in March 1830), his novel _Volupté_ (published in 1834), and the first
two volumes of _Port-Royal_, mark the emotional and somewhat pious
period in the life of their author. _Les Consolations_ is dedicated to
Victor Hugo in terms of hysterical admiration coupled with expressions
of Christian contrition, and Hugo's name occurs frequently in the book;
but it was in reality quite as much an offering to Madame Hugo, who
was the love of Sainte-Beuve's youth, and to whom the first poem and
several others are addressed. Of his relations with her he wrote too
openly in _Le Livre d'Amour_, a collection of poems which obviously
treat of realities, and which, though printed, was never published.[2]
And in the novel _Volupté_, too, we have no difficulty in recognising
its author's relations with Victor Hugo and his household in Amaury's
relations with the eminent politician, Monsieur de Couaën, and his wife.
Sainte-Beuve himself and many of his biographers have hinted that
the works which he wrote during the period of his enthusiasm for
Madame Hugo, all of which have a faint Catholic tinge or varnish,
were directly inspired by that lady, who was a devout Catholic in her
youth, though an ardent freethinker in later life, in the days when she
wrote her husband's life to his dictation. It has been asserted that
Sainte-Beuve, in his lover's ardour, went the length of accustoming
himself to speak in her language and even to share her feelings.
This explanation, however, I refuse to accept, as I feel convinced
that Sainte-Beuve in his old age deceived both himself and others
by speaking as he did of his youthful works. In a letter dated July
1863, he writes to Hortense Allart de Méritens, the authoress (Madame
Saman): "I tried a little Christian mythology in my youth; but it
has evaporated. It was for me the swan of Leda, a means of obtaining
access to the fair and producing tenderness in them. Youth has time
and employs every means." I object to this, to say the least of it,
frivolous manner of explaining away a phenomenon which is plainly
attributable to the natural attraction possessed by Catholicism for
a youthfully pliant and dependent character, an attraction in this
case strengthened by the general tendency of the period, which,
as usually happens, was becoming a fashionable tendency before
disappearing altogether. The period was the period of the revival of
philosophic spiritualism. In 1828 Sainte-Beuve attended the lectures
which Jouffroy, after his dismissal, gave in his own house; and he was
also, like almost all the young men of his day, strongly influenced by
Cousin. The fashionable philosophers converted him temporarily from
sensationalism. Romanticism was still regarded by many of the younger
men in the light in which it was originally regarded by Hugo, namely,
as a reaction against the pagan art and literature of the Classicists;
and one branch of the Romantic School was, from its eager desire for
the poetic revival of medievalism, so closely associated with the young
Catholic party which rallied round Lamennais and founded the newspaper
_L'Avenir_ (to which Sainte-Beuve contributed articles), that it was
not at all surprising that a few drops from the aspergill of the
Neo-Catholics lighted upon the young Romantic writers, and found their
way into their works. The part of _Volupté_ which describes conventual
life, was actually written by Lacordaire. The piety which prevails
throughout _Les Consolations_--and which annoyed many, amongst others
Beyle, a sincere admirer of Sainte-Beuve--and the incense fumes which
permeate the second part of _Volupté_, vividly recall corresponding
phenomena in German Romanticism.
In spite of its diffuseness and heaviness, _Volupté_ is a delicately
profound psychological study. It consists of confessions of the nature
of Rousseau's, but recorded in a style which is richer in imagery, more
saturated with colour, and more delicately shaded than Rousseau's; the
emotionally lyric tone reminds us of Lamartine's _Jocelyn_, a work
which treats the same kind of theme more chastely. Sainte-Beuve's book
presents us with the life-story of a pleasure-seeking, dissipated
youth, interspersed with many a profound, sagacious reflection. It
represents the sensual and the tender impulses of the soul as equally
destructive of the vigour and energy of youth. It treats mainly of
those enervating friendships with young women, especially with young
married women, in cultivating which clever young men often squander so
much time. The word "squander" seems to me to convey Sainte-Beuve's
meaning better than the word "lose"; for he himself reproaches a gifted
writer whose vigorous style is lacking in shades, with having worked
too hard and lived too lonely a life, with having injured himself by
too seldom seeking the society "which is the best of all, and leads one
to lose most time in the pleasantest way, the society of women."
Amaury, the hero of the book, is on intimate terms with three women.
One, who is the wife of his teacher and chief, he loves more than he
ventures to let her understand; the second, to whom he is betrothed,
he gives up for the sake of the first; and yet at the very same time
he allows himself to drift into an intimate friendship with the third,
whom he alternately adores passionately, and pains by his cruel
indifference--a friendship which neither satisfies him, nor saves
him from indulging in the lowest debauchery. Intelligent, ambitious,
and obstinately industrious as Amaury is, his intellectual vigour is
gradually paralysed by all these entanglements, and he at last feels
that there is no hope for him except in submission to the severest
discipline of the Roman Catholic Church. His account of his life as a
young man is given in the form of the confession of an ecclesiastic,
and the unction of parts of it is insufferable; the outbursts of
remorse, the moral and religious admonitions, the prayers and homilies,
which interrupt the flow of the tale, are tiresome; but the reader is
sufficiently compensated for them.
Two things make the book a remarkable one--in the first place, the
perfect understanding which it displays of the development process and
the diseases of the soul, an understanding which speaks of persistent
self-examination, and foreshadows the coming critic; in the second
place, the insight into feminine character, which reveals the feminine
element in Sainte-Beuve's own nature, and prognosticates his unique
success in the critical interpretation of the personalities of notable
women. I append a few specimens of his keen observation and impressive
reflections:--"How ungrateful youth is by nature! It throws away
with a contemptuous gesture everything that has not been given to it
by itself. It will only be bound by ties which it has formed itself,
demands friends of its own choice, for itself alone, being certain
that in its soul are treasures sufficient to buy hearts with, and life
sufficient to fructify them. Hence we see it bestow itself for life on
friends whom it did not know yesterday, and swear eternal devotion to
women who are almost strangers." "How contemptible human friendships
are! How they exclude one another! How they follow one another and
drive one another away like waves! Alas! this house to which you repair
every morning and every evening, which seems like your home and better
than your home, and for which you neglect everything that hitherto has
been sweet to you, this house, you may be quite certain, will some day
lose favour in your eyes; you will avoid it as a fatal place, and if by
chance your business leads you into its neighbourhood, you will take
a long round to avoid seeing it. The cleverer you are, the stronger
will be the feeling." Every one of a truthful disposition who has been
under the painful necessity of concealing his or her real feeling, will
understand the following sentence, and admire its brevity:--"I tried
to express what I really felt, while apparently expressing what I did
not feel--to be honest to myself and to mislead her." Here, again, is a
mournful little picture of life:--"A brigade is marching slowly along
a road. The enemy's troops, in ambush on both sides, make terrible
havoc with their rifles, and in the end there is an open fight. The
brigade succeeds in putting the enemy to flight, and when the general
arrives in the evening at the nearest town with the lucky survivors
of his force and the torn remnants of his flag, this is called a
triumph. When some one part of our plans, our ambition, our love, has
suffered less than the rest, we call this glory or success." And the
following is an apt little simile. It is of jealous love Sainte-Beuve
is writing;--"At this stage, when it desires absolute possession, when
it is irritated and embittered by the slightest opposition, nay, even
by the beloved object's affection for others, I can only compare it
with those Asiatic despots who, in order to clear the way to the throne
for themselves, assassinate all their nearest relations, even their own
brothers."
With _Les Pensées d'Août_ Sainte-Beuve closed his career as a poet. It
is the only one of his poetical ventures which was quite unsuccessful,
and the poems which the volume contains are certainly his coldest; yet
it seems to me, though my opinion is unsupported by any other critic,
that it is in this work he first displays marked originality. It is
realistic to an extent which is quite unique in the lyric poetry of
the Romantic School; no poet had yet ventured to make such free use of
the language and the surroundings of daily life. In the North, where a
poet even to-day would hardly have the courage to give an omnibus or a
railway platform a place in a lyric poem, such a work as _Les Pensées
d'Août_ would still almost be regarded in the light of a specimen of
the poetry of the future.
In it, as in _Les Poésies de Joseph Delorme_, we find several of the
characteristics of the English Lake School transplanted to French soil.
Sainte-Beuve, like the Englishmen, presents us with simple, sober
pictures of real life, and his style, like theirs, is founded upon
the conviction that there ought not to be any essential difference
between the language of prose and of metrical compositions. But in
Sainte-Beuve's poems we have, instead of the strange want of crispness
and point of the English poems, a genuinely French dramatic tension.
Each of them is a little drama developed within the limits of a short
lyric narrative.
Take, as a good specimen, the poem entitled _À Madame la Comtesse
de T_. The Countess to whom it is dedicated relates the story. She
is travelling by steamer from Cologne to Mainz. To see the scenery
better, she has seated herself in her carriage, which is in the
fore part of the ship, and she is consequently beside the steerage
passengers--servants, workmen and their wives, poor people of all
descriptions. One of her children exclaims: "Mother, there is Count
Paul!" She looks round and recognises the acquaintance named, a Polish
political refugee (the year is 1831). His features are refined and
his hands are white, but he is dressed in the old, shabby clothes
of a working-man. He is in the company of a family of plain English
workpeople. The husband is a coarse-looking man, who is always eating
or smoking; his wife is, at the first glance, insignificant; they have
a daughter with them, a pretty girl of about fourteen. The Countess's
first idea is that the young Pole has been attracted by the girl; then
she sees that it is the mother, whose eyes follow him wherever he goes.
And this mother is no longer a young woman, though she must, not so
long ago, have been very pretty; her figure, in spite of the poverty of
her dress, is elegant, and her hair is beautiful. With a solicitude,
which is not that of love, but of tenderness towards the being by
whom one is beloved, the young man puts her cloak round her and holds
the umbrella over her when it rains. He buys expensive grapes for her
little boys. The Countess divines that in the distant town where he
sought refuge he has found friends in this poor family. But he, like
herself, is to go on shore at Mainz, and his friends are to continue
their journey in the steamer.
"Montant sur le bateau, je suivis la détresse,
Le départ jusqu'au bout! Il baise avec tendresse
Les deux petits garçons, embrasse le mari,
Prend la main à la fille (et l'enfant a souri,
Maligne, curieuse, Ève déjà dans l'âme);
Il prend, il serre aussi les deux mains à la femme,
Évitant son regard.--C'est le dernier signal
De la cloche! Il s'élance! O le moment final!
Quand on ôte le pont et pendant qu'on démarre,
Quand le cable encor crie, ô minute barbare!
Au rivage mouvant, alors il fallait voir,
De ce groupe vers lui, gestes, coups de mouchoir;
Et les petits enfants, chez qui tout devient joie,
Couraient le long du bord d'où leur cri se renvoie.
Mais la femme, oh! la femme, immobile en son lieu,
Le bras levé, tenant un mouchoir rouge-bleu
Qu'elle n'agitait pas, je la vois là sans vie,
Digne que, par pitié, le Ciel la pétrifie!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Je pensai: Pauvre cœur, veuf d'insensés amours,
Que sera-ce demain, et ce soir, et toujours?
Mari commun, grossier, enfants sales, rebelles;
La misère; une fille aux couleurs déjà belles,
Et qui le sait tout bas, et dont l'œil peu clément
A, dans tout ce voyage, épié ton tourment:
Quel destin!--Lui pourtant, sur qui mon regard plonge,
Et qu'embarrasse aussi l'adieu qui se prolonge,
Descendit.--Nous voguions. En passant près de lui,
Une heure après: 'Monsieur, vous êtes aujourd'hui
Bien seul,' dis-je.--'Oui,' fit-il en paroles froissées,
'Depuis Londres, voilà six semaines passées,
J'ai voyagé toujours avec _ces braves gens_.'
L'accent hautain notait les mots plus indulgents.
--'Et les reverrez-vous bientôt?' osai-je dire.
--'Jamais!' répliqua-t-il d'un singulier sourire;
'Je ne les reverrai certainement jamais;
Je vais en Suisse; après, plus loin encor, je vais!'"
I would also call attention to a little poem which is a real work of
genius, _Monsieur Jean, Maître d'école_. It is the story of a poor
country schoolmaster, who, brought up in a foundling hospital, has
known nothing of his parents until he one day suddenly finds out who
his father is--no less a man than the famous Jean Jacques Rousseau,
who, as his readers know, deposited the children of his wife Theresa
(of whom he had no absolute certainty of being the father) in the Paris
foundling hospital. The schoolmaster has not read Rousseau, but he
begins now, and studies _Émile, La nouvelle Héloïse_, and all the other
works with the deepest interest. He is more intensely conscious than
other readers both of their fertile geniality and of the very slight
feeling of personal responsibility displayed by their author. At last
he can no longer resist the desire to make the acquaintance of his
parents.
"Il part donc, il accourt au Paris embrumé;
Il cherche au plein milieu, dans sa rue enfermé,
Celui qu'il veut ravir; il a trouvé l'allée,
Il monte;... à chaque pas son audace troublée
L'abandonnait--Faut-il redescendre?--Il entend,
Près d'une porte ouverte, et d'un cri mécontent,
Une voix qui gourmande et dont l'accent lésine:
C'était là! Le projet que son âme dessine
Se déconcerte; il entre, il essaie un propos.
Le vieillard écoutait sans tourner le dos,
Penché sur une table et tout à sa musique.
Le fils balbutiait; mais, avant qu'il s'explique,
D'un regard soupçonneux, sans nulle question,
Et comme saisissant sur le fait l'espion:
'Jeune homme, ce métier ne sied pas à ton âge;
Epargne un solitaire en son pauvre ménage;
Retourne d'où tu viens! ta rougeur te dément!
'Le jeune homme, muet, dans l'étourdissement,
S'enfuit, comme perdu sous ces mots de mystère,
Et se sentant deux fois répudié d'un père.
Et c'était là celui qu'il voudrait à genoux
Racheter devant Dieu, confesser devant tous!
C'était celle.... O douleur! impossible espérance!"
And he hastens back to the country to practise in life as a poor
schoolmaster some of the great precepts which are to be found in his
father's works, but are set at naught by his practice. The good seed
in Rousseau's _Émile_ germinates in the education which the children
entrusted to this schoolmaster receive.
_Les Pensées d'Août_ was published in 1837. Thenceforward Sainte-Beuve
was exclusively the critic.
[1] Some of the father's aphorisms are given as an appendix to Morand's
edition of Sainte-Beuve's letters to the Abbé Barbe.
[2] The most important poems of this collection are printed in Pons's
low-minded book, _Sainte-Beuve et ses inconnues_.
XXX
Sainte-Beuve
It was to follow his own peculiar, undoubted vocation that Sainte-Beuve
gave up the practice of the art of poetry. It was only the art he
forsook; for poetry, like an underground spring, communicated life and
freshness to his critical investigations of even the driest and most
serious subjects.
It is interesting to observe all the steps of the somewhat intricate
process by which the first great modern critic was prepared for the
exercise of his vocation. At the time when the Romantic circle was
broken up by the Revolution of July, Sainte-Beuve stood on such good
terms with the Legitimist leaders that Polignac was on the point
of offering him the post of secretary to Lamartine, who was then
about to proceed as ambassador to Greece. It was a post which the
young poet would have had no objection to accept from them; hence he
involuntarily cherished a certain feeling of resentment against the
new government, under which almost all his literary friends received
political preferment. The democratic element which lay latent in his
character (he gave up the _de_ which he was entitled to prefix to his
name), proclaimed itself; he became a species of interpreter of the
naïvely ardent socialistic philosopher, Pierre Leroux, and continued
to write in the _Globe_ even after it had passed from the hands of
the Romantic dogmatists into those of the Saint-Simonists, and was
appearing as their organ, with the motto: _À chacun selon sa vocation à
chaque vocation selon ses œuvres_. Like Heine, he had an enthusiastic
admiration for Père Enfantin; and in an article written in 1831 he
ranks the religious writings of Saint-Simon high above Lessing's
_Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts_.
Hardly had he separated from the Saint-Simonists, after the break-up
of their "family" in 1832, than he entered into relations with
Armand Carrel, the literary chief of Republican France. Although
Sainte-Beuve, in the article he wrote on Carrel in 1852, ignores his
own close connection with him, it is quite certain that he wrote in
Carrel's paper, the _National_, for three years, and on political as
well as literary subjects. He enrolled himself among the Republicans,
and made acquaintance with them, as he had previously done with the
Saint-Simonists, the Romanticists, and the Legitimists. And it was
about this same time that his friend, Ampère, procured him admission to
the circle of the Abbaye des Bois, where the venerable Madame Récamier
reigned and Chateaubriand was worshipped. After a quarrel with Carrel
on the subject of an article on Ballanche, which Carrel considered too
favourable to Legitimacy, Sainte-Beuve allied himself with Lamennais,
who had made overtures of friendship. What attracted him to Lamennais,
whose confidant and adviser he soon became, was partly that great
churchman's sincere and ardent devotion to the people, partly sympathy
with his main theory, that it was necessary, in order to keep the
steadily rising stream of democracy within its banks, to oppose to its
powerful, and to a certain extent irrefutable, principle one still more
powerful, namely, the religious principle, which addressed itself with
authority to the people, and with no less authority to their kings.
So strongly did Lamennais' attitude before his defection from the
Church of Rome appeal to Sainte-Beuve, that he in one of his articles
addressed a public, though qualified, reproach to his friend on the
subject of this defection, maintaining that a man who had so lately
striven to submit other men's minds to the authority of the church had
no right to figure as an anti-papal demagogue.
The years 1834-37 were the most painful of Sainte-Beuve's life.
In 1837 the sudden termination of his relations with Madame Hugo
simultaneously severed his connection with the Romantic circle and
obliterated his religious tendencies. He retired to Lausanne, where,
in 1837-38, he began the course of lectures which formed the basis of
his great work, _Port-Royal_. They had been planned and partly written
before; the fact that they were delivered to an audience which, though
Protestant, was orthodox, to a certain extent determined their tone.
It was also influenced by Sainte-Beuve's intimacy with the eminent
Swiss pastor, Vinet, one of the few men whom he all his life continued
to revere. Vinet's character and intellect were equally interesting
to Sainte-Beuve; he was a strictly and sincerely religious man, and
an exceedingly acute and subtle critic of French literature. His
representation and vindication of Christianity as _spirituality_ made
an impression on Sainte-Beuve's mind, for which theological problems
had a natural attraction! Vinet, seeing his friend such an attentive
listener, thought that he had converted him, but Sainte-Beuve left
Lausanne an unbeliever. After a tour in Italy he returned to Paris,
where he resumed his occupation of critic, writing better than he
had ever done before, and with this difference, that his criticism,
instead of being as heretofore polemical, was now interpretative and
instructive.
He became the highly esteemed literary critic of the _Revue des
deux Mondes_, an influential man of the world, a welcome guest in
aristocratic houses. He was regarded as a somewhat independent, but
refined and dignified author; his politics were, generally speaking,
those of the Right Centre. A lady, with whom he stood on terms of the
closest friendship, ensured his position in the social world. This was
Madame d'Arbouville, the authoress of some sad but pleasing stories;
she was the widow of a General, and niece of Comte Molé, the Prime
Minister. In winter Sainte-Beuve spent his leisure hours in her house
or the houses of her friends, and in summer he paid visits to her
relations in the country. He became Count Molé's friend and literary
adviser, taking the part of this cultured nobleman and adherent of the
Classic School against his own old Romantic allies, when these latter
showed themselves wanting in taste and tact.[1] Supported by all the
Monarchists and Classicists, he was elected a member of the French
Academy in 1844, without having to submit to any preliminary defeat.
(In one of the letters of Madame de Girardin, his clever enemy, a
bitter attack is made on him apropos of this election.)[2] Particular
piquancy was lent to the reception of the ex-Romanticist by the fact
that it fell to the lot of Victor Hugo, who had been rejected three
times before he was elected, to make the installation speech.
Sainte-Beuve, however, felt himself no more bound by his new social
ties than by any previous ones. The circle was broken up by the
Revolution of 1848; and as the victorious Republicans offended him
mortally by publishing a perfectly imbecile charge against him, he
felt more isolated than ever before.[3] He left France for the second
time, and, settling in Liège, gave there the course of lectures out of
which his book, _Chateaubriand et son Groupe littéraire_, was evolved,
lectures the tone of which must have been very offensive to the
Monarchical and Church party, and which point to the loss of cherished
illusions.