_SYMBOLISM AND LOGIC_
The French symbolists, and all poets and artists who move in the
world of emotions, are invited by Nordau to “take their place at the
table of science, where there is room for all.” Were they to accept
the invitation, how would the emotional nature of our race find
expression? Would it be possible, or wise, to ignore emotions in face
of the fact that our lives are essentially emotional? Or does Nordau
push his scientific superstition to such a point as to believe that
human emotions can ever be investigated by means of the lancet, the
microscope, and the thermometer? In spite of his sneer at Rossetti’s
remark regarding his indifference as to whether the sun turned round
the earth or the earth turned round the sun, he cannot fail to
acknowledge that what humanity yearns for is beautiful and pleasing
emotions, not scientific facts. The glorious sunshine, the balmy
breeze, the radiant flowers, the inscrutable attractions of woman, her
love, her esteem, her faith, the affection of children, the confidence
of our fellow-beings, our trust in the good, our struggle against
evil—such are the elements of life and happiness. Science acquires all
its importance from being the means by which beautiful and pleasing
emotions are safeguarded, and unpleasant emotions are avoided. When
science mistakes its mission, when it attempts to distort and vilify
their expressions, it has become unreal and fatal.
Nordau wishes us to regard science—progressing as it has done by
replacing old errors of our senses by new errors of our senses—as
embodying all facts worth noticing, and to disregard emotions which are
eternally unchangeable.
To turn our back upon emotions and to take our place at the table of
science means to ignore all that is beautiful, lovable, ennobling, and
hopeful, to shut our eyes to the charms of form, colour, motion, and
our ears to music, and to concentrate our attention upon the repast
spread on the table of science: the pleasure of discovering bacteria in
human tissue, the curiosity of counting the throbs of a frog’s heart
after being torn from the living body, the sensation of ascertaining
the effect of the gastric juices on the foot of a living rabbit
inserted into a living dog’s stomach.
We take no side in the question of vivisection, or any other scientific
methods, but without in the least minimizing the great services
rendered, and to be rendered, by science to humanity, we must express
our astonishment that any sound mind, knowing what scientific methods
are, and must be, can seriously suggest that scientific investigation
should supersede art and poetry. If we believed in degeneration, such
opinions would be the first examples of it we should quote.
Poets and philosophers who deal with emotions, so to say with
immaterial phenomena, impalpable to every one of our senses, but
demonstrated as eternally real by their effects, must needs make use
of symbols, or, to be more exact, of more symbols, vaguer symbols,
and bolder symbols than those which naturally enter into language. To
deny them this right is equal to denying the mathematician the use
of the letter _X_, which stands for unknown quantities, and which is
handled by him as dexterously as if it were the most familiar object
in the world. If human beings were not allowed to speak about what
their imagination conjures up, what their feelings prompt, and what
irresistible instincts point to, they would be brought alarmingly near
to the level of the beast.
The French symbolists being poets, might not have formulated into
distinct thoughts what we have said above, but they have certainly
felt it all, and much more. They have felt themselves surrounded by
undefined and undefinable _X’s_ of far greater moment to their lives,
to their happiness, and to their best instincts, than all the known
and half-known quantities of science. In attempting to give expression
to their feelings and to their thoughts regarding the all-important
unknown, and to evoke among their fellow-beings an interest in them,
they have found themselves justified in using any means, including
symbolism, for their purpose.
Nordau has entertained no such considerations in dealing with the
French symbolists. In obedience to his professional prejudices, he
looks for no other causes, no other influences, than those that can be
found in the mechanism of their brains. This is all the more amazing
as he over and over again recognises that external circumstances,
conditions of life and habits, exercise a strong influence on the
brain, or, in other words, that the mechanism which connects the _Ego_
with matter may be influenced by the _Ego_. The result of his criticism
presents therefore a want of fairness which to the English mind is
especially objectionable.
The manner in which he pries into the private life and antecedents
of Paul Verlaine, and the indelicate manner in which he refers to
the personal appearance of the poet, impress us English people as so
many unfair means of giving plausibility to his conclusions. When a
hunchback is good-humoured enough to make fun of his own deformity,
those of gentle feelings sympathize all the more with his misfortune,
and become all the more anxious not to refer to it. When a poet, in
his love of truth and in his anxiety to rouse a certain emotion, makes
confessions, when he instances his own sad experiences and failings,
when he, so to say, throws himself into the flames on the altar of
truth, we in England count it indelicate and unfair to base criticism
on facts thus revealed. Had Nordau read Verlaine’s poetry with an
unbiassed mind, he could not have failed to be struck by the extent to
which the poet typifies the movement going on around him: his failings,
his errors, and, maybe, his bad habits—all this is the fate of millions
who have been induced by the materialist tendencies of recent times
to disregard personal responsibility, and who, after rejecting such
guides as the nobler instincts of humanity had proffered, attempt to
follow the dictates of the lower instincts and animal impulses. His
terrible remorse and despair, while he is still unmoved by religion,
bear witness to aspirations which the materialist would fain deny.
His instinctive groping for the consolations of religion shows to
what an extent he attributes his failings to an irreligious life, and
that he experiences within him yearnings for a happiness which the
gratification of the senses, prompted by atheism, has never afforded
him.
Nordau would object to this expression—the gratification of his senses
prompted by atheism—and would tell us that atheism ought to have
implanted into Verlaine the religion of humanity, and that he should
have sacrificed all his inclinations for the future happiness of his
race. But, surely, it would require a good dose of hypocrisy for a
man, sincerely convinced that death puts him personally beyond any
consequences of his life, to persuade himself that he is practising
a life-long abnegation for the good of posterity. Is it not much
more likely that in so frank a nature as Verlaine’s the disbelief in
personal responsibility would turn him into a devil-may-care vagabond
until he learned in the school of experience the dangerous mistakes of
materialism? Does Nordau not recognise the logic and the frankness in a
young man who, in the exuberance of his animal life, when convinced of
personal irresponsibility, lives up to the motto of a “short life and a
merry one”?
The need of love and affection—a need generally so strongly felt by
all poets—Nordau is pleased to call eroticism, and when the poet finds
that he has profaned love, implanted in his soul by God, Nordau fancies
he has discovered in Verlaine that blending of religious fervour and
morbid eroticism which, when irrational, is a sign of lunacy.
When Paul Verlaine invokes the Virgin Mary, a form of religious
expression which millions of sane people indulge in daily, Nordau at
once imagines he has discovered another trace of insanity. In order to
show that we are not unfair to our alienist, we will quote one of the
poems of Verlaine he refers to, and the conclusions he draws from it,—
Et comme j’étais faible, et bien méchant encore,
Aux mains lâches, les yeux éblouis des chemins,
Elle baissa mes yeux, et me joignis les mains,
Et m’enseigna les mots par lesquels on adore.
“The accents here quoted,” says Nordau, “are well known to the clinics
of psychiatry. We may compare them to the picture which Legrain gives
of some of his patients. ‘His speech continually reverts to God and the
Virgin Mary, his cousin.’ [The case in question is that of a degenerate
subject who was a tramway conductor.] ‘Mystical ideas complete the
picture. He talks of God, of heaven, crosses himself, kneels down, and
says that he is following the commandments of Christ.’ [The subject
under observation is a day-labourer.] ‘The devil will tempt me, but I
see God who guards me. I have asked of God that all people might be
beautiful,’ etc.”
So far Nordau.
Because a mad tramway conductor thinks he is cousin of the Virgin
Mary, Verlaine, who symbolizes in the Virgin Mary the power that draws
him towards the good, is on the road to madness! From this it follows
that, if a mad tramway conductor were to believe himself the cousin
of Professor Lombroso, Nordau’s quasi-worship of that authority would
indicate degeneracy in Nordau’s mind.
One of Nordau’s characteristics is a weak or dull logical faculty,
often to be observed in those who over-study for examination and in
specialists fanatically inclined. Without this peculiarity he could
not possibly have omitted to ask himself the question, “How about
all other worshippers of Christ?” when he concludes that Verlaine’s
mind is degenerate because he speaks devotedly of the Virgin Mary,
while a lunatic labourer says that he follows the commandments of
Christ. Nordau does not see that in this manner he completely gives
himself away, and lets us perceive that it is not the symbolist whom
he considered degenerate, but the whole Christian populations of the
world that have existed during two thousand years, and that still
exist. Only his lack of a sense of the ridiculous, already pointed out,
has prevented him from remembering that the man in his cups considers
himself the only sober man of the company.
The verses which Verlaine has written in praise of a vagabond life
Nordau holds up as a sure sign of lurking lunacy. Are then all poets
who write in praise of a vagabond life degenerates? Is not the true
secret of Nordau’s conclusion to be found in the fact that he entirely
misses the satire against our modern system which underlies Verlaine’s
and other writers’ poems on this same subject? He does the same with
regard to Verlaine’s poem addressed to the demented king, Louis II. of
Bavaria. When we behold the follies of reigning sovereigns, who are
supposed to be in the full enjoyment of their faculties, making such
poor use of their opportunities, degrading and ruining their people,
rousing a hatred against themselves and their dynasty, or striving at
low _bourgeois_ aims, or even, to use Nordau’s own expression, selling
their royalty for a big cheque; when we read of the monarchs of the
past, of their crimes and their meanesses, how can we wonder that the
unfortunate King Louis should inspire sympathy in a poet, and that he
should satirize the so-called reasonable monarchs by eulogizing the
demented one?
Nordau makes much of that form of mental weakness which manifests
itself in echolalia, or the mania of repeating for no reason the
same words and the same sentences. But to deny the poet, who aims at
conveying an emotion and for that purpose wishes to create a certain
mood in his listeners, the use of choruses, refrains, and cadenced
repetitions, he runs counter to the oldest literary tradition in the
world. He would surely not object to repetitions in verses intended to
be sung; and if we are right in placing poetry half way between speech
and music in the list of the vehicles of thought, as we have done in a
previous chapter, euphonies, musicalities of words, and repetitions are
both permissible and rational.
Many poetical emotions may be quickened by reminiscences from
childhood; and a style of writing, or the use of words or sounds,
reminding us of early days, might be the most effective methods
of expression. Thus, for instance, a drowsy repetition of
pleasant-sounding words may be very telling in a lullaby, even if
they convey no scientific meaning, or do not contribute to the sense
of the poem, and so long as they do not distort it. The examples of
repetitions from degeneracy in Verlaine are chosen so unhappily
as to place Nordau in the wrong and Verlaine in the right in the
judgment of unbiassed persons; the one is a serenade, and the other
is entitled “Chevaux du Bois,” in which the sensation of a child on
a merry-go-round is suggested. Another is supposed to be sung by, or
suggests, Pierrot Gamin, that is a young idiot. When Verlaine wishes to
qualify a noun in a manner which is difficult to express in ordinary
adjectives, he, like millions of his fellows, has recourse to the
method of giving a new, or symbolic, signification to an old adjective,
and this, according to Nordau, is a sign of mental degeneration. To
prove his case he quotes such terms as “a narrow and vast affection,”
“a slow landscape,” “a slack liqueur,” “a gilded perfume,” “a terse
contour,” etc. He does not seem to know that the paucity of language
renders such expressions not only legitimate but extremely useful in
many professions and trades, let alone poetry. Has he never heard
of a warm colour, a lively tint, a cold tone, etc.? Are the French
wine-growers mad when they say that wine is heavy, light, full, dead,
alive, slack, round, green, angular, smooth, velvety, etc.?
We are glad to see that he recognises Verlaine’s ability as a poet and
does not find fault with some of his poems. Thus he says of “Chanson
d’Automne” that “there are few poems in French literature that can
rival” it. While rejoicing at the fairness that Nordau here displays,
we must however point out the eccentricity of his logic. He desires
to warn us against degeneration, and therefore points to a poet
whose degeneracy has not prevented him from writing a masterpiece of
literature. It should also be noticed that the “Chanson d’Automne,”
which meets with such ample praise from Nordau, is on the same theme
which underlies other pieces of poetry quoted in his work as examples
of legitimate and sane poetry. When he does intimate that a poet might
burst into song over flowers, trees, books, and twittering birds, but
not over the sympathy he feels in his consciousness with the powers
that have called them forth, simply because science has not so far been
able to analyse and classify those powers, he only shows that he is
illogical enough to proffer his limited view of what is poetical as an
infallible standard of the poetry of the world.
Nordau blames Verlaine and other symbolists for dealing with moods
instead of with definite ideas. But is there a single poet in the
past or the present who did not largely deal in moods, and who did
not labour to give the world an impression of his own feelings?
Nordau’s ideal author—Goethe—has gone further. He wrote a whole novel,
_Werther’s Leiden_, which is little else than a lengthy description of
his hero’s moods.
Another symbolist, Stephane Mallarmé, who in France as well as in
England enjoys a reputation as a poet, or rather as an authority on
poetry, is attacked by Nordau in a manner which suggests other motives
than fair criticism. He gibes at the symbolists and at all who consider
Mallarmé a poet, because he has produced only a few original works and
translations. As our alienist cannot very well put this down as a sign
of degeneration, having treated those who write much as graphomaniacs,
he gives us no other reasons for placing Mallarmé among the examples
of degeneration than that he has “long, pointed, faun-like ears,” a
fact which he seems not to have noticed personally but which he has
obtained, like most of his facts, from a book.
He distinctly insinuates that the admiration for Mallarmé’s poetical
gift indicates degeneration, especially as Mallarmé has written so
little. We meet here again with a striking example of his curious
logic. He imagines that he strengthens his case by quoting from
Lessing, who in _Amelia Galotti_ makes Conti say that Raphael would
have been the greatest genius in painting, even if he had unfortunately
been born without hands. From this, English readers who happen to know
nothing of Lessing or Conti would conclude that either Lessing was
a lunatic or that his character, Conti, was mad. But neither is the
case, and the quotation consequently tells against Nordau. Whoever
would deny that a man cannot be a poet and an authority on poetry
without publishing verse must attach an extremely narrow meaning to
the word poet. If Lessing, or Conti, means by the word painter, not
the craftsman, but the man with the painter’s soul, the symbolist may
surely be allowed to call Mallarmé a poet. Has Nordau never met with
mute poets, blind painters, and deaf musicians? One of the greatest
musicians of the world composed marvellous music while stone-deaf.
Now if we suppose that Beethoven had lost his hearing before he had
mastered the technicalities of music, would he therefore not have
remained a musician?
Nordau is very severe on several other symbolists and certainly does
his best to represent them in an unfavourable light. In order to show
that Charles Morice, the author of _La Littérature de tout à l’heure_
is literally insane and a graphomaniac, he quotes Morice’s rhapsodical
conception of God, which he pretends to take as an exact definition in
order to reduce it to twaddle. To any unprejudiced reader it is evident
that Morice intended to convey by this wild attempt at description how
impossible it is to define God. Nordau’s prejudice against the French
nation becomes palpable when speaking of the fact that the French
language lends itself badly to blank verse and that a freer treatment
of it in French poetry is a comparatively modern departure which by
other countries was taken long ago. He says: “But to any one but a
Frenchman, they merely make themselves ridiculous when they trumpet
their painful hobbling after the nations who are far in front of them,
as an unheard-of discovery of new paths and opening up of new roads
and as an advance inspired by the ideal into the dawn of the future.”
This gratuitous insult of a whole nation gives us a vivid insight into
the working of his mind. He would not have penned a sentence of such
bad taste, and so marked by the echolalia he condemns in others, had he
not been prompted by feelings stronger than his judgment.