"Nothing is beautiful but the True."
What can be said of the other simplisme which, in its search for the True, ignores the Beautiful while it disregards the Good? Again, its partisans seek artistic truth in its very worst conditions. Why paint in full sunshine, if the intense light obliterates details and confuses the shadows? Does it seem a difficulty conquered? It is far oftener a disguised insufficiency. If my reference to painting seem premature, it is because I wished to borrow an image to show how equally grievous was the faulty touch of many of our writers of renown. Many among them seem striving to propagate the culture of the Mediocre and Unseemly, as a thousandfold easier practice than the religion of the Beautiful.
My present aim is to show clearly the influence of even incomplete simplisme, in certain pernicious effects upon literature. Edgar A. Poe entered the realm of the fanciful after Hoffman, and how is it that the initiator is less dangerous than his disciple? It is because of these two simplistes, who have put reason out of consideration, the first addressed himself only to the imagination, while the American poet sounded the emotions to depths where terror is awakened and madness begins to sting. Hoffman has perhaps upon his conscience some readers confined in asylums for the deranged, but the far more perilous hallucinations of Poe must account for greater harm. The distance is great between imagination and sentiment, and should be so regarded. This extravagance should surely not be allowed to usurp the place of morality, but this is what is done, and greatness is not for them.
Another illustration lies in the transition intermediate between the romances of Balzac, Frederic Soulié, Emile Souvestre, and Eugène Sue, and the poetry of Victor Hugo, Lamartine, Béranger, Barbier and the impressionalist school whose decline is already at hand.
Of many names, which have acquired notoriety, I select the two which afford the best contrast,--Charles Baudelaire and Jules de la Madelène. The first, among other eccentric works, has left us "The Blossoms of Evil." In the ideas which it embraces it is the successful production of an imagination misled and in distress; a pathological experience probably prompted the conception. In it one reads beautiful verse of scholarly construction, and readily perceives an individuality and originality of thought and expression; but no one would predict or desire that this production should pass to posterity.
"Le Marquis des Saffras," by Jules de la Madelène, on the contrary, gratifies both judgment and feeling. It is a spirited painting, acute and profound, as well as true, of human life, especially of provincial life. The human being is revealed in all his aspects. Though the author disguises neither errors nor weaknesses, he presents clearly the redeeming side--the simple manners and the humble devotion of sincere hearts. This, then, is the reason why, sustained by a style rich in grace and strength, full of the breath of poetry which is felt rather than described, "Le Marquis des Saffras" holds its place as an incontestable masterpiece in the choice libraries that preserve the renown of great writers.
A more careful examination of the doctrine of Delsarte--"The necessity of the concurrence of the mother modalities of the human organism to fulfil the conditions of æsthetics"--but forces the conviction that disregard of this requirement renders all sterile and incomplete, if not monstrous. Is this equivalent to saying that the deductions from the law of Delsarte tend to condemn in French literature its simple gaiety, its graceful lightness, and to efface this stamp of the race that our ancestors have surely imprinted?
In works of the imagination the omission of moral meaning is often more seeming than real, and every good reader should be able to recognize this. However, this negligent seeming is far less hurtful than brilliant wit concealing crudities and modifying boldnesses. Writers of this class do not lose sight of the fact that, while the French character has its audacities (contrary to the modifications of æsthetics), our language possesses a proverbial chastity, which, even in its farthest wanderings, genius comprehends and respects. Tact and taste suffice to him who consults them to escape grossness of language. The delicacy of the allusions leaves their images in a transparent mist; the very elasticity of the equivocation furnishes a refuge for the thought which it disquiets.
By art some most delicate subjects, very nearly approaching license, have been pardoned. We would surely exhibit a tyrannical and morose humor to condemn to be burned en place de Grève, by the hand of the executioner, the romances of Manon Lescaut, and Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, as they have been transmitted to us by Paul Louis Courier.
But when literature, realistic or materialistic (or whatever they please to call it), freeing itself from moral accompaniment, shows itself negative or weak in its creations; if it be simpliste to the point of appealing exclusively to the senses, limiting its means of action to the development of the egotistic and instinctive side of the human passions,--its works have no longer right of consideration in æsthetics. The consideration of the physical being should surely figure in all representations of life, but it is not necessary that from a subordinate consideration it should ever be made all-governing. The body, the essential part of our personality, is the companion of our higher faculties. We should be mindful of it, making it as beautiful as possible, but giving it the reins would be even worse than giving power absolute to the imagination.