IV

M. Albalat's analysis is, then, bad, because unscientific. Yet from

it he has derived a practical method of which it may be said that,

while incapable of forming an original writer--he is well aware of

this himself--it might possibly attenuate, not the mediocrity, but the

incoherence, of speeches and publications to which custom obliges us to

lend some attention. Besides, even were this manual still more useless

than I believe it to be, certain of its chapters would nevertheless

retain their expository and documentary interest. The detail is

excellent, as, for example, the pages where it is shown that the idea

is bound up in the form, and that to change the form is to modify the

idea. "It means nothing to say of a piece of writing that the substance

is good, but the form is bad." These are sound principles, though the

idea may subsist as a residue of sensation, independently of the words

and, above all, of a choice of words. But ideas stripped bare, in the

state of wandering larvae, have no interest whatever. It may even be

true that such ideas belong to everybody. Perhaps all ideas are common

property. But how differently one of them, wandering through the

world, awaiting its evocator, will be revealed according to the word

that summons it from the Shades. What would Bossuet's ideas be worth,

despoiled of their purple? They are the ideas of any ordinary student

of theology, and, uttered by him, such a farrago of stupid nonsense

would shock and shame those who had listened to it intoxicated in the

_Sermons_ and _Oraisons_. And the impression will be similar if, having

lent a charmed ear to Michelet's lyric paradoxes, we come across them

again in the miserable mouthings of some senator, or in the depressing

commentaries of the partisan press. This is the reason why the Latin

poets, including the greatest of them all, Virgil, cease to exist

when translated, all looking exactly alike in the painful and pompous

uniformity of a normal student's rhetoric. If Virgil had written in

the style of M. Pessonneaux, or of M. Benoist, he would be Benoist, he

would be Pessonneaux, and the monks would have scrapped his parchments

to substitute for his verses some good lease of a sure and lasting

interest.

Apropos of these evident truths, M. Albalat refutes Zola's opinion

that "it is the form which changes and passes the most quickly," and

that "immortality is gained by presenting living creatures." So far

as this second sentence can be interpreted at all, it would seem to

mean that what is called life, in art, is independent of form. But

perhaps this is even less clear? Perhaps it will seem to have no sense

whatever. Hippolytus, too, at the gates of Troezen, was "without form

and without colour" only he was dead. All that can be conceded to this

theory is that, if a beautiful and original work of art survives its

century and, what is more, the language in which it was written, it

is no longer admired except as a matter of imitation, in obedience to

the traditional injunction of the educators. Were the _Iliad_ to be

discovered to-day, beneath the ruins of Herculaneum, it would give us

merely archaeological sensations. It would interest us in precisely

the same degree as the _Chanson de Roland_; but a comparison of

the two poems would then reveal more clearly than at present their

correspondence to extremely different moments of civilization, since

one is written entirely in images (somewhat stiff, it is true) while

the other contains so few that they have been counted.

There is, moreover, no necessary relation between the merit of a

work and its duration. Yet, when a book has survived, the authors of

"analyses and extracts conforming to the requirements of the academic

programme" know very well how to prove its "inimitable" perfection,

and to resuscitate (for the brief time of a lecture) the mummy which

will return once more to its linen bands. The idea of glory must not

be confused with that of beauty. The former is entirely dependent upon

the revolutions of fashion and of taste. The second is absolute to the

extent of human sensations. The one is a matter of manners and customs;

the other is firmly rooted in the law.

The form passes, it is true, but it is hard to see just how it could

survive the matter which is its substance. If the beauty of a style

becomes effaced or falls to dust, it is because the language has

modified the aggregate of its molecules--words--as well as these

molecules themselves, and because this internal activity has not taken

place without swellings and disturbances. If Angelico's frescos have

"passed," it is not that time has rendered them less beautiful, but

that the humidity has swollen the cement where the painting has become

caked and coated. Languages swell and flake like cement; or rather,

they are like plane-trees, which can live only by constantly changing

their bark, and which, early each spring, shed on the moss at their

feet the names of lovers graven in their very flesh.

But what matters the future? What matters the approval of men who

will not be what we should make them, were we demiurges? What is this

glory enjoyed by man the moment he quits the realm of consciousness?

It is time we learned to live in the present moment, to make the best

of the passing hour, bad though it may be, and to leave to children

this concern for the future, which is an intellectual weakness--though

the naïveté of a man of genius. It is highly illogical to desire the

immortality of works, when affirming and desiring the mortality of the

soul. Dante's Virgil lived beyond life, his glory grown eternal. Of

this dazzling conception there is left us but a little vain illusion,

which we shall do well to extinguish entirely.

This does not mean, however, that we should not write for men as if we

were writing for angels, and thus realize, according to our calling and

our nature, the utmost of beauty, even though passing and perishable.

V

M. Albalat shows excellent judgment in suppressing the very amusing

distinctions made by the old manuals between the florid style and the

simple style, the sublime and the moderate. He deems justly that there

are but two sorts of style: the commonplace and the original. Were

it permitted to count the degrees from the mediocre to the bad, as

well as from the passable to the perfect, the scale of shades and of

colours would be long. It is so far from the _Légende de Saint-Julien

l'Hospitalier_ to a parliamentary discourse, that we really wonder if

it is the same language in both cases--if there are not two French

languages, and below them an infinite number of dialects almost

entirely independent of one another. Speaking of the political style,

M. Marty-Laveaux[5] thinks that the people, having remained faithful

in its speech to the traditional diction, grasps this very imperfectly

and in a general way only, as if it were a foreign language. He wrote

this twenty-seven years ago, but the newspapers, more widely circulated

at present, have scarcely modified popular habits. It is always safe

to estimate in France that, out of every three persons, there is

one who reads a bit of a paper now and then by chance, and another

who never reads at all. At Paris the people have certain notions

concerning style. They have a special predilection for violence and

wit. This explains the popularity, rather literary than political, of a

journalist like Rochefort, in whom the Parisians have for a long time

found once more their ancient ideal of a witty and wordy cleaver of

mountains.

Rochefort is, moreover, an original writer--one of those who should be

cited among the first to show that the substance is nothing without the

form. To be convinced of this, one has only to read a little further

than his own article in the paper which he edits. Yet we are perhaps

fooled by him. We have been, it appears, for fully half a century,

by Mérimée, from whom M. Albalat quotes a page as a specimen of the

hackneyed style. Going farther, he indulges in his favourite pastime;

he corrects Mérimée and juxtaposes the two texts for our inspection.

Here is a sample:

_Bien qu'elle ne fût pas Sensible au plaisir d'attirer

insensible_ au plaisir _ou sérieusement un homme aussi

à la vanité d'inspirer un léger, elle n'avait jamais pensé

sentiment sérieux_ à un homme que cette affection pût devenir

aussi léger _que l'était Max dangeureuse.

dans son opinion_, elle n'avait

jamais pensé que cette

affection pût devenir _un

jour_ dangeureuse _pour son

repos_.[6]

It cannot, at least, be denied that the severe professor's style is

economical, since it reduces the number of lines by nearly one-half.

Subjected to this treatment, poor Mérimée, already far from fertile,

would find himself the father of a few thin opuscules, symbolic

thenceforth of his legendary dryness. Having become the Justin of

all the Pompeius Troguses, Albalat places Lamartine himself upon the

easel to tone down, for example, _la finesse de sa peau rougissante

comme à quinze ans sous les regards_, to _sa fine peau de jeune fille

rougissante_. What butchery! The words stricken out by M. Albalat are

so far from being hackneyed that they would, on the contrary, correct

and counteract the commonplaceness of the improved sentence. This

surplusage conveys the exceedingly subtle observation of a man who has

made a close study of women's faces--a man more tender than sensual,

and touched by modesty rather than by carnal prestige. Good or bad,

style cannot be corrected. Style is inviolable.

M. Albalat gives some very amusing lists of _clichés_, or hackneyed

phrases; but this criticism, at times, lacks measure. I cannot accept

as _clichés_ "kindly warmth," "precocious perversity," "restrained

emotion," "retreating forehead," "abundant hair," or even "bitter

tears," for tears can be "bitter" and can be "sweet." It should be

understood, also, that the expression which exists as a _cliché_ in one

style, can occur as a renewed image in another. "Restrained emotion" is

no more ridiculous than "simulated emotion," while, as for "retreating

forehead," this is a scientific and quite accurate expression, which

one has only to be careful about employing in the proper place. It is

the same with the others. If such locutions were banished, literature

would become a kind of algebra and could no longer be understood

without the aid of long analytical operations. If the objection to them

is that they have been overworked, it would be necessary to forego

all words in common use as well as those devoid of mystery. But that

would be a delusion. The commonest words and most current expressions

can surprise us. Finally, the true _cliché_, as I have previously

explained, may be recognized by this, that, whereas the image which

it conveys, already faded, is halfway on the road to abstraction, it

is not yet sufficiently insignificant to pass unperceived and to take

its place among the signs which owe whatever life they may possess to

the will of the intelligence.[7] Very often, in the _cliché_, one of

the words has kept a concrete sense, and what makes us smile is less

its triteness than the coupling of a living word with one from which

the life has vanished. This can be seen clearly in such formulas as:

"in the bosom of the Academy," "devouring activity," "open his heart,"

"sadness was painted on his face," "break the monotony," "embrace

principles." However, there are _clichés_ in which all the words

seem alive--_une rougeur colora ses joues_; others in which all seem

dead--_il était au comble des ses vœux_. But this last was formed at a

time when the word _comble_ was thoroughly alive and quite concrete.

It is because it still contains the residue of a sensible image that

its union with _vœux_ displeases us. In the preceding example the word

colorer has become abstract, since the concrete verb expressing this

idea is _colorier_, and goes badly with _rougeur_ and joues. I do not

know just where a minute work on this part of the language, in which

the fermentation is still unfinished, would lead us; but no doubt in

the end it would be quite easy to demonstrate that, in the true notion

of the _cliché_, incoherence has its place by the side of triteness.

There would be matter in such a study for reasoned opinions that M.

Albalat might render fruitful for the practice of style.