The second consequence is that the productions of amusement-art, which

are prepared in such terrific quantities by the armies of professional

artists, enable the rich people of our times to live the lives they do,

lives not only unnatural but in contradiction to the humane principles

these people themselves profess. To live as do the rich, idle people,

especially the women, far from nature and from animals, in artificial

conditions, with muscles atrophied or misdeveloped by gymnastics, and

with enfeebled vital energy would be impossible were it not for what is

called art—for this occupation and amusement which hides from them the

meaninglessness of their lives, and saves them from the dulness that

oppresses them. Take from all these people the theatres, concerts,

exhibitions, piano-playing, songs, and novels, with which they now fill

their time in full confidence that occupation with these things is a

very refined, æsthetical, and therefore good occupation; take from the

patrons of art who buy pictures, assist musicians, and are acquainted

with writers, their rôle of protectors of that important matter art, and

they will not be able to continue such a life, but will all be eaten up

by ennui and spleen, and will become conscious of the meaninglessness

and wrongness of their present mode of life. Only occupation with what,

among them, is considered art, renders it possible for them to continue

to live on, infringing all natural conditions, without perceiving the

emptiness and cruelty of their lives. And this support afforded to the

false manner of life pursued by the rich is the second consequence, and

a serious one, of the perversion of art.

The third consequence of the perversion of art is the perplexity

produced in the minds of children and of plain folk. Among people not

perverted by the false theories of our society, among workers and

children, there exists a very definite conception of what people may be

respected and praised for. In the minds of peasants and children the

ground for praise or eulogy can only be either physical strength:

Hercules, the heroes and conquerors; or moral, spiritual, strength:

Sakya Muni giving up a beautiful wife and a kingdom to save mankind,

Christ going to the cross for the truth he professed, and all the

martyrs and the saints. Both are understood by peasants and children.

They understand that physical strength must be respected, for it compels

respect; and the moral strength of goodness an unperverted man cannot

fail to respect, because all his spiritual being draws him towards it.

But these people, children and peasants, suddenly perceive that besides

those praised, respected, and rewarded for physical or moral strength,

there are others who are praised, extolled, and rewarded much more than

the heroes of strength and virtue, merely because they sing well,

compose verses, or dance. They see that singers, composers, painters,

ballet-dancers, earn millions of roubles and receive more honour than

the saints do: and peasants and children are perplexed.

When 50 years had elapsed after Pushkin’s death, and, simultaneously,

the cheap edition of his works began to circulate among the people and a

monument was erected to him in Moscow, I received more than a dozen

letters from different peasants asking why Pushkin was raised to such

dignity? And only the other day a literate[88] man from Saratoff called

on me who had evidently gone out of his mind over this very question. He

was on his way to Moscow to expose the clergy for having taken part in

raising a “monament” to Mr. Pushkin.

Indeed one need only imagine to oneself what the state of mind of such a

man of the people must be when he learns, from such rumours and

newspapers as reach him, that the clergy, the Government officials, and

all the best people in Russia are triumphantly unveiling a statue to a

great man, the benefactor, the pride of Russia—Pushkin, of whom till

then he had never heard. From all sides he reads or hears about this,

and he naturally supposes that if such honours are rendered to anyone,

then without doubt he must have done something extraordinary—either some

feat of strength or of goodness. He tries to learn who Pushkin was, and

having discovered that Pushkin was neither a hero nor a general, but was

a private person and a writer, he comes to the conclusion that Pushkin

must have been a holy man and a teacher of goodness, and he hastens to

read or to hear his life and works. But what must be his perplexity when

he learns that Pushkin was a man of more than easy morals, who was

killed in a duel, _i.e._ when attempting to murder another man, and that

all his service consisted in writing verses about love, which were often

very indecent.

That a hero, or Alexander the Great, or Genghis Khan, or Napoleon were

great, he understands, because any one of them could have crushed him

and a thousand like him; that Buddha, Socrates, and Christ were great he

also understands, for he knows and feels that he and all men should be

such as they were; but why a man should be great because he wrote verses

about the love of women he cannot make out.

A similar perplexity must trouble the brain of a Breton or Norman

peasant who hears that a monument, “_une statue_” (as to the Madonna),

is being erected to Baudelaire, and reads, or is told, what the contents

of his _Fleurs du Mal_ are; or, more amazing still, to Verlaine, when he

learns the story of that man’s wretched, vicious life, and reads his

verses. And what confusion it must cause in the brains of peasants when

they learn that some Patti or Taglioni is paid £10,000 for a season, or

that a painter gets as much for a picture, or that authors of novels

describing love-scenes have received even more than that.

And it is the same with children. I remember how I passed through this

stage of amazement and stupefaction, and only reconciled myself to this

exaltation of artists to the level of heroes and saints by lowering in

my own estimation the importance of moral excellence, and by attributing

a false, unnatural meaning to works of art. And a similar confusion must

occur in the soul of each child and each man of the people when he

learns of the strange honours and rewards that are lavished on artists.

This is the third consequence of the false relation in which our society

stands towards art.

The fourth consequence is that people of the upper classes, more and

more frequently encountering the contradictions between beauty and

goodness, put the ideal of beauty first, thus freeing themselves from

the demands of morality. These people, reversing the rôles, instead of

admitting, as is really the case, that the art they serve is an

antiquated affair, allege that morality is an antiquated affair, which

can have no importance for people situated on that high plane of

development on which they opine that they are situated.

This result of the false relation to art showed itself in our society

long ago; but recently, with its prophet Nietzsche and his adherents,

and with the decadents and certain English æsthetes who coincide with

him, it is being expressed with especial impudence. The decadents, and

æsthetes of the type at one time represented by Oscar Wilde, select as a

theme for their productions the denial of morality and the laudation of

vice.

This art has partly generated, and partly coincides with, a similar

philosophic theory. I recently received from America a book entitled

“_The Survival of the Fittest: Philosophy of Power_, 1896, by Ragnar

Redbeard, Chicago.” The substance of this book, as it is expressed in

the editor’s preface, is that to measure “right” by the false philosophy

of the Hebrew prophets and “weepful” Messiahs is madness. Right is not

the offspring of doctrine but of power. All laws, commandments, or

doctrines as to not doing to another what you do not wish done to you,

have no inherent authority whatever, but receive it only from the club,

the gallows, and the sword. A man truly free is under no obligation to

obey any injunction, human or divine. Obedience is the sign of the

degenerate. Disobedience is the stamp of the hero. Men should not be

bound by moral rules invented by their foes. The whole world is a

slippery battlefield. Ideal justice demands that the vanquished should

be exploited, emasculated, and scorned. The free and brave may seize the

world. And, therefore, there should be eternal war for life, for land,

for love, for women, for power, and for gold. (Something similar was

said a few years ago by the celebrated and refined academician, Vogüé.)

The earth and its treasures is “booty for the bold.”

The author has evidently by himself, independently of Nietzsche, come to

the same conclusions which are professed by the new artists.

Expressed in the form of a doctrine these positions startle us. In

reality they are implied in the ideal of art serving beauty. The art of

our upper classes has educated people in this ideal of the

over-man,[89]—which is, in reality, the old ideal of Nero, Stenka

Razin,[90] Genghis Khan, Robert Macaire,[91] or Napoleon, and all their

accomplices, assistants, and adulators—and it supports this ideal with

all its might.

It is this supplanting of the ideal of what is right by the ideal of

what is beautiful, _i.e._ of what is pleasant, that is the fourth

consequence, and a terrible one, of the perversion of art in our

society. It is fearful to think of what would befall humanity were such

art to spread among the masses of the people. And it already begins to

spread.

Finally, the fifth and chief result is, that the art which flourishes in

the upper classes of European society has a directly vitiating

influence, infecting people with the worst feelings and with those most

harmful to humanity—superstition, patriotism, and, above all,

sensuality.

Look carefully into the causes of the ignorance of the masses, and you

may see that the chief cause does not at all lie in the lack of schools

and libraries, as we are accustomed to suppose, but in those

superstitions, both ecclesiastical and patriotic, with which the people

are saturated, and which are unceasingly generated by all the methods of

art. Church superstitions are supported and produced by the poetry of

prayers, hymns, painting, by the sculpture of images and of statues, by

singing, by organs, by music, by architecture, and even by dramatic art

in religious ceremonies. Patriotic superstitions are supported and

produced by verses and stories, which are supplied even in schools, by

music, by songs, by triumphal processions, by royal meetings, by martial

pictures, and by monuments.

Were it not for this continual activity in all departments of art,

perpetuating the ecclesiastical and patriotic intoxication and

embitterment of the people, the masses would long ere this have attained

to true enlightenment.

But it is not only in Church matters and patriotic matters that art

depraves; it is art in our time that serves as the chief cause of the

perversion of people in the most important question of social life—in

their sexual relations. We nearly all know by our own experience, and

those who are fathers and mothers know in the case of their grown-up

children also, what fearful mental and physical suffering, what useless

waste of strength, people suffer merely as a consequence of

dissoluteness in sexual desire.

Since the world began, since the Trojan war, which sprang from that same

sexual dissoluteness, down to and including the suicides and murders of

lovers described in almost every newspaper, a great proportion of the

sufferings of the human race have come from this source.

And what is art doing? All art, real and counterfeit, with very few

exceptions, is devoted to describing, depicting, and inflaming sexual

love in every shape and form. When one remembers all those novels and

their lust-kindling descriptions of love, from the most refined to the

grossest, with which the literature of our society overflows; if one

only remembers all those pictures and statues representing women’s naked

bodies, and all sorts of abominations which are reproduced in

illustrations and advertisements; if one only remembers all the filthy

operas and operettas, songs and _romances_ with which our world teems,

involuntarily it seems as if existing art had but one definite aim—to

disseminate vice as widely as possible.

Such, though not all, are the most direct consequences of that

perversion of art which has occurred in our society. So that, what in

our society is called art not only does not conduce to the progress of

mankind, but, more than almost anything else, hinders the attainment of

goodness in our lives.

And therefore the question which involuntarily presents itself to every

man free from artistic activity and therefore not bound to existing art

by self-interest, the question asked by me at the beginning of this

work: Is it just that to what we call art, to a something belonging to

but a small section of society, should be offered up such sacrifices of

human labour, of human lives, and of goodness as are now being offered

up? receives the natural reply: No; it is unjust, and these things

should not be! So also replies sound sense and unperverted moral

feeling. Not only should these things not be, not only should no

sacrifices be offered up to what among us is called art, but, on the

contrary, the efforts of those who wish to live rightly should be

directed towards the destruction of this art, for it is one of the most

cruel of the evils that harass our section of humanity. So that, were

the question put: Would it be preferable for our Christian world to be

deprived of _all_ that is now esteemed to be art, and, together with the

false, to lose _all_ that is good in it? I think that every reasonable

and moral man would again decide the question as Plato decided it for

his _Republic_, and as all the Church Christian and Mahommedan teachers

of mankind decided it, _i.e._ would say, “Rather let there be no art at

all than continue the depraving art, or simulation of art, which now

exists.” Happily, no one has to face this question, and no one need

adopt either solution. All that man can do, and that we—the so-called

educated people, who are so placed that we have the possibility of

understanding the meaning of the phenomena of our life—can and should

do, is to understand the error we are involved in, and not harden our

hearts in it but seek for a way of escape.

Footnote 88:

In Russian it is customary to make a distinction between literate and

illiterate people, _i.e._ between those who can and those who cannot

read. _Literate_ in this sense does not imply that the man would speak

or write correctly.—Trans.

Footnote 89:

The over-man (Uebermensch), in the Nietzschean philosophy, is that

superior type of man whom the struggle for existence is to evolve, and

who will seek only his own power and pleasure, will know nothing of

pity, and will have the right, because he will possess the power, to

make ordinary people serve him.—Trans.

Footnote 90:

Stenka Razin was by origin a common Cossack. His brother was hung for

a breach of military discipline, and to this event Stenka Razin’s

hatred of the governing classes has been attributed. He formed a

robber band, and subsequently headed a formidable rebellion, declaring

himself in favour of freedom for the serfs, religious toleration, and

the abolition of taxes. Like the Government he opposed, he relied on

force, and, though he used it largely in defence of the poor against

the rich, he still held to

“The good old rule, the simple plan,

That they should take who have the power,

And they should keep who can.”

Like Robin Hood he is favourably treated in popular legends.—Trans.

Footnote 91:

Robert Macaire is a modern type of adroit and audacious rascality. He

was the hero of a popular play produced in Paris in 1834.—Trans.

CHAPTER XVIII

The cause of the lie into which the art of our society has fallen was

that people of the upper classes, having ceased to believe in the Church

teaching (called Christian), did not resolve to accept true Christian

teaching in its real and fundamental principles of sonship to God and

brotherhood to man, but continued to live on without any belief,

endeavouring to make up for the absence of belief—some by hypocrisy,

pretending still to believe in the nonsense of the Church creeds; others

by boldly asserting their disbelief; others by refined agnosticism; and

others, again, by returning to the Greek worship of beauty, proclaiming

egotism to be right, and elevating it to the rank of a religious

doctrine.

The cause of the malady was the non-acceptance of Christ’s teaching in

its real, _i.e._ its full, meaning. And the only cure for the illness

lies in acknowledging that teaching in its full meaning. And such

acknowledgment in our time is not only possible but inevitable. Already

to-day a man, standing on the height of the knowledge of our age,

whether he be nominally a Catholic or a Protestant, cannot say that he

really believes in the dogmas of the Church: in God being a Trinity, in

Christ being God, in the scheme of redemption, and so forth; nor can he

satisfy himself by proclaiming his unbelief or scepticism, nor by

relapsing into the worship of beauty and egotism. Above all, he can no

longer say that we do not know the real meaning of Christ’s teaching.

That meaning has not only become accessible to all men of our times, but

the whole life of man to-day is permeated by the spirit of that

teaching, and, consciously or unconsciously, is guided by it.

However differently in form people belonging to our Christian world may

define the destiny of man; whether they see it in human progress in

whatever sense of the words, in the union of all men in a socialistic

realm, or in the establishment of a commune; whether they look forward

to the union of mankind under the guidance of one universal Church, or

to the federation of the world,—however various in form their

definitions of the destination of human life may be, all men in our

times already admit that the highest well-being attainable by men is to

be reached by their union with one another.

However people of our upper classes (feeling that their ascendency can

only be maintained as long as they separate themselves—the rich and

learned—from the labourers, the poor, and the unlearned) may seek to

devise new conceptions of life by which their privileges may be

perpetuated,—now the ideal of returning to antiquity, now mysticism, now

Hellenism, now the cult of the superior person (overman-ism),—they have,

willingly or unwillingly, to admit the truth which is elucidating itself

from all sides, voluntarily and involuntarily, namely, that our welfare

lies only in the unification and the brotherhood of man.

Unconsciously this truth is confirmed by the construction of means of

communication,—telegraphs, telephones, the press, and the

ever-increasing attainability of material well-being for everyone,—and

consciously it is affirmed by the destruction of superstitions which

divide men, by the diffusion of the truths of knowledge, and by the

expression of the ideal of the brotherhood of man in the best works of

art of our time.

Art is a spiritual organ of human life which cannot be destroyed, and

therefore, notwithstanding all the efforts made by people of the upper

classes to conceal the religious ideal by which humanity lives, that

ideal is more and more clearly recognised by man, and even in our

perverted society is more and more often partially expressed by science

and by art. During the present century works of the higher kind of

religious art have appeared more and more frequently, both in literature

and in painting, permeated by a truly Christian spirit, as also works of

the universal art of common life, accessible to all. So that even art

knows the true ideal of our times, and tends towards it. On the one

hand, the best works of art of our times transmit religious feelings

urging towards the union and the brotherhood of man (such are the works

of Dickens, Hugo, Dostoievsky; and in painting, of Millet, Bastien

Lepage, Jules Breton, L’Hermitte, and others); on the other hand, they

strive towards the transmission, not of feelings which are natural to

people of the upper classes only, but of such feelings as may unite

everyone without exception. There are as yet few such works, but the

need of them is already acknowledged. In recent times we also meet more

and more frequently with attempts at publications, pictures, concerts,

and theatres for the people. All this is still very far from

accomplishing what should be done, but already the direction in which

good art instinctively presses forward to regain the path natural to it

can be discerned.

The religious perception of our time—which consists in acknowledging

that the aim of life (both collective and individual) is the union of

mankind—is already so sufficiently distinct that people have now only to

reject the false theory of beauty, according to which enjoyment is

considered to be the purpose of art, and religious perception will

naturally takes its place as the guide of the art of our time.

And as soon as the religious perception, which already unconsciously

directs the life of man, is consciously acknowledged, then immediately

and naturally the division of art, into art for the lower and art for

the upper classes, will disappear. There will be one common, brotherly,

universal art; and first, that art will naturally be rejected which

transmits feelings incompatible with the religious perception of our

time,—feelings which do not unite, but divide men,—and then that

insignificant, exclusive art will be rejected to which an importance is

now attached to which it has no right.

And as soon as this occurs, art will immediately cease to be, what it

has been in recent times: a means of making people coarser and more

vicious, and it will become, what it always used to be and should be, a

means by which humanity progresses towards unity and blessedness;

Strange as the comparison may sound, what has happened to the art of our

circle and time is what happens to a woman who sells her womanly

attractiveness, intended for maternity, for the pleasure of those who

desire such pleasures.

The art of our time and of our circle has become a prostitute. And this

comparison holds good even in minute details. Like her it is not limited

to certain times, like her it is always adorned, like her it is always

saleable, and like her it is enticing and ruinous.

A real work of art can only arise in the soul of an artist occasionally,

as the fruit of the life he has lived, just as a child is conceived by

its mother. But counterfeit art is produced by artisans and

handicraftsmen continually, if only consumers can be found.

Real art, like the wife of an affectionate husband, needs no ornaments.

But counterfeit art, like a prostitute, must always be decked out.

The cause of the production of real art is the artist’s inner need to

express a feeling that has accumulated, just as for a mother the cause

of sexual conception is love. The cause of counterfeit art, as of

prostitution, is gain.

The consequence of true art is the introduction of a new feeling into

the intercourse of life, as the consequence of a wife’s love is the

birth of a new man into life.

The consequences of counterfeit art are the perversion of man, pleasure

which never satisfies, and the weakening of man’s spiritual strength.

And this is what people of our day and of our circle should understand,

in order to avoid the filthy torrent of depraved and prostituted art

with which we are deluged.

CHAPTER XIX

People talk of the art of the future, meaning by “art of the future”

some especially refined, new art, which, as they imagine, will be

developed out of that exclusive art of one class which is now considered

the highest art. But no such new art of the future can or will be found.

Our exclusive art, that of the upper classes of Christendom, has found

its way into a blind alley. The direction in which it has been going

leads nowhere. Having once let go of that which is most essential for

art (namely, the guidance given by religious perception), that art has

become ever more and more exclusive, and therefore ever more and more

perverted, until, finally, it has come to nothing. The art of the

future, that which is really coming, will not be a development of

present-day art, but will arise on completely other and new foundations,

having nothing in common with those by which our present art of the

upper classes is guided.

Art of the future, that is to say, such part of art as will be chosen

from among all the art diffused among mankind, will consist, not in

transmitting feelings accessible only to members of the rich classes, as

is the case to-day, but in transmitting such feelings as embody the

highest religious perception of our times. Only those productions will

be considered art which transmit feelings drawing men together in

brotherly union, or such universal feelings as can unite all men. Only

such art will be chosen, tolerated, approved, and diffused. But art

transmitting feelings flowing from antiquated, worn-out religious

teaching,—Church art, patriotic art, voluptuous art, transmitting

feelings of superstitious fear, of pride, of vanity, of ecstatic

admiration of national heroes,—art exciting exclusive love of one’s own

people, or sensuality, will be considered bad, harmful art, and will be

censured and despised by public opinion. All the rest of art,

transmitting feelings accessible only to a section of people, will be

considered unimportant, and will be neither blamed nor praised. And the

appraisement of art in general will devolve, not, as is now the case, on

a separate class of rich people, but on the whole people; so that for a

work to be esteemed good, and to be approved of and diffused, it will

have to satisfy the demands, not of a few people living in identical and

often unnatural conditions, but it will have to satisfy the demands of

all those great masses of people who are situated in the natural

conditions of laborious life.

And the artists producing art will also not be, as now, merely a few

people selected from a small section of the nation, members of the upper

classes or their hangers-on, but will consist of all those gifted

members of the whole people who prove capable of, and are inclined

towards, artistic activity.

Artistic activity will then be accessible to all men. It will become

accessible to the whole people, because, in the first place, in the art

of the future, not only will that complex technique, which deforms the

productions of the art of to-day and requires so great an effort and

expenditure of time, not be demanded, but, on the contrary, the demand

will be for clearness, simplicity, and brevity—conditions mastered not

by mechanical exercises but by the education of taste. And secondly,

artistic activity will become accessible to all men of the people

because, instead of the present professional schools which only some can

enter, all will learn music and depictive art (singing and drawing)

equally with letters in the elementary schools, and in such a way that

every man, having received the first principles of drawing and music,

and feeling a capacity for, and a call to, one or other of the arts,

will be able to perfect himself in it.

People think that if there are no special art-schools the technique of

art will deteriorate. Undoubtedly, if by technique we understand those

complications of art which are now considered an excellence, it will

deteriorate; but if by technique is understood clearness, beauty,

simplicity, and compression in works of art, then, even if the elements

of drawing and music were not to be taught in the national schools, the

technique will not only not deteriorate, but, as is shown by all peasant

art, will be a hundred times better. It will be improved, because all

the artists of genius now hidden among the masses will become producers

of art and will give models of excellence, which (as has always been the

case) will be the best schools of technique for their successors. For

every true artist, even now, learns his technique, chiefly, not in the

schools but in life, from the examples of the great masters; then—when

the producers of art will be the best artists of the whole nation, and

there will be more such examples, and they will be more accessible—such

part of the school training as the future artist will lose will be a

hundredfold compensated for by the training he will receive from the

numerous examples of good art diffused in society.

Such will be one difference between present and future art. Another

difference will be that art will not be produced by professional artists

receiving payment for their work and engaged on nothing else besides

their art. The art of the future will be produced by all the members of

the community who feel the need of such activity, but they will occupy

themselves with art only when they feel such need.

In our society people think that an artist will work better, and produce

more, if he has a secured maintenance. And this opinion would serve once

more to show clearly, were such demonstration still needed, that what

among us is considered art is not art, but only its counterfeit. It is

quite true that for the production of boots or loaves division of labour

is very advantageous, and that the bootmaker or baker who need not

prepare his own dinner or fetch his own fuel will make more boots or

loaves than if he had to busy himself about these matters. But art is

not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has

experienced. And sound feeling can only be engendered in a man when he

is living on all its sides the life natural and proper to mankind. And

therefore security of maintenance is a condition most harmful to an

artist’s true productiveness, since it removes him from the condition

natural to all men,—that of struggle with nature for the maintenance of

both his own life and that of others,—and thus deprives him of

opportunity and possibility to experience the most important and natural

feelings of man. There is no position more injurious to an artist’s

productiveness than that position of complete security and luxury in

which artists usually live in our society.

The artist of the future will live the common life of man, earning his

subsistence by some kind of labour. The fruits of that highest spiritual

strength which passes through him he will try to share with the greatest

possible number of people, for in such transmission to others of the

feelings that have arisen in him he will find his happiness and his

reward. The artist of the future will be unable to understand how an

artist, whose chief delight is in the wide diffusion of his works, could

give them only in exchange for a certain payment.

Until the dealers are driven out, the temple of art will not be a

temple. But the art of the future will drive them out.

And therefore the subject-matter of the art of the future, as I imagine

it to myself, will be totally unlike that of to-day. It will consist,

not in the expression of exclusive feelings: pride, spleen, satiety, and

all possible forms of voluptuousness, available and interesting only to

people who, by force, have freed themselves from the labour natural to

human beings; but it will consist in the expression of feelings

experienced by a man living the life natural to all men and flowing from

the religious perception of our times, or of such feelings as are open

to all men without exception.

To people of our circle who do not know, and cannot or will not

understand the feelings which will form the subject-matter of the art of

the future, such subject-matter appears very poor in comparison with

those subtleties of exclusive art with which they are now occupied.

“What is there fresh to be said in the sphere of the Christian feeling

of love of one’s fellow-man? The feelings common to everyone are so

insignificant and monotonous,” think they. And yet, in our time, the

really fresh feelings can only be religious, Christian feelings, and

such as are open, accessible, to all. The feelings flowing from the

religious perception of our times, Christian feelings, are infinitely

new and varied, only not in the sense some people imagine,—not that they

can be evoked by the depiction of Christ and of Gospel episodes, or by

repeating in new forms the Christian truths of unity, brotherhood,

equality, and love,—but in that all the oldest, commonest, and most

hackneyed phenomena of life evoke the newest, most unexpected and

touching emotions as soon as a man regards them from the Christian point

of view.

What can be older than the relations between married couples, of parents

to children, of children to parents; the relations of men to their

fellow-countrymen and to foreigners, to an invasion, to defence, to

property, to the land, or to animals? But as soon as a man regards these

matters from the Christian point of view, endlessly varied, fresh,

complex, and strong emotions immediately arise.

And, in the same way, that realm of subject-matter for the art of the

future which relates to the simplest feelings of common life open to all

will not be narrowed but widened. In our former art only the expression

of feelings natural to people of a certain exceptional position was

considered worthy of being transmitted by art, and even then only on

condition that these feelings were transmitted in a most refined manner,

incomprehensible to the majority of men; all the immense realm of

folk-art, and children’s art—jests, proverbs, riddles, songs, dances,

children’s games, and mimicry—was not esteemed a domain worthy of art.

The artist of the future will understand that to compose a fairy-tale, a

little song which will touch, a lullaby or a riddle which will

entertain, a jest which will amuse, or to draw a sketch which will

delight dozens of generations or millions of children and adults, is

incomparably more important and more fruitful than to compose a novel or

a symphony, or paint a picture which will divert some members of the

wealthy classes for a short time, and then be for ever forgotten. The

region of this art of the simple feelings accessible to all is enormous,

and it is as yet almost untouched.

The art of the future, therefore, will not be poorer, but infinitely

richer in subject-matter. And the form of the art of the future will

also not be inferior to the present forms of art, but infinitely

superior to them. Superior, not in the sense of having a refined and

complex technique, but in the sense of the capacity briefly, simply, and

clearly to transmit, without any superfluities, the feeling which the

artist has experienced and wishes to transmit.

I remember once speaking to a famous astronomer who had given public

lectures on the spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, and

saying it would be a good thing if, with his knowledge and masterly

delivery, he would give a lecture merely on the formation and movements

of the earth, for certainly there were many people at his lecture on the

spectrum analysis of the stars of the Milky Way, especially among the

women, who did not well know why night follows day and summer follows

winter. The wise astronomer smiled as he answered, “Yes, it would be a

good thing, but it would be very difficult. To lecture on the spectrum

analysis of the Milky Way is far easier.”

And so it is in art. To write a rhymed poem dealing with the times of

Cleopatra, or paint a picture of Nero burning Rome, or compose a

symphony in the manner of Brahms or Richard Strauss, or an opera like

Wagner’s, is far easier than to tell a simple story without any

unnecessary details, yet so that it should transmit the feelings of the

narrator, or to draw a pencil-sketch which should touch or amuse the

beholder, or to compose four bars of clear and simple melody, without

any accompaniment, which should convey an impression and be remembered

by those who hear it.

“It is impossible for us, with our culture, to return to a primitive

state,” say the artists of our time. “It is impossible for us now to

write such stories as that of Joseph or the Odyssey, to produce such

statues as the Venus of Milo, or to compose such music as the

folk-songs.”

And indeed, for the artists of our society and day, it is impossible,

but not for the future artist, who will be free from all the perversion

of technical improvements hiding the absence of subject-matter, and who,

not being a professional artist and receiving no payment for his

activity, will only produce art when he feels impelled to do so by an

irresistible inner impulse.

The art of the future will thus be completely distinct, both in

subject-matter and in form, from what is now called art. The only

subject-matter of the art of the future will be either feelings drawing

men towards union, or such as already unite them; and the forms of art

will be such as will be open to everyone. And therefore, the ideal of

excellence in the future will not be the exclusiveness of feeling,

accessible only to some, but, on the contrary, its universality. And not

bulkiness, obscurity, and complexity of form, as is now esteemed, but,

on the contrary, brevity, clearness, and simplicity of expression. Only

when art has attained to that, will art neither divert nor deprave men

as it does now, calling on them to expend their best strength on it, but

be what it should be—a vehicle wherewith to transmit religious,

Christian perception from the realm of reason and intellect into that of

feeling, and really drawing people in actual life nearer to that

perfection and unity indicated to them by their religious perception.

CHAPTER XX

THE CONCLUSION

I have accomplished, to the best of my ability, this work which has

occupied me for 15 years, on a subject near to me—that of art. By saying

that this subject has occupied me for 15 years, I do not mean that I

have been writing this book 15 years, but only that I began to write on

art 15 years ago, thinking that when once I undertook the task I should

be able to accomplish it without a break. It proved, however, that my

views on the matter then were so far from clear that I could not arrange

them in a way that satisfied me. From that time I have never ceased to

think on the subject, and I have recommenced to write on it 6 or 7

times; but each time, after writing a considerable part of it, I have

found myself unable to bring the work to a satisfactory conclusion, and

have had to put it aside. Now I have finished it; and however badly I

may have performed the task, my hope is that my fundamental thought as

to the false direction the art of our society has taken and is

following, as to the reasons of this, and as to the real destination of

art, is correct, and that therefore my work will not be without avail.

But that this should come to pass, and that art should really abandon

its false path and take the new direction, it is necessary that another

equally important human spiritual activity,—science,—in intimate

dependence on which art always rests, should abandon the false path

which it too, like art, is following.

Science and art are as closely bound together as the lungs and the

heart, so that if one organ is vitiated the other cannot act rightly.

True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and

such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most

important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception to

the region of emotion. Therefore, if the path chosen by science be false

so also will be the path taken by art. Science and art are like a

certain kind of barge with kedge-anchors which used to ply on our

rivers. Science, like the boats which took the anchors up-stream and

made them secure, gives direction to the forward movement; while art,

like the windlass worked on the barge to draw it towards the anchor,

causes the actual progression. And thus a false activity of science

inevitably causes a correspondingly false activity of art.

As art in general is the transmission of every kind of feeling, but in

the limited sense of the word we only call that art which transmits

feelings acknowledged by us to be important, so also science in general

is the transmission of all possible knowledge; but in the limited sense

of the word we call science that which transmits knowledge acknowledged

by us to be important.

And the degree of importance, both of the feelings transmitted by art

and of the information transmitted by science, is decided by the

religious perception of the given time and society, _i.e._ by the common

understanding of the purpose of their lives possessed by the people of

that time or society.

That which most of all contributes to the fulfilment of that purpose

will be studied most; that which contributes less will be studied less;

that which does not contribute at all to the fulfilment of the purpose

of human life will be entirely neglected, or, if studied, such study

will not be accounted science. So it always has been, and so it should

be now; for such is the nature of human knowledge and of human life. But

the science of the upper classes of our time, which not only does not

acknowledge any religion, but considers every religion to be mere

superstition, could not and cannot make such distinctions.

Scientists of our day affirm that they study _everything_ impartially;

but as everything is too much (is in fact an infinite number of

objects), and as it is impossible to study all alike, this is only said

in the theory, while in practice not everything is studied, and study is

applied far from impartially, only that being studied which, on the one

hand, is most wanted by, and on the other hand, is pleasantest to those

people who occupy themselves with science. And what the people,

belonging to the upper classes, who are occupying themselves with

science most want is the maintenance of the system under which those

classes retain their privileges; and what is pleasantest are such things

as satisfy idle curiosity, do not demand great mental efforts, and can

be practically applied.

And therefore one side of science, including theology and philosophy

adapted to the existing order, as also history and political economy of

the same sort, are chiefly occupied in proving that the existing order

is the very one which ought to exist; that it has come into existence

and continues to exist by the operation of immutable laws not amenable

to human will, and that all efforts to change it are therefore harmful

and wrong. The other part, experimental science,—including mathematics,

astronomy, chemistry, physics, botany, and all the natural sciences,—is

exclusively occupied with things that have no direct relation to human

life: with what is curious, and with things of which practical

application advantageous to people of the upper classes can be made. And

to justify that selection of objects of study which (in conformity to

their own position) the men of science of our times have made, they have

devised a theory of science for science’s sake, quite similar to the

theory of art for art’s sake.

As by the theory of art for art’s sake it appears that occupation with

all those things that please us—is art, so, by the theory of science for

science’s sake, the study of that which interests us—is science.

So that one side of science, instead of studying how people should live

in order to fulfil their mission in life, demonstrates the righteousness

and immutability of the bad and false arrangements of life which exist

around us; while the other part, experimental science, occupies itself

with questions of simple curiosity or with technical improvements.

The first of these divisions of science is harmful, not only because it

confuses people’s perceptions and gives false decisions, but also

because it exists, and occupies the ground which should belong to true

science. It does this harm, that each man, in order to approach the

study of the most important questions of life, must first refute these

erections of lies which have during ages been piled around each of the

most essential questions of human life, and which are propped up by all

the strength of human ingenuity.

The second division—the one of which modern science is so particularly

proud, and which is considered by many people to be the only real

science—is harmful in that it diverts attention from the really

important subjects to insignificant subjects, and is also directly

harmful in that, under the evil system of society which the first

division of science justifies and supports, a great part of the

technical gains of science are turned not to the advantage but to the

injury of mankind.

Indeed it is only to those who are devoting their lives to such study

that it seems as if all the inventions which are made in the sphere of

natural science were very important and useful things. And to these

people it seems so only when they do not look around them and do not see

what is really important. They only need tear themselves away from the

psychological microscope under which they examine the objects of their

study, and look about them, in order to see how insignificant is all

that has afforded them such naïve pride, all that knowledge not only of

geometry of n-dimensions, spectrum analysis of the Milky Way, the form

of atoms, dimensions of human skulls of the Stone Age, and similar

trifles, but even our knowledge of micro-organisms, X-rays, etc., in

comparison with such knowledge as we have thrown aside and handed over

to the perversions of the professors of theology, jurisprudence,

political economy, financial science, etc. We need only look around us

to perceive that the activity proper to real science is not the study of

whatever happens to interest us, but the study of how man’s life should

be established,—the study of those questions of religion, morality, and

social life, without the solution of which all our knowledge of nature

will be harmful or insignificant.

We are highly delighted and very proud that our science renders it

possible to utilise the energy of a waterfall and make it work in

factories, or that we have pierced tunnels through mountains, and so

forth. But the pity of it is that we make the force of the waterfall

labour, not for the benefit of the workmen, but to enrich capitalists

who produce articles of luxury or weapons of man-destroying war. The

same dynamite with which we blast the mountains to pierce tunnels, we

use for wars, from which latter we not only do not intend to abstain,

but which we consider inevitable, and for which we unceasingly prepare.

If we are now able to inoculate preventatively with diphtheritic

microbes, to find a needle in a body by means of X-rays, to straighten a

hunched-back, cure syphilis, and perform wonderful operations, we should

not be proud of these acquisitions either (even were they all

established beyond dispute) if we fully understood the true purpose of

real science. If but one-tenth of the efforts now spent on objects of

pure curiosity or of merely practical application were expended on real

science organising the life of man, more than half the people now sick

would not have the illnesses from which a small minority of them now get

cured in hospitals. There would be no poor-blooded and deformed children

growing up in factories, no death-rates, as now, of 50 per cent. among

children, no deterioration of whole generations, no prostitution, no

syphilis, and no murdering of hundreds of thousands in wars, nor those

horrors of folly and of misery which our present science considers a

necessary condition of human life.

We have so perverted the conception of science that it seems strange to

men of our day to allude to sciences which should prevent the mortality

of children, prostitution, syphilis, the deterioration of whole

generations, and the wholesale murder of men. It seems to us that

science is only then real science when a man in a laboratory pours

liquids from one jar into another, or analyses the spectrum, or cuts up

frogs and porpoises, or weaves in a specialised, scientific jargon an

obscure network of conventional phrases—theological, philosophical,

historical, juridical, or politico-economical—semi-intelligible to the

man himself, and intended to demonstrate that what now is, is what

should be.

But science, true science,—such science as would really deserve the

respect which is now claimed by the followers of one (the least

important) part of science,—is not at all such as this: real science

lies in knowing what we should and what we should not believe, in

knowing how the associated life of man should and should not be

constituted; how to treat sexual relations, how to educate children, how

to use the land, how to cultivate it oneself without oppressing other

people, how to treat foreigners, how to treat animals, and much more

that is important for the life of man.

Such has true science ever been and such it should be. And such science

is springing up in our times; but, on the one hand, such true science is

denied and refuted by all those scientific people who defend the

existing order of society, and, on the other hand, it is considered

empty, unnecessary, unscientific science by those who are engrossed in

experimental science.

For instance, books and sermons appear, demonstrating the antiquatedness

and absurdity of Church dogmas, as well as the necessity of establishing

a reasonable religious perception suitable to our times, and all the

theology that is considered to be real science is only engaged in

refuting these works and in exercising human intelligence again and

again to find support and justification for superstitions long since

out-lived, and which have now become quite meaningless. Or a sermon

appears showing that land should not be an object of private possession,

and that the institution of private property in land is a chief cause of

the poverty of the masses. Apparently science, real science, should

welcome such a sermon and draw further deductions from this position.

But the science of our times does nothing of the kind: on the contrary,

political economy demonstrates the opposite position, namely, that

landed property, like every other form of property, must be more and

more concentrated in the hands of a small number of owners. Again, in

the same way, one would suppose it to be the business of real science to

demonstrate the irrationality, unprofitableness, and immorality of war

and of executions; or the inhumanity and harmfulness of prostitution; or

the absurdity, harmfulness, and immorality of using narcotics or of

eating animals; or the irrationality, harmfulness, and antiquatedness of

patriotism. And such works exist, but are all considered unscientific;

while works to prove that all these things ought to continue, and works

intended to satisfy an idle thirst for knowledge lacking any relation to

human life, are considered to be scientific.

The deviation of the science of our time from its true purpose is

strikingly illustrated by those ideals which are put forward by some

scientists, and are not denied, but admitted, by the majority of

scientific men.

These ideals are expressed not only in stupid, fashionable books,

describing the world as it will be in 1000 or 3000 years’ time, but also

by sociologists who consider themselves serious men of science. These

ideals are that food instead of being obtained from the land by

agriculture, will be prepared in laboratories by chemical means, and

that human labour will be almost entirely superseded by the utilisation

of natural forces.

Man will not, as now, eat an egg laid by a hen he has kept, or bread

grown on his field, or an apple from a tree he has reared and which has

blossomed and matured in his sight; but he will eat tasty, nutritious,

food which will be prepared in laboratories by the conjoint labour of

many people in which he will take a small part. Man will hardly need to

labour, so that all men will be able to yield to idleness as the upper,

ruling classes now yield to it.

Nothing shows more plainly than these ideals to what a degree the

science of our times has deviated from the true path.

The great majority of men in our times lack good and sufficient food (as

well as dwellings and clothes and all the first necessaries of life).

And this great majority of men is compelled, to the injury of its

well-being, to labour continually beyond its strength. Both these evils

can easily be removed by abolishing mutual strife, luxury, and the

unrighteous distribution of wealth, in a word by the abolition of a

false and harmful order and the establishment of a reasonable, human

manner of life. But science considers the existing order of things to be

as immutable as the movements of the planets, and therefore assumes that

the purpose of science is—not to elucidate the falseness of this order

and to arrange a new, reasonable way of life—but, under the existing

order of things, to feed everybody and enable all to be as idle as the

ruling classes, who live a depraved life, now are.

And, meanwhile, it is forgotten that nourishment with corn, vegetables,

and fruit raised from the soil by one’s own labour is the pleasantest,

healthiest, easiest, and most natural nourishment, and that the work of

using one’s muscles is as necessary a condition of life as is the

oxidation of the blood by breathing.

To invent means whereby people might, while continuing our false

division of property and labour, be well nourished by means of

chemically-prepared food, and might make the forces of nature work for

them, is like inventing means to pump oxygen into the lungs of a man

kept in a closed chamber the air of which is bad, when all that is

needed is to cease to confine the man in the closed chamber.

In the vegetable and animal kingdoms a laboratory for the production of

food has been arranged, such as can be surpassed by no professors, and

to enjoy the fruits of this laboratory, and to participate in it, man

has only to yield to that ever joyful impulse to labour, without which

man’s life is a torment. And lo and behold, the scientists of our times,

instead of employing all their strength to abolish whatever hinders man

from utilising the good things prepared for him, acknowledge the

conditions under which man is deprived of these blessings to be

unalterable, and instead of arranging the life of man so that he might

work joyfully and be fed from the soil, they devise methods which will

cause him to become an artificial abortion. It is like not helping a man

out of confinement into the fresh air, but devising means, instead, to

pump into him the necessary quantity of oxygen and arranging so that he

may live in a stifling cellar instead of living at home.

Such false ideals could not exist if science were not on a false path.

And yet the feelings transmitted by art grow up on the bases supplied by

science.

But what feelings can such misdirected science evoke? One side of this

science evokes antiquated feelings, which humanity has used up, and

which, in our times, are bad and exclusive. The other side, occupied

with the study of subjects unrelated to the conduct of human life, by

its very nature cannot serve as a basis for art.

So that art in our times, to be art, must either open up its own road

independently of science, or must take direction from the unrecognised

science which is denounced by the orthodox section of science. And this

is what art, when it even partially fulfils its mission, is doing.

It is to be hoped that the work I have tried to perform concerning art

will be performed also for science—that the falseness of the theory of

science for science’s sake will be demonstrated; that the necessity of

acknowledging Christian teaching in its true meaning will be clearly

shown, that on the basis of that teaching a reappraisement will be made

of the knowledge we possess, and of which we are so proud; that the

secondariness and insignificance of experimental science, and the

primacy and importance of religious, moral, and social knowledge will be

established; and that such knowledge will not, as now, be left to the

guidance of the upper classes only, but will form a chief interest of

all free, truth-loving men, such as those who, not in agreement with the

upper classes but in their despite, have always forwarded the real

science of life.

Astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological science, as also

technical and medical science, will be studied only in so far as they

can help to free mankind from religious, juridical, or social

deceptions, or can serve to promote the well-being of all men, and not

of any single class.

Only then will science cease to be what it is now—on the one hand a

system of sophistries, needed for the maintenance of the existing

worn-out order of society, and, on the other hand, a shapeless mass of

miscellaneous knowledge, for the most part good for little or

nothing—and become a shapely and organic whole, having a definite and

reasonable purpose comprehensible to all men, namely, the purpose of

bringing to the consciousness of men the truths that flow from the

religious perception of our times.

And only then will art, which is always dependent on science, be what it

might and should be, an organ coequally important with science for the

life and progress of mankind.

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter.

Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception

into feeling. In our age the common religious perception of men is the

consciousness of the brotherhood of man—we know that the well-being of

man lies in union with his fellow-men. True science should indicate the

various methods of applying this consciousness to life. Art should

transform this perception into feeling.

The task of art is enormous. Through the influence of real art, aided by

science guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man which is

now obtained by external means—by our law-courts, police, charitable

institutions, factory inspection, etc.—should be obtained by man’s free

and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside.

And it is only art that can accomplish this.

All that now, independently of the fear of violence and punishment,

makes the social life of man possible (and already now this is an

enormous part of the order of our lives)—all this has been brought about

by art. If by art it has been inculcated how people should treat

religious objects, their parents, their children, their wives, their

relations, strangers, foreigners; how to conduct themselves to their

elders, their superiors, to those who suffer, to their enemies, and to

animals; and if this has been obeyed through generations by millions of

people, not only unenforced by any violence, but so that the force of

such customs can be shaken in no way but by means of art: then, by the

same art, other customs, more in accord with the religious perception of

our time, may be evoked. If art has been able to convey the sentiment of

reverence for images, for the eucharist, and for the king’s person; of

shame at betraying a comrade, devotion to a flag, the necessity of

revenge for an insult, the need to sacrifice one’s labour for the

erection and adornment of churches, the duty of defending one’s honour

or the glory of one’s native land—then that same art can also evoke

reverence for the dignity of every man and for the life of every animal;

can make men ashamed of luxury, of violence, of revenge, or of using for

their pleasure that of which others are in need; can compel people

freely, gladly, and without noticing it, to sacrifice themselves in the

service of man.

The task for art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood

and love of one’s neighbour, now attained only by the best members of

the society, the customary feeling and the instinct of all men. By

evoking, under imaginary conditions, the feeling of brotherhood and

love, religious art will train men to experience those same feelings

under similar circumstances in actual life; it will lay in the souls of

men the rails along which the actions of those whom art thus educates

will naturally pass. And universal art, by uniting the most different

people in one common feeling, by destroying separation, will educate

people to union, will show them, not by reason but by life itself, the

joy of universal union reaching beyond the bounds set by life.

The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason

to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being for men consists in

being united together, and to set up, in place of the existing reign of

force, that kingdom of God, _i.e._ of love, which we all recognise to be

the highest aim of human life.

Possibly, in the future, science may reveal to art yet newer and higher

ideals, which art may realise; but, in our time, the destiny of art is

clear and definite. The task for Christian art is to establish brotherly

union among men.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I.

This is the first page of Mallarmé’s book _Divagations_:—

LE PHÉNOMÈNE FUTUR.

Un ciel pâle, sur le monde qui finit de décrépitude, va peut-être partir

avec les nuages: les lambeaux de la pourpre usée des couchants

déteignent dans une rivière dormant à l’horizon submergé de rayons et

d’eau. Les arbres s’ennuient, et, sous leur feuillage blanchi (de la

poussière du temps plutôt que celle des chemins) monte la maison en

toile de Montreur de choses Passées: maint réverbère attend le

crépuscule et ravive les visages d’une malheureuse foule, vaincue par la

maladie immortelle et le péché des siècles, d’hommes près de leurs

chétives complices enceintes des fruits misérables avec lesquels périra

la terre. Dans le silence inquiet de tous les yeux suppliant là-bas le

soleil qui, sous l’eau, s’enfonce avec le désespoir d’un cri, voici le

simple boniment: “Nulle enseigne ne vous régale du spectacle intérieur,

car il n’est pas maintenant un peintre capable d’en donner une ombre

triste. J’apporte, vivante (et préservée à travers les ans par la

science souveraine) une Femme d’autrefois. Quelque folie, originelle et

naïve, une extase d’or, je ne sais quoi! par elle nommé sa chevelure, se

ploie avec la grâce des étoffes autour d’un visage qu’ éclaire la nudité

sanglante de ses lèvres. A la place du vêtement vain, elle a un corps;

et les yeux, semblables aux pierres rares! ne valent pas ce regard qui

sort de sa chair heureuse: des seins levés comme s’ils étaient pleins

d’un lait éternel, la pointe vers le ciel, les jambes lisses qui gardent

le sel de la mer première.” Se rappelant leurs pauvres épouses, chauves,

morbides et pleines d’horreur, les maris se pressent: elles aussi par

curiosité, mélancoliques, veulent voir.

Quand tous auront contemplé la noble créature, vestige de quelque époque

déjà maudite, les uns indifférents, car ils n’auront pas eu la force de

comprendre, mais d’autres navrés et la paupière humide de larmes

résignées, se regarderont; tandis que les poètes de ces temps, sentant

se rallumer leur yeux éteints, s’achemineront vers leur lampe, le

cerveau ivre un instant d’une gloire confuse, hantés du Rythme et dans

l’oubli d’exister à une époque qui survit à la beauté.

THE FUTURE PHENOMENON—by Mallarmé

A pale sky, above the world that is ending through decrepitude,

going perhaps to pass away with the clouds: shreds of worn-out

purple of the sunsets wash off their colour in a river sleeping on

the horizon, submerged with rays and water. The trees are weary and,

beneath their foliage, whitened (by the dust of time rather than

that of the roads), rises the canvas house of “Showman of things

Past.” Many a lamp awaits the gloaming and brightens the faces of a

miserable crowd vanquished by the immortal illness and the sin of

ages, of men by the sides of their puny accomplices pregnant with

the miserable fruit with which the world will perish. In the anxious

silence of all the eyes supplicating the sun there, which sinks

under the water with the desperation of a cry, this is the plain

announcement: “No sign-board now regales you with the spectacle that

is inside, for there is no painter now capable of giving even a sad

shadow of it. I bring living (and preserved by sovereign science

through the years) a Woman of other days. Some kind of folly, naïve

and original, an ecstasy of gold, I know not what, by her called her

hair, clings with the grace of some material round a face brightened

by the blood-red nudity of her lips. In place of vain clothing, she

has a body; and her eyes, resembling precious stones! are not worth

that look, which comes from her happy flesh: breasts raised as if

full of eternal milk, the points towards the sky; the smooth legs,

that keep the salt of the first sea.” Remembering their poor

spouses, bald, morbid, and full of horrors, the husbands press

forward: the women too, from curiosity, gloomily wish to see.

When all shall have contemplated the noble creature, vestige of some

epoch already damned, some indifferently, for they will not have had

strength to understand, but others broken-hearted and with eyelids

wet with tears of resignation, will look at each other; while the

poets of those times, feeling their dim eyes rekindled, will make

their way towards their lamp, their brain for an instant drunk with

confused glory, haunted by Rhythm and forgetful that they exist at

an epoch which has survived beauty.

APPENDIX II.[92]

No. 1.

The following verses are by Vielé-Griffin, from page 28 of a volume of

his Poems:—

OISEAU BLEU COULEUR DU TEMPS.

1.

Sait-tu l’oubli

D’un vain doux rêve,

Oiseau moqueur

De la forêt?

Le jour pâlit,

La nuit se lève,

Et dans mon cœur

L’ombre a pleuré;

2.

O chante-moi

Ta folle gamme,

Car j’ai dormi

Ce jour durant;

Le lâche emoi

Où fut mon âme

Sanglote ennui

Le jour mourant...

3.

Sais-tu le chant

De sa parole

Et de sa voix,

Toi qui redis

Dans le couchant

Ton air frivole

Comme autrefois

Sous les midis?

4.

O chante alors

La mélodie

De son amour,

Mon fol espoir,

Parmi les ors

Et l’incendie

Du vain doux jour

Qui meurt ce soir.

FRANCIS VIELÉ-GRIFFIN.

BLUE BIRD.

1.

Canst thou forget,

In dreams so vain,

Oh, mocking bird

Of forest deep?

The day doth set,

Night comes again,

My heart has heard

The shadows weep;

2.

Thy tones let flow

In maddening scale,

For I have slept

The livelong day;

Emotions low

In me now wail,

My soul they’ve kept:

Light dies away ...

3.

That music sweet,

Ah, do you know

Her voice and speech?

Your airs so light

You who repeat

In sunset’s glow,

As you sang, each,

At noonday’s height.

4.

Of my desire,

My hope so bold,

Her love—up, sing,

Sing ’neath this light,

This flaming fire,

And all the gold

The eve doth bring

Ere comes the night.

No. 2.

And here are some verses by the esteemed young poet Verhaeren, which I

also take from page 28 of his Works:—

ATTIRANCES.

Lointainement, et si étrangement pareils,

De grands masques d’argent que la brume recule,

Vaguent, au jour tombant, autour des vieux soleils.

Les doux lointaines!—et comme, au fond du crépuscule,

Ils nous fixent le cœur, immensément le cœur,

Avec les yeux _défunts de leur_ visage d’âme.

C’est toujours du silence, à moins, dans la pâleur

Du soir, un jet de feu soudain, un cri de flamme,

Un départ de lumière inattendu vers Dieu.

On se laisse charmer et troubler de mystère,

Et l’on dirait des morts qui taisent un adieu

Trop mystique, pour être écouté par la terre!

Sont-ils le souvenir matériel et clair

Des éphèbes chrétiens couchés aux catacombes

Parmi les lys? Sont-ils leur regard et leur chair?

Ou seul, ce qui survit de merveilleux aux tombes

De ceux qui sont partis, vers leurs rêves, un soir,

Conquérir la folie à l’assaut des nuées?

Lointainement, combien nous les sentons vouloir

Un peu d’amour pour leurs œuvres destituées,

Pour leur errance et leur tristesse aux horizons.

Toujours! aux horizons du cœur et des pensées,

Alors que les vieux soirs éclatent en blasons

Soudains, pour les gloires noires et angoissées.

ÉMILE VERHAEREN,

_Poèmes_.

ATTRACTIONS.

Large masks of silver, by mists drawn away,

So strangely alike, yet so far apart,

Float round the old suns when faileth the day.

They transfix our heart, so immensely our heart,

Those distances mild, in the twilight deep,

Looking out of dead faces with their spirit eyes.

All around is now silence, except when there leap

In the pallor of evening, with fiery cries,

Some fountains of flame that God-ward do fly.

Mysterious trouble and charms us enfold.

You might think that the dead spoke a silent good-bye,

Oh! too mystical far on earth to be told!

Are they the memories, material and bright,

Of the Christian youths that in catacombs sleep

’Mid the lilies? Are they their flesh or their sight?

Or the marvel alone that survives, in the deep,

Of those that, one night, returned to their dream

Of conquering folly by assaulting the skies?

For their destitute works—we feel it seems,

For a little love their longing cries

From horizons far—for their errings and pain.

In horizons ever of heart and thought,

While the evenings old in bright blaze wane

Suddenly, for black glories anguish fraught.

No. 3.

And the following is a poem by Moréas, evidently an admirer of Greek

beauty. It is from page 28 of a volume of his Poems:—

ENONE AU CLAIR VISAGE.

Enone, j’avais cru qu’en aimant ta beauté

Où l’âme avec le corps trouvent leur unité,

J’allais, m’affermissant et le cœur et l’esprit,

Monter jusqu’à cela qui jamais ne périt,

N’ayant été crée, qui n’est froideur ou feu,

Qui n’est beau quelque part et laid en autre lieu;

Et me flattais encor’ d’une belle harmonie

Que j’eusse composé du meilleur et du pire,

Ainsi que le chanteur qui chérit Polimnie,

En accordant le grave avec l’aigu, retire

Un son bien élevé sur les nerfs de sa lyre.

Mais mon courage, hélas! se pâmant comme mort,

M’enseigna que le trait qui m’avait fait amant

Ne fut pas de cet arc que courbe sans effort

La Vénus qui naquit du mâle seulement,

Mais que j’avais souffert cette Vénus dernière,

Qui a le cœur couard, né d’une faible mère.

Et pourtant, ce mauvais garçon, chasseur habile,

Qui charge son carquois de sagette subtile,

Qui secoue en riant sa torche, pour un jour,

Qui ne pose jamais que sur de tendres fleurs,

C’est sur un teint charmant qu’il essuie les pleurs,

Et c’est encore un Dieu, Enone, cet Amour.

Mais, laisse, les oiseaux du printemps sont partis,

Et je vois les rayons du soleil amortis.

Enone, ma douleur, harmonieux visage,

Superbe humilité, doux honnête langage,

Hier me remirant dans cet étang glacé

Qui au bout du jardin se couvre de feuillage,

Sur ma face je vis que les jours ont passé.

JEAN MORÉAS.

ENONE.

Enone, in loving thy beauty, I thought,

Where the soul and the body to union are brought,

That mounting by steadying my heart and my mind,

In that which can’t perish, myself I should find.

For it ne’er was created, is not ugly and fair;

Is not coldness in one part, while on fire it is there.

Yes, I flattered myself that a harmony fine

I’d succeed to compose of the worst and the best,

Like the bard who adores Polyhymnia divine,

And mingling sounds different from the nerves of his lyre,

From the grave and the smart draws melodies higher.

But, alas! my courage, so faint and nigh spent,

The dart that has struck me proves without fail

Not to be from that bow which is easily bent

By the Venus that’s born alone of the male.

No, ’twas that other Venus that caused me to smart,

Born of frail mother with cowardly heart.

And yet that naughty lad, that little hunter bold,

Who laughs and shakes his flowery torch just for a day,

Who never rests but upon tender flowers and gay,

On sweetest skin who dries the tears his eyes that fill,

Yet oh, Enone mine, a God’s that Cupid still.

Let it pass; for the birds of the Spring are away,

And dying I see the sun’s lingering ray.

Enone, my sorrow, oh, harmonious face,

Humility grand, words of virtue and grace,

I looked yestere’en in the pond frozen fast,

Strewn with leaves at the end of the garden’s fair space,

And I read in my face that those days are now past.

No. 4.

And this is also from page 28 of a thick book, full of similar Poems, by

M. Montesquiou.

BERCEUSE D’OMBRE.

Des formes, des formes, des formes

Blanche, bleue, et rose, et d’or

Descendront du haut des ormes

Sur l’enfant qui se rendort.

Des formes!

Des plumes, des plumes, des plumes

Pour composer un doux nid.

Midi sonne: les enclumes

Cessent; la rumeur finit ...

Des plumes!

Des roses, des roses, des roses

Pour embaumer son sommeil,

Vos pétales sont moroses

Près du sourire vermeil.

O roses!

Des ailes, des ailes, des ailes

Pour bourdonner à son front.

Abeilles et demoiselles,

Des rythmes qui berceront.

Des ailes!

Des branches, des branches, des branches

Pour tresser un pavillon,

Par où des clartés moins franches

Descendront sur l’oisillon.

Des branches!

Des songes, des songes, des songes

Dans ses pensers entr’ ouverts

Glissez un peu de mensonges

A voir le vie au travers

Des songes!

Des fées, des fées, des fées,

Pour filer leurs écheveaux

Des mirages, de bouffées

Dans tous ces petits cerveaux.

Des fées.

Des anges, des anges, des anges

Pour emporter dans l’éther

Les petits enfants étranges

Qui ne veulent pas rester ...

Nos anges!

COMTE ROBERT DE MONTESQUIOU-FEZENSAC,

_Les Hortensias Bleus_.

THE SHADOW LULLABY.

Oh forms, oh forms, oh forms

White, blue, and gold, and red

Descending from the elm trees,

On sleeping baby’s head.

Oh forms!

Oh feathers, feathers, feathers

To make a cosy nest.

Twelve striking: stops the clamour;

The anvils are at rest ...

Oh feathers!

Oh roses, roses, roses

To scent his sleep awhile,

Pale are your fragrant petals

Beside his ruby smile.

Oh roses!

Oh wings, oh wings, oh wings

Of bees and dragon-flies,

To hum around his forehead,

And lull him with your sighs.

Oh wings!

Branches, branches, branches

A shady bower to twine,

Through which, oh daylight, family

Descend on birdie mine.

Branches!

Oh dreams, oh dreams, oh dreams

Into his opening mind,

Let in a little falsehood

With sights of life behind.

Dreams!

Oh fairies, fairies, fairies,

To twine and twist their threads

With puffs of phantom visions

Into these little heads.

Fairies!

Angels, angels, angels

To the ether far away,

Those children strange to carry

That here don’t wish to stay ...

Our angels!

Footnote 92:

The translations in Appendices I., II., and IV., are by Louise Maude.

The aim of these renderings has been to keep as close to the originals

as the obscurity of meaning allowed. The sense (or absence of sense)

has therefore been more considered than the form of the verses.

APPENDIX III.

These are the contents of _The Nibelung’s Ring_:—

The first part tells that the nymphs, the daughters of the Rhine, for

some reason guard gold in the Rhine, and sing: Weia, Waga, Woge du

Welle, Walle zur Wiege, Wagalaweia, Wallala, Weiala, Weia, and so forth.

These singing nymphs are pursued by a gnome (a nibelung) who desires to

seize them. The gnome cannot catch any of them. Then the nymphs guarding

the gold tell the gnome just what they ought to keep secret, namely,

that whoever renounces love will be able to steal the gold they are

guarding. And the gnome renounces love, and steals the gold. This ends

the first scene.

In the second scene a god and a goddess lie in a field in sight of a

castle which giants have built for them. Presently they wake up and are

pleased with the castle, and they relate that in payment for this work

they must give the goddess Freia to the giants. The giants come for

their pay. But the god Wotan objects to parting with Freia. The giants

get angry. The gods hear that the gnome has stolen the gold, promise to

confiscate it and to pay the giants with it. But the giants won’t trust

them, and seize the goddess Freia in pledge.

The third scene takes place under ground. The gnome Alberich, who stole

the gold, for some reason beats a gnome, Mime, and takes from him a

helmet which has the power both of making people invisible and of

turning them into other animals. The gods, Wotan and others, appear and

quarrel with one another and with the gnomes, and wish to take the gold,

but Alberich won’t give it up, and (like everybody all through the

piece) behaves in a way to ensure his own ruin. He puts on the helmet,

and becomes first a dragon and then a toad. The gods catch the toad,

take the helmet off it, and carry Alberich away with them.

Scene IV. The gods bring Alberich to their home, and order him to

command his gnomes to bring them all the gold. The gnomes bring it.

Alberich gives up the gold, but keeps a magic ring. The gods take the

ring. So Alberich curses the ring, and says it is to bring misfortune on

anyone who has it. The giants appear; they bring the goddess Freia, and

demand her ransom. They stick up staves of Freia’s height, and gold is

poured in between these staves: this is to be the ransom. There is not

enough gold, so the helmet is thrown in, and they also demand the ring.

Wotan refuses to give it up, but the goddess Erda appears and commands

him to do so, because it brings misfortune. Wotan gives it up. Freia is

released. The giants, having received the ring, fight, and one of them

kills the other. This ends the Prelude, and we come to the First Day.

The scene shows a house in a tree. Siegmund runs in tired, and lies

down. Sieglinda, the mistress of the house (and wife of Hunding), gives

him a drugged draught, and they fall in love with each other.

Sieglinda’s husband comes home, learns that Siegmund belongs to a

hostile race, and wishes to fight him next day; but Sieglinda drugs her

husband, and comes to Siegmund. Siegmund discovers that Sieglinda is his

sister, and that his father drove a sword into the tree so that no one

can get it out. Siegmund pulls the sword out, and commits incest with

his sister.

Act II. Siegmund is to fight with Hunding. The gods discuss the question

to whom they shall award the victory. Wotan, approving of Siegmund’s

incest with his sister, wishes to spare him, but, under pressure from

his wife, Fricka, he orders the Valkyrie Brünnhilda to kill Siegmund.

Siegmund goes to fight; Sieglinda faints. Brünnhilda appears and wishes

to slay Siegmund. Siegmund wishes to kill Sieglinda also, but Brünnhilda

does not allow it; so he fights with Hunding. Brünnhilda defends

Siegmund, but Wotan defends Hunding. Siegmund’s sword breaks, and he is

killed. Sieglinda runs away.

Act III. The Valkyries (divine Amazons) are on the stage. The Valkyrie

Brünnhilda arrives on horseback, bringing Siegmund’s body. She is flying

from Wotan, who is chasing her for her disobedience. Wotan catches her,

and as a punishment dismisses her from her post as a Valkyrie. He casts

a spell on her, so that she has to go to sleep and to continue asleep

until a man wakes her. When someone wakes her she will fall in love with

him. Wotan kisses her; she falls asleep. He lets off fire, which

surrounds her.

We now come to the Second Day. The gnome Mime forges a sword in a wood.

Siegfried appears. He is a son born from the incest of brother with

sister (Siegmund with Sieglinda), and has been brought up in this wood

by the gnome. In general the motives of the actions of everybody in this

production are quite unintelligible. Siegfried learns his own origin,

and that the broken sword was his father’s. He orders Mime to reforge

it, and then goes off. Wotan comes in the guise of a wanderer, and

relates what will happen: that he who has not learnt to fear will forge

the sword, and will defeat everybody. The gnome conjectures that this is

Siegfried, and wants to poison him. Siegfried returns, forges his

father’s sword, and runs off, shouting, Heiho! heiho! heiho! Ho! ho!

Aha! oho! aha! Heiaho! heiaho! heiaho! Ho! ho! Hahei! hoho! hahei!

And we get to Act II. Alberich sits guarding a giant, who, in form of a

dragon, guards the gold he has received. Wotan appears, and for some

unknown reason foretells that Siegfried will come and kill the dragon.

Alberich wakes the dragon, and asks him for the ring, promising to

defend him from Siegfried. The dragon won’t give up the ring. Exit

Alberich. Mime and Siegfried appear. Mime hopes the dragon will teach

Siegfried to fear. But Siegfried does not fear. He drives Mime away and

kills the dragon, after which he puts his finger, smeared with the

dragon’s blood, to his lips. This enables him to know men’s secret

thoughts, as well as the language of birds. The birds tell him where the

treasure and the ring are, and also that Mime wishes to poison him. Mime

returns, and says out loud that he wishes to poison Siegfried. This is

meant to signify that Siegfried, having tasted dragon’s blood,

understands people’s secret thoughts. Siegfried, having learnt Mime’s

intentions, kills him. The birds tell Siegfried where Brünnhilda is, and

he goes to find her.

Act III. Wotan calls up Erda. Erda prophesies to Wotan, and gives him

advice. Siegfried appears, quarrels with Wotan, and they fight. Suddenly

Siegfried’s sword breaks Wotan’s spear, which had been more powerful

than anything else. Siegfried goes into the fire to Brünnhilda; kisses

her; she wakes up, abandons her divinity, and throws herself into

Siegfried’s arms.

Third Day. Prelude. Three Norns plait a golden rope, and talk about the

future. They go away. Siegfried and Brünnhilda appear. Siegfried takes

leave of her, gives her the ring, and goes away.

Act I. By the Rhine. A king wants to get married, and also to give his

sister in marriage. Hagen, the king’s wicked brother, advises him to

marry Brünnhilda, and to give his sister to Siegfried. Siegfried

appears; they give him a drugged draught, which makes him forget all the

past and fall in love with the king’s sister, Gutrune. So he rides off

with Gunther, the king, to get Brünnhilda to be the king’s bride. The

scene changes. Brünnhilda sits with the ring. A Valkyrie comes to her

and tells her that Wotan’s spear is broken, and advises her to give the

ring to the Rhine nymphs. Siegfried comes, and by means of the magic

helmet turns himself into Gunther, demands the ring from Brünnhilda,

seizes it, and drags her off to sleep with him.

Act II. By the Rhine. Alberich and Hagen discuss how to get the ring.

Siegfried comes, tells how he has obtained a bride for Gunther and spent

the night with her, but put a sword between himself and her. Brünnhilda

rides up, recognises the ring on Siegfried’s hand, and declares that it

was he, and not Gunther, who was with her. Hagen stirs everybody up

against Siegfried, and decides to kill him next day when hunting.

Act III. Again the nymphs in the Rhine relate what has happened.

Siegfried, who has lost his way, appears. The nymphs ask him for the

ring, but he won’t give it up. Hunters appear. Siegfried tells the story

of his life. Hagen then gives him a draught, which causes his memory to

return to him. Siegfried relates how he aroused and obtained Brünnhilda,

and everyone is astonished. Hagen stabs him in the back, and the scene

is changed. Gutrune meets the corpse of Siegfried. Gunther and Hagen

quarrel about the ring, and Hagen kills Gunther. Brünnhilda cries. Hagen

wishes to take the ring from Siegfried’s hand, but the hand of the

corpse raises itself threateningly. Brünnhilda takes the ring from

Siegfried’s hand, and when Siegfried’s corpse is carried to the pyre she

gets on to a horse and leaps into the fire. The Rhine rises, and the

waves reach the pyre. In the river are three nymphs. Hagen throws

himself into the fire to get the ring, but the nymphs seize him and

carry him off. One of them holds the ring; and that is the end of the

matter.

The impression obtainable from my recapitulation is, of course,

incomplete. But however incomplete it may be, it is certainly infinitely

more favourable than the impression which results from reading the four

booklets in which the work is printed.

APPENDIX IV.

Translations of French poems and prose quoted in Chapter X.

BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL.”

No. XXIV.

I adore thee as much as the vaults of night,

O vase full of grief, taciturnity great,

And I love thee the more because of thy flight.

It seemeth, my night’s beautifier, that you

Still heap up those leagues—yes! ironically heap!—

That divide from my arms the immensity blue.

I advance to attack, I climb to assault,

Like a choir of young worms at a corpse in the vault;

Thy coldness, oh cruel, implacable beast!

Yet heightens thy beauty, on which my eyes feast!

BAUDELAIRE’S “FLOWERS OF EVIL.”

No. XXXVI.

DUELLUM.

Two warriors come running, to fight they begin,

With gleaming and blood they bespatter the air;

These games, and this clatter of arms, is the din

Of youth that’s a prey to the surgings of love.

The rapiers are broken! and so is our youth,

But the dagger’s avenged, dear! and so is the sword,

By the nail that is steeled and the hardened tooth.

Oh, the fury of hearts aged and ulcered by love!

In the ditch, where the ounce and the pard have their lair,

Our heroes have rolled in an angry embrace;

Their skin blooms on brambles that erewhile were bare.

That ravine is a friend-inhabited hell!

Then let us roll in, oh woman inhuman,

To immortalise hatred that nothing can quell!

FROM BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE WORK ENTITLED “LITTLE POEMS.”

THE STRANGER.

Whom dost thou love best? say, enigmatical man—thy father, thy mother,

thy brother, or thy sister?

“I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.”

Thy friends?

“You there use an expression the meaning of which till now remains

unknown to me.”

Thy country?

“I ignore in what latitude it is situated.”

Beauty?

“I would gladly love her, goddess and immortal.”

Gold?

“I hate it as you hate God.”

Then what do you love, extraordinary stranger?

“I love the clouds ... the clouds that pass ... there ... the marvellous

clouds!”

BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE POEM,

THE SOUP AND THE CLOUDS.

My beloved little silly was giving me my dinner, and I was

contemplating, through the open window of the dining-room, those moving

architectures which God makes out of vapours, the marvellous

constructions of the impalpable. And I said to myself, amid my

contemplations, “All these phantasmagoria are almost as beautiful as the

eyes of my beautiful beloved, the monstrous little silly with the green

eyes.”

Suddenly I felt the violent blow of a fist on my back, and I heard a

harsh, charming voice, an hysterical voice, as it were hoarse with

brandy, the voice of my dear little well-beloved, saying, “Are you going

to eat your soup soon, you d—— b—— of a dealer in clouds?”

BAUDELAIRE’S PROSE POEM,

THE GALLANT MARKSMAN.

As the carriage was passing through the forest, he ordered it to be

stopped near a shooting-gallery, saying that he wished to shoot off a

few bullets to _kill_ Time. To kill this monster, is it not the most

ordinary and the most legitimate occupation of everyone? And he

gallantly offered his arm to his dear, delicious, and execrable

wife—that mysterious woman to whom he owed so much pleasure, so much

pain, and perhaps also a large part of his genius.

Several bullets struck far from the intended mark—one even penetrated

the ceiling; and as the charming creature laughed madly, mocking her

husband’s awkwardness, he turned abruptly towards her and said, “Look at

that doll there on the right with the haughty mien and her nose in the

air; well, dear angel, _I imagine to myself that it is you_!” And he

closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. The doll was neatly decapitated.

Then, bowing towards his dear one, his delightful, execrable wife, his

inevitable, pitiless muse, and kissing her hand respectfully, he added,

“Ah! my dear angel, how I thank you for my skill!”

VERLAINE’S “FORGOTTEN AIRS.”

No. I.

“The wind in the plain

Suspends its breath.”—FAVART.

’Tis ecstasy languishing,

Amorous fatigue,

Of woods all the shudderings

Embraced by the breeze,

’Tis the choir of small voices

Towards the grey trees.

Oh the frail and fresh murmuring!

The twitter and buzz,

The soft cry resembling

That’s expired by the grass ...

Oh, the roll of the pebbles

’Neath waters that pass!

Oh, this soul that is groaning

In sleepy complaint!

In us is it moaning?

In me and in you?

Low anthem exhaling

While soft falls the dew.

VERLAINE’S “FORGOTTEN AIRS.”

No. VIII.

In the unending

Dulness of this land,

Uncertain the snow

Is gleaming like sand.

No kind of brightness

In copper-hued sky,

The moon you might see

Now live and now die.

Grey float the oak trees—

Cloudlike they seem—

Of neighbouring forests,

The mists in between.

Wolves hungry and lean,

And famishing crow,

What happens to you

When acid winds blow?

In the unending

Dulness of this land,

Uncertain the snow

Is gleaming like sand.

SONG BY MAETERLINCK.

When he went away,

(Then I heard the door)

When he went away,

On her lips a smile there lay ...

Back he came to her,

(Then I heard the lamp)

Back he came to her,

Someone else was there ...

It was death I met,

(And I heard her soul)

It was death I met,

For her he’s waiting yet ...

Someone came to say,

(Child, I am afraid)

Someone came to say

That he would go away ...

With my lamp alight,

(Child, I am afraid)

With my lamp alight,

Approached I in affright ...

To one door I came,

(Child, I am afraid)

To one door I came,

A shudder shook the flame ...

At the second door,

(Child, I am afraid)

At the second door

Forth words the flame did pour ...

To the third I came,

(Child, I am afraid)

To the third I came,

Then died the little flame ...

Should he one day return

Then what shall we say?

Waiting, tell him, one

And dying for him lay ...

If he asks for you,

Say what answer then?

Give him my gold ring

And answer not a thing ...

Should he question me

Concerning the last hour?

Say I smiled for fear

That he should shed a tear ...

Should he question more

Without knowing me?

Like a sister speak;

Suffering he may be ...

Should he question why

Empty is the hall?

Show the gaping door,

The lamp alight no more ...

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH

● Transcriber’s Notes:

○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).

Text that was in bold face is enclosed by equals signs (=bold=).

○ Footnotes have been moved to follow the chapters in which they are

referenced.