GLORY PROPAGANDA
In order to make a consecutive story we have followed the development of
English art for a century and a half. We now go back to cover the same
period on the Continent, where a new ruling class has acquired wealth
and power and has ordered a supply of new artists.
The difference between France and England during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries may be summed up briefly. The English revolt
against the Catholic machine was successful, therefore the spirit of the
English race expanded, and new art forms were created. In France, on the
other hand, the Catholic machine succeeded in crushing the Protestants;
something over fifty thousand were slaughtered on St. Bartholomew’s Eve;
and therefore the art of France was held within the mold of the
classical tradition. The Elizabethan drama grew out of the old miracle
and mystery plays, a native product, crude, but popular and democratic.
There existed such a native drama also in France; but it was scorned and
repressed by authority, and cultured art followed the tragedies of
Seneca, a Roman millionaire of the time of Nero, who had of course
derived from the Greeks.
It may seem strange that Catholic absolutism should have made Greek and
Latin art forms a part of its sacred dogma; but so it was. The doctors
of the church in the Middle Ages had put together a theology, in part
from the early Christian fathers, and in part from Athenian and
Alexandrian philosophers. It was for denying Ptolemy’s doctrine that the
sun moved round the earth that Galileo was forced to recant under
threat of torture by the pope; and it was for denying the sacred “three
unities,” derived from Aristotle’s “Poetics,” that playwrights were
critically tortured by the priests of orthodox culture.
These three dogmas of play-writing were unity of theme, unity of time,
and unity of place. The first is, within reasonable limits, a natural
requirement of any work of art; but unity of time, meaning that the play
must happen within twenty-four hours, and unity of place, meaning that
it must happen on one physical spot, are absurdities. It is hard for us
to realize that such rules were compulsory upon any dramatist who wished
to see his work upon the stage; it is harder yet for us to realize that
such rules were used as weapons in the class struggle, along with the
infallibility of the pope and the divine right of kings.
There arose in France a prelate of the grim and bloody kind, who became
the king’s minister, and directed the slaughtering of the Huguenots, and
chopped off the heads of the rebellious nobles; he even forced the
church to submit itself, and made his king the absolute ruler of France,
so that a year after Richelieu’s death it was possible for the king’s
son to ascend the throne, and to say, “I am the State,” and have no one
dispute him through his reign of seventy-two years. One of the engines
of repression that Richelieu devised was the French Academy, to take
charge of the language and art of the monarchy, and impose law and order
by chopping off the literary heads of all rebels. This Academy became
the ruling authority in cultured France, and has filled that rôle for
three hundred years. Not merely has it served the ruling classes by
maintaining tradition and discrediting every innovation in French
letters; it has issued formal pronouncements against unorthodox social
and political books--for example, Rousseau’s “Social Contract.” A list
of the French men of letters who have been excluded from the “immortals”
includes Descartes, Pascal, Molière, Saint-Simon, LeSage, Rousseau,
Beaumarchais, Diderot, Compte, Proudhon, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert,
Zola, Goncourt, Maupassant, Jaurès, Barbusse, Rolland.
The polite literature which reigned in Richelieu’s time was known as
“précieuse,” and occupied itself in the making up of elaborate long
similes, extending sometimes through several pages. It was foppish and
fantastic to the point of imbecility; and the makers of it were the
darlings of Richelieu’s Academy. There came up from the provinces a
young lawyer by the name of Pierre Corneille, who began to write
successful comedies, and received the high honor of being picked by
Richelieu as one of five men to write dramas under his august direction.
But Corneille, a man of genius, could not long submit himself to the
head-chopping cardinal. He went his own way, and incurred the raging
enmity of both Richelieu and his Academy.
He wrote a tragedy in Alexandrine verse called “The Cid,” which was an
enormous popular success. This Cid was a legendary hero of Spain, a
“free captain”--that is, the head of an army of hired mercenaries, who
went about fighting for anybody who would pay him. We are used to this
system of “free captains” in the United States, where they are called
private detective bureaus and strike-breaking agencies. They have armies
of tens of thousands of fighting men, horse, foot and artillery, whom
they move about from place to place for the crushing of union labor. So
before long we shall see on Broadway or in Hollywood some young writer
making a tremendous ruling-class drama out of the legendary career of
Alan Pinkerton or William J. Burns. The great detective will be shown in
love with the beautiful daughter of some labor leader, the tragedy
coming when in the course of his duty the great detective has to kill
the labor leader. That is the story which Corneille developed--except
that of course, it was a rival prince whom the Cid was fighting.
Needless to say, in order not to have his head chopped off by Richelieu,
the playwright put his hero in the position of defending legitimacy.
But the poet had failed to respect the “three unities” in his tragedy;
so, although acclaimed by audiences, he was viciously attacked by the
academicians--one of them even challenged him to a duel! The Academy as
a body was afraid to attack the play, but Richelieu forced it to take
action. Corneille was not strong enough to withstand opposition such as
this; in his future work he conformed to the rules, and became a humble
pensioner of the cardinal. It is interesting to note that his genius
began quickly to decline, and he had the humiliation of living to old
age and seeing himself scorned and neglected by the new generation. Thus
Richelieu’s Academy fulfilled at the outset its function, destroying the
greatest tragic dramatist that France had produced, and suppressing for
two hundred years the romantic movement in the French theater.
It is important to get clear the difference between the real classical
art of the Greeks, and this imitation classical art of French
absolutism. The Greek stage rules had been made to fit the facts of the
Greek stage. Their tragedies had been enacted in a large open-air
theater, and to keep the actors from looking too small they had worn
high shoes, almost stilts, and had shouted to the audience through a
megaphone disguised as a mask. Needless to say, they could not move
quickly, and could not do anything but talk. Their tendency was to talk
at great length--like mighty ships, which, having got under way, were
not easily to be stopped.
But in the time of Corneille and his successors all that was gone; plays
were acted in small, indoor theaters, and the characters might have been
human and real. But the critical authorities ordained that the Greek
conventions were sacred; so the characters of Corneille are stiff and
stately, and stalk about hurling long, impassioned tirades at one
another.
Nevertheless, two thousand years have not failed to make an impression
upon the minds of men. The dark, overshadowing fate of the Greeks is
gone, its place as director of events being taken by human ambition.
Corneille’s characters are embodiments of this or that passion. They
are, of course, always aristocrats, the mighty and powerful of the
earth; they are intended to be morally sublime, but to us they seem
monsters of egotism. They want what they want when they want it, they
smite their breasts and exclaim: “Moi! Moi! Moi!” There is war, splendid
war, in which they gain the admiration and attention known as “glory.”
The tragedy comes because they cannot get all they want; they have
weaknesses, especially love, which get in the way, and paralyze the will
of mighty princes engaged in prevailing over each other.
At this time the Thirty Years’ War was devastating Europe. It had begun
as a religious war, an effort of Catholic Austria to crush German
Protestantism; but it had now degenerated into a clash of rival
dynasties, with Richelieu, master intriguer, using the Protestants to
put down the enemies of the French monarchy. The mother of the French
king had been an Austrian princess, Catherine de’ Medici, and she was
intriguing against her son’s country. She had been driven into exile by
Richelieu, and was raising up armies against him; so, all over Europe,
the people were being led out to slaughter at the whim of this vicious
old woman. They were led out for one greedy prince or another; they were
led out because the mistress of some king had been snubbed by the wife
of some emperor; they were led out for an endless tangle of royal
jealousies and noble spites.
And the function of the dramas of Corneille is to take us into the souls
of these lawless aristocrats; all the powers of genius, all the
resources of the stage are expended in order that we may share their
furies, may strut the stage with them and deliver tumultuous tirades.
For a time or two the experience is interesting; but then the novelty
wears off, and we ask ourselves: Do I really care anything about these
heroes? Do I want to share their feelings--or do I want to change the
world, so that there may be no corner where such dangerous and
destructive creatures can lurk? And so ends the glory propaganda of
Corneille.