Beginning with the ninth lesson, L'Art d'écrire becomes still more didactic, and we encounter Invention, Disposition and Elocution. I should find it hard to explain just how M. Albalat succeeds in separating these three phases of composition, which are really one. The art of developing a subject has been refused me by Providence. I leave all that to the unconscious, nor do I know anything more of the art of invention. I believe that an author invents by reversing the method of Newton—that is, without ever thinking about it, while, as for elocution, I should hesitate to trust myself to the method of recasting. One does not recast, one remakes, and it is so tedious to do the same thing twice, that I approve of those who throw the stone at the first turn of the sling. But here is what proves the inanity of literary counsels: Théophile Gautier wrote the complicated pages of Capitaine Fracasse at odd moments on a printer's table, among half-opened bundles of papers, in the stench of oil and ink, and it is said that Buffon recopied eighteen times the Époques de la Nature.[9] This divergence is of no importance, since, as M. Albalat should have said, there are writers who make their corrections mentally, putting on paper only the swift or sluggish product of the unconscious, while there are others who need to see exteriorized what they have written, and to see it more than once, in order to correct it—that is, to understand it. Yet, even in the case of mental corrections, exterior revision is often profitable, provided, as Condillac puts it, the writer knows how to stop, to bring to a conclusion.[10] But too often the demon of Betterment has tormented and sterilized intelligence. It is also true that it is a great misfortune to lack self-criticism. Who will dare to choose between the writer who does not know what he is doing, and the one who, endowed with a double nature, can watch himself as he works? There is Verlaine and there is Mallarmé. One must follow the bent of one's own genius.
M. Albalat excels in definitions. "Description is the animated depiction of objects." He means that, in order to describe, a writer must, like a painter, place himself before the landscape, whether this be real or imaginary. Judging by the analysis that he makes of a page of Télémaque, it seems clear that Fénelon was only moderately endowed with visual imagination, and more moderately still with the gift of words. In the first twenty lines of the description of Calypso's grotto, the word doux occurs three times, and the verb former four. This has, indeed, become for us the very type of the inexpressive style, but I persist in believing that it once had its freshness and grace, and that the appeal which it made when it appeared was not unjustified. We smile at this opulence of gilt paper and painted flowers—the ideal of an archbishop who had remained a theological student—and forget that no one had described nature since Astrée. Those sweet oranges, those syrups diluted with spring-water, were refreshments fit for Paradise. It would be cruel to compare Fénelon, not with Homer, but even with the Homer of Leconte de Lisle. Translations too well done—those that may be said to possess literary literalness—have in fact the inevitable result of transforming into concrete, living images everything which had become abstract in the original. Did λευκοβραχίων mean one who had white arms, or was it merely a worn-out epithet? Did λευκάκανθα suggest an image such as blanche épine, or a neutral idea like aubépine, which has lost its representative value? We cannot tell; but, judging dead languages by the living, we must suppose that most of the Homeric epithets had already reached the stage of abstraction in Homer's own time.[11] It is possible that foreigners may find in a work as outworn for us as Télémaque, the same pleasure which we derive from the Iliad done in bas-relief by Leconte de Lisle. Mille fleurs naissantes émaillaient les tapis verts is a cliché only when read for the hundredth time. New, the image would be ingenious and pictorial. Poe's poems, translated by Mallarmé, acquired a life at once mysterious and precise which they do not possess to the same degree in the original, and, from Tennyson's Mariana, agreeable verse full of commonplaces and padding, grey in tone, the same poet, by substituting the concrete for the abstract, made a fresco of lovely autumnal colouring. I offer these remarks merely as a preface to a theory of translation. They will suffice here to indicate that, where it is a question of style, comparison should be made only between texts in the same language and belonging to the same period.
It is very difficult, after fifty years, to appreciate the real originality of a style. To do so, one should have read all the notable books in the order of their publication. It is at least possible to judge of the present, and also to accord some weight to the contemporary opinions of a work. Barbey d'Aurevilly found in Georges Sand a profusion of anges de la destinée, of lampes de la foi, and of coupes de miel, which certainly were not invented by her any more than the rest of her washed-out style; but "these decrepit tropes" would have been none the better if she had invented them. I feel sure that the cup, whose brim has been rubbed with honey, goes back to the obscure ages of pre-Hippocratic medicine. Hackneyed expressions enjoy a long life. M. Albalat notes justly "that there are images which can be renewed and rejuvenated." There are many such, and among them some of the commonest; but I cannot see that, in calling the moon the morne lampe, Leconte de Lisle has been very successful in freshening up Lamartine's lampe d'or. M. Albalat, who gives evidence of wide reading, should attempt a catalogue of metaphors by subject: the moon, the stars, the rose, the dawn, and all the "poetic" words. We should thus obtain a collection of a certain utility for the study of words and psychology of elementary emotions. Perhaps we should learn at last why the moon is so dear to poets. Meanwhile he announces his next book, La Formation du style par l'assimilation des auteurs; and I suppose that, once the series is complete, everyone will write well—that there will henceforth be a good medium style in literature, as there is in painting and in the other fine arts, which the State protects so successfully. Why not an Académie Albalat, as well as an Académie Julian?
Here, then, is a book which lacks almost nothing except not having a purpose, except being a work of pure and disinterested analysis; but, were it to have an influence, were it to multiply the number of honourable writers, it would deserve our maledictions. Instead of putting the manual of literature and all the arts within the reach of all, it would be wiser to transport their secrets to the top of some Himalaya. Yet there are no secrets. To be a writer, it is enough to have natural talent for the calling, to practise with perseverance, to learn a little more every morning, and to experience all human sensations. As for the art of "creating images," we are obliged to believe that this is absolutely independent of all literary culture, since the loveliest, truest and boldest images are enclosed in the words we use every day—age-old products of instinct, spontaneous flowering of the intellectual garden.
1899.
[1] On the importance and influence of Protestantism at this time, see the work of E. Hugues, pilfered by Protestant writers for the last twenty-five years: Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en France au XVIIIe siècle (1872).
[2] A book so little known and disfigured in its pious editions. Nothing could be less pious, however, or less edifying, after the first volume, than this curious and confused encyclopedia, where we find René and statistical tables, Atala and a catalogue of Greek painters. It is a universal history of civilization and a plan of social reconstruction.
[3] In speaking of the eighteenth century, exception must always be made of the grandiose and solitary Buffon, in his tower at Montbard, who was, in the modern sense of these words, a scientist, a philosopher, and a poet.
[4] An attempt will be made some day in a study in the World of Words, to determine whether words have really a meaning—that is to say, a constant value.
[5] De l'Enseignement de notre langue.