In the lyric poetry of Lamartine and Victor Hugo, as in the prose of
Chateaubriand, there was, in spite of the unconditioned assertion of
the principle of authority, a hidden or germinating antagonism to that
principle in _literature_, as demanding unqualified reverence for the
past, its writers, and its forms.
It has already been remarked that the great political and social
revolution in France did not affect literary _form_. As regarded this,
there was no necessity to re-establish the principle of authority;
it had never been overthrown. In no domain are the French less
revolutionary than in that of literature. The Academy is the one
institution of the country which has held its ground since the days of
Richelieu, and to-day it has the same name, the same aims, and even the
same number of members that it had then. In literature the principle
of authority was known by the name of the classic spirit, and the
Revolution, far from weakening the classic spirit, had strengthened
it. The Revolution itself is a classic French tragedy. Like all other
French tragedies, it clothes its heroes in Greek and Roman garb. In
their style and language they imitate the republicans of ancient Rome,
and it is significant that it is the most cultivated and literary
revolutionary party, the Girondists, who adopt the antique "thou" and
the antique designation of "citizen." The Jacobins are the direct
descendants of Corneille--the same toga style of oratory, the same
love of magnificent laconicism. With the same enthusiasm with which
Cromwell's soldiers metamorphosed themselves into ancient Hebrews,
adopting their names and singing their psalms, the Frenchmen of the
Revolution metamorphosed themselves into ancient Romans; and when
David, the Jacobin and intimate friend of Robespierre, left his seat in
the Legislative Assembly to paint the Horatii or the Brutus exhibited
in 1791, he simply took his associates as models; as painter he did not
need to go a step beyond the boundaries of his own period.
Just as French tragedy, when it came into being, had refused to build
upon the foundation of the history of its own country, had turned its
back on French tradition and laid its scenes in far-away Rome in the
far-off, dimly discerned past, now the Revolution, heedless of history,
heedless of the France of its own day, took far-off, un-historically
appreciated antiquity, with its republicans, evolved under such
different conditions, as the model to be exactly imitated. The modern
Gracchi and Horatii imitated the ancient. There is, as has often been
remarked, a Roman loftiness of style in Madame Roland's letters to
Buzot. The ladies of the Directory at times took Cornelia, and more
frequently Aspasia, as their model, even in dress. In the language of
some of Napoleon's earliest letters to Josephine the influence of Latin
models is to be traced; and even when he no longer stands in need of a
model, his style is as classic as his profile. His taste in literature
was also classic; his attachment to "les règles" and his admiration of
Corneille are matter of history. As long as he is the ruler of France,
even those authors who make an attempt at a species of opposition,
such as Raynouard, keep in the classic track. A comparison of Werner's
_Söhne des Thals_ (Sons of the Vale) with Raynouard's _Les Templiers_
will show how differently the same subject can be approached. The
German poet is as mysterious and incomprehensible, as extravagant and
fantastic in his treatment of the theme as the Frenchman with his
obligatory alexandrines, his king and his queen, his five acts and
his three unities, is well-regulated and law-abiding. Raynouard's
play represents a sort of lawsuit between church and state; the king
conducts his case in a most orderly manner; the Knights Templar conduct
theirs in an equally orderly manner, and are thereupon burnt in an
orderly manner--orderly, for we see as little as possible of the
execution and of what precedes it; we only hear of it all in one of
those long concluding narrations which were in vogue as far back as
the days of Euripides. And the metre is still the metre prescribed by
Boileau, that father of evil. The meaning of the clause, which is cut
in two by the cæsura, ends with the line, and the lines are as like
each other as one penny bun is like another penny bun. There is neither
harmony, nor animation, nor rhythm, nor rhyme in them, for _larmes_ and
_armes, époux_ and _coups, souffrir_ and _mourir_ can hardly be called
rhymes. They resemble molluscs, these lines; and one of the features
they have in common with molluscs is, that it is possible to cut them
in two without their showing any less sign of life because of it.
One consequence of this retention of the classic spirit is the exact
resemblance between the style of some of the most eminent prose authors
of this day and the style of their abhorred opponents, the philosophers
of the eighteenth century. We have the most conspicuous instance
of this in Joseph de Maistre. De Maistre's inability to comprehend
history, his want of the critical faculty and of any deep religious
feeling, his tendency to systematise, his argumentativeness, which
tempted him to draw hard and fast conclusions--all this in combination,
really deriving from the eighteenth century, found expression in the
style of that century. Bonalds cold, argumentative style, his craze
for reducing everything to formulas, his persuasion that he makes his
positions mathematically obvious, show that he too is a child of the
century which produced Condillac, and his work a product of the very
spirit which he combated. The only difference is, that such a man
as Condillac is as clear and consistent as Bonald is changeable and
self-contradictory.
A distinguishing feature in both classic prose and poetry is _the
domination of reason_. It is against this ruler that literature
makes its first revolt in Madame de Staël's emotional style and
Chateaubriand's richly coloured prose. Emotion and colour--these are
the two great exiles who now return from a long banishment. And,
curiously enough, it is not only his talents but his art theories
which make of Chateaubriand a rebel against the principle of authority
in literature, the very principle which it was his aim by means of
literature to uphold. For classical poetry from its earliest days
had sought its subjects and its inspiration in heathen antiquity
and heathen mythology, and he was calling upon his fellow authors
to open their own and their countrymen's eyes and ears to a poetry
diametrically opposed to this, namely, the poetry of Christianity--was,
in other words, _attacking literary tradition as the champion of
Christian tradition_. His artistic principles show him to be of the new
age, his political and social principles mark him as the man of the
past; he is two-faced; he gives poetical expression to all the modern
emotions, wearing a mask of unchangeable reverence for all the official
authorities of the past. It is more especially his style which makes
of him a Romanticist before the days of Romanticism. Hence, when first
Lamartine and then Hugo follow his example, forsake heathen, and seek
their themes in Christian mythology, society is for a time at a loss
to know whether it is to recognise a conservative or a revolutionary
spirit in these attempts to uphold the sacredness of religion in new
ways. But by degrees the germ of revolt against the principle of
authority latent in the new literary standpoint develops to such an
extent that the countenance of the new school is changed.
It is interesting to trace the stages of this development in Victor
Hugo's different prefaces to his _Odes_. In the first (of 1822), which
consists of only a few lines, the young poet asserts that loyalty
and Christian faith are the standards of true poetry. The nineteenth
century, he declares, has first revealed to the world the truth that
poetry _does not depend upon the form given to ideas, but upon the
ideas themselves_. In his preface to the second edition (published
the same year) he further observes that the poet's task now is to
substitute for the faded, false colours of the heathen mythology those
new and true ones which belong to the Christian conception of the
origin of the universe. The ode ought now to speak the severe, the
consolatory, the pious language of which an old society, quitting with
trembling steps "the revels of atheism and anarchy" stands in such need.
He earnestly hopes that his readers will not think that he is so
conceited as "to wish to strike out a new path or create a new literary
style." In the preface of 1824 the same assurances are repeated, in
very characteristic words; but we feel that the young poet is now
the object of suspiciously observant criticism, and that the name
"Romanticist," as synonymous with transgressor of the laws of classic
art, is one which men will be very apt to apply to him. He is eager to
prove his literary orthodoxy. What is needed, he says, is not novelty,
but truth. It is this need which he aims at supplying. Taste, "which is
neither more nor less than _authority_ in literature," shows him that
works which are true as regards their matter ought also to be true as
regards their style. This leads to the demand for "local colouring," a
demand which the classic authors can hardly be said to have supplied.
But it is an understood matter that the laws imposed upon the language
by Boileau are to be _religiously_ observed. Of him Hugo writes:
"Boileau shares with Racine the unique merit of having given its
permanent form to the French language; this in itself is a sufficient
proof that he too possessed _creative genius_!" Boileau a creative
genius! With what derisive laughter will Victor Hugo, ere many years
have passed, receive such an assertion!
Of the poet Hugo writes that it is his duty to lead the vanguard of the
people like a pillar of fire, lead them back to the great principles
of _order_, morality, and honour. The flaw in the literature of the
century of Louis "the Great" is that its authors invoke the gods of
heathendom instead of the God of Christianity. If in this matter,
Hugo naïvely remarks, they had acted differently, the "triumph of the
sophistical writings" of the eighteenth century would have been much
impeded. What might not have been the fate of "philosophy," if the
cause of God had been championed by genius instead of by virtue alone!
He vigorously objects to being called romantic. He affirms that he
"has not the slightest idea of what is meant by classic and romantic
literature." Refusing to be influenced by all the nonsense written
on the subject at that time, he in the following sensible utterance
declares the distinction to be an empty and meaningless one: "It is
an acknowledged fact that every literature receives an impression,
in some cases strong, in some weak, from the climate, customs, and
history of the nation of which it is the expression. David, Homer,
Virgil, Tasso, Milton, Corneille, men each one of whom represents a
literature and a nation, have nothing in common but genius." It is
impossible, therefore, to divide them into classical and romantic
poets. He combats the assertion that the literary revival (evidently
referring to Chateaubriand) is an outcome of the political revolution.
"The literature of to-day may to a certain extent be the result of the
Revolution, without on that account being its expression. Revolutionary
society had its literature, _ugly and foolish as itself_. That society
and that literature are dead and will never come to life again. _Order_
has revived in all the institutions of society; it is also reviving in
literature.... Just as the Revolution originated in literature, so the
literature of our day is _the anticipatory expression of the pious and
loyal society_ which will most certainly arise from those ruins."
Hugo was mistaken; the literature in question was the exact expression
of the intellectual mood of its day, and the attempts at reform which
aroused such anxiety were really forerunners of a literary revolution.
For they destroyed faith in authority as authority--in this particular
case faith in Boileau. From the moment when it was discovered that
there were spots even in this sun, it was not possible to confine doubt
to the few points where it had first modestly and cautiously insinuated
itself. Literary tradition was a principle; it had to be either
accepted or rejected.
In reading Hugo's second last preface to the _Odes_ (1826) we feel
that his thoughts, always turning upon _order_, that favourite idea of
the day, are about to drive him from the shore of literature out on
to the open sea. He has discovered that order is in reality something
different from the regularity which is attained by discipline and
coercion. Employing a simile which occurred naturally to a youth
brought up in the neighbourhood of Versailles, with Chateaubriand's
descriptions of the luxuriant landscape of North America as his
leisure reading, he compares the gardens of Versailles and their
carefully clipped, symmetrically trimmed trees with a forest in the
New World, and exclaims: "We will not ask, Where here is splendour,
where grandeur, or beauty? but simply, Where is _order_ and where
_disorder?_" He recognises now that regularity concerns only the
outward form of things, but that order lies at their very foundation,
and is a result of the skilful arrangement of their elements. "A
writer is not classic," he says, "because he _slavishly_ treads in the
footprints which others have left on the road."
We have thus followed Hugo step by step along the path which leads him
towards the final breach with the literary principle of authority. One
year more, and he throws off the yoke, assumes the leadership of the
Romantic School in France, and in its first manifesto, the preface
to _Cromwell_ (October, 1827), declares that there is a tyranny of
the past in literature exactly as there is in politics, and that this
tyranny lies like a nightmare on the breast of the young generation:
"The train of the eighteenth century still stretches into ours, but
should not we young men who have seen Bonaparte be too proud to bear
such a train?" Observe that he now, in direct antagonism to the spirit
of the Restoration, invokes Napoleon as a species of liberator. And he
writes of "that rouged, powdered and patched poetry, that literature of
hoops and furbelows." He is aiming his first blow at Boileau.
New as Lamartine had seemed, both in style and matter, he had retained
many of the classic circumlocutions. In spite of his aversion to the
lyre, he often named it in his poetry, and in choosing his subjects he
preferred the abstract to the concrete.
Victor Hugo was as yet almost equally cautious. "Granted that it is
advantageous and at times necessary," he writes, "to renew a few
worn-out expressions, to replace a few old phrases, and perhaps even to
endeavour to improve our verse by increasing the sonority of its metre
and the purity of its rhyme, it cannot be too often repeated that this
must be the limit of all attempts at perfecting it. Every reform at
variance with the natural accent and genius of our mother-tongue must
be regarded as an attack on the first principles of taste."
Neither alteration of the rhythm, nor variability in the position
of the cæsura, nor the continuation of the phrase from one line to
another (changes all of which he afterwards vindicated), does he as yet
consider permissible. In the _Odes_ he conforms to the old poetic court
fashion (he does not, for instance, say _Convention_, but _Senate_,
does not say _shawl_, but _drapery_ or _treasure of Kashmir_), only
making a few cautious attempts at a change of metre, with the object of
rendering the ode style less stiff and heavy.
That court fashion was of the following nature. A small collection had
been made of refined expressions, of choice words--the elect, as it
were, of language--which alone had admission into poetry. Poets did not
say sword, but brand, did not say soldier, but warrior, and they never
mentioned such things as guns or knives; just as Danish poetry for long
acknowledged only roses, lilies, violets, woodruff, and at the outside
a dozen other flowers as representatives of the whole floral world.
The consequence of this was that the supply of words was extremely
limited, that there were only a few hundred pairs of noble rhymes,
and that the same expressions, which had to be constantly repeated,
brought with them exactly the same thoughts and feelings. The poetic
oratory of those days was very much on a par with the pulpit oratory
of our own. Sublime was the adjective applied to the dignified flow of
words in which things were spoken of as far as possible without ever
calling them by their real names--and, be it observed, only things that
reminded men as little as possible of their earthly nature, of the
material side of their being. One result of this was that the direct,
unambiguous mention of common things in any work which laid claim to
the privilege of classic style at once produced a comic effect. When
Lebrun's _Cid_ was acted, the word _chambre_ called forth a murmur of
disapproval. It also explains how the attempt made about the time of
the earliest experiments in the Romantic style to introduce Shakespeare
into France created such consternation. Every one knows that _Othello_,
acted in the translation of Alfred de Vigny at the Odéon--that is to
say to an audience of students, the least prejudiced and least prudish
of Parisian audiences--was hissed because of the occurrence in it of
the word "pocket-handkerchief."
Count Alfred de Vigny, who was born in 1797, belonged to a family of
ancient lineage, and was brought up a loyal adherent of monarchy by
the grace of God. In 1814 he received a lieutenant's commission in the
army of Louis XVIII, and he quickly developed into one of the most
attractive and most independent literary characters of the day. In
several branches of literature it was he who took the first step in
the new direction, Hugo who followed. He wrote a historical novel in
the style of Sir Walter Scott before Hugo did (_Cinq-Mars_, 1826), had
a play acted before Hugo (the rhymed translation of _Othello_, 1829),
the style of which created a great sensation, and he forestalled Hugo
in introducing freedom and flexibility into lyric poetry. He was the
Columbus of the new movement, Hugo the Amerigo Vespucci who gave the
newly discovered continent its name.
It is not a matter for surprise that, at a time when authority was
upheld on every side, Hugo should have begun by accommodating himself
to existing literary rules, nay, by actually believing in them as
real laws of poetry and language. But presently he commenced to
experiment with them a little, to shake them a little, to doubt them
a little, to interpret them in his own way, doing it all with the
profoundest reverence, until it became no longer possible for him
to observe them, upon which he overthrew them. In one of his poems
(_Les Contemplations_, i., vii.) he gives a witty description of the
revolution which he ended by making:
Je suis ce monstre énorme,
Je suis le démagogue horrible et débordé
Et le dévastateur du vieil ABCD;
Causons,
Quand je sortis du collège, du thème,
Des vers latins, farouche, espèce d'enfant blême
Et grave, au front penchant, aux membres appauvris;
Quand, tâchant de comprendre et de juger, j'ouvris
Les yeux sur la nature et sur Part, l'idiome
Peuple et noblesse, était l'image du royaume;
La poésie était la monarchie; un mot
Était un duc ou pair ou n'était qu'un grimaud;
Les syllabes, pas plus que Paris et que Londres,
Ne se mêlaient; ainsi marchent sans se confondre
Piétons et cavaliers traversant le pont Neuf;
La langue était l'État avant quatre-vingt-neuf;
Les mots, bien ou mal nés, vivaient parqués en castes;
Les uns, nobles, hantant les Phèdres, les Jocastes,
Les Méropes, ayant le décorum pour loi,
Et montant à Versaille aux carosses du roi;
Les autres, tas de gueux, drôles patibulaires,
Habitant les patois, quelques-uns aux galères
Dans l'argot; dévoués à tous les genres bas,
Déchirés en haillons dans les halles; sans bas,
Sans perruque; créés pour la prose et la farce.
* * * * *
Alors, brigand, je vins; je m'écriai: Pourquoi
Ceux-ci toujours devant, ceux-lâ toujours derrière?
Et sur l'Académie, aïeule et douairière,
Cachant sous ses jupons les tropes effarés,
Et sur les bataillons d'alexandrins carrés
Je fis souffler un vent révolutionnaire.
Je mis un bonnet rouge au vieux dictionnaire.
Plus de mot sénateur! plus de mot roturier!
Je fis une tempête au fond de l'encrier,
Et je mêlai parmi les ombres débordées,
Au peuple noir des mots l'essaim blanc des idées;
Et je dis; Pas de mot où l'idée au vol pur
Ne puisse se poser, tout humide d'azur!
But Hugo, even when he doubts, has not yet reached this stage. He
still styles his poetry "cavalier" poetry, stamping himself by a word
which recalls the restoration of royalty in England as the poet of the
restoration of royalty in France. The rock on which he splits is the
impossibility of harmonising religious and literary tradition. This is
especially felt in the ballads. Hugo revives memories of the Middle
Ages and feudalism. What could be more royalist? But the literature of
the age of Louis XIV. had utterly rejected the Middle Ages and their
memories--so what could be less classical? One of the ballads (_La
ronde du sabbat_) describes a witches' dance, another treats of sylphs
and fairies; the motley superstitions of the old popular legends are
revived--Romanticism is not far off. And the tone is anything but
classic; in France, as in Germany and Denmark, the style of the popular
ballad supplants the dignified, literary style. There is, moreover,
in these poems a new patriotic element (_Le géant, Le pas d'armes du
roi Jean_) which turns from classic antiquity to the France of the
far-off past. Of this national movement, too, Chateaubriand had been
the leader; his description of the ancient Gauls in _Les Martyrs_ was
the first attempt in the new direction; it made a powerful impression
(according to his own confession) on such a man as Augustin Thierry,
the future author of _The Age of the Merovingians_; we may safely say
that it gave the impulse generally to a more graphic and animated
historical style. But even this patriotic element was new and foreign
to French poetry, was consequently a rebellion against tradition. The
revival of old French subjects was accompanied by a revival of old
French metres. Here also Chateaubriand led the way with that charming
exile's song beginning with the beautiful lines:
Combien j'ai douce souvenance
Du joli lieu de ma naissance!
Ma sœur, qu'ils étaient beaux, ces jours
De France!
a song which was sung on the little rocky island in the Bay of St.
Malo as he was laid to rest in the grave which he had hewn for himself
there. And the tones of the days of Ronsard and the Pleiades are
re-echoed simultaneously by Alfred de Vigny, the brothers Deschamps,
Sainte-Beuve, and Hugo.
In May 1828 Alfred de Vigny published, in _Madame de Soubise_, lines
like:
La voyez-vous croître,
La tour du vieux cloître?
Et le grand mur noir
Du royal manoir?
Entrons dans le Louvre.
Vous tremblez, je croi,
Au son du beffroi?
La fenêtre s'ouvre,
Saluez le roi.
In June he is followed and surpassed by Hugo in the admirable lines in
_Le pas d'armes du roi Jean_:
Cette ville
Aux longs cris,
Qui profile
Son front gris.
Des toits frêles,
Cent tourelles,
Clochers grêles,
C'est Paris!
The metre, the picturesqueness, the melodiousness, and the concision
which distinguish such verse were something quite new in French poetry.
It seemed at first as if the principle of authority had received new
and powerful support from the re-engrafting of the traditions of
Christianity and monarchy upon literature. But it soon became evident
that religious and literary tradition could not thrive together.
The former at first took refuge under the wings, in the very bosom
of the latter, but the inherent antagonism soon revealed itself,
and the principle of authority in its literary shape was set aside,
nay, overthrown by the new spirit, which had all the appearance of
sincerely desiring to uphold the practical, that is to say, the
politico-religious principle of authority.
We have now to see how the practical principle of authority came to
share the fate of the theoretical, the literary principle.[1]
[1] Victor Hugo, _Odes et Ballades; Cromwell_; A. de Vigny, _Poésies
complètes_; Émile Deschamps, _Poésies_; Antony Deschamps, _Poésies_;
Raynouard, _Les Templiers_.