THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES: FRANCE
Of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: Fontenelle, Bayle. Of the
Eighteenth: Poets: La Motte, Jean Baptiste Rousseau, Voltaire, etc. Prose
Writers: Montesquieu, Voltaire, Buffon, Jean Jacques Rousseau, etc. Of
the Nineteenth Century: Poets: Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Musset, Vigny,
etc.; Prose Writers: Chateaubriand, Michelet, George Sand, Mérimée,
Renan, etc.
FONTENELLE.--The eighteenth century, which was announced, and announced
with great precision, by La Bruyère, was inaugurated by his enemy
Fontenelle. Fontenelle, nephew of Corneille, began with despicable
trifles, eclogues, operas, stilted tragedies, letters of a dandy, so he
might be justly regarded as an inferior Voiture. Very soon, because he
possessed the passion of the eighteenth century for science and
free-thought, he showed himself to be a serious man, and because he had
wit he showed himself an amusing serious man, which is rare. His
_Dialogues of the Dead_ were very humorous and, at the same time, in many
passages profound; he wrote his _Discourses on the Plurality of_
(Habitable) _Worlds_; then because he was perpetual secretary of the
Academy of Sciences, came his charming and often astonishing _Eulogies of
Sages_, which ought to be regarded as the best existent history of
science in the seventeenth century and in the eighteenth up to 1740.
BAYLE.--Bayle, a Frenchman who lived in Holland on account of religion, a
journalist and lexicographer, in his _News of the Republic of Letters_
and in his immense _Dictionary_, gave proof of broad erudition about all
earthly questions, especially philosophical and religious, guiding his
readers to absolute scepticism. Fontenelle and Bayle are the two heralds
who opened the procession of the eighteenth century. Successively must
now be examined first the poets and then the prose writers of the first
half of that era.
LA MOTTE.--La Motte, as celebrated in his own time as he is forgotten in
ours, was lyricist, fabulist, dramatic orator, epical even after a
certain fashion. He wrote odes that were deadly cold, fables that were
often quite witty but affected and laboured, comedies sufficiently
mediocre, of which _The Magnificent Lover_ was the most remarkable,
and a tragedy, _Inez de Castro_, which was excellent and enjoyed one of
the greatest successes of the French stage. Finally, becoming the
partisan of the modernists against the classicists, he abridged the
_Iliad_ of Homer into a dozen books as frigid as his own lyric poems. He
had parodoxical ideas in literature, and, being a poet, or believing
himself one, he considered that verse enervated thought and that
sentiments should only be written in prose. It was against these
tendencies that Voltaire so vigorously reacted.
J.B. ROUSSEAU; POMPIGNAN.--Beside La Motte, being more gifted as a poet,
Jean Baptiste Rousseau was conspicuous. He wrote lyrical poems which were
cold as lyrics but were well composed and, sometimes at least, attained a
certain degree of eloquence. From Malherbe to Lamartine, lyrical poetry
was almost completely neglected by French poets, or at least very badly
treated. Jean Baptiste Rousseau had the advantage of being nearly
solitary and for approximately century was regarded as the greatest
national lyrical poet.
Le Franc de Pompignan has endured much ridicule, not the least being for
a certain naive vanity perceptible directly he passed from the south to
the north of France; but he had some knowledge; he was acquainted with
Hebrew, then a sufficiently rare accomplishment, and he was an assiduous
student of classic literature. His tragedy, _Dido_, succeeded; his
_Sacred Songs_ enjoyed popularity, no matter what Voltaire might say,
and deserved their success; in his odes, which were too often cold, he
rarely succeeded--only once triumphantly, in his ode on the death of Jean
Baptiste Rousseau.
THE _HENRIADE_.--So far as poets, strictly speaking, were concerned, the
foregoing are all that have to be indicated in the first half of the
eighteenth century, except the ingenious and frigid _Henriade_ of
Voltaire.
DRAMATIC POETS.--To counterbalance, the dramatic poets are numerous and
not without merit. Let us recall _Inez de Castro_ by De la Motte.
Campistron, the feeble pupil of Racine (and, moreover, there could be no
pupil of Racine, so original was the latter, so closely was his genius
associated with his mind), perpetrated numerous tragedies and operas
which enjoyed the success obtained by all imitative works: that is, a
success which arouses no discussion, and which today appears to be the
climax of tediousness.
CRÉBILLON.--Crébillon followed, vigorous, energetic, violently shaking
the nerves, master of horror and of terrors, not lacking some analogy
with Shakespeare, but without delicacy or depth, never even giving a
thought to being psychological or a moralist, writing badly and to a
certain extent meriting the epithet of "the barbarian" bestowed on him
by Voltaire.
The latter was infatuated with the drama, having the feeling for
beautiful themes and for new and original topics, adapting them to
the stage with sufficient aptitude, delighting, in addition, in pomp,
mimicry, and decorativeness, and causing tragedy to lean towards
opera, which in his day was no bad thing; but weak in execution, never
creating characters because he could not escape from himself, as moderate
in psychology and morality as Crébillon himself and replacing analysis of
passion by these and philosophical commonplaces. He left tragic dramas
which until about 1815 enjoyed success, but which then fell into a
disregard from which there is no probability they will ever emerge.
COMIC POETS.--The comic poets of this period were highly agreeable. The
most notable were Destouches, Regnard, La Chaussée. Destouches was the
very type of the comic writers of the eighteenth century already alluded
to, who took a portrait by La Bruyère and turned it into a comedy, and
that is what was called a comedy of character. Thus he wrote _The
Braggart_, _The Irresolute_, _The Ungrateful_, _The Backbiter_, _The
Spendthrift_, etc. Sometimes he took pains to be a trifle more original,
as in _The False Agnes_, _The Married Philosopher_; sometimes he borrowed
a subject from a foreign literature and adapted it fairly dexterously for
the Gallic stage, as in _The Impertinent Inquisitive_, taken from _Don
Quixote_ and _The Night Drum_, borrowed from an English author. His
versification was dexterous and correct without possessing other merit.
REGNARD.--Regnard, on the contrary, was an original genius, though
frequently imitative of Molière. He possessed the comic spirit, gaiety,
animation, the sense of drollery, and a prodigious capacity for humorous
verse of great flexibility and incredible ease, highly superior in point
of form to that of Boileau and even of Molière, for he suggests a Scarron
perfected by Molière himself and by the Italian poets. Still alive and
probably imperishable are such works as _The Gamester_, _The Universal
Legatee_, _The Unexpected Return_.
THE DRAMA: LA CHAUSSÉE.--La Chaussée possessed a vein of the popular
novel, the serial, as we should say, and at the same time a taste for the
stage. The result was he created a new species, which in itself is no
small achievement. He created _the drama_: that is, the stage-play
wherein common people, and no longer kings and princes, affect us by
their misfortunes. This has been called by all possible names; when it
is a comedy it is described as a tearful comedy; when a tragedy, as a
dramatic tragedy. This is the drama we have known in France for a hundred
and fifty years; such as it already existed in the sixteenth century
under the title of the morality play, such as Corneille, who foresaw
everything, anticipated and predicted in his preface to _Don Sancho_: "I
would rather say, sir, that tragedy should excite pity and fear, and that
in its essentials, since there is necessity for definition. Now if it be
true that this latter feeling is only excited in us when we see those
like ourselves suffer, and that their misfortunes put us in fear of
similar calamities, is it not also true that we can be more strongly
moved by disasters arriving to people of our own rank, having resemblance
to ourselves, than by the picture of the overthrow from their thrones of
the greatest monarchs, who can have no relation to us except in so far as
we are susceptible to the passions that overwhelmed them, which is not
always the case?" This domestic tragedy La Chaussée wrote in verse, which
is not against French rules, and which has been done by dramatists a
hundred and twenty years later; but it is probably an error, being even
more unlikely that citizens would express themselves in metre than that
kings and heroes should give utterance with a certain solemnity which
entails rhythm. Thus he wrote _The Fashionable Prejudice_, _The School of
Friends_, _Melanide_, very pathetic, _The School of Mothers_, etc. It
must be stated that he wrote his plays in verse somewhat systematically;
he had made his first appearance in literature by a defence of
versification against the doctrines of La Motte.
PIRON.--According to the old system, but in original verse, Piron, after
having met with scant success in tragedy, wrote the delicious
_Metromania_ which, with _The Turcaret_ of Le Sage, _The Bad Man_ of
Gresset, the masterpieces of Marivaux and the two great comedies
of Beaumarchais rank among the seven or eight superior comedies produced
in the eighteenth century.
GREAT PROSE WRITERS: MONTESQUIEU.--In prose, writers, and even great
writers, were abundant at this period. Immediately after Fontenelle and
Bayle appeared Montesquieu, sharp, malicious, satirical, already
profound, in _The Persian Letters_, a great political philosopher and
master of jurisprudence in _The Spirit of Laws_, a great philosophical
historian in _The Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans_. The influence of
Montesquieu on Voltaire, no matter what the latter may have said; on
Rousseau, however silent the latter may have been about it; on Mably, on
Raynal, on the encyclopaedists, on a large portion of the men in the
French Revolution, on the greatest minds of the nineteenth century, has
been profound and difficult to measure. As writer he was concise,
collected, and striking, seeking the motive and often finding it, seeking
the formula and invariably finding it--Tacitus mingled with Sallust.
LE SAGE; SAINT-SIMON.--In considering Le Sage and Saint-Simon, it is not,
perhaps, the one who is instinctively thought of as a novelist who really
was the greater romancer. They each wrote at the same time as
Montesquieu. Saint-Simon narrated the age of Louis XIV as an eyewitness,
both with spirit and with a feeling for the picturesque that were alike
inimitable, expressed in a highly characteristic fashion, which was often
incorrect, always incredibly vigorous, energetic, and masterful. Le Sage,
in the best of all French styles, that of the purest seventeenth century,
narrated Spanish stories in which he mingled many observations made in
Paris, and set the model for the realistic novel in his admirable _Gil
Blas_. As a dramatist he will be dealt with later.
MARIVAUX; PRÉVOST.--Marivaux also essayed the realistic novel in his very
curious _Marianne_, full of types drawn from contemporary life and drawn
with an art which was less condensed but as exact as that of La Bruyère,
and in his _Perverted Peasant_ with an art which was more gross, but
still highly interesting.
The Abbé Prévost, much inferior, much overpraised, generally insipid in
his novels of adventure, once found a good theme, _Manon Lescaut_, and,
though writing as badly as was his wont, evoked tears which, it may be
said, still flow.
HISTORY: DRAMA.--In history Voltaire furnished a model of vivid, rapid,
truly epic narration in his _History of Charles XII_, and an example, at
least, of exact documentation and of contemporaneous history studied with
zeal and passion in his _Philosophical Letters on England_. On the stage,
in prose there were the pretty, witty, and biting light comedies of
Dancourt, De Brueys and Palaprat, and Dufresny, then the delicious drama,
at once fantastic and perceptive, romantic and psychological, of
Marivaux, who, in _The Legacy_, _The False Confidences_, _The Test_,
_The Game of Love and of Shame_, showed himself no less than the true
heir of Racine and the only one France has ever had.
VOLTAIRE.--In the second portion of the eighteenth century, Voltaire
reigned. He multiplied historical studies (_Century of Louis XIV_),
philosophies (_Philosophical Dictionary_), dramas (_Zaïre_, _Mérope_,
_Alzire_ [before 1750], _Rome Saved_, _The Chinese Orphan_, _Tancred_,
_Guèbres_, _Scythia_, _Irene_), comedies (_Nanine_, _The Prude_),
romances(_Tales and Novels_), judicial exquisitions (the Calas, Labarre,
and Sirven cases), and articles, pamphlets, and fugitive papers on
all conceivable subjects.
THE PHILOSOPHERS.--But the second generation of philosophers was now
reached. There was Diderot, philosophical romancer (_The Nun_, _James the
Fatalist_), art critic(_Salons_), polygraphist (collaboration in the
Encyclopaedia); there was Jean Jacques Rousseau, philosophic novelist in
_The New Héloise_, publicist in his discourse against _Literature and the
Arts and Origin of Inequality_, schoolmaster in his _Emilius_, severe
moralist in his _Letters to M. d'Alembert on the Spectacles_,
half-romancer, charming, impassioned, and passion-inspiring in the
autobiography which he called his Confessions; there was Duclos,
interesting though rather tame in his _Considerations on the Manners of
this Century_; there was Grimm, an acute and subtle critic of the highest
intelligence in his _Correspondence_; then Condillac, precise,
systematic, restrained, but infinitely clear in the best of diction in
his _Treatise on the Sensations_; finally Turgot, the philosophical
economist, in his _Treatise on the Formation and Distribution of
Wealth_.
BUFFON; MARMONTEL; DELILLE.--Philosophy, meditation on great problems,
filled almost all the literary horizon, while scientific literature
embraced a score of illustrious representatives, of which the most
impressive was Buffon, with his _Natural History_. Nevertheless, in
absolute literature there were also names to cite: Marmontel gave his
_Moral Tales_, his _Belisarius_, his _Incas_, and his _Elements of
Literature_.
Delille, with his translation in verse of the _Georgics_ of Virgil,
commenced a noble poetic career which he pursued until the nineteenth
century; Gilbert wrote some mordant satires which recalled Boileau, and
some farewells to life which are among the best lyrics; Saint
Lambert sang of _The Seasons_ with felicity, and Roucher treated the same
theme with more vivid sensibility.
THE STAGE.--On the stage, a little before 1750. Gresset gave his
_Wicked Man_, which was witty and in such felicitous metre that it
carried the tradition of great comedy in verse; Diderot, theorist and
creator of the drama in prose, followed La Chaussée, and produced _The
Father of a Family_, _The Natural Son_, and _Is He Good, Is He Bad_? being
the portrait of himself. Innumerable dramas by the fertile Mercier and a
score of others followed, including Beaumarchais, himself a devotee of
the drama, but only able to succeed in comedy, wherein he gave his two
charming works, _The Barber of Seville_ and _The Marriage of Figaro_.
ANDRÉ CHÉNIER.--Almost on the verge of the Revolution, quite unexpectedly
there emerged a really great poet, André Chénier, marvellously gifted in
every way. As the poet of love he recalled Catullus and Tibullus; in
political lyricism he suggested d'Aubigny, though with more fervour; as
elegiac poet he possessed a grace that was truly Grecian; as the poet of
nature he employed the large manner of Lucretius; in polemical prose he
was remarkably eloquent. Struck down whilst quite young amid the turmoil
of the Revolution, he bequeathed immortal fragments. No doubt he would
have been the greatest French poet between Racine and Lamartine.
BERNARDIN DE SAINT-PIERRE.--In prose, his contemporary, Bernardin de
Saint-Pierre, primarily was a man of genius, since he wrote that immortal
idyllic romance, _Paul and Virginia_; subsequently he became a gracious
and amiable pupil of Jean Jacques Rousseau, being smitten with the
sentiment of nature in his _Harmonies of Nature_; finally he attained
a great importance in literary history as the creator of exotic
literature through the descriptions he wrote of many lands: Asia,
African isles traversed and studied by him, Russia, and Germany.
THE REVOLUTIONARY ORATORS.--During the revolutionary period may be
pointed out the great orators of the Assembly: Mirabeau, Barnave, Danton,
Vergniaud, Robespierre; the ill-starred authors of national songs:
Marie Joseph Chénier; the author of the _Marseillaise_, Rouget de Lisle,
who only succeeded on the day that he wrote it. And so we reach the
nineteenth century.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.--At the commencement of a century which was so
brilliant from the literary aspect, James Delille was despotic: his
earlier efforts have already been attended to. A skilled versifier, but
without fire or many ideas, he made cultured translations from Virgil and
Milton, wrote perennially descriptive poems, such as _The Man in the
Fields_, _The Gardens_, etc., and a witty satirical poem on
_Conversation_, which, in our opinion, was the best thing he wrote.
GREAT POETS: LAMARTINE.--Great poets were to come. Aroused, without
doubt, by the poetic genius of the prose writer Chateaubriand, the first
generation of the romantics was formed by Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and
Alfred de Vigny. Romanticism was the preponderance of imagination and
sensibility over reason and observation. Lamartine rebathed poetry in its
ancient and eternal sources: love, religion, and the sentiment of nature.
In his _Meditations_, his _Harmonies_, and his _Contemplations_, he
reawoke feelings long slumbering, and profoundly moved the hearts of men.
In _Jocelyn_ he widened his scope, and, emerging from himself, narrated,
as he imagined it, the story of the soul of a priest during the
Revolution, and subsequently in the obscurity of a rural parish; in
_The Fall of an Angel_ he reverted to the life of primaeval man as he
conceived it to be when humanity was still barbarous. Apart from his
poetic works, he wrote _The History of the Girondins_, which is a
romanesque history of almost the whole of the Revolution, some novels,
some autobiographic episodes, and a few discourses on literature.
VICTOR HUGO.--Victor Hugo, though less sensitive than Lamartine but more
imaginative, began with lyrical poems which were somewhat reminiscent of
the classical manner, then went on to pictures of the East, thence to
meditations on what happened to himself, and on all subjects (_Autumn
Leaves_, _Lights and Shades_); next, in full possession of his genius, he
dwelt on great philosophical meditations in his _Contemplations_, and in
_The Legend of the Centuries_ gave that epic fragment which is a picture
of history. His was one of the most powerful imaginations that the world
has ever seen, as well as a _creator of style_, who made a style for
himself all in vision and colour, and also in melody and orchestration.
Although in prose he lacked one part of his resources, he utilised
the rest magnificently, and _Notre Dame_ and _The Miserable_ are works
which excite admiration, at least in parts. Later, he will be dealt with
as a dramatist.
ALFRED DE VIGNY.--Alfred de Vigny was the most philosophical of these
three great poets, though inferior to the other two in creative
imaginativeness. He meditated deeply on the existence of evil on earth,
on the misfortunes of man, and the sadness of life, and his most
despairing songs, which were also his most beautiful, left a profound
echo in the hearts of his contemporaries. Some of his poems, such as
_The Bottle in the Sea_, _The Shepherd's House_, _The Fury of Samson_,
are among the finest works of French literature.
MUSSET; THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.--The second generation of romanticism, which
appeared about 1830, possessed Alfred de Musset and Théophile Gautier as
chief representatives. They bore little mutual resemblance, be it said,
the former only knowing how to sing about himself, his pleasures, his
illusions, his angers, and, above all, his sorrows, always with sincerity
and in accents that invariably charmed and sometimes lacerated; the
latter, supremely artist, always seeking the fair exterior and delighting
in reproducing it as though he were a painter, a sculptor, or a musician,
and excellent and dexterous in these "transpositions of art," whether
they were in verse or prose.
THE PROSE WRITERS: CHATEAUBRIAND.--The French prose writers of this first
half of the nineteenth century were emphatically poets, as had also
already been Jean Jacques Rousseau and even Buffon. Imagination,
sensibility, and the sentiment for nature were the mistresses of their
faculties. Chateaubriand was the promoter of all the literary movement
of the nineteenth century, alike in prose and poetry. He was a literary
theorist, an epic poet in prose, traveller, polemist, orator. His great
literary theory was in _The Genius of Christianity_, and consisted in
supporting that all true poetic beauties lay in Christianity. His epic
poems in prose are _The Natchez_, a picture of the customs of American
Indians, _The Martyrs_, a panorama of the struggle of paganism at its
close and of Christianity at its beginning; his travels were _The Voyage
in America_ and _The Itinerary from Paris to Jerusalem_. Member of the
parliamentary assemblies, ambassador and minister, he wrote and spoke in
the most brilliant and impassioned manner on the subjects that he took
up. Finally, falling back on himself, as he had never ceased to do more
or less all through his career, he left, in his marvellous _Memoirs from
Beyond the Tomb_, a posthumous work which is, perhaps, his masterpiece.
His infinitely supple and variegated style formed a continuous artistic
miracle, so harmonious and musical was it more musical even than that of
Jean Jacques Rousseau.
MME. DE STAËL.--At the same time, though she died long before him, Mme.
de Staël, by her curious and interesting, though never affecting, novels,
_Delphine_ and _Corinne_, by her dissertations on various serious
subjects, by her work on Germany, which initiated the French into the
habits and literature of neighbours they were ill acquainted with, also
directed the minds of men into new paths, and she was prodigal of ideas
which she had almost always borrowed, but which she thoroughly
understood, profoundly reconsidered, and to which she imparted an
appearance of originality even in the eyes of those who had given them to
her.
THE HISTORIANS.--Even the historians of this first half of the century
were poets: Augustin Thierry, who reconstituted scientifically but
imaginatively _The Merovingian Era_; Michelet, pupil of Vico, who saw in
history the development of an immense poem and cast over his account of
the Middle Ages the fire and feverishness of his ardent imagination and
tremulous sensitiveness. Guizot and Thiers can be left apart, for they
were statesmen by education and, although capable of passion, sought the
one to rationally generalise and "discipline history," as was said, the
other solely to capture facts accurately and to set them out clearly in
orderly fashion.
THE PHILOSOPHERS.--The philosophers were not sheltered from this
contagion, and if Cousin and his eclectic school loved to attach
themselves to the seventeenth century both in mind and style, Lamennais,
first in his _Essay on Indifference_, then in his _Study of a
Philosophy_ and in his _Words of a Believer_, impassioned, impetuous, and
febrile, underwent the influence of romanticism, but also gave to the
romantics the greater portion of the ideas they put in verse.
THE NOVEL.--As for the novel, it was only natural that it should be
deeply affected by the spirit of the new school. George Sand wrote
lyrical novels, if the phrase may be used--and, as I think, it is here
the accurate expression--entitled _Indiana_, _Valentine_, _Mauprat_, and
especially _Lelia_. She was to impart wisdom later on.
It even happened that a mind born to see reality in an admirably accurate
manner, saw it so only by reason of the times, or at least partly due to
the times, associated it with a magnifying but deforming imagination
converting it into a literary megalomania; and this was the case of
Honoré de Balzac.
NON-ROMANTIC LITERATURE.--Nevertheless, as was only natural, throughout
the whole of the romantic epoch there was an entire literature which did
not submit to its influence, and simply carried on the tradition of
the eighteenth century. In poetry there was the witty, malicious, and
very often highly exalted Béranger, whose songs are almost always
excellent songs and sometimes are odes; and there was also the able and
dexterous but frigid Casimir Delavigne. In prose there was Benjamin
Constant, supremely oratorical and a very luminous orator, also
a religious philosopher in his work _On Religions_, and a novelist in his
admirable _Adolphus_, which was semi-autobiographical.
Classical also were Joseph de Maistre, in his political considerations
(_Evenings in St. Petersburg_), and, in fiction, Mérimée, accurate,
precise, trenchant, and cultured; finally in criticism, Sainte-Beuve, who
began, it is true, by being the theorist and literary counsellor of
romanticism, but who was soon freed from the spell, almost from 1830, and
became author of _Port Royal_. Though possessing a wide and receptive
mind because he was personified intelligence, he was decisively classical
in his preferences, sentiments, ideas, and even in his style.
Stendhal, pure product of the eighteenth century, and even exaggerating
the spirit of that century in the dryness of his soul and of his style, a
pure materialist writing with precision and with natural yet intentional
nakedness, possessed valuable gifts of observation, and in his famous
novel, _Red and Black_, in the first part of the _Chartreuse of Parma_,
and in his _Memoirs of a Tourist_, knew how to draw characters with
exactness, sobriety, and power, and to set them in reliefs that were
remarkably rare.
THE STAGE.--The drama was very brilliant during this first half of the
nineteenth century. The struggle was lively for thirty or thirty-five
years between the classicists and the romanticists; the classics
defending their citadel, the French stage, much more by their polemics in
the newspapers than by the unimportant works which they brought to the
_Comédie française_, the romantics here producing nearly all the plays of
Hugo (_Hernani_, _Marion de Lorme_, _Ruy Blas_, _The Burghers_, etc.),
and the works of Vigny(_Othello_, _Marshal d'Ancre_), as well as the
dramas of Dumas (_Henry III and his Court_, etc.). Between the two
schools, both of which were on the stage nearer to the modern than to the
antique, the dexterous Casimir Delavigne, with almost invariable success,
gave _Marino Faliero_, _Louis XI_, _The Children of Edward_, _Don Juan of
Austria_, and _Princess Aurelia_, which was pretty, but without
impassioned interest.
A veritable dramatic genius, although destitute of style, of elevation of
thought and of ideas, but a prodigious constructor of well-made plays,
was Eugène Scribe, who, by his dramas and comedies, as well as the
libretti of operas, was the chief purveyor to the French stage between
1830 and 1860.
ROMANTICISM AND REALISM.--So far as pure literature was concerned, the
second half of the nineteenth century was divided between enfeebled but
persistent romanticism and realism. Théophile Gautier, in 1853, gave his
_Enamels and Cameos_, his best poetic work, and later (1862) his
_Captain Fracasse_. Hugo wrote his _Miserables_, the second and third
_Legends of the Centuries_, _Songs of the Streets and the Woods_, etc.
A third romantic generation, of which Théodore de Banville was the most
brilliant representative, and which proceeded far more from Gautier than
from Hugo or De Musset, pushed verbal and rhythmic virtuosity to the
limit and perhaps beyond. Then great or highly distinguished poets
appeared.
FAMOUS POETS.--Leconte de Lisle, philosophical poet, attracted by Indian
literature, by pessimism, by the taste for nothingness, and the thirst
for death, forcing admiration by his sculptural form and majestic rhythm;
Sully-Prudhomme, another philosopher, especially psychological,
manipulating the lyrical elegy with much art and, above all, infusing
into it a grave, sad, and profound sensibility which would have awakened
the affection and earned the respect of Catullus, Tibullus, and
Lucretius; Francis Coppée, the poet of the joys and sorrows of the lowly,
a dexterous versifier too, and possessed of a sincerity so candid as to
make the reader forget that there is art in it; Baudelaire, inquisitive
about rare and at times artificial sensations, possessing a laborious
style, but sometimes managing to produce a deep impression either morbid
or lugubrious, considered by an entire school which is still extant as
one of the greatest poets within the whole range of French literature;
Verlaine, extremely unequal, often detestable and contemptible, but
suddenly charming and touching or revealing a religious feeling that
suggests a clerk of the Middle Ages; Catulle Mendès, purely romantic,
wholly virtuoso, but an astonishingly dexterous versifier. To these poets
some highly curious literary dandies set themselves in opposition, being
desirous of renovating the poetic art by ascribing more value to the
sound of words than to their meaning, striving to make a music of poesy
and, in a general way--which is their chief characteristic--being
difficult to understand. They gave themselves the name of symbolists, and
accepted that of decadents; they regarded Stephen Mallarmé either as
their chief or as a friend who did them honour. This school has been
dignified by no masterpieces and will probably ere long be forgotten.
REALISTIC LITERATURE.--Confronting all this literature, which had a
romantic origin even when it affected scorn of the men of 1830, was
developed an entire realistic literature composed almost exclusively of
writers in prose, but of prose imbued with poetry written by some who had
read the romantics and who would not have achieved what they did had
romanticism not already existed, a fact which they themselves have
not denied, and which is now almost universally accepted. Flaubert, whose
masterpiece, _Madame Bovary_, is dated 1857, was very precisely divided
between the two schools; he possessed the taste for breadth of eloquence,
for the adventurous, and for Oriental colouring, and also the taste for
the common, vulgar, well visualised, thoroughly assimilated truth,
tersely portrayed in all its significance. But as he has succeeded
better, at least in the eyes of his contemporaries, as a realist than as
a man with imagination, he passes into history as the founder of realism
always conditionally upon considering Balzac as possessing much of the
vigorous realism which provided the impulse and furnished models.
NATURALISM.--From the realism of Flaubert was born the naturalism of
Zola, which is the same thing more grossly expressed. Also by his
energetic, violent, and tenacious talent, as well as by a weighty though
powerful imagination, he exercised over his contemporaries a kind of
fascination which it would be puerile to regard as an infatuation for
which there was no cause.
More refined and even extremely delicate, though himself also fond of the
small characteristic fact; possessed, too, with a graceful and gracious
sensibility, Alphonse Daudet often charmed and always interested us in
his novels, which are the pictorial anecdotes of the Parisian world at
the close of the second Empire and the opening of the third Republic.
The brothers De Goncourt also enjoyed notable success, being themselves
absorbed in the exceptional deed and the exceptional character whilst
possessing a laboured style which is sometimes seductive because of its
unlooked-for effects.
THE POSITIVISTS.--Two great men filled with their renown an epoch already
so brilliant; namely, Renan and Taine, both equally historians and
philosophers. Renan composed _The History of the Children of Israel_ and
_The Origins of Christianity_, as well as various works of general
philosophy, of which the most celebrated is entitled _Philosophical
Dialogues_. Taine wrote the history of _The Origins of Contemporary
France_: that is, the history of the French Revolution, and sundry
philosophical works of which the principal are _On Intelligence_ and
_The French Philosophers of the Eighteenth Century_. Both were
"positivists," that is to say, elevating Auguste Comte, who has his place
in the history of philosophy, but not here, because he was not a good
writer; both were positivists, but Renan possessed a lively and profound
sense of the grandeur and the moral beauty of Christianity, Taine being
imbued with more philosophic strictness. Renan, with infinite flexibility
of intelligence, applied himself to understand thoroughly and always
(with some excess) to bring home to us the great figures of the Bible,
the Gospels, and the early Christians, as well as their foes down to the
time of Marcus Aurelius. Further, he affirmed science to possess
_unique_ value in his _Future of Science_; elsewhere, under the
similitude of "dreams," he indulged in conceptions, hypotheses, and
metaphysical imaginations which were voluntarily rash and infinitely
seductive. As always happens, he possessed the style of his mind, supple,
sinuous, undulating, astonishingly plastic, insatiable, and charming,
evoking the comment, "That is admirably done and it is impossible to know
with what it is done."
TAINE.--Taine, more rigid, accumulating documents and methodically
arranging them in a method that refuses to be concealed, advances in a
rectilineal order, step by step, and with a measured gait, to a solid
truth which he did not wish to be either evasive or complex. Highly
pessimistic and a little affecting to be so, just as Renan was optimistic
and much affected being so, he believed in the evil origin of man and of
the necessity for him to be drastically curbed if he is to remain
inoffensive. He has written a history of the Revolution wherein he has
refused admiration and respect for the crimes then committed, which is
why posterity now begins to be very severe upon him. His learned style is
wholly artificial, coloured without his being a colourist, composed of
metaphors prolonged with difficulty, yet remaining singularly imposing
and powerful. He was a curious philosopher, an upright, severe, and
rather systematic historian, solid and laboriously original as a
writer.
BRUNETIÈRE.--Brunetière, of the great French thinkers before our
contemporaneous epoch, was critic, literary historian, philosopher,
theologian, and orator. As critic, he defended classic tradition against
bold innovations, and, especially, moral literature against licentious or
gross literature; as a literary historian he renovated literary history
by the introduction of the curious, audacious, and fruitful theory of
evolution, and his _Manual of the History of French Literature_ was a
masterpiece; as philosopher he imparted clearness and precision into the
system of Auguste Comte, whose disciple he was; as theologian, exceeding
Comte and utilising him, he added weight to Catholicism in France by
finding new and decisive "reasons for belief"; as orator he raised his
marvellously eloquent tones in France, Switzerland, and America, making
more than a hundred "fighting speeches." Since the death of Renan and
Taine, he has been the sole director of French thought, which he
continues to guide by his books and by the diffusion of his thought among
the most vigorous, serious, and meditative minds of the day.
THE CONTEMPORANEOUS DRAMA.--The drama, since 1850, has been almost
exclusively written in prose. Emil Augier, however, composed some
comedies and dramas in verse and in verse particularly suited to the
stage; but the major portion of his work is in prose, whilst Alexander
Dumas and Sardou have written exclusively in prose. Augier and Dumas came
from Balzac, and remained profoundly realistic, which was particularly
suitable to authors of comedy. They studied the manners of the second
Empire and depicted them wittily; they studied the social questions which
agitated educated minds at this time and drew useful inspiration. Augier
leant towards good middle-class common-sense, which did not prevent him
from having plenty of wit. Dumas was more addicted to paradox and
possessed as much ability as his rival. Victorien Sardou, as dexterous a
dramatic constructor as Scribe, and who sometimes rose above this,
dragged his easy tolerance from the grand historic drama to the comedy of
manners, to light comedy and to insignificant comedy with prodigious
facility and inexhaustible fertility.
The most admired living authors, whom we shall be content only to name
because they are living, are poets: Edmond Rostand, author of
_Loiterings_; Edmond Haraucourt, author of _The Naked Soul_ and _The Hope
of the World_; Jean Aicard, author of _Miette el Noré_; Jean Richepin,
author of _Césarine_, _Caresses_, _Blasphemies_, etc.; in fiction, Paul
Bourget, Marcel Prévost, René Bazin, Bordeaux, Boylesve, Henri de
Régnier; in history, Ernest Lavisse, Aulard, Seignobos, D'Haussonville;
in philosophy, Boutroux, Bergson, Théodule Ribot, Fouillée, Izoulet; in
the drama, Paul Hervieu, Lavedan, Bataille, Brieux, Porto-Riche,
Bernstein, Wolff, Tristan Bernard, Edmond Rostand, author of _Cyrano de
Bergerac_ and of _The Aiglon_; as orators, Alexander Ribot, De Mun
Poincaré, Jaurès, etc.