it asked us to resuscitate it.
It was pointed out that academic methods of galvanism applied to corpses might, occasionally, make a dead body tremble; but between that and the resurrection of the daughter of Jairus, and of Lazarus, there was the abyss which separates Volta from Jesus Christ, the man from God. No matter, exclaimed the critics. Give us Molière, Corneille and Racine; we will have none others. True, said MM. Lemercier, Viennet and Baour-Lormian, you have us; but criticism would not accept them.