THE SYNTHESIS OF THE NOUVELLE ATHÈNES
Two dominant notes in my character--an original hatred of my native
country, and a brutal loathing of the religion I was brought up in. All the
aspects of my native country are violently disagreeable to me, and I cannot
think of the place I was born in without a sensation akin to nausea. These
feelings are inherent and inveterate in me. I am instinctively averse to my
own countrymen; they are at once remote and repulsive; but with Frenchmen I
am conscious of a sense of nearness; I am one with them in their ideas and
aspirations, and when I am with them, I am alive with a keen and
penetrating sense of intimacy. Shall I explain this by atavism? Was there a
French man or woman in my family some half dozen generations ago? I have
not inquired. The English I love, and with a love that is foolish--mad,
limitless; I love them better than the French, but I am not so near to
them. Dear, sweet Protestant England, the red tiles of the farmhouse, the
elms, the great hedgerows, and all the rich fields adorned with spreading
trees, and the weald and the wold, the very words are passionately
beautiful ... southern England, not the north--there is something Celtic in
the north,--southern England, with its quiet, steadfast faces;--a smock
frock is to me one of the most delightful things in the world; it is so
absolutely English. The villages clustered round the greens, the spires of
the churches pointing between the elm trees.... This is congenial to me;
and this is Protestantism. England is Protestantism, Protestantism is
England. Protestantism is strong, clean, and westernly, Catholicism is
eunuch-like, dirty, and Oriental.... Yes, Oriental; there is something even
Chinese about it. What made England great was Protestantism, and when she
ceases to be Protestant she will fall.... Look at the nations that have
clung to Catholicism, starving moonlighters and starving brigands. The
Protestant flag floats on every ocean breeze, the Catholic banner hangs
limp in the incense silence of the Vatican. Let us be Protestant, and
revere Cromwell.
* * * * *
_Garçon, un bock!_ I write to please myself, just as I order my
dinner; if my books sell I cannot help it--it is an accident.
But you live by writing.
Yes, but life is only an accident--art is eternal.
* * * * *
What I reproach Zola with is that he has no style; there is nothing you
won't find in Zola from Chateaubriand to the reporting in the
_Figaro_.
He seeks immortality in an exact description of a linendraper's shop; if
the shop conferred immortality it should be upon the linendraper who
created the shop, and not on the novelist who described it.
And his last novel "l'Oeuvre," how terribly spun out, and for a franc a
line in the "Gil Blas." Not a single new or even exact observation. And
that terrible phrase repeated over and over again--"La Conquête de Paris."
What does it mean? I never knew any one who thought of conquering
Paris;--no one ever spoke of conquering Paris except, perhaps, two or three
provincials.
* * * * *
You must have rules in poetry, if it is only for the pleasure of breaking
them, just as you must have women dressed, if it is only for the pleasure
of imagining them as Venuses.
* * * * *
Fancy, a banquet was given to Julien by his pupils! He made a speech in
favour of Lefevre, and hoped that every one there would vote for Lefevre.
Julien was very eloquent. He spoke of _Le grand art, le nu_, and
Lefevre's unswerving fidelity to _le nu_ ... elegance, refinement, an
echo of ancient Greece: and then,--what do you think? when he had exhausted
all the reasons why the medal of honour should be accorded to Lefevre, he
said, "I ask you to remember, gentlemen, that he has a wife and eight
children." Is it not monstrous?
* * * * *
But it is you who are monstrous, you who expect to fashion the whole world
in conformity with your aestheticisms ... a vain dream, and if realised it
would result in an impossible world. A wife and children are the basis of
existence, and it is folly to cry out because an appeal to such interests
as these meet with response ... it will be so till the end of time.
* * * * *
And these great interests that are to continue to the end of time began two
years ago, when your pictures were not praised in the _Figaro_ as much
as you thought they should be.
* * * * *
Marriage--what an abomination! Love--yes, but not marriage. Love cannot
exist in marriage, because love is an ideal; that is to say, something not
quite understood--transparencies, colour, light, a sense of the unreal. But
a wife--you know all about her--who her father was, who her mother was,
what she thinks of you and her opinion of the neighbours over the way.
Where, then, is the dream, the _au delà_? There is none. I say in
marriage an _au delà_ is impossible ... the endless duet of the marble
and the water, the enervation of burning odours, the baptismal whiteness of
women, light, ideal tissues, eyes strangely dark with kohl, names that
evoke palm trees and ruins, Spanish moonlight or maybe Persepolis. The
monosyllable which epitomises the ennui and the prose of our lives is heard
not, thought not there--only the nightingale-harmony of an eternal yes.
Freedom limitless; the Mahometan stands on the verge of the abyss, and the
spaces of perfume and colour extend and invite him with the whisper of a
sweet unending yes. The unknown, the unreal.... Thus love is possible,
there is a delusion, an _au delà_.
* * * * *
Good heavens! and the world still believes in education, in teaching people
the "grammar of art." Education is fatal to any one with a spark of
artistic feeling. Education should be confined to clerks, and even them it
drives to drink. Will the world learn that we never learn anything that we
did not know before? The artist, the poet, painter, musician, and novelist
go straight to the food they want, guided by an unerring and ineffable
instinct; to teach them is to destroy the nerve of the artistic instinct,
it is fatal. But above all in painting ... "correct drawing," "solid
painting." Is it impossible to teach people, to force it into their heads
that there is no such thing as correct drawing, and that if drawing were
correct it would be wrong? Solid painting; good heavens! Do they suppose
that there is one sort of painting that is better than all others, and that
there is a receipt for making it as for making chocolate! Art is not
mathematics, it is individuality. It does not matter how badly you paint,
so long as you don't paint badly like other people. Education destroys
individuality. That great studio of Julien's is a sphinx, and all the poor
folk that go there for artistic education are devoured. After two years
they all paint and draw alike, every one; that vile execution,--they call
it execution,--_la pâet, la peinture au premier coup_. I was over in
England last year, and I saw some portraits by a man called Richmond. They
were horrible, but I liked them because they weren't like painting. Stott
and Sargent are clever fellows enough; I like Stott the best. If they had
remained at home and hadn't been taught, they might have developed a
personal art, but the trail of the serpent is over all they do--that vile
French painting, _le morceau_, etc. Stott is getting over it by
degrees. He exhibited a nymph this year. I know what he meant; it was an
interesting intention. I liked his little landscapes better ... simplified
into nothing, into a couple of primitive tints, wonderful clearness, light.
But I doubt if he will find a public to understand all that.
* * * * *
Democratic art! Art is the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a few
thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that democracy! No!
what I am speaking of is modern democracy--the mass. The mass can only
appreciate simple and _naïve_ emotions, puerile prettiness, above all
conventionalities. See the Americans that come over here; what do they
admire? Is it Degas or Manet they admire? No, Bouguereau and Lefevre. What
was most admired at the International Exhibition?--The Dirty Boy. And if
the medal of honour had been decided by a _plébiscite_, the dirty boy
would have had an overwhelming majority. What is the literature of the
people? The idiotic stories of the _Petit Journal_. Don't talk of
Shakespeare, Molière, and the masters; they are accepted on the authority
of the centuries. If the people could understand _Hamlet_, the people
would not read the _Petit Journal_; if the people could understand
Michel Angelo, they would not look at our Bouguereau or your Bouguereau,
Sir F. Leighton. For the last hundred years we have been going rapidly
towards democracy, and what is the result? The destruction of the
handicrafts. That there are still good pictures painted and good poems
written proves nothing, there will always be found men to sacrifice their
lives for a picture or a poem. But the decorative arts which are executed
in collaboration, and depend for support on the general taste of a large
number, have ceased to exist. Explain that if you can. I'll give you five
thousand, ten thousand francs to buy a beautiful clock that is not a copy
and is not ancient, and you can't do it. Such a thing does not exist. Look
here; I was going up the staircase of the Louvre the other day. They were
putting up a mosaic; it was horrible; every one knows it is horrible. Well,
I asked who had given the order for this mosaic, and I could not find out;
no one knew. An order is passed from bureau to bureau, and no one is
responsible; and it will be always so in a republic, and the more
republican you are the worse it will be.
* * * * *
The world is dying of machinery; that is the great disease, that is the
plague that will sweep away and destroy civilisation; man will have to rise
against it sooner or later.... Capital, unpaid labour, wage-slaves, and all
the rest--stuff.... Look at these plates; they were painted by machinery;
they are abominable. Look at them. In old times plates were painted by the
hand, and the supply was necessarily limited to the demand, and a china in
which there was always something more or less pretty, was turned out; but
now thousands, millions of plates are made more than we want, and there is
a commercial crisis; the thing is inevitable. I say the great and the
reasonable revolution will be when mankind rises in revolt, and smashes the
machinery and restores the handicrafts.
* * * * *
Goncourt is not an artist, notwithstanding all his affectation and
outcries; he is not an artist. _Il me fait l'effet_ of an old woman
shrieking after immortality and striving to beat down some fragment of it
with a broom. Once it was a duet, now it is a solo. They wrote novels,
history, plays, they collected _bric-à-brac_--they wrote about their
_bric-à-brac_; they painted in water-colours, they etched--they wrote
about their water-colours and etchings; they have made a will settling that
the _bric-à-brac_ is to be sold at their death, and the proceeds
applied to founding a prize for the best essay or novel, I forget which it
is. They wrote about the prize they are going to found; they kept a diary,
they wrote down everything they heard, felt, or saw, _radotage de vieille
femme_; nothing must escape, not the slightest word; it might be that
very word that might confer on them immortality; everything they heard, or
said, must be of value, of inestimable value. A real artist does not
trouble himself about immortality, about everything he hears, feels, and
says; he treats ideas and sensations as so much clay wherewith to create.
And then the famous collaboration; how it was talked about, written about,
prayed about; and when Jules died, what a subject for talk for articles; it
all went into pot. Hugo's vanity was Titanic, Goncourt's is puerile.
And Daudet?
Oh, Daudet, _c'est de la bouillabaisse_.
* * * * *
Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people have
of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute inability
of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of artistic work.
Whistler's art is absolutely classical; he thinks of nature, but he does
not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and the best
of it is he says so. Oh, he knows it well enough! Any one who knows him
must have heard him say, "Painting is absolutely scientific; it is an exact
science." And his work is in accord with his theory; he risks nothing, all
is brought down, arranged, balanced, and made one,--a well-determined
mental conception, I admire his work; I am merely showing how he is
misunderstood, even by those who think they understand. Does he ever seek a
pose that is characteristic of the model, a pose that the model repeats
oftener than any other?--Never. He advances the foot, puts the hand on the
hip, etc., with a view to rendering his _idea_. Take his portrait of
Duret. Did he ever see Duret in dress clothes? Probably not. Did he ever
see Duret with a lady's opera cloak?--I am sure he never did. Is Duret in
the habit of going to the theatre with ladies? No; he is a
_littérateur_ who is always in men's society, rarely in ladies'. But
these facts mattered nothing to Whistler as they matter to Degas, or to
Manet. Whistler took Duret out of his environment, dressed him up, thought
out a scheme--in a word, painted his idea without concerning himself in the
least with the model. Mark you, I deny that I am urging any fault or flaw;
I am merely contending that Whistler's art is not modern art, but classic
art--yes, and severely classical, far more classical than Titian's or
Velasquez;--from an opposite pole as classical as Ingres. No Greek
dramatist ever sought the synthesis of things more uncompromisingly than
Whistler. And he is right. Art is not nature. Art is nature digested. Art
is a sublime excrement. Zola and Goncourt cannot, or will not understand
that the artistic stomach must be allowed to do its work in its own
mysterious fashion. If a man is really an artist he will remember what is
necessary, forget what is useless; but if he takes notes he will interrupt
his artistic digestion, and the result will be a lot of little touches,
inchoate and wanting in the elegant rhythm of the synthesis.
* * * * *
I am sick of synthetical art; we want observation direct and unreasoned.
What I reproach Millet with is that it is always the same thing, the same
peasant, the same _sabot_, the same sentiment. You must admit that it
is somewhat stereotyped.
* * * * *
What does that matter; what is more stereotyped than Japanese art? But that
does not prevent it from being always beautiful.
* * * * *
People talk of Manet's originality; that is just what I can't see. What he
has got, and what you can't take away from him, is a magnificent execution.
A piece of still life by Manet is the most wonderful thing in the world;
vividness of colour, breadth, simplicity, and directness of
touch--marvellous!
* * * * *
French translation is the only translation; in England you still continue
to translate poetry into poetry, instead of into prose. We used to do the
same, but we have long ago renounced such follies. Either of two things--if
the translator is a good poet, he substitutes his verse for that of the
original;--I don't want his verse, I want the original;--if he is a bad
poet, he gives us bad verse, which is intolerable. Where the original poet
put an effect of caesura, the translator puts an effect of rhyme; where the
original poet puts an effect of rhyme, the translator puts an effect of
caesura. Take Longfellow's "Dante." Does it give as good an idea of the
original as our prose translation? Is it as interesting reading? Take
Bayard Taylor's translation of "Goethe." Is it readable? Not to any one
with an ear for verse. Will any one say that Taylor's would be read if the
original did not exist. The fragment translated by Shelley is beautiful,
but then it is Shelley. Look at Swinburne's translations of Villon. They
are beautiful poems by Swinburne, that is all; he makes Villon speak of a
"splendid kissing mouth." Villon could not have done this unless he had
read Swinburne. "Heine," translated by James Thomson, is not different from
Thomson's original poems; "Heine," translated by Sir Theodore Martin, is
doggerel.
* * * * *
But in English blank verse you can translate quite as literally as you
could into prose?
* * * * *
I doubt it, but even so, the rhythm of the blank line would carry your mind
away from that of the original.
* * * * *
But if you don't know the original?
The rhythm of the original can be suggested in prose judiciously used; even
if it isn't, your mind is at least free, whereas the English rhythm must
destroy the sensation of something foreign. There is no translation except
a word-for-word translation. Baudelaire's translation of Poe, and Hugo's
translation of Shakespeare, are marvellous in this respect; a pun or joke
that is untranslatable is explained in a note.
* * * * *
But that is the way young ladies translate--word for word!
* * * * *
No; 'tis just what they don't do; they think they are translating word for
word, but they aren't. All the proper names, no matter how unpronounceable,
must be rigidly adhered to; you must never transpose versts into
kilometres, or roubles into francs;--I don't know what a verst is or what a
rouble is, but when I see the words I am in Russia. Every proverb must be
rendered literally, even if it doesn't make very good sense; if it doesn't
make sense at all, it must be explained in a note. For example, there is a
proverb in German: "_Quand le cheval est sellé il faut le monter_;" in
French there is a proverb: "_Quand le vin est tiré il faut le boire._"
Well, a translator who would translate _quand le cheval_, etc., by
_quand le vin_, etc., is an ass, and does not know his business. In
translation, only a strictly classical language should be used; no word of
slang, or even word of modern origin should be employed; the translator's
aim should be never to dissipate the illusion of an exotic. If I were
translating the "Assommoir" into English, I should strive after a strong,
flexible, but colourless language, something--what shall I say?--a sort of
a modern Addison.
* * * * *
What, don't you know the story about Mendés?--when _Chose_ wanted to
marry his sister? _Chose's_ mother, it appears, went to live with a
priest. The poor fellow was dreadfully cut up; he was brokenhearted; and he
went to Mendés, his heart swollen with grief, determined to make a clean
breast of it, let the worst come to the worst. After a great deal of
beating about the bush, and apologising, he got it out. You know Mendés,
you can see him smiling a little; and looking at _Chose_ with that
white cameo face of his he said, "_Avec quel meilleur homme voulez-vous
que votre mère se fit? vous n'avez donc, jeune homme, aucun sentiment
religieux._"
* * * * *
Victor Hugo, he is a painter on porcelain; his verse is mere decoration,
long tendrils and flowers; and the same thing over and over again.
* * * * *
How to be happy!--not to read Baudelaire and Verlaine, not to enter the
_Nouvelle Athènes_, unless perhaps to play dominoes like the
_bourgeois_ over there, not to do anything that would awake a too
intense consciousness of life,--to live in a sleepy country side, to have a
garden to work in, to have a wife and children, to chatter quietly every
evening over the details of existence. We must have the azaleas out
to-morrow and thoroughly cleansed, they are devoured by insects; the tame
rook has flown away; mother lost her prayer-book coming from church, she
thinks it was stolen. A good, honest, well-to-do peasant, who knows nothing
of politics, must be very nearly happy;--and to think there are people who
would educate, who would draw these people out of the calm satisfaction of
their instincts, and give them passions! The philanthropist is the Nero of
modern times.