The epic, most synthetic of literary productions, is no longer in fashion, because, perhaps, of the growing rarity of heroes. On the contrary, simplisme is now deforming the greatest germs in the drama and romance. The weakness often lies in the morality of the production, or rather in its lack of morality, often so lacking that the author sinks to the level of producing repulsive works and cynical pictures.
In view also of man's essential faculties, but from another point of view, St.-Simonianism classed men as scholars, artists and artisans. Then were added the priests of a new order whose nature, more perfectly balanced, was to furnish the model type of future humanity. This classification had brought thinking people to the consideration and criticism of a system isolating and concentrating all development upon one or another of the faculties. It was readily seen that thus sentiment would rush to folly; sensibility without a corrective would soon become weakness; unbalanced industry would lead to disregard of health and strength, while the triviality of the sensual nature, unrestrained by mental or moral activity, would soon fall into hopeless degradation. Herein was simplisme most bitterly condemned. Delsarte, ever studying relations between coincidences in art and the revelations of nature, arranged a typical demonstration, as ingenious as logical, of the action and play of opposing faculties. By most wonderful pantomime he showed a man tempted to sin; then, touched by pity for the victim of his desire, at last transformed by the intervention of the moral sense, he came by slow gradations to most elevated sentiments. One saw clearly the courage of resistance and triumph in the sacrifice. Then, taking an inverse progression, he slid from this height to the opposite extreme of culpable resolutions.
Delsarte was the author of this mute scene which contains the elements of a drama. The contemplation of this wonderful effect leads to the conviction of the great value to literature of the fundamental law, which may be applied to any and all literature, as a permanent criterion by which productions may be classified and judged, in their departure from the simpliste form and approach to a conception in which the constituent modalities of being act in harmonious accord. Here, again, we have a fresh distinction between scientific and ethical literature, and that which may be termed the literature of art. To this latter class belong romances, dramatic productions and poems--works made up of shades of meaning and just proportions, which should be based on clear and sound philosophy, prudently disguised but indisputable and imperishable. Here is place for the grace of an agreeable wit and the elegant flexibility of a fruitful pen. More imperative than in any other class of writing is the demand for individual touch and that harmony of construction depending upon the proportionate relations of those elements of æsthetics,--the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Thus, through æsthetics, it is elevated.
To this literature of art belong the sonnet of Arvers, and "The Soul," by Sully-Prudhomme. Musset, in his grace or pathos, is not inferior to Victor Hugo. There are, even in his faults, certain effective boldnesses to which the author of "Nôtre Dame de Paris" cannot aspire. Whence, then, comes the immense distance between these poets? It lies in the fact that Victor Hugo, while he is a finished artist, shows himself also a thinker, philosopher, man of science and erudition. Endowed with a profound humanitarian feeling, he is preoccupied with the evils of society, with its rights, its mistakes, its tendencies and with their amelioration; while the poet of "Jacques Rolla"--a refined sensualist--devotes his verse to the unbridling of the torments of imagination in delirium, to the agitations of hearts which have place only for love.
If comparison be made between novelists and dramatists of diverse schools, why has not M. Zola, who in so many regards should be considered a master, attained the heights of eminence upon which are enrolled the names of Shakespeare, Molière, Corneille, Schiller, Madame de Staël, and George Sand? It is because M. Zola, profound analyst and charming narrator, even more forcibly than Musset breaks the æsthetic synthesis by the absence of morality in his writings. His fatalism arrests the flight of that which would be great; he corrupts in the germ wonderful creative powers! M. Zola's great lack lies in his considering in man his physical nature only. Between mind and matter he holds a magnifying lantern full upon the lowest molecules, and rejects disdainfully the initiating atom that Leibnitz has signalized as the centre of life. M. Zola has created a detestable school which already slides into the mire beneath the weight of the crimes which it excites and the disgust which it arouses. Should we blame Zola and his disciples for the danger and the impotence of this method? Should we not impute the wrong in greater measure to philosophical naturalism?
In considering materialism and naturalism let us not lose sight of the fact that while materialism is simpliste, naturalism (in so much as it represents nature) is essentially comprehensive and necessarily synthetic; harmony of force and matter being an invariable requisite of life.
Realism, another term strangely compromised, seems to proclaim itself under the banner of materialism, while the Real, implying the idea of the True, cannot be contained in simplisme. It is a most pernicious evil that writers, calling themselves realistic, still concentrate their talent upon the painting of vicious types and characters drawn in an infernal cycle of repulsive morals.
"Man is the object of art." Never could the words of the master more appropriately interpose than before the encroachments of literary simplisme. The man of whom Delsarte speaks is not confined to such or such a category of the species. He proposes that æsthetics should interpret an all-comprehensive human nature, which is not made up alone of baseness, egotism and duplicity. Though it be subject to perversion, it has its luminous aspects, its radiant sides, and we should not too long turn our eyes from them.
Artistically, evil or the Hideous (which is also evil) should never be used except as a foil. There is no immorality in exhibiting the prevailing vices of the epoch, but this is the physician's duty. The evil lies in presenting these evils under such forms as may lead many to enjoy or tolerate them, giving them the additional power of a charming style and the specious arguments of fatality. This is precisely the case of M. Zola. The glamor of his disturbing theory, which annihilates free will, gives to his works a philosophical appearance. He conceals its vacuity beneath forms of a highly-colored style, an amiable negligence and a facility that is benumbing to thought. As he asserts nothing, no one dreams of contradicting, and one finds himself entwined in a network of repulsive depravity without a ray of healthful protection or correction. In comparison with the blight of this disastrous system of fatality, the coarseness of the writer's language, so loudly censured, is relatively unimportant. The simplisme of M. Zola is not absolute, as but one of the three constituent modalities is omitted, that one being morality. The lack is, however, no less fatal, inasmuch as the void produced by the absence of one of the noblest faculties of human activity must usually be filled by disturbing forces.
I have heard the theory, "art for art," supported by men otherwise very enlightened. "An artistic production need not contain a moral treatise," they say, and this is quite true, provided the artist be a quick observer, possessing talent sufficient to handle his subject harmoniously. Vice carries its own stigma, and pure beauty surrounds itself with light. The author should be able readily to distinguish the one as well as the other, and his precepts should come as the harmonious result of his experience. But such a work, at the mercy of an ill-balanced brain and unhealthful temperament, must yield bad fruit. Talent without broad and true knowledge of reality, or that which is, instead of being invented, is incomplete in its workings and results. Its creations resemble the light of the foot-lamp, of fireworks, of the prodigies of our modern pyrotechnists--pleasing for a time, dazzling, captivating, intoxicating! But lost in the life-giving beauty of a summer's night or a glorious sunset, we are tempted to cry out with the poet,--