Poetry is the Spirit of God--The Conservatoire and l'École
of Rome--Letter of counsel to my Son--Employment of my
time at Trouville--Madame de la Garenne--The Vendéan
Bonnechose--M. Beudin--I am pursued by a fish--What came of
it
If I had not just steeped my readers in literature, during the
preceding chapters, I should place a work before them which might not
perhaps be uninteresting to them. It would be the ancient tradition
of _Phèdre,_ which is to Euripides, for example, what the Spanish
romancer's is to Guilhem de Castro. Then I would show what Euripides
borrowed from tradition; then what, five hundred years later, the
_Roman_ Seneca borrowed from Euripides; then finally, what, sixteen
centuries later still, the _French_ Racine borrowed from both Euripides
and Seneca. At the same time I should show how the genius of each
nation and the emotional taste of each age brought about changes from
the original character of the subject. One last word. Amongst all
peoples, literature always begins with poetry; prose only comes later.
Orpheus, Homer, Hesiod--Herodotus, Plato, Aristotle.
"In the beginning, says Genesis, God created the heavens.
And the earth was waste and void; and darkness was upon the
face of the deep; and the _Spirit of God moved upon the face
of the waters._"
Poetry is the Spirit of God, or, rather, it is primeval poetic
substance, impersonal and common property; it floats in space like the
cosmic essence of which Humboldt speaks, a kind of luminous matter,
mother of old worlds, germ of worlds to come; indestructible, because
it is incessantly being renewed, each element faithfully giving back
to it that which it has borrowed.
Gradually, however, this matter settles round the great personalities,
as clouds settle round great mountains, and in like manner as clouds
dissolve into springs of living waters, spreading over plains,
satisfying bodily thirst, so does this cosmic element resolve itself
into poetry, hymns, songs and tragedies which satisfy the thirst of
the soul. The inference to be drawn from the foregoing analogy is,
that human genius creates and individual genius applies. Thus, when
a critic happened to accuse Shakespeare of having taken a scene or
phrase or idea from a contemporary writer, he said: "I have but rescued
a child from evil company to put it among better companions." Again,
Molière answered, even more naively still, when people made the same
reproach with regard to him: "I take my treasure wherever I find it!"
Now, Shakespeare and Molière were right: the man of genius--need I
point out that I mean the great masters, not myself? (I am well aware
that I shall not be of any importance until after my death!)--the
man of genius, I repeat, does not steal, he conquers: he makes a
colony, as it were, of the province he takes; he imposes his own laws
upon it and peoples it with his own subjects; he extends his golden
sceptre over it, and not a soul, seeing his fine kingdom, dares to
say to him (except, of course, the jealous, who are subject to no one
and will not recognise even genius as supreme ruler), "This portion
of territory does not belong to your patrimony." It is an absurd
notion that this arbitrary spirit should accord its protection to
letters: it means that it prohibits foreign literature and discourages
contemporary literature. In a country like France, which is the brain
of Europe, and whose language is spoken throughout the whole world,
owing to the equipoise of consonants and vowels, which disconcert
neither northern nor southern nations, there ought to be a universal
literature besides its national one. Everything of beauty that has
been produced in the whole world, from Æschylus down to Alfieri, from
_Sakountala_ to _Roméo_, from the romancero of the _Cid_ down to
Schiller's _Brigands_,--all ought to belong to France, if not by right
of inheritance, at least by right of conquest. Nothing that an entire
people has admired can be without value, and everything that has a
value ought to find its place in that vast casket entitled French
intelligence. It is on account of this false system that there is a
Conservatoire and an École at Rome. We have already, in connection with
the _mise-en-scène_ of Soulié's _Juliette_, said a few words about this
Conservatoire, which has the unique object of teaching young men to
scan Molière and to recite Racine's _Corneille._ We will now complete
the sketch begun. As a result of the invariable programme, adopted by
the government, every pupil of the Conservatoire, after three years'
study, leaves the rue Bergère incapable of appreciating any modern
or foreign literature; acquainted with the _songe_ of Athalie, the
_récit_ of Théramène, the monologue of Auguste, the scene between
Tartuffe and Elmire, that of the Misanthrope and Oronte, of Gros-René
and Marinette; he is completely ignorant that there existed at Athens
people of the names of Æschylus, Euripides, Sophocles and Aristophanes;
at Rome, Ennius, Plautus, Terence and Seneca; in England, Shakespeare,
Otway, Sheridan and Byron; in Germany, Goethe, Schiller, Uhland and
Kotzebue; in Spain, Guillem de Castro, Tirso de Molina, Calderon and
Lope de Vega; in Italy, Macchiavelli, Goldoni, Alfieri; that these
men have left a trail of light across twenty-four centuries and among
five different peoples, consisting of stars called _Orestes, Alcestis,
Œdipus at Colonus, The Knights, Aulularia, Eunuchus, Hippolytus,
Romeo and Juliet, Venice Preserved, The School for Scandal, Manfred,
Goetz von Berlichingen, Kabale und Liebe, les Pupilles, Menschenhass
und Reue, The Cid, Don Juan, le Chien du Jardinier, le Médecin de
son honneur, le Meilleur Alcade c'est le Roi, la Mandragora, le
Bourra bienfaisant, and Philippe II._ You will see that I only quote
one masterpiece by each of these men; also that the pupils of the
Conservatoire are utterly ignorant, behind the times and of no use on
any stage except those which play Molière, Racine and Corneille. And,
furthermore!... None of the great actors of our time have come from
the Conservatoire; neither Talma, nor Mars, Firmin, Potier, Vernet,
Bouffé, Rachel, Frédérick-Lemaître, Bocage, Dorval, Mélingue, Arnal,
Numa, Bressant, Déjazet, Rose Chéri, Duprez, Masset, nor any prominent
person whatsoever. What is to be said about a mill which goes round and
says tic-tac but does not grind?
Ah! well, the same vice exists in the École of Rome as in the
Conservatoire. If there is a changeable art it is that of painting.
Each artist sees a colour which is not that of his neighbour; one calls
it green, another yellow, another blue, another red: one inclines
towards the Flemish School, another to the Spanish and yet another to
the German. You would think they would send each student, according
as his bent might be, to study Rubens at Anvers, Murillo at Madrid,
Cornelius at Munich? Nothing of the sort! They all go to Rome to
study Raphael or Michael Angelo! Not a painter, not a single original
sculptor of our time was a pupil at Rome; neither Delacroix, nor
Rousseau, Diaz, Dupré, Cabot, Boulanger, Müller, Isabey, Brascassat,
Giraud, Barrye, Clésinger, Gavarni, Rosa Bonheur, nor ... upon my word,
I was tempted to say--nor anybody! But as the institution is absurd it
will still continue to exist. With half the money to spend they could
turn out twice as many actors, painters and sculptors; only, they would
turn them out capable instead of incapable.
We have travelled a long way from Trouville! What would you have me do?
Fancy has the wings of Icarus, the horses of Hippolytus: she goes as
far as she dare towards the sun, as near as she dare without dashing
herself against the rocks. Let us return to _Charles VII._, the first
cause of all this digression. Whatever may have been the cause; when I
returned to Mother Oseraie's inn, at nine o'clock on the evening of 7
July, I wrote the first lines of that scene. By the following morning,
the first hundred lines of the drama were done, and among them were the
thirty-six or thirty-eight relating Yaqoub's lion hunt. They should
rank among the few really good lines I have written. On the other
hand, in order that an exact idea may be formed of the value I put
upon my own poetry, I may be allowed to transcribe here a letter which
I wrote, fifteen or sixteen years ago, to my son, who asked my advice
on the poetry he ought to read and on the ancient and modern poets he
ought to study.
"MY DEAR BOY,--Your letter gave me great pleasure, as
every letter from you does which shows you are doing what
is right. You ask me the use of the Latin verses--which
you are forced to compose; they are not very important;
nevertheless, you learn metre by so doing, and that enables
you to scan properly and to understand the music of Virgil's
poetry and the freedom and ease of Horace. Again, this habit
of scanning will come in useful, if you ever have to talk
Latin in Hungary, where every peasant speaks it. Learn Greek
steadily and thoroughly, so as to be able to read Homer,
Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes in the
original, and you will then be able to learn modern Greek in
three months. Practise yourself well in the pronunciation
of German; later you will learn English and Italian. Then,
when you know all these, we will decide together what career
you shall follow. At the same time do not neglect drawing.
Tell Charlieu to give you not only Shakespeare but Dante
and Schiller as well. Do not place much reliance on the
verses they make you read, at school: professor's verses
are not worth a son! Study the Bible, as a religious book,
a history and a poem; Sacy's translation, although very
poor, is the best; look for the magnificent poetry contained
beneath all those ambiguous veilings and obscurities; in
Saul and Joseph, and especially in Job, a poem which is
one long human wail. Read Corneille; learn portions of him
by heart. Corneille is not always poetical, he is at times
pettifogging; but he always uses fine, picturesque and
concise language. Tell Charpentier, from me, to give you
André Chénier: he is the poet of solitude and the night,
akin to the nightingales. Charpentier lives in the rue de
Seine; you can get his address from Buloz. Tell Collin to
give you, through Hachette, four volumes entitled, _Rome
au Siècle d'Auguste_; it is a dry but learned work on
ancient times. Read all Hugo; read Lamartine, but only the
_Méditations_ and the _Harmonies._ Then write an essay
on the passages you think beautiful and those you think
bad; and show it to me on my return. Finally, always keep
yourself occupied, and rest yourself by the variety of
your occupations. Take care of your health _and be wise._
Good-bye, my dear lad. I told D to give you twenty francs
for a New Year's gift. ALEXANDRE DUMAS"
_P.S.--_Tell Collin that, as soon as my piece is received,
I will write to Buloz to arrange the business of his
introduction to the Théâtre-Français. Go to Tresse, at
the Palais Royal; get from him at my expense the poems of
Hugo, and his dramas, and Molière of the Panthéon; the
Lamartine I will give you on my return. Read Molière often,
much, always; with Saint-Simon and Madame Sévigné he is
the supreme type of the language of the time of Louis XIV.
Learn by heart certain passages of _Tartuffe_, the _Femmes
savantes_ and the _Misanthrope_: there have been and there
will be other masterpieces of style, but nothing will ever
exceed these in beauty. Learn by heart the monologue of
Charles Quint from _Hernani_, all _Marion Delorme_, the
monologue of Saint-Vallier and that of Triboulet in _Le Roi
s'amuse_, the speech of Angelo on Venice; in conclusion,
although I have few things to mention in comparison with
the works I have just pointed out to you, learn the recital
of Stella, in my _Caligula_; Yaqoub's lion-hunt, as well
as the whole scene between the Comte, the King and Agnes
Sorel, in the third act of _Charles VII._ Read de Vigny's
_Othello_ and _Roméo_; read de Musset without being carried
away by his great facility and his inaccuracy, which in him
might almost be reckoned a virtue, but which, in another,
would be a serious fault. These are the ancient and modern
writers I advise you to study. Later you shall pass on from
these to a wider range. Adieu, you see I am treating you as
though you were a grown-up youth and reasoning with you. You
will soon be fifteen, and what I have said is quite easy
to understand--your health, your health before all things:
health is the foundation of everything in your future, and
especially of talent.
"A. D."
I hope the sincerity and impartiality of my opinion upon others will be
believed, when it is seen with what sincerity and impartiality I speak
of myself.
From that day our life began to assume the uniformity and monotony
of the life of the waters. I bethought me that I ought to introduce
myself to the mayor, M. Guétier, a brave and excellent man, who I
believe played a somewhat active part in 1848, in the embarking of
King Louis-Philippe. He gave me free leave to hunt over the communal
marshes, which leave I took advantage of from that very day. The rising
sun shot through the window of my room, and, although the curtains were
drawn, it woke me in my bed. I opened my eyes, stretched out my hand
for my pencil and set to work. At ten o'clock, Mother Oseraie came and
told us breakfast was ready; at eleven, I took my gun and shot three
or four snipe; at two, I began work again until four; at four, I went
for a swim till five; and at half-past five dinner was ready for us;
from seven until nine o'clock we went for a walk on the shore; at nine
o'clock work was begun again and continued until eleven o'clock or
midnight. _Charles VII._ advanced at the rate of a hundred lines per
day. Undiscovered though Trouville was, nevertheless a few Normandy,
Vendéan or Breton bathers came there. Among these was a charming woman,
accompanied by her husband and her son; I remember nothing more about
her than her name and face: she was gracious and prepossessing in
expression, with a slightly aristocratic air; her name was Madame de la
Garenne. From the day of her arrival, directly she knew I was living at
the hotel, she began the preliminaries of making an acquaintanceship
by boldly lending me her album. I had just finished the great scene
in the third act between the Comte de Savoisy and Charles VII., and I
copied it out for her, newly born from my brain. A good sort of young
fellow had come with them, who concealed some degree of knowledge and
great determination under the retiring air of a country gentleman. He
was a sportsman, which similarity of tastes rapidly made us congenial
companions if not exactly friends. He was the unfortunate Bonnechose,
who was hung during the Vendéan insurrection of 1832. Whilst we were
walking and hunting in the marsh lands round Trouville, Madame la
Duchesse de Berry obtained permission from King Charles X. to make
an attempt on France, under the title of regent; she left Edinburgh,
went through Holland, stayed a day or two at Mayence, and the same at
Frankfort, crossed the frontier of Switzerland and entered Piedmont;
then, finally, under the name of the Comtesse de Sagana, she stopped
at Sestri, a small town a dozen leagues from Genoa, in the provinces
of King Charles-Albert. Thus, all unsuspected by Bonnechose, death
was postponed for one year! Meantime, the report began to spread in
Paris that a new seaport had been discovered between Honfleur and
la Délivrande. The result was that from time to time a venturesome
bather would arrive who would ask timidly, "Is there a village called
Trouville about here, and is that it with the belfry tower?" And I
would reply _yes_, to my great regret: for I foresaw the time when
Trouville would become another Dieppe or Boulogne or Ostend. I was not
mistaken. Alas! Trouville has now ten inns; and land which could be
bought at a hundred francs the arpent,[1] to-day fetches five francs
per foot. One day among these venturesome bathers, these wandering
tourists, these navigators without compass, there arrived a man of
twenty-eight to thirty years of age, who gave out that his name was
Beudin and that he was a banker. On the very evening of his arrival
I was bathing a long distance off in the sea, when about ten yards
from me, on the crest of a wave, I perceived a fish which realised the
dream of Marécot in the _Ours et le Pacha_--that is to say, it was a
huge enormous fish such as one scarcely ever sees, the like of which
many never have seen. Had I possessed a little more vanity, I might
have taken it for a dolphin and imagined it had taken me for another
Arion; but I simply took it for a fish of gigantic proportions, and,
I confess, its proximity disturbed me--I set to work to swim to the
shore as hard as I could. I was a good swimmer, in those days, but my
neighbour, the fish, could swim still better; accordingly, without any
apparent effort, it followed me, always keeping an equal distance from
me. Two or three times, feeling fatigued--mostly from want of breath--I
thought of taking to my feet, but I was afraid of becoming nervous if
I found too great a depth of water beneath me. I therefore continued
to swim until my knees ploughed into the sand. The other swimmers were
looking at me in astonishment; my fish was following me as though I
held it in leash. When I got to the point of touching the sand with my
knees I stood up. My fish made somersault after somersault and seemed
overjoyed with satisfaction. I turned round and looked at it more
closely and calmly. I saw it was a porpoise. Instantly I ran to Mother
Oseraie's house. I ran through the village just as I was, in my bathing
drawers. Although Mother Oseraie was not very impressionable, she was
not accustomed to receive travellers in so light a costume and she
uttered a cry.
"Don't mind me, Mother Oseraie," I said to her, "I have come to get my
gun."
"Good Lord!" she said, "are you going to hunt in the happy hunting
fields?"
Had I been in less of a hurry, I would have stopped and complimented
her on her wit; but I only thought of the porpoise. Upon the stairs
I met Madame de la Garenne; the staircase was very narrow and I drew
aside to let her pass. I thought of asking how her husband and son
were, but I reflected that the moment for holding a conversation was
ill-chosen. Madame de la Garenne passed by and I flew into my room and
seized hold of my carbine. The chamber-maid was making my bed.
"Ah! monsieur, instead of taking your gun hadn't you better take some
clothes?"
It seemed as though my costume inspired wit in all who saw me. I ran
full tilt down the road to the sea. My porpoise was still turning
somersaults. I went up to my waist in the water until I was about
fifty feet from him; I was afraid I might frighten him if I went any
nearer; besides, I was just at the right range. I took aim and fired.
I heard the dull sound of the ball penetrating the flesh. The porpoise
dived and disappeared. Next day, the fishermen found it dead among the
mussel-covered rocks. The bullet had entered a little below the eye and
gone through the head.
[1] TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.--An old French measure varying in different
provinces from 3 roods to 2 English acres.