partly the profundity of the thoughts which support them, partly the
exact conformity of the perfect artistic expression to the idea; but,
unless the author is really a creative thinker, what is of conclusive
importance is that his mind should, consciously or unconsciously, be
permeated by the most advanced ideas of his age; for it is the spirit
which "maketh alive" and preserves from destruction.
Romanticism in France displays three main tendencies:
1. The endeavour to reproduce faithfully either some real piece of past
history or some phase of modern life--the tendency towards the true.
2. The endeavour after perfection of form, whether apprehended as
plasticity and picturesqueness of expression, as severe metrical
harmony, or as a prose style imperishable from its concise
simplicity--the tendency towards the beautiful.
3. Enthusiasm for great religious or social reformatory ideas, an ethic
aim in art--the tendency towards the good.
These three main tendencies define the nature of this vigorous and
talented school as the three dimensions define space; and each of them
produced works of great and enduring value.
The last two, as resultant from French influences, occupy our attention
first.
Although there were to be found in the Romantic School authors who,
like Mérimée and Gautier, retained to the last a natural or artificial
indifference to the social and political aims of the age, it numbered
far more who were strongly appealed to and affected by the endeavours
made to organise the future of their country and of the whole human
race. Poetry, literature, has two main developments. It is either of
the nature of representation based upon psychological observation--in
which form it approaches science--or it bears the character of an
annunciation, an inspired appeal--in which form it approaches religion.
Many writers of the generation of 1830 show that they apprehended it
in the latter manner. The critics who have tried to depreciate these
men by calling their productions works with a purpose, or problem
literature, have done them wrong. For what such critics condemn is
nought else but the spirit of the age--its ideas; and these ideas are
the life-blood of all true literature. All that we have a right to
demand in the interest of art is, that the veins through which this
life-blood flows shall only show blue under the skin, not rise black
and swollen as they do in the case of a sick or angry man.
During the course of the Thirties reformatory ideas make their way
into French Romanticism from all sides. If we try to trace them back
to their source, it is not possible to stop before Saint-Simon. In
Count Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (born in 1760), the only descendant
of the famous Duke de Saint-Simon who wrote the private chronicles of
the court of Louis XIV., France, which showed so little interest in
the drama of _Faust_, herself produced a nineteenth-century Faust, a
genuine Faust in the matter of restless genius and irresistible craving
after both theoretical and practical knowledge of everything in the
universe. He is less acute and sagacious than the hero of Goethe's
famous poem, but his mental horizon is wider, his aim a grander one,
and his whole endeavour of a higher nature. He begins where Faust
ends. His plans for cutting a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, and
for the canalisation of Spain, remind us of the undertakings of the
latter years of Faust's life. Saint-Simon was in turn soldier, man of
fashion, engineer, company-projector, philosopher, scientist, political
economist, and founder of a religion; he was a man who possessed almost
every talent. In his youth he spent a large fortune, believing himself
to be heir to the dignities of peer of France and grandee of Spain and
a capital of 500,000 francs; but his father and the Duke de Saint-Simon
quarrelled, and he inherited nothing. He sank into abject poverty,
worked as a copyist nine hours a day for a thousand francs a year,
and in 1812 was reduced to living on bread and water. In despair, he
one day made an attempt at suicide; he shot out one of his eyes, but
recovered. The attempt at suicide, too, reminds us of Faust.
Disciples came to his assistance, supported him, were instructed by
him, and founded one periodical after another to propagate his ideas.
At the time of Saint-Simon's death, which happened five years before
the Revolution of July, these ideas were only known to and adopted
by a small circle, but during the reign of Louis Philippe they
spread rapidly, undergoing various alterations during the process. A
Saint-Simonist sect was founded, a sect with a high-priest and with
eminent men of all classes and professions amongst its numbers, such
men as Isaac Péreire, the financier, and Félicien David, the musical
composer. In the end the Saint-Simonist ideas penetrated the whole
of French society; through Michel Chevalier they became elements of
political economy; they inspired the most eminent historian of the day,
Augustin Thierry; they lay at the foundation of the philosophy of the
greatest French thinker of the century, Auguste Comte; with certain
modifications they won, in Pierre Leroux and Lamennais, influential
philosophic and religious apostles; and at the same time they made
their way into poetry. And there was nothing marvellous in all this,
for, in spite of his extravagances, Saint-Simon undoubtedly had
something of the prophetic instinct of the great poet.
He was in advance of his age; for his philosophy is one of the signs
of the great European reaction against the eighteenth century, which
he regarded as a purely critical, purely disintegrative period, whilst
he denominated the nineteenth an organic, directly productive period.
He disagreed as entirely with those who imagined that the happiness of
humanity can be produced by a mere change in the forms of government
as with those who, like the church party, exalted the past in order to
bring it back again. He was not the friend of the past, but the herald
of the future; the aims and endeavours of the reaction appeared to him
only in so far reasonable and right as they arose from a perception
of the truth that mankind cannot be civilised by mere reason, that
religion is indispensable to civilisation--the religion desiderated
by Saint-Simon being, however, one divested of the conventions and
externalities of all the existing religions. Possessed, as he was,
not with the spirit of doubt, but with the reformer's enthusiasm, the
liberty which consisted in emancipation from restraints seemed to him
of little value if it were not complemented and completed by true,
perfect liberty, that is to say, by an ever greater, wider capability.
The work of the last, the critical, centuries had been the destruction
of the medieval power of the priest and the warrior; now the time had
come to establish the reign of science and industry. In the new order
of society science was destined to take the place of faith, industry of
war.
The first thing to be done was to "organise" science and industry.
In Saint-Simon's _Lettres d'un habitant de Genève_, any who are
interested in his projects for the organisation of science may read
his scheme of starting a subscription at the tomb of Sir Isaac Newton
for the purpose of enabling all the greatest scientists and artists
to devote themselves to their professions, not only freed from all
pecuniary anxieties, but with the certainty of being well paid for
their work--a scheme which Alfred de Vigny, as author of _Chatterton_,
must have read with enthusiastic approbation, if he ever did read it.
But he would learn with perhaps more surprise than approbation that
these geniuses were in return to undertake the supervision of all
the spiritual interests of humanity, in accordance with a definite,
carefully detailed plan.
Saint-Simon's _Parable_ is the document which gives most information
about the proposed organisation of industry. As this parable, from the
fact that it is written in a laconic style and with glimpses of a wit
which the author displays on no other occasion, is probably the only
one of his writings which will continue to be read, I reproduce it in a
condensed form.
Suppose, says Saint-Simon, that France were to lose from the ranks of
its scientists, painters, poets, mechanicians, physicians, surgeons,
&c., the fifty best in each class--say its 3000 best scientific men,
artists, and mechanicians--what would be the result?
Since these men are the real productive power of the country, the
flower of the French nation, at least another whole generation would be
required to repair the misfortune. For the human beings whose life-work
is unmistakably of use are exceptions, and nature is not prodigal of
these exceptions.
Let us suppose another case. Let us suppose that France keeps all her
gifted scientists, artists, industrial and mechanical geniuses, but has
the misfortune to lose his Royal Highness the King's brother, their
Royal Highnesses the Dukes of Berry, Orléans, and Bourbon, the Duchess
of Angoulème, the Duchess of Bourbon, and the young Duchess of Condé.
She at the same time loses all the great officers of the crown, all
the ministers of state, chamberlains, masters of the hunt, marshals,
cardinals, archbishops, bishops, deans, and canons, all the prefects
and sub-prefects, all the judges, and into the bargain 10,000 of the
richest of those landed proprietors who live in great style.
The event would undoubtedly cause grief to the nation, because the
French are a good-hearted people, and not capable of regarding with
indifference the sudden disappearance of such a number of their
fellow-citizens. But this loss of not fewer than 30,000 of the persons
who are esteemed the first in the state could occasion sorrow only on
purely sentimental grounds; for no serious harm to the state as state
would arise from it. It would be very easy to fill the vacant places.
There are any number of Frenchmen who could occupy the position of His
Majesty the King's brother quite as well as that august prince, any
number who could fill the place of prince of the blood royal, &c., &c.
The anterooms of the court are crowded with aspirants ready and fit to
be invested with the rank of officers of the crown. The army possesses
any number of officers who are quite as good generals as our present
marshals; and how many commercial travellers are cleverer men than our
ministers of state, how many priests quite as devout and capable as our
cardinals, archbishops, deans, and canons! As regards the 10,000 landed
proprietors, their heirs would scarcely need any apprenticeship to make
quite as charming hosts.
The idea underlying this jest, for which, by the way, Saint-Simon had
to answer to the authorities, is, of course, that only the productive
class of citizens is in reality useful. Before the Revolution the
conflict was between the nobility and the bourgeoisie; now that a part
of the bourgeoisie is elevated to the same position as the nobility and
shares its privileges, the division is between the unproductive and the
productive class; the future belongs to industry, labour, the deeds of
peace and utility. But whereas contemporary French political economists
only went the length of granting the individual the greatest possible
amount of liberty to develop his powers, Saint-Simon demanded the
interference of the state. It was, according to him, the province of
the state to organise labour and production; it alone could ensure that
for the future man should utilise nature only, and not his fellow-man.
The state ought, while fully acknowledging the natural differences
between man and man, to do its utmost to abolish the artificial
differences--ought, therefore, to abolish all hereditary privileges,
and to annul or modify the law of succession.
In Saint-Simon's writings we find, then, in the first place, the
fundamental ideas of modern socialism--distrust of the consequences of
free competition and the demand that productive labour shall receive
the recompense and the honour which are its due--ideas which prompted
his famous dictum, that every member of society ought to hold the place
in it to which his abilities entitle him and receive the due reward
of his labour (_à chacun selon sa capacité!_). In the second place we
find, as a result of this demand, the inculcation, for the first time
in the writings of a French author, of the doctrine of the complete
equality of woman and man as members of society. And, lastly, we have,
in the matter of religion, rejection of all dogma, not with the aim of
destroying religion, but for the purpose of rescuing from the grave of
orthodoxy the one command: Love one another! This is the Christianity
which Saint-Simon expounded in his last important work, _Le nouveau
Christianisme_, a Christianity with only one doctrine, which may be
expressed as follows: The task of religion is to help society to
accomplish that great object, the speediest possible improvement of the
condition of the poorest and most numerous class.
There was something in Saint-Simon's personality which could not but
be congenial to the more simple-minded among the Romanticists. He had
the unbounded self-confidence which inspires others with confidence;
the philosopher's inclination to self-examination formed no part of
his nature; he was dogmatic; he was a prophet. He was, moreover,
possessed by the Romantic desire to experience everything, to feel
everything. The lines of conduct which he prescribed as indispensable
to progress in philosophy do not differ materially from those which
a young Romantic poet would have named as requisite for poetical
production. They are: (1) to lead during one's vigorous years as active
and independent a life as possible; (2) to make one's self thoroughly
acquainted with every variety of theory and every variety of practice;
(3) to study all classes of society and to insinuate one's self into
the most varied social positions; (4) to sum up one's observations and
draw a conclusion from them.
In Saint-Simon's philosophy there was one outstanding feature that,
as a rule, repelled the Romantic authors, namely, his enthusiasm for
industrial pursuits, which, as merely useful, were repugnant to most
of them. But the philosophy was by no means destitute of poetry. Its
revolutionary, its fantastic, and its Utopian elements were certain
to appeal to a Romanticist, as also its insistence upon natural
inequality, its idolisation of genius, and its leaning to religion. It
was poetical, too, in its solicitude for the welfare of woman and its
affectionate interest in the most unfortunate classes of society.
And it was not until after 1830 that Saint-Simonism began to be a
social power. Saint-Simon himself, like most founders of religions,
was both prophet and exemplar; he made of his disciples real apostles;
regarding him in sober earnest as the modern Messiah, they went out
into the world as his messengers. It was through these men and their
intellectual kin that society in general made acquaintance with the
doctrines of Saint-Simon during the reign of Louis Philippe, though
some of the intellectually vigilant had before this read the master's
own writings. There is a memorandum in Victor Hugo's diary for 1830
(_Littérature et Philosophie mêlées I_.) which shows that he, for one,
was already acquainted with Saint-Simon.
A year after Saint-Simon's death, his organ, _Le Producteur_, had to
be given up; but this very circumstance brought his disciples into
more personal and intimate relations with their adherents. And when
Enfantin, the St. Paul of the new faith, a man of imposing appearance,
a sacerdotal genius of the first rank, with something of a Brigham
Young's capacity for rule and leadership, became the real head of the
sect, it made proselytes of numbers of clever young men and cultivated,
high-spirited women. Large sums were voluntarily contributed towards
the support of the Saint-Simonist "family"; in 1831 alone they amounted
to 330,000 francs. A new weekly paper, _L'Organisateur_ was started,
and from 1830 onwards Paul Leroux edited the _Globe_. But the doctrines
propagated deviated ever more and more from Saint-Simon's original
system. In his scheme of organisation an important rôle was assigned
to the capitalists; one of the three Chambers proposed by him was to
consist exclusively of capitalists. But now capital was attacked.
Saint-Simon had distinctly reprobated every species of communism; now,
in the "family," community of goods was the order of the day, and state
communism was considered desirable. One particular conclusion deduced
from Saint-Simon's doctrines led to the downfall of the system and
the break-up of the sect. The master had taught that, since the old
Christianity had put enmity between the flesh and the spirit, it was
the task of the new to reconcile them. The old Christianity had made
self-denial and mortification of the flesh man's aim, the new ought to
make it well-being and universal happiness. Employing other words we
may express his thought thus:--The Christianity of renunciation has
been a sharp and violent remedy for that indulgence in the satisfaction
of every desire which was the order of the day under the empire of
Rome; but the remedy has shown itself to be quite as dangerous as the
disease. We have got rid of the disease, but what can free us from the
remedy without exposing us to a relapse? No power except that of the
new Christianity.
From this comparatively sensible idea Enfantin deduced doctrines the
practical application of which would have resulted in much such a state
of matters as prevailed amongst Jan van Leiden's Anabaptists. One of
the original doctrines of Saint-Simonism was that now, in the new era,
man, the individual, was superseded by the individual, _man-woman_,
whose constituent parts possessed equal rights and full liberty to
dissolve an unsatisfactory marriage, it being in the double, not the
single, being that true humanity is realised. From this doctrine
Enfantin drew the conclusion that there are two kinds of marriage, the
one the marriage of monogamists, the other the marriage of those who
in course of time become polygamists--that is to say, the enduring and
the ephemeral marriage; actual, simultaneous polygamy was to be the
prerogative only of the priests and priestesses. Although little could
be advanced, either in general discussion or in the court of justice,
against the Saint-Simonists' argument that the inauguration of this
order of things would have no other consequence than the confirming
and legalising of relations which at present existed illegally,
this particular practical conclusion sufficiently showed the entire
incapacity of the young enthusiasts to judge what was possible and
what impossible of realisation in the existing, state of society; it
proved them to be of the number of those who believe that society can
be reformed by a stroke of the pen. Their excuse is to be found in
the circumstance that, with the exception of Enfantin and Bazard, all
the Saint-Simonists of 1830 (as also all Lamennais' disciples) were
about twenty years of age. Ridicule cooled their ardour for the spread
of the faith. In the summer of 1832 the heads of the "family" were
sentenced, Enfantin to a year's imprisonment, Michel, Chevalier, and
Duveyrier to a trifling fine. The young enthusiasts of whom the little
sect was composed were scattered; but almost all of them distinguished
themselves in later life, either in the domain of science, of industry,
or of art. Their exaggerations of the theories of Saint-Simon had, like
the Utopian schemes of Fourier which belong to the same period, no
influence upon literature. It was influenced only by the original ideas.
The air of the day became impregnated with these ideas; minds were
infected by them; they seized upon some soft, impressionable character,
and this impressionable character influenced a strong one; they gained
possession of a woman through a man, or of a man through a woman, of a
poet through a priest, or of a young student through a poet. And after
the manner of ideas, they summoned up other ideas--socialistically
democratic ideas which had lain dormant since the end of the previous
century, like Louis Blanc's; philosophico-historic humanitarian ideas
like those of Pierre Leroux's maturer period, which recalled Schelling
and were inimical to plutocracy; ideas like Lamennais', which recalled
the thoughts and feelings with which, during the peasant revolts of the
Middle Ages, the priests who bore the crucifix in front of the rebel
armies inspired the proletariat, making them ready to risk their lives.
If the source of the Romantic School's reformatory desires and
endeavours (what we have called its tendency towards the good) is to
be found in the doctrines of Saint-Simon, its tendency towards the
beautiful is to be traced to the influence of another great Frenchman.
Nothing contributed more to the remarkable artistic advance noticeable
in French literature, and especially French lyric poetry, at this
period, than the discovery, the recovery, of a French genius of whose
existence no one had any idea. As, at the beginning of the modern era,
the impulse to Italian humanism was given by the excavation of the
first antique sculptures from the soil which had so long concealed
them, so now the impulse to a regular revolution in French poetry was
given by the discovery and publication, in 1819, of André Chénier's
works. Scales fell, as it were, from men's eyes when, twenty-six years
after their author's death, these soulful Ionic poems were brought to
the light of day; all the literary idols of the Empire, Delille and all
the didactic descriptive poets, fell and were broken to pieces. A fresh
spring breeze from ancient Hellas, the true, the real Greece, blew
over France and fertilised the ground. The Alexandrine, which in the
eighteenth century had been so flaccid and feeble, in the seventeenth
so stiff and symmetrical, revealed mysterious harmonies, a delicate,
flexible force, an audacious, sensuous charm, and (now that the cæsura
no longer came inevitably after the sixth foot and the clause no longer
ended with the line) a versatility hitherto undreamt of. The ideas
and emotions were modern, but the artistic spirit which dictated the
expression given them was antique. In this combination lay concealed
the motive power that produced a whole literary development of the same
species as that to which Ronsard, by adopting a similar standpoint,
gave the impulse in the sixteenth century. In this new literature the
ancient and the modern spirit met; and their meeting-place was at a
great distance from their rendezvous in the days of Louis XIV. The
clear radiance of the name of André Chénier extinguished the light of
all the names that had hitherto shone brightly. A poet with the light
of genius on his brow and the martyr's aureole round his head, had
risen from the grave to lead the young generation into the promised
land of the new literature.