Delsarte System of Oratory

by Delaumosne

The part played by the shoulder is considerable in tenderness; that is not to be doubted. But its role seems to be less in sensuality. Thus the shoulder generally rises less when the head retroacts than when it advances toward the object of its contemplation. Why is this? Is it because sensuality pertains less to love than tenderness? Has it not the same title to rank as one of the aspects of love? In a word, why is less demand made upon the shoulder in one instance than in the other?

If I do not mistake, the reason is this: love gives more than it lays claim to receive, while sensuality asks continually and seeks merely the possession of its object. Love understands and loves sacrifice; it pervades the whole being; it inspires it to bestow its entire self, and that gift admits of no reserve.

Sensuality, on the contrary, is essentially selfish; far from giving itself, it pretends to appropriate and absorb in itself the object of its desires. Sensuality is, so to speak, but a distorted, narrow and localized love; the body is the object of its contemplation, and it [sensuality] sees nothing beyond the possession of the object.

But love does not stop at the body--that would be its tomb; it crosses the limits of it, to rise to the soul in which it is utterly absorbed. Thus love transfigures the being by consuming its personality, whence it comes that he who loves, no longer lives his own life, but the life of the being whom he contemplates.

Let the vulgar continually confound these two things in their manifestations; let lovers themselves fail to distinguish accurately between tenderness and sensuality; for me this confusion is henceforth forbidden, and I can from the first glance boldly separate them, thanks to the lessons taught me by the inflections of the head.

But let us return to the shoulder. Am I not right in saying that in this agent I possess the organic criterion of love? Yes, I maintain it. But let us follow the action of this organ in its various manifestations.

One thing at first amazed me, in view of the part which I felt I must assign to the shoulder. Whence comes, if the designation of that role be in conformity with truth,--whence comes the activity so apparent, so vehement indeed, which the shoulder displays in a movement of anger or of mere impatience? Whence comes its perfect concomitance or relations with moral or physical pain? Lastly, whence comes that universal application which I just now perceived clearly and which, until now, I had confined to such narrow limits? But if the elevation of the shoulder is not the criterion of love, if, on the contrary, that movement is met with again just as correctly associated with the most contradictory impressions, what can it mean?

Here I was, once again, thrown far back from the discovery that I was so sure I possessed.

It is very fortunate that I have been neither an author nor a journalist, and I bless to-day that distrust of self which has saved me from the mania of writing. I highly congratulate myself on the spirit of prudence that has invariably made me reply to whoever pressed me to publish: "When I am old."

Age has come, and it has found me even less disposed to publicity than ever. This work owes its existence solely to the earnest and continual solicitations, the sometimes severe demands of deep friendship and devotion, which it was impossible for me to refuse. This book is not, then, a spontaneous enterprise on my part; it is the work of friendship. And if this book has any measure of success, if it accomplishes any good, it may be traced back to and acknowledged as rising from the never-failing encouragement of my old friend Brucker.