VINET AND SAINTE-BEUVE--JUSTE OLIVIER
The centre of the intellectual life was always the University. It
could not be otherwise in a country in which every man is born a
pedagogue. In England the view has come to prevail that literature
only begins to be vital when it ceases to be academic. In the Canton
of Vaud the literature is academic or nothing, and even the poets
are professors, unbending in their hours of sentimental ease; while
the literature of revolt is the bitter cry of professors who have
forfeited their chairs on account of their religious or political
opinions. As the result of each revolution in turn we see a company
of professors put to flight. The casualties of that sort are at least
as numerous as the broken heads.
The detailed relation of such professorial vicissitudes belongs,
however, to the native antiquary. Here it will suffice to recall a
few more notable names.
A Swiss historian would doubtless say that the greatest of the names
is that of Alexandre Vinet. In his hot youth he wrote riotous poetry:
'O mes amis, vidons bouteille
Et laissons faire le destin.
Le Dieu qui préside à la treille
Est notre unique souverain.'
Afterwards he became austere, and played a great part in theological
controversy. He hated the Revivalists, whom he described as 'lunatics
at large'; but he insisted that religious liberty should be the
heritage of all, and, while opposing established churches, exercised
a profound spiritual influence. He was a great Broad Churchman, and
we may class him as the F. W. Robertson or F. D. Maurice of the
Canton of Vaud. Sainte-Beuve blew his trumpet, and he, on his part,
almost persuaded Sainte-Beuve to become a Protestant.
Sainte-Beuve, it is hardly too much to say, came to Lausanne in
search of a religion. St. Simonism had disappointed him, and so had
the Liberal Catholicism of Lamennais. Lamennais, in fact, had gone
too fast and too far for him--had, as it were, he said, taken him
for a drive, and spilt him in a ditch, and left him there and driven
on. None the less, he earnestly desired to be spiritually-minded
and a devout believer, feeling, in particular, an inclination
towards mysticism, though unable to profess himself a mystic. 'I
have,' he wrote to a friend, 'the sense of these things, but not the
things themselves.' It seemed to him that he might find 'the things
themselves' at Lausanne, if he went there in the proper spirit and
sat at Vinet's feet.
His Swiss friend, Juste Olivier, a professor who was also a poet,
procured him an engagement to deliver a course of lectures at
the Lausanne Academy,[8] and he embarked upon his errand with as
much humility as was compatible with professorship. Left free to
choose his own subject, he decided to treat of Port Royal and the
Jansenists--the most spiritually-minded of the Catholics, and those
who had the closest affinity with the Protestants. By means of his
lectures he thought to build himself a bridge by which to pass from
the one camp to the other.
His elocution was defective, and his lectures were not quite such a
success as he could have wished. The students used to meet in the
cafés to parody them in the evenings. On the other hand, however,
serious people eagerly watched the developments of the spiritual
drama. Not only did it seem to them that the fate of a soul was in
the balance--they were also hoping to see Protestantism score the
sort of triumph that would make a noise in Paris. So they asked daily
for news of Sainte-Beuve, as of a sick man lying at death's door,
and asked Vinet, whom they regarded as his spiritual physician, to
issue a bulletin. And Vinet's bulletin was to this effect: 'I think
he is convinced, but not yet converted.' But Vinet, as he was soon to
discover, was only partly right.
That Sainte-Beuve was not converted was, indeed, obvious enough,
seeing that he was making violent love to his neighbour's wife
at the time--between him and 'conversion' stood the obstructive
charms of Madame Olivier. But it is equally true that he was not
convinced; and, by a crowning irony, he found his faith evaporating
as he got to close quarters with the subject, through the study of
which he had expected to achieve conviction. The great history of
Port Royal, begun by a believer, was finished by a sceptic. 'Moral
bankruptcy,' is M. Michaut's description of his condition, and there
is a sense in which it might be applied even by those who desire to
dissociate morality from creeds. It was the end--at any rate, for
Sainte-Beuve--of all emotion which was not either purely sensual or
purely intellectual. He could not be a mystic, as he could not be a
poet, because he lacked the necessary genius; and forms of religion
which depended, not on intuition, but on authority, were repugnant to
his sane intelligence. So he said a sad farewell to Christianity, and
sought no substitute. 'I am mournfully looking on at the death of my
heart,' he wrote to Vinet; and he went away and resigned himself to
become a materialist, a voluptuary, and a critic.
And now a word about that Juste Olivier to whom Sainte-Beuve owed
his appointment, and to whose wife Sainte-Beuve made love. The poet
and the critic had met at Paris, where Olivier had gone to prepare
himself for the Chair of Literature at Neuchâtel. He was promoted,
three years later, to the Chair of History at Lausanne, which he
occupied for twelve years, acting also, during part of the time, as
editor of the _Revue Suisse_, to which Sainte-Beuve contributed.
The Revolution of 1845 unseated him. He went to Paris, where he
achieved no great success, and was homesick there for five-and-twenty
years. The Swiss forgot him, and the Parisians did not understand
him. But, in 1870, when there was no longer a living to be made in
Paris, he came home again. One may quote the pathetic picture of his
home-coming, drawn by M. Philippe Godet:
'He had to live. For three winters the poet travelled through
French Switzerland, lecturing, reading his verses, relating his
reminiscences, with that melancholy humour which gave his speech its
charm. The public--I speak of what I saw--was polite, respectful,
and nothing more. Olivier felt almost a stranger in his own country.
But he consoled himself, in the summer, at Gryon, "the high village
facing the Alps of Vaud," which he has so often celebrated. He was to
sing, at the mid-August fête, his song to the Shepherds of Anzeindaz.
And there they understood him and applauded. He had his day of
happiness and glory among these simple mountaineers. He was, for an
hour, what it had been the dream of his life to be, the national
singer of the Vaudois country.'
But the end is melancholy. He died in a chalet at Gryon in January,
1876, a broken and disappointed man, reluctant even to speak of his
work or hear it spoken of. There is a deep pathos in one of his last
letters which M. Godet quotes:
'It is a melancholy history--that of our country. It did nothing for
Viret or Vinet; and, though I do not rank myself with them, I
too know what neglect means. "Come and have a drink"--that is their
last word here. I had hoped for better things. What a beautiful dream
it was! At least I have been loyal to it, even if I have not, as I
fancy, done all that it was in me to do. Since the day when, in one
of my first printed poems, I wrote, "Un génie est caché dans tous les
lieux que j'aime," I have obstinately sought out that genius, and
tried to make it speak. It has answered me, I think more often than
its voice has been heard.'
[Illustration: LUTRY]
FOOTNOTE:
[8] It was not made a University until later.