Yet M. Albalat asks how it is possible to be personal and original.
His answer is not very clear. He counsels hard work and concludes that
originality implies an incessant effort. This is a very regrettable
illusion. Secondary qualities would, doubtless, be easier to acquire,
but is concision, for example, an absolute quality? Are Rabelais
and Victor Hugo, who were great accumulators of words, to be blamed
because M. de Pontmartin was also in the habit of stringing together
all the words that came into his head, and of heaping up as many as a
dozen or fifteen epithets in a single sentence? The examples given by
Albalat are very amusing; but if Gargantua had not played as many as
two hundred and sixteen different and agreeable games under the eye of
Ponocrates, we should feel very sorry, though "the great rules of the
game are eternal."
Concision is sometimes the merit of dull imaginations. Harmony is a
rarer and more decisive quality. There is no comment to be made on
what Albalat says in this connection, unless it be that he believes a
trifle too much in the necessary relations between the lightness or
heaviness of a word, for example, and the idea which it expresses.
This is an illusion which springs from our habits of thought, and
an analysis of the sounds destroys it completely. It is not merely,
says Villemain, imitation of the Greek or the Latin _fremere_ that
has given us the word _frémir_; it is also the relation of its sound
to the emotion expressed. _Horreur, terreur, doux, suave, rugir,
soupirer, pesant, léger_, come to us not only from Latin, but from an
intimate sense which has recognized and adopted them as analogous to
the impression produced by the object.[8] If Villemain, whose opinion
M. Albalat accepted, had been better versed in linguistics, he would
doubtless have invoked the theory of roots, which at one time gave
to his nonsense an appearance of scientific force. As it stands, the
celebrated orator's brief paragraph would afford very agreeable matter
for discussion. It is quite evident that if _suave_ and _suaire_ invoke
impressions generally remote from each other, this is not because of
the quality of their sound. In English, _sweet_ and _sweat_ are words
which resemble each other. _Doux_ is not more _doux_ than _toux_ and
the other monosyllables of the same tone. Is _rugir_ more violent than
_rougir_ or _vagir_? _Léger_ is the contraction of a Latin word of five
syllables, _leviarium_. If _légère_ carries with it its own meaning,
does _mégère_ likewise? _Pesant_ is neither more nor less heavy than
_pensant_, the two forms being, moreover, doublets of a single Latin
original, pensare. As for _lourd_, this is _luridus_, which meant many
things: yellow, wild, savage, strange, peasant, heavy--such, doubtless,
is its genealogy. _Lourd_ is no more heavy than _fauve_ is cruel. Think
also of _mauve_ and _velours_. If the English _thin_ means the same as
the French _mince_, how does it happen that the idea of its opposite,
_épais_, is expressed by _thick_? Words are negative sounds which the
mind charges with whatever sense it pleases. There are coincidences,
chance agreements, between certain sounds and certain ideas. There are
_frémir, frayeur, froid, frileux, frisson_. Yes; but there are also:
_frein, frère, frêle, frêne, fret, frime_, and twenty other analogous
sonorities, each of which is provided with a very different meaning.
M. Albalat is more successful in the balance of the two chapters where
he treats successively word harmony and sentence harmony. He is right
in calling the Goncourts' style _un style désécrit_. This is still more
strikingly true applied to Loti, in whose work there are no longer any
sentences. His pages are thickets of phrases. The tree has been felled,
its branches have been lopped; there is nothing left but to make
faggots of them.
Beginning with the ninth lesson, _L'Art d'écrire_ becomes still more
didactic, and we encounter Invention, Disposition and Elocution.
I should find it hard to explain just how M. Albalat succeeds in
separating these three phases of composition, which are really one.
The _art of developing a subject_ has been refused me by Providence.
I leave all that to the unconscious, nor do I know anything more of
the _art of invention_. I believe that an author invents by reversing
the method of Newton--that is, without ever thinking about it, while,
as for elocution, I should hesitate to trust myself to the method of
recasting. One does not recast, one remakes, and it is so tedious to
do the same thing twice, that I approve of those who throw the stone
at the first turn of the sling. But here is what proves the inanity
of literary counsels: Théophile Gautier wrote the complicated pages
of _Capitaine Fracasse_ at odd moments on a printer's table, among
half-opened bundles of papers, in the stench of oil and ink, and it is
said that Buffon recopied eighteen times the _Époques de la Nature_.[9]
This divergence is of no importance, since, as M. Albalat should have
said, there are writers who make their corrections mentally, putting
on paper only the swift or sluggish product of the unconscious, while
there are others who need to see exteriorized what they have written,
and to see it more than once, in order to correct it--that is, to
understand it. Yet, even in the case of mental corrections, exterior
revision is often profitable, provided, as Condillac puts it, the
writer knows how to stop, to bring to a conclusion.[10] But too often
the demon of Betterment has tormented and sterilized intelligence. It
is also true that it is a great misfortune to lack self-criticism. Who
will dare to choose between the writer who does not know what he is
doing, and the one who, endowed with a double nature, can watch himself
as he works? There is Verlaine and there is Mallarmé. One must follow
the bent of one's own genius.
M. Albalat excels in definitions. "Description is the animated
depiction of objects." He means that, in order to describe, a writer
must, like a painter, place himself before the landscape, whether
this be real or imaginary. Judging by the analysis that he makes of a
page of _Télémaque_, it seems clear that Fénelon was only moderately
endowed with visual imagination, and more moderately still with
the gift of words. In the first twenty lines of the description of
Calypso's grotto, the word _doux_ occurs three times, and the verb
_former_ four. This has, indeed, become for us the very type of the
inexpressive style, but I persist in believing that it once had
its freshness and grace, and that the appeal which it made when it
appeared was not unjustified. We smile at this opulence of gilt paper
and painted flowers--the ideal of an archbishop who had remained a
theological student--and forget that no one had described nature since
_Astrée_. Those sweet oranges, those syrups diluted with spring-water,
were refreshments fit for Paradise. It would be cruel to compare
Fénelon, not with Homer, but even with the Homer of Leconte de Lisle.
Translations too well done--those that may be said to possess literary
literalness--have in fact the inevitable result of transforming into
concrete, living images everything which had become abstract in the
original. Did λευκοβραχίων mean one who had white arms, or was it
merely a worn-out epithet? Did λευκάκανθα suggest an image such as
_blanche épine_, or a neutral idea like aubépine, which has lost its
representative value? We cannot tell; but, judging dead languages by
the living, we must suppose that most of the Homeric epithets had
already reached the stage of abstraction in Homer's own time.[11]
It is possible that foreigners may find in a work as outworn for us
as _Télémaque_, the same pleasure which we derive from the _Iliad_
done in bas-relief by Leconte de Lisle. _Mille fleurs naissantes
émaillaient les tapis verts_ is a _cliché_ only when read for the
hundredth time. New, the image would be ingenious and pictorial. Poe's
poems, translated by Mallarmé, acquired a life at once mysterious and
precise which they do not possess to the same degree in the original,
and, from Tennyson's Mariana, agreeable verse full of commonplaces and
padding, grey in tone, the same poet, by substituting the concrete
for the abstract, made a fresco of lovely autumnal colouring. I offer
these remarks merely as a preface to a theory of translation. They
will suffice here to indicate that, where it is a question of style,
comparison should be made only between texts in the same language and
belonging to the same period.
It is very difficult, after fifty years, to appreciate the real
originality of a style. To do so, one should have read all the notable
books in the order of their publication. It is at least possible
to judge of the present, and also to accord some weight to the
contemporary opinions of a work. Barbey d'Aurevilly found in Georges
Sand a profusion of _anges de la destinée_, of _lampes de la foi_, and
of _coupes de miel_, which certainly were not invented by her any more
than the rest of her washed-out style; but "these decrepit tropes"
would have been none the better if she had invented them. I feel sure
that the cup, whose brim has been rubbed with honey, goes back to the
obscure ages of pre-Hippocratic medicine. Hackneyed expressions enjoy
a long life. M. Albalat notes justly "that there are images which
can be renewed and rejuvenated." There are many such, and among them
some of the commonest; but I cannot see that, in calling the moon the
_morne lampe_, Leconte de Lisle has been very successful in freshening
up Lamartine's _lampe d'or_. M. Albalat, who gives evidence of wide
reading, should attempt a catalogue of metaphors by subject: the moon,
the stars, the rose, the dawn, and all the "poetic" words. We should
thus obtain a collection of a certain utility for the study of words
and psychology of elementary emotions. Perhaps we should learn at last
why the moon is so dear to poets. Meanwhile he announces his next book,
_La Formation du style par l'assimilation des auteurs_; and I suppose
that, once the series is complete, everyone will write well--that
there will henceforth be a good medium style in literature, as there
is in painting and in the other fine arts, which the State protects
so successfully. Why not an Académie Albalat, as well as an Académie
Julian?
Here, then, is a book which lacks almost nothing except not having
a purpose, except being a work of pure and disinterested analysis;
but, were it to have an influence, were it to multiply the number of
honourable writers, it would deserve our maledictions. Instead of
putting the manual of literature and all the arts within the reach of
all, it would be wiser to transport their secrets to the top of some
Himalaya. Yet there are no secrets. To be a writer, it is enough to
have natural talent for the calling, to practise with perseverance,
to learn a little more every morning, and to experience all human
sensations. As for the art of "creating images," we are obliged to
believe that this is absolutely independent of all literary culture,
since the loveliest, truest and boldest images are enclosed in the
words we use every day--age-old products of instinct, spontaneous
flowering of the intellectual garden.
1899.
[1] On the importance and influence of Protestantism at this time, see
the work of E. Hugues, pilfered by Protestant writers for the last
twenty-five years: _Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en
France au XVIIIe siècle_ (1872).
[2] A book so little known and disfigured in its pious editions.
Nothing could be less pious, however, or less edifying, after the
first volume, than this curious and confused encyclopedia, where we
find _René_ and statistical tables, _Atala_ and a catalogue of Greek
painters. It is a universal history of civilization and a plan of
social reconstruction.
[3] In speaking of the eighteenth century, exception must always
be made of the grandiose and solitary Buffon, in his tower at
Montbard, who was, in the modern sense of these words, a scientist, a
philosopher, and a poet.
[4] An attempt will be made some day in a study in the _World of
Words_, to determine whether words have really a meaning--that is to
say, a constant value.
[5] _De l'Enseignement de notre langue_.
[6] M. Albalat has italicized everything he deems "banal or useless."
[7] See the chapter on the _cliché_, in my book, _L'Esthétique de la
Langue française_.
[8] _L'Art d'écrire_, p. 138.
[9] Or rather, had them copied by his secretaries. He afterwards
reworked the clean copy. There is a whole volume on this subject: _Les
Manuscrits de Buffon_, by P. Flourens, Paris, Garnier, 1860.
[10] There is, on this point, a pretty passage from Quintilian, quoted
by M. Albalat, p. 213.
[11] I take it for granted that the reader no longer believes that the
Homeric poems were composed at haphazard by a multitude of rhapsodists
of genius, and that it was enough to string these improvisations
together to get the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.