The 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.
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.
[Illustration: Georg Brandes]
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.'
In spite of the growing fame that came to him from these masterly
studies, Brandes felt the need of a larger audience than the
Scandinavian countries could offer him, and in 1877 changed his
residence from Copenhagen to Berlin, a step to which he was in part
urged by the violent antagonism engendered at home by the radical and
uncompromising character of many of his utterances. It was not until
1883 that he again took up residence in his own country, upon a
guarantee of four thousand kroner (about $1000) annually for ten years,
secured by some of his friends, the condition being that he should give
courses of public lectures in Copenhagen during that period.
Among the works not yet named, mention should be made of his volumes
upon Holberg, Tegnér, Kierkegaard, Ferdinand Lassalle, and the Earl of
Beaconsfield. These brilliant monographs are remarkable for their
insight into the diverse types of character with which they deal, for
their breadth of view, felicity of phrase, and originality of treatment.
There are also several collections of miscellaneous essays, with such
titles as 'Danske Digtere' (Danish Poets), 'Danske Personligheder'
(Danish Personalities), 'Det Moderne Gjennembruds Mænd' (Men of the
Modern Awakening), and 'Udenlandske Egne og Personligheder' (Foreign
Parts and Personalities). The latest publication of Brandes is a careful
study of Shakespeare, a work of remarkable vigor, freshness,
and sympathy.
As a critic, Brandes belongs distinctly to the class of those who speak
with authority, and has little in common with the writers who are
content to explore the recesses of their own subjectivity, and record
their personal impressions of literature. Criticism is for him a matter
of science, not of opinion, and he holds it subject to a definite method
and body of principles. A few sentences from the second volume of his
'Hovedströmninger' will illustrate what he conceives that method
to be:--
"First and foremost, I endeavor everywhere to bring
literature back to life. You will already have observed that
while the older controversies in our literature--for example,
that between Heiberg and Hauch, and even the famous
controversy between Baggesen and Oehlenschläger--have been
maintained in an exclusively literary domain and have become
disputes about literary principles alone, the controversy
aroused by my lectures, not merely by reason of the
misapprehension of the opposition, but quite as much by
reason of the very nature of my writing, has come to touch
upon a swarm of religious, social, and moral problems.... It
follows from my conception of the relation of literature to
life that the history of literature I teach is not a history
of literature for the drawing-room. I seize hold of actual
life with all the strength I may, and show how the feelings
that find their expression in literature spring up in the
human heart. Now the human heart is no stagnant pool or
idyllic woodland lake. It is an ocean with submarine
vegetation and frightful inhabitants. The literary history
and the poetry of the drawing-room see in the life of man a
salon, a decorated ball-room, the men and the furnishings
polished alike, in which no dark corners escape illumination.
Let him who will, look at matters from this point of view;
but it is no affair of mine."
The boldness and even the ruthlessness which characterize much of the
author's work were plainly foreshadowed in this outspoken introduction;
and he has grown more rather than less uncompromising during the
quarter-century that has elapsed since they were spoken. Matthew Arnold
would have applauded the envisagement of literature as "criticism of
life," but would have deplored the sacrifice of sweetness to gain
increased intensity of light. Brandes came back from contact with the
European world full of enthusiasm for the new men and the new
ideas,--for Comte and Taine, for Renan and Mill and Spencer,--and wanted
his recalcitrant fellow-countrymen to accept them all at once. They were
naturally taken aback by so imperious a demand, and their opposition
created the atmosphere of controversy in which Brandes has ever since
for the most part lived--with slight effort to soften its asperities,
but, it must be added, with the ever-increasing respect of those not of
his own way of thinking. On the whole, his work has been healthful and
stimulating; it has stirred the sluggish to a renewed mental activity,
and has made its author himself one of the most conspicuous figures of
what he calls "det Moderne Gjennembrud"--the Modern Awakening.
[Illustration: Signature]