Quand on est coquette, il faut être sage;
L’oiseau de passage
Qui vole à plein cœur
Ne dort pas en l’air comme une hirondelle,
Et peut, d’un coup d’aile,
Briser une fleur.
--ALFRED DE MUSSET.
The literature of a nation is rooted in national characteristics.
Foreign influences may dominate it for a time; but that which is born
of the soil is imperishable, and must, by virtue of tenacity, conquer
in the end. England, after the Restoration, tried very hard to be
French, and the “happy and unreflecting wantonness” of her earlier song
was chilled into sobriety by the measured cadences of Gallic verse; yet
the painful and perverse effort to adjust herself to strange conditions
left her more triumphantly English than before. We are tethered to our
kind, and the wisest of all wise limitations is that which holds us
well within the sphere of natural and harmonious development.
It is true, however, that nationality betrays itself less in lyrics,
and, above all, less in love lyrics, than in any other form of
literature. Love is a malady, the common symptoms of which are the
same in all patients; and though love-songs--like battle-songs and
drinking-songs--are seldom legitimate offsprings of experience, they
are efforts to express in words that sweet and transient pain. “_Les
âmes bien nées_”--without regard to birthplace--clearly of their
passion, and seek their “_petit coin de bonheur_” under Southern
and Northern skies. The Latin races have, indeed, depths of reserve
underlying their apparent frankness, and the Saxons have a genius for
self-revelation underlying their apparent reticence; but these traits
count for little in the refined duplicity of the love-song.
Garde bien ta belle folie!
has been its burden ever since it was first chanted by minstrel lips.
M. Brunetière frankly admits the inferiority of the French lyric,
an inferiority which he attributes to the predominance of social
characteristics in the literature, as in the life of France. When
poetry is compelled to fulfil a social function, to express social
conditions and social truths, to emphasize fundamental principles and
balance contrasted forces, the founts of lyrical inspiration are early
dried. Individualism is their source,--the sharp, clear striking of
the personal note; and the English, says M. Brunetière, excel in this
regard. “To Lucasta. Going to the Warres,” has no perfect counterpart
in the love-songs of other lands.
Even the eager desire of the Frenchman to be always intelligible (“That
which is not lucid is not French”) militates against the perfection of
the lyric. So too does his exquisite and inborn sense of proportion.
“Measure,” says Mr. Brownell, “is a French passion;” but it is a
passion that refuses to lend itself to rapturous sentiment.