Decadence, and Other Essays on the Culture of Ideas

by Remy de Gourmont

II

Yet, in the case of Mallarmé and of a literary group, the idea of decadence has been assimilated to its exact opposite—the idea of innovation. Such judgments have made a particular impression upon men of one generation because, doubtless, we ourselves were involved and foolishly flouted by "right-minded" critics; they were, however, merely the clumsy and decrepit modern version of those decrees with which the mandarins of every age have sought to curse and to crush the new serpents breaking their shell under the ironical eye of their old mother. Diabolical intelligence laughs at exorcisms, and the University has been no more able than the Church to disinfect it with its holy water. In the past a man rose up—buckler of the faith—against heresies and novelties. He was the Jesuit. To-day it is too often the Professor who arises as champion of the rules. Here again we have the antinomy which surprises us in Voltaire and the Voltairian of yesterday. The same man, so courageous where justice or political liberty is concerned, recoils the moment it is a matter of literary novelty or liberty. When, reaching Tolstoy and Ibsen, he alludes to their glory, he adds (in a note): "Are these reputations—especially Ibsen's—firmly established? The question whether the author of Ghosts is a mystifier or a genius has not yet been settled."[2] Such, confronted with the unknown—with the not yet seen or read—is the attitude of a writer who, in the very volume here quoted, proves that he possesses praiseworthy independence of judgment. I need not add that, in his pages, the "decadents" are scouted on every occasion. How, after this, can we be surprised at the dull raillery of lesser minds? A new way of stating the eternal truths is always a scandal for men—especially for men who are too well-educated. They feel a sort of fright, and to recover their assurance they have recourse to denial, to abuse, to derision. It is the natural attitude of the human animal in the presence of physical danger. But how have we come to regard as a peril every real innovation in art or in literature? Why, above all, is this assimilation one of the maladies peculiar to our time—perhaps the gravest of all, since it tends to restrict movement and to obstruct life?

For years Delacroix and Puvis de Chavannes, so different in their genius, were hooted and rejected by the juries. Under evidently contradictory pretexts, a single explanation is discovered—originality. The guardians of art feel themselves menaced by a work which reveals almost no trace of previous methods—one not visibly attached to something known and already understood. Each of them reacts to the provocation according to his own peculiar temperament. Formulae change, too, periodically. The eighteenth century considered non-imitation a breach of taste, and that was a serious matter at a time when Voltaire was erecting a temple, which was only a templet, to this sprightly god. For ten years, and up to a few weeks ago, artists and writers who refused to rifle the masters were branded decadents or symbolists. This last insult prevailed in the end, being verbally more obscure and consequently easier to handle; it contains, moreover, precisely the same abhorrent notion of non-imitation.

It was said long ago, considerably before M. Tarde had developed his theory of social philosophy, that "imitation rules the world of men, as abstraction that of things." This law is very evident in the particular domain of art and of literature. Literary history is, in sum, nothing but the chart of a succession of intellectual epidemics. Some have been brief. Fashion changes or continues in accordance with caprices impossible to foresee and difficult to determine. Shakespeare had no immediate influence. Honoré d'Urfé, during his life and after his death, was, for half a century, the master and inspirer of all romantic fiction. He would have reigned still longer, had it not been for La Princesse de Clèves, the clandestine work of a grande dame. The seventeenth century, part of whose literature was merely translation and imitation, was not, however, averse to moderate and prudent novelties. The reason is that, if it would have been discreditable not to imitate the ancients—or, strange as it may seem, the Spaniards, but only the Spaniards!—in their fables and phrases (Racine trembled because he had written Bajazet), it was a mark of honour to be able to give classic borrowings an air of freshness and novelty.

However, this literature itself very quickly became classic. There was thus a second source of imitation; and, since it was more accessible than the first, it soon came to be almost the sole spring sought by successive generations to drink and pray and water their ink. Boileau was deified before his death. As soon as he could read at all, Voltaire read Boileau. The principle of imitation was thenceforth supreme in French literature.

Leaving aside the exceptions—however memorable—this principle has remained very powerful and so well understood, with the spread of education, that a critic has only to invoke it, for a shamefaced reader to cast aside a new work which he has found refreshing. Thus the newspaper critics have kept Ibsen from being acclimatized in France. Thus, too, verse plays, imitative works par excellence, succeed even on the boulevards! These theatrical events, always much magnified by advertising, furnish excellent illustrations for a theory.

The idea of imitation has, then, become the very soul of art and of literature. It is no more possible to-day to conceive of a novel which is not a counterpart or sequel of a preceding novel, than it is to conceive of rhymeless verse, or verses whose syllables have not been scrupulously scanned. When such innovations nevertheless occurred, altering suddenly the accustomed aspect of the literary landscape, there was a flutter among the experts. To conceal their embarrassment, they began to laugh (third method). Then they uttered judgments. Since these productions in verse or in prose are not imitated after the latest models, or the works praised by the handbooks, they must necessarily spring from an abnormal source, since it is not familiar to us—but which? There were attempts at explanation by means of Pre-Raphaelitism, but they were not decisive; they were even a little ridiculous, so profound and invulnerable was the ignorance on every hand. But about this time appeared a book which suddenly enlightened all minds. A parallel imposed itself inexorably between the new poets and the obscure versifiers of the Roman decadence, praised by des Esseintes. The movement was unanimous, and the very ones thus decried accepted this opprobrious epithet as a distinction. Once the principle was admitted, there was no lack of comparisons. Since no one—not even des Esseintes himself, perhaps—had read the depreciated poets, it was no trick at all for any critic to compare Sidonius Apollinaris, of whom we knew nothing, with Stéphane Mallarmé, whom he did not understand. Neither Sidonius Apollinaris nor Mallarmé is a decadent, since both possess, in different degrees, their own originality; but for that very reason the word was justly applied to the poet of L'Après-midi d'un Faune, for it signified obscurely, in the minds of the very persons who employed it, something little known, difficult, rare, precious, unexpected, new.

If, on the contrary, it were desired to restore to the idea of literary decadence its real and really cruel meaning, it is not, we suspect, Mallarmé or Laforgue, or any symbolist still writing, who should be named to-day. The decadent of Latin literature is neither Ammianus Marcellinus, nor Saint Augustine, each of whom fashioned a language in his own manner, nor is it Saint Ambrose, who created the hymn, nor Prudentius, who developed a literary genre, the lyrical biography.[3] We are beginning to have a greater indulgence for Latin literature of the second period. Tired, perhaps, of ridiculing it without reading it, we have begun to glance at it a little. Before long, this simple notion will be admitted, that there is no inherent distinction between good Latin and bad Latin; that languages live and that their changes are not necessarily corruptions; that a man could have genius in the sixth century as well as in the second, in the eleventh as well as in the eighteenth; that classic prejudices constitute an obstacle to the development of literary history and to integral knowledge of the language itself. Had they been better understood, the poets in the library at Fontenay would not have served to christen a literary movement, unless the intention had been to compare idealistic with Christian innovators—a difficult and rather ridiculous undertaking.

III

I have wished here merely to attempt the historical (or anecdotal) analysis of an idea, and to indicate, by means of a somewhat elaborate example, how a word comes to have only the meaning which it is our interest to give it. Hence I do not believe it necessary to establish minutely the ground of Stéphane Mallarmé's claims to either hatred or ridicule.