he man of letters who devotes himself chiefly or wholly to criticism is an essentially modern type. Although the critical art has been practiced in all literary periods, it has not until the present century enlisted anything like the exclusive attention of writers of the highest order of attainment, but has rather played a subordinate part beside the constructive or creative work to the performance of which such men have given their best energies.
Georg Brandes.
In the case of some writers, such as Voltaire and Samuel Johnson, we recognize the critical spirit that informs the bulk of their work, yet are compelled on the whole to classify them as poets, or historians, or philosophers. Even Coleridge, who wrote no inconsiderable amount of the best literary criticism in existence, is chiefly remembered as a poet; even Lessing, one of the fountain-heads of authoritative critical doctrine, owes to his plays the major part of his great reputation. As for such men as Ben Jonson and Dryden, Lamb and Shelley, Goethe and Heine, their critical utterances, precious and profound as they frequently are, figure but incidentally among their writings, and we read these men mainly for other reasons than that of learning their opinions about other people's productions. For examples of the man of letters considered primarily as critic, we must then look to our own century, and we find the type best illustrated by such men as Sainte-Beuve, Taine, Brunetière, and the subject of the present sketch.
It is indeed a rather remarkable fact that the most conspicuous figure in literary Denmark at the present time should be not a poet or a novelist, but a critic pure and simple; for that is the title which must be given to Georg Brandes. Not only is his attitude consistently critical throughout the long series of his writings, but his form and matter are also avowedly critical; so much so that hardly one of his score or more of published volumes calls for classification in any other than the critical category. Even when he takes us with him upon his travels to France or Russia with the best intentions in the world as to the avoidance of "shop," he finds himself in the end talking about the literature and the politics of those countries. One of his latest books, 'Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder' (Foreign Parts and Personalities) has a preface with the following opening paragraph:--
"One gets tired of talking about books all the time. Even the man whose business it is to express himself in black and white has eyes like other people, and with them he perceives and observes the variegated visible world: its landscapes, cities, plain and cultivated men, plastic art. For him too does Nature exist; he too is moved at sight of such simple happenings as the fall of the leaves in October; he too is stirred as he gazes upon a waterfall, a mountain region, a sunlit glacier, a Dutch lake, and an Italian olive grove. He too has been in Arcadia."
Yet half the contents of the volume thus introduced must be described as the work of the critic. Not only are the set papers upon such men as Taine, Renan, and Maupassant deliberate critical studies, but the sketches of travel likewise are sure to get around to the art and literature of the countries visited.
The life of criticism, in the larger sense, comes from wide observation and a cultivation of the cosmopolitan spirit. And it must be said of Brandes that he is a critic in this large sense, that he has taken for his province the modern spirit in all its varied manifestations. The very title of his chief work--'Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century'--shows him to be concerned with the broad movements of thought rather than with matters of narrow technique or the literary activity of any one country--least of all his own. It was peculiarly fortunate for Denmark that a critic of this type should have arisen within her borders a quarter-century ago. The Scandinavian countries lie so far apart from the chief centres of European thought that they are always in danger of lapsing into a narrow self-sufficiency so far as intellectual ideals are concerned. Danish literature has been made what it is chiefly by the mediation of a few powerful minds who have kept it in touch with modern progress: by Holberg, who may almost be said to have brought humanism into Denmark; by Oehlenschläger, who made the romantic movement as powerful an influence in Denmark as it was in Germany; by Brandes, who, beginning his career just after the war in which Denmark lost her provinces and became as embittered toward Germany as France was to become a few years later, strove to prevent the political breach from extending into the intellectual sphere, and helped his fellow-countrymen to understand that thought and progress are one and have a common aim, although nations may be many and antagonistic. There is much significance in the fact that the name of 'Emigrant Literature' is given to the first section of his greatest work. He thus styles the French literature of a century ago,--the work of such writers as Chateaubriand, Senancour, Constant, and Madame de Staël,--because it received a vivifying impulse from the emigration,--from the contact, forced or voluntary, of the French mind with the ideals of German and English civilization. It has been the chief function of Brandes, during the whole of his brilliant career, to supply points of contact between the intellectual life of Denmark and that of the rest of Europe, to bring his own country into the federal republic of letters.
A glance at the course of his life, and at the subjects of his books, will serve to outline the nature of the work to which his energies have been devoted. A Jew by race, Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was born February 4th, 1842. He went through his academic training with brilliant success, studied law for a brief period, and then drifted into journalism and literature. A long visit to Paris (1866-7) gave him breadth of view and the materials for his first books, 'Æsthetiske Studier' (Æsthetic Studies), 'Den Franske Æsthetik' (French Æsthetics), and a volume of 'Kritiker og Portraiter' (Criticisms and Portraits).
A later visit to foreign parts (1870-1) brought him into contact with Taine, Renan, and Mill, all of whom influenced him profoundly. In 1871 he began to lecture on literary subjects, chiefly in Copenhagen, and out of these lectures grew his 'Hovedströmninger i det Nittende Aarhundredes Litteratur' (Main Currents in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century), a work that in the course of about ten years extended to six volumes, and must be considered not only the author's capital critical achievement, but also one of the greatest works of literary history and criticism that the nineteenth century has produced. The division of the subject is as follows:--1. 'Emigrant Literature'; 2. 'The Romantic School in Germany'; 3. 'The Reaction in France'; 4. 'Naturalism in England'; 5. 'The Romantic School in France'; 6. 'Young Germany.'