MEN OF LETTERS
We have spoken of the literature of science. In the literature which is
an art, and an end in itself, Geneva never excelled; and if we look for
reasons, we can find several.
The first difficulty was with the language. French came to the
Genevans as a foreign tongue at a time when their men of learning
wrote Latin and their populace spoke a Savoyard patois; and, even to
the present day, few of them avoid a certain provincial awkwardness
in the handling of it. Anyone who wishes to see the proof has only to
compare the _Journal de Genève_ with the _Gil Blas_ or the _Figaro_.
The few stylists whom Geneva can claim have generally been of French
extraction, like Marc Monnier, or have lived abroad, like Rousseau
and Madame de Staël. A far more typical Genevan writer was Charles
Bonnet whose perplexing circumlocutions swamp his elevated sentiments
and effectively prevent his books from being read. There is also, of
course, Amiel; but even ‘Roulez, tambours’ is tolerably obvious; while
the trail of the _cliché_ lies even over that famous ‘Journal Intime’
which Mrs. Humphry Ward translated.
Another difficulty was the vexatious censorship exercised by Town
Councillors, whose views of literature were parochial. Even Agrippa
d’Aubigné, with all his fame and merit, was pursued by their suspicions
both during his lifetime and after his death. The printer of one
of his works was imprisoned and fined for issuing from his press a
book alleged to contain ‘much impious and blasphemous matter which
scandalizes well-conducted persons’; while, after his decease, his
papers were sent for, to be inspected by public officials. ‘Anything
composed by the defunct,’ it was decided, ‘during his residence in this
State must be suppressed, but anything composed on other territory may
be restored to his heirs.’ Literary decorum may have been insured by
such measures; but they were not calculated to encourage originality,
and it is not surprising that we search Genevan annals in vain for
distinguished literary names.
[Illustration: THE STATUE OF JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU ON THE ISLAND IN THE
RHONE, GENEVA, FROM HOTEL DES BERGUES]
The name of which the Genevans are proudest is probably that of
Rousseau, who has sometimes been spoken of as ‘the austere citizen of
Geneva.’ But ‘austere’ is a strange epithet to apply to the philosopher
who endowed the Foundling Hospital with five illegitimate children;
and Geneva cannot claim a great share in a citizen who ran away from
the town in his boyhood to avoid being thrashed for stealing apples.
It was, indeed, at Geneva that Jean Jacques received from his aunt the
disciplinary chastisement of which he gives such an exciting account
in his ‘Confessions’; and he once returned to the city and received
the Holy Communion there in later life. But that is all. Jean Jacques
was not educated at Geneva, but in Savoy--at Annecy, at Turin, and at
Chambéry; his books were not printed at Geneva, though one of them was
publicly burnt there, but in Paris and Amsterdam; it is not to Genevan
but to French literature that he belongs. And when Jean Jacques has
been named, there remains no other Genevan citizen of letters worthy to
be mentioned in the same paragraph. So that branch of the subject may
be left.