There is nothing tangible in the book to which it can be said to owe its significance. Notes are not tangible. The point on which it differs from all other well-known books by women is the intensity of its awakened consciousness as woman. It follows no pattern and is quite independent of any previous work; it is simply full of a woman’s individuality. It is not written on a large scale, and it does not reveal a very expansive temperament. But, such as it is, it possesses an amount of nervous energy which carries us along with it, and we must read every page carefully until the last one is turned, not peep at the end to see what is going to happen, as we do when reading a story with a plot; we must read every page for its own sake, if we would feel the power of its different moods, varying from feverish haste to wearied rest.
II
Nearly a year afterwards, a book was published in Paris by Lemerre, called “Dilettantes.” Instead of the author’s name there were three stars, but a catalogue issued by a less illustrious publisher is not so discreet. It mentions the bearer of a well-known pseudonym as the author of the book; a lady who first gained a reputation by translating Hungarian folk songs into French, for which she received an acknowledgment from the Académie Française, and who afterwards introduced Scandinavian authors to Paris, thereby deserving the thanks of both countries. She has also made herself a name in literary circles by her original and clever criticisms. Those who are behind the scenes know that the translator’s pseudonym and the three stars conceal a lady who belongs to the highest aristocracy of Austria, and who is herself a “dilettante,” inasmuch as she writes without any pecuniary object, and that, quite independent of her public, she writes and translates what she pleases. Her social position has placed her among intellectual people; on her mother’s side she is descended from one of the foremost families among the Austrian nobility, and she has lived in Paris from her childhood, where she has enjoyed the society of the best authors, and acquired a French style which, for richness, beauty, and grace, might well cause many an older French author to envy her. It is in this French, which she finds more pliable than the homely Viennese German, that this curious book is written.
I search high and low for words in which to describe the nature of this book, but in vain. It is womanly to such an extent, and in such a peculiar way, that we lack the words to express it in a language which has not yet learned to distinguish between the art of man and the art of woman in the sphere of production. It has the same effect upon us as Mrs. Egerton’s “Keynotes.”
The same reason which makes it difficult to understand this Celtic woman with the English pseudonym, makes it equally difficult to draw an intelligible picture of this French-writing Austrian, with the Polish and Hungarian blood mingled in her veins. But it is not the cross between the races, nor, we might add, is it any cross between soul and ideas which makes these two women so incomprehensible and almost enigmatical; one is twice married, the other a girl, although she is perhaps the more wearied and disillusioned of the two,—and yet it is not the outer circumstances of their lives which render both what they are, it is something in themselves, quite apart from the experience which beautifies and develops a woman’s character; it is the keynote of their being which retreats shyly to the background as though afraid of the public gaze. It is the beginning of a series of personal confessions at first hand, and forms an entirely new department in women’s literature. Hitherto, as I have already said, all books, even the best ones, written by women, are imitations of men’s books, with the addition of a single high-pitched, feminine note, and are therefore nothing better than communications received at second hand. But at last the time has come when woman is so keenly alive to her own nature that she reveals it when she speaks, even though it be in riddles.
I have often pointed out that men only know the side of our character which they wish to see, or which it may please us to show them. If they are thorough men, they seek the woman in us, because they need it as the complement to their own nature; but often they seek our “soul,” our “mind,” our “character,” or whatever else they may happen to look upon as the beautifying veil of our existence. Something may come of the first, but of the last nothing. Mrs. Egerton interpreted man from the first of the above standpoints; she wrote of him, half in hate and half in admiration; her men are great clowns. The author of “Dilettantes” wrote from the opposite point of view; her man is the smooth-speaking poseur, of whom she writes with a shrug of the shoulders and an expression of mild contempt.
Both feel themselves to be so utterly different from what they were told they were, and which men believe them to be. They do not understand it at all; they do not understand themselves in the very least. They interpret nothing with the understanding, but their instinct makes them feel quite at home with themselves and leads them to assert their own natures. They are no longer a reflection which man moulds into an empty form; they are not like Galatea, who became a living woman through Pygmalion’s kiss; they were women before they knew Pygmalion,—such thorough women that Pygmalion is often no Pygmalion to them at all, but a stupid lout instead.
It is a fearful disappointment, and causes a woman—and many a womanly woman too—to shrink from man and scan him critically. “You?” she cries. “No, it were better not to love at all!” But the day is coming—
And when the day has come, then woman will be as bad as Strindberg’s Megoras, or as humorous as a certain poetess who sent a portrait of her husband to a friend, with this inscription: “My old Adam;” or else she may meet with the same fate as Countess Resa in the anonymous book of a certain well-known authoress. She will commit suicide in one way or the other. She will not kill herself like Countess Resa, but she will kill a part of her nature. And these women, who are partly dead, carry about a corpse in their souls from whence streams forth an odor as of death; these women, whose dead natures have the power of charming men with a mystery they would gladly solve,—these women are our mothers, sisters, friends, teachers, and we scarcely know the meaning of the shiver down our backs which we feel in their presence. A very keen consciousness is needed to dive down deep enough in ourselves to discover the reason, and very subtle, spiritual tools are necessary to grasp the process and to reproduce it. The Austrian authoress possessed both these requisites. But there is also a third which is equally indispensable to any one who would draw such a portrait of themselves, and that is the distinguished manner of a noble and self-confident nature, in which everything can be said.
She has something besides, which gives the book a special attraction of its own, and that is her extremely modern, artistic feeling, which teaches how the laws of painting can be brought to bear upon the art of writing, and gives her a keen appreciation of the value of sound in relation to language.