One phrase of Huysmans he remembered: without personality, no talent.
If I can't achieve a personality I shall never become a writer, thought
Ulick. That's what this sweeping dictum means: but how to achieve a
personality? He was forced to smile over the crudeness of his question.
Either you have it or you haven't--personality. He had wished to ask M.
Huysmans the road to perfection, but he put off doing so for he knew in
advance the answer: Holy Mother the Church. Then one day he received
a card inscribed: "Changement de domicile: J.-K. Huysmans. Maison
Notre-Dame à Ligugé (Vienne)" and he felt that he would never again see
his friend. Nor did he. Huysmans, become a saint, rather an acrimonious
saint, had severed all earthly ties. Henceforth, till the day of his
cruel death, he was with God.
Music, already a passion with Ulick, began to dominate his life. He
lost interest in various absurd or depraved "movements" that floated
on the surface of artistic and literary life in Paris like greasy
scum on clear soup. He changed his apartment and went out on the
northern line, to Villiers-le-Bel, where in a rented maisonette, he
could patrol the keyboard five or six hours daily without disturbing
his neighbors. He had mastered technical difficulties years before,
it was the higher reaches of interpretation he sought. He played Bach
and Beethoven with a fervour that was religious. For him, as for Hans
von Billow, the Well-Tempered Clavichord and the Sonatas were the
Old and New Testaments of music. Chopin came third in this immortal
trio of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit; Chopin, whose Preludes and
Studies contain the past, present and future of the pianoforte. Even
at this period Ulick saw clearly into the classic genius of the Polish
tone-poet. Schumann ran a close second to Chopin in his affections. The
glowing heart of romance, of great still forests, tangled underwoods,
secret, sudden little lakes, clear and shining in the mystic daylight,
their waters washed at dusk by the silver of a tender young moon;
lover's vows in the dense darkness, sighs over their hapless fate--all
passion and mystery, shy, hesitating, are in his music. He, not Chopin,
is the real Romantic. Brahms and the moderns were not neglected. The
elusive genius of Claude Debussy was then new. Ulick admired him. He
loved certain phases of Brahms; not Dr. Johannes Brahms, the ponderous
philosopher, but Brahms, the romantic, the follower in the trail of
Schumann. There are pages in the pianoforte music that evoke grey
days when the soul in its reverse aspirations recoils on itself, half
articulate, divinely stammering, to express sensations that had lain
buried in its convulutions since the birth of the monad. Brahms, too,
is a mystic. His music sometimes registers moods recondite, moods
that transcend normal psychic experiences. After Mendelssohn, and
his crystalline shallowness, the utterances of Brahms are seemingly
prophetic; a prophet who does not comprehend his own speech, though the
fiery coal has touched his lips into eloquence. But the Forty-eight
Preludes and Fugues, with the Beethoven sonatas were the daily musical
sustenance, the bread of life, for Ulick. They quite filled his
emotional and intellectual cravings.
He didn't neglect the other arts. A brief stay in the atelier of
Gérôme, later with Bonnat, failed to convince him that he had a
painting hand. His eye was well-trained, not only by constant study and
adventuring among the masterpieces in the Louvre, but also by sketching
outdoors. The theatre was a thrice-told tale for him, his parents had
been lovers of the drama, and Paris had everything to gratify his
versatile tastes. In all the tohu-bohu of his activities, he did not
lose sight of his chiefest ambition; to become a writer, one with an
individual note. Playing the pianoforte was all very well; he knew
that he had a friend for his old age; but the main business of his
life was writing, and if he recognized his dilettante viewpoint he was
assured that at some time this smattering of the Seven Arts--Jack of
all, master of none--would prove useful in his avocation of criticism,
for critic he had elected to become. Criticism was the best way to
practice his scales in public and acquire a supple, steady touch on his
intellectual instrument. In due time his own books would follow.
He wrote French as if it were his native tongue, as in a sense it
was. English was always spoken in the Invern household; that had been
a wise rule of a seldom wise father. Also French or Italian, not
often German--because Ulick never met in Paris any of his old Jena
associates; but, preferably French. Yet, when he essayed several
flights, chiefly critical, he recognized that his was the Anglo-Saxon
mind. He thought in French, the purity of which in diction could not be
challenged; nevertheless, the fundamental structure of his thought was
English. His French essays, which he showed to that most unselfish of
professional egotists, most optimistic of pessimists, Remy de Gourmont,
were soon touched on their sore spot.
"You are, my dear young friend, an Englishman, more than that, an
Irishman, still more than that, an American, and, having known that
beautiful lady, your dear mother, I may add, A New York American.
You write well in our tongue, though not so well as Arthur Symons,
anyhow, better than Oscar Wilde--who hasn't mastered our syntax--but,
but--it's not vital, individual, your style. I overhear too many echoes
of Flaubert, Goncourt, above all, Huysmans. That won't do. You have so
saturated yourself with the ideas and methods of these masters that you
have left no room for the growth of your own personality. Jeune homme,
écoutez!"--and the kindly eyes peering through the big bowed glasses
pierced to the inner consciousness of his listener--"Take the advice
of an old doctor of vocables. Have you written much in English? No? I
thought not. That is a virgin-field for you. Go home, go back to New
York, you are deracinated in Paris, as my brilliant friend, Maurice
Barrès puts it--what, haven't you read Barrès? Begin at once with
that novel of national energy, Les Déracinés--and of a cosmopolite,
detestable, person--pardon!--as detestable as the dilettante attitude.
Perhaps the unexpected clash with a comparatively new language, new
characters, and new environment may strike a personal spark from your
little grind-stone in New York. Otherwise, Monsieur Ulick, you will
become a replica of your brother Oswald, with whom I occasionally
collaborate in a bock at the Café François-Premier; you will become
a second-rate Parisian, writing excellent, colorless prose, the
standardized prose of the college professor. The world over my dear
chap, college professors are alike--the Eternal Sophomore, coprolites
of the ideal. No, I repeat, don't expect to get your head above the
turbid stream. Return to your native heath and astonish the Yanks, as
your beloved Mark Twain says--there's a Yankee genius for you, racy,
original, and one who should stand four-square with Emerson, Poe and
Thoreau. But, then, you have no school of critique in America, so I
suppose Mark Twain will be put in his true niche a half century hence.
But do you love your country?" suddenly asked the master. Cornered,
Ulick blurted out: "Certainly, I am an American, though born in Paris.
Besides, I love baseball and mince pie."
"Bon, true American arts," said the writer and benevolently dismissed
his ardent neophyte with the shining brow.