Gautier.
France—I have been told frequently of late, and even not so very late, years—has forgotten her Théophile Gautier. And some of the voices have generally said that she has been quite right in doing so, whether urged to the forgetfulness by serious arguments such as those of M. Émile Faguet (whom, though I differ with him not seldom, I desire to take the opportunity here of saluting with all possible respect as an admirable critic, and to whom I could almost pay the doubtful compliment of wishing that he were dead in order that I might discuss him fully), or by the mere impertinences of quite trivial folk. I have never seen the least reason to change my own opinion to the contrary, that “Théo” was not only one of the most amiable and (with some peccadillos) estimable men of letters of the whole French century, but one of the greatest of its men of letters in verse and in prose, in romance and in travel-writing, in miscellanies and in criticism. He was not greatest in the function which here concerns us, but he was great. The common complaint that he was too good-natured, though it may have some faint colour, is mainly a blunder and the son of a blunder—that is to say, of the notion, far too often encouraged by critics themselves, that the critic is a schoolmaster, whose business is to say nothing but “Blockhead!” and “Sit down!” and “Come to me after school!” But the comparative ill-luck which pursued him, and forced him always to write for bread, partly turned him away from pure literary criticism,[[620]] and sometimes made him write smooth but not very significant things to please, though never at the cost of friendship and principle. Much that he wrote is not reprinted; he could not afford, like M. de Pontmartin, for instance, to “embook” all his feuilletons. Yet certain volumes of his printed works, the Grotesques, the Histoire du Romantisme, and its companion the Portraits Contemporains, with some separate articles, prefaces, &c., will give us good matter to indite of.[[621]]
His theory: “Art for Art’s sake,” &c.
“Théo” has not been a favourite with the grave and precise sort among our fellowship as a rule: yet, if they could be consistent, they should at least admire him for his own consistency, and for the fact that, from the very first to the very last, his criticism, apparently so impressionist and occasional, was conducted on an almost rigid—on a quite logical and well co-ordinated—theory. This theory was the famous one of “L’Art pour l’Art,” with, for inseparable companion, the doctrine that the instrument, the medium, the vehicle, almost the constituent of literary art, is the Word, the beautiful word, furnished with its beauty by light and colour, by sound and form, and developing it by skilful and laborious arrangement, selection, and rejection. As for the major theory (the formulation of which is sometimes attributed to Hugo himself, and was admitted by him as late as William Shakespeare, but with an important qualification, and even, to a certain extent, disclaimer, as to its range and meaning) I have already said,[[622]] though I see that some critics have not observed the observation, that, especially with the addition “Art for Art’s sake only,” it is at best but a half truth, and may be a full half “error and curse.” And we all know to what sort of whole a half truth constantly turns. Art, after all, is a means: and “means for means’ sake only,” if not nonsense, is at any rate sense very incomplete. But it was necessary, and it was almost desirable, that the exaggeration should be formulated, because of the incessant intrusion of the opposite theories, which are scarcely even quarter-truths, that all depends on the subject, that art must serve morality, and the like. As for the second doctrine above formulated, I need not say that, with Longinus and with Dante, I accept it absolutely and sans phrase. To both doctrines, however, to the more disputable as to the less, Gautier flew at first, and clung at last, not more in the provocative youthfulness of the Preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin than in the famous and exquisite
“Oui, l'œuvre sort plus belle”
of Émaux et Camées, many years afterwards, or in conversation and writing, more than as many years later still. The first is an eager and passionate sermon on the doctrine by a fervent neophyte; the second, its mature embodiment in imperishable verse by a master. Both together leave very little to be said on the matter save the single word “Read!”
His practice: Les Grotesques.