CHAPTER II.
There are two poets,—the poet of caprice and the poet of logic; and there is a third poet, a component of both, amending them one by the other, completing them one by the other, and summing them up in a loftier entity,—the two statures in a single one. The third is the first. He has caprice, and he follows the wind. He has logic, and he follows duty. The first writes the Canticle of Canticles, the second writes Leviticus, the third writes the Psalms and the Prophecies. The first is Horace, the second is Lucan, the third is Juvenal. The first is Pindar, the second is Hesiod, the third is Homer.
No loss of beauty results from goodness. Is the lion less beautiful than the tiger, because it has the faculty of merciful emotion? Does that jaw which opens to let the infant fall into the hands of the mother deprive that mane of its majesty? Does the vast noise of the roaring vanish from that terrible mouth because it has licked Androcles? The genius which does not help, even if graceful, is deformed. A prodigy without love is a monster. Let us love! let us love!
To love has never hindered from pleasing. Where have you seen one form of the good excluding the other? On the contrary, all that is good is connected. Let us, however, understand each other. It does not follow that to have one quality implies necessarily the possession of the other; but it would be strange that one quality added to another should make less. To be useful, is but to be useful; to be beautiful is but to be beautiful; to be useful and beautiful is to be sublime. That is what Saint Paul is in the first century, Tacitus and Juvenal in the second, Dante in the thirteenth, Shakespeare in the sixteenth, Milton and Molière in the seventeenth.
We have just now recalled a saying become famous: "Art for art." Let us, once for all, explain ourselves in this question. If faith can be placed in an affirmation very general and very often repeated (we believe honestly), these words, "Art for art," would have been written by the author of this book himself. Written? Never! You may read, from the first to the last line, all that we have published; you will not find these words. It is the opposite which is written throughout our works, and, we insist on it, in our entire life. As for these words in themselves, how far are they real? Here is the fact, which several of our contemporaries remember as well as we do. One day, thirty-five years ago, in a discussion between critics and poets on Voltaire's tragedies, the author of this book threw out this suggestion: "This tragedy is not a tragedy. It is not men who live, it is sentences which speak in it! Rather a hundred times 'Art for art!'" This remark turned, doubtless involuntarily, from its true sense to serve the wants of discussion, has since taken, to the great surprise of him who had uttered it, the proportions of a formula. It is this opinion, limited to "Alzire" and to the "Orpheline de la Chine," and incontestable in that restricted application, which has been turned into a perfect declaration of principles, and an axiom to inscribe on the banner of art.
This point settled, let us go on.
Between two verses, the one by Pindar, deifying a coachman or glorifying the brass nails of the wheel of a chariot, the other by Archilochus, so powerful that, after having read it, Jeffreys would leave off his career of crimes and would hang himself on the gallows prepared by him for honest people,—between these two verses, of equal beauty, I prefer that of Archilochus.
In times anterior to history, when poetry is fabulous and legendary, it has a Promethean grandeur. What composes this grandeur? Utility. Orpheus tames wild animals; Amphion builds cities; the poet, tamer and architect, Linus aiding Hercules, Musæus assisting Dædalus, poetry a civilizing power,—such is the origin. Tradition agrees with reason. The common-sense of peoples is not deceived in that. It always invents fables in the sense of truth. Everything is great in those magnifying distances. Well, then, the wild-beast-taming poet that you admire in Orpheus, recognize him in Juvenal.
We insist on Juvenal. Few poets have been more insulted, more contested, more calumniated. Calumny against Juvenal has been drawn at such long date that it lasts yet. It passes from one literary clown to another. These grand haters of evil are hated by all the flatterers of power and success. The mob of fawning sophists, of writers who have around the neck the mark of their slavery, of bullying historiographers, of scholiasts kept and fed, of court and school followers, stand in the way of the glory of the punishers and avengers. They croak around those eagles. People do not willingly render justice to the dispensers of justice. They hinder the masters and rouse the indignation of the lackeys. There is such a thing as the indignation of baseness.
Moreover, the diminutives cannot do less than help one another, and Cæsarion must at least have Tyrannion as a support The pedant snaps the ferules for the benefit of the satrap. There is for this kind of work a literary sycophancy and an official pedagogism. These poor, dear-paying vices; these excellent indulgent crimes; his Highness Rufinus; his Majesty Claudius; that august Madame Messalina who gives such beautiful fêtes, and pensions out of her privy purse, and who lasts and who is perpetuated, always crowned, calling herself Theodora, then Fredegonde, then Agnes, then Margaret of Burgundy, then Isabel of Bavaria, then Catherine de Medici, then Catherine of Russia, then Caroline of Naples, etc.,—all these great lords, crimes, all these fine ladies, turpitudes, shall they have the sorrow of witnessing the triumph of Juvenal! No. War with the scourge in the name of sceptres! War with the rod in the name of the shop! That is well! Go on, courtiers, clients, eunuchs, and scribes. Go on, publicans and pharisees. You will not hinder the republic from thanking Juvenal, or the temple from approving Jesus.