Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 by Various

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Such a strain of remark, based as it is upon general principles, cannot
be useless in our own country; although we do not suspect that the same
perverted taste which meets its reproof in these lectures is common
amongst us. Were we called upon to describe the malady under which our
countrymen labour in respect to literary taste, we should describe it as
a state of torpor and lethargy, rather than of virulent disease. It is
indifference, more than any morbid taste, which an imaginative work
would have to struggle against in this country. There is little
necessity here to guard the public against any species of literary
enthusiasm; certain writers of very dubious merit may be extensively
read, but they are not esteemed. It is only necessary to listen to the
conversation that goes on around us, to be convinced that the extensive
circulation of a book has ceased to be a decisive proof even of its
_popularity_. We seem too idle, or too busy, to give attention to a
thoughtful literature which is not at the same time _professional_--and
we have too much good sense amongst us to admire the sort of clever
trash we are contented to read and to talk about. For something in
leisure hours must be read. A book must be had, if only as a companion
for the sofa, if only to place in the hand, as we place the ottoman
under our feet, to steady and complete our repose.

We will at once introduce a striking quotation from the author before
us, which has immediate reference to the _Lucrece Borgia_ of Victor
Hugo. To those who have not read the play it is only necessary to
observe, in order to understand what follows, that Victor Hugo, with
that violent effort after a moral novelty which distinguishes him, has
chosen to represent the infamous Lucretia Borgia as under the influence
of maternal love, while in all other respects she fully sustains her
odious and infernal reputation.

The author wished, he tells us in his preface, to retrieve
the moral deformity of Lucretia Borgia by the beauty of the
maternal sentiment; he wished, according to his own
energetic expression, 'to place the mother in the monster.'
Here let us make a distinction. I admire the tenderness
which the most ferocious animals have for their offspring,
and when the dying lioness covers her young with her wounded
and bleeding body, I admire and am moved. But a woman who is
a mother ought, in her tenderness to her children, to have
more intelligence, more of elevation of thought, than the
lioness. Instinct is not enough; there must be a sentiment,
a sentiment which does not exclude, but perfects and
purifies the instinct. Thus, when in Florence, a mother cast
herself in desperation before the lion who had taken her
child, and the lion, astonished at her despair, or perhaps
comprehending it, replaced the infant at her feet, it was
instinct which impelled the mother, and it was probably
instinct in the lion which responded to her. But good
instincts, whatever admirable actions they may occasionally
produce, are but the germ and commencement of human virtues;
they are indeed radically distinguished from human virtue by
this, that, of themselves, however strong, they are sterile:
a good instinct dwells by the side of a bad without effort
to reform or to purify it, and equally without danger of
being itself perverted. One virtue only in a vicious
character might convert it entirely to virtue, as one vice
only in a virtuous might lead it to utter depravation. But
an instinct, however good, supports without disquietude the
neighbourhood of evil, and it is thus that, in Lucretia
Borgia, the mother and the monster are placed side by side,
without affecting, without combating each other. Now there
is nothing less natural, and nothing less dramatic than this
mutual toleration. Characters wherein good and evil are
mixed together, are dramatic, only because the conflict of
opposite sentiments which takes place in the mind, is
brought before the view of the spectator. But where, in
Lucretia, is the struggle between good and evil? At what
moment does the maternal virtue enlighten and purify this
soul lost in darkness? When does this transfiguration take
place, so marvellous and yet so natural? * * *

It is singular, and marks the change which has taken place
in our moral notions. Formerly poets gave to their
personages one only vice or passion, taking care in other
respects to render them virtuous, in order that they should
be worthy of interest; at the present day, our poets give
their personages I know not how many passions and vices,
with one only virtue as a counterpoise. And this virtue,
weak and solitary, is by no means charged with the task of
purifying the corrupted mind in which it has by chance been
preserved. It carefully respects the independence of those
vices which permit it to dwell with them. Neither is it
commissioned to inspire an interest in the spectator;
because it is vice which now inspires all our interest,
thanks to a certain noble and proud bearing which has been
assigned to it, and which has been imitated from the heroes
of Lord Byron.

M. Girardin, it will have been remarked from the above extract, is
disposed to reproach our Lord Byron as the source from which some of his
countrymen have drawn their dark inspiration. This may be true. But
without defending our Byron from charges to which he is manifestly
exposed, let us say thus much for him, that in his poetry he was still
too much a classic not to be a worshipper of the beautiful; that he did
not court for itself the monstrous, the ugly; his mind did not willingly
associate with what was revolting in outward form or human passion. If
there was any thing Satanic, as some were pleased to express it, in his
poetry, he was not, at all events, of the hobgoblin or demoniac school.
It was the Satan of Milton, with its ruined beauty and clouded dignity,
that had taken possession of his imagination. He delighted to depict the
pride, the love, the generosity, of hearts at war with man, and not on
too good terms with heaven; but still it was their pride, their love,
their generosity, that occupied his imagination. They are bad men; he
takes care to tell us so himself; but he has not the heart to make them
act otherwise than as noble fellows while they are under his guidance.
The Corsair, from his very name and profession, is a declared criminal;
but this once said, the poet occupies himself and his reader with
nothing but what is generous and heroic in Conrad. Byron had no
disposition, had a certain antipathy, to paint the virtuous man; but it
was a virtue, nevertheless, that attracted his pencil. He felt it
necessary, as a preliminary condition, to remove his hero from the
category of good men; but this being fairly done, he resigned himself to
the natural bent for what is good and great. A Borgia, whether male or
female, in all its native deformity, was not the subject to allure him.

Nowhere is the rebuke of M. Girardin of certain of his contemporaries,
more dignified, or more justly merited, than where, discoursing on the
manner in which the moderns have delineated paternal love, he reproves
that exaggeration and falsification which has represented the father
describing the affection he bears to his daughter in a style of language
devoted to another species of love. Nothing can be more odious and
offensive than to transgress, even in language, the bounds between the
two affections, and to put into the mouth of a parent, as Victor Hugo
and Balzac have done, a style appropriate to the lover speaking of his
mistress. But we will not quote these passages from M. Girardin, because
they will require long quotations in order to justify the censure
contained in them. At the close of the lecture upon paternal love, we
find the following general remarks on the composition of a modern French
drama; and the slightest acquaintance with this drama will enable the
reader to appreciate their justice and analytic accuracy:--

Formerly a dramatic character was an assemblage of
qualities good and bad, which, on the one hand, were in
conflict amongst themselves, and, on the other, were
subjected to some superior law of religion, of honour, or of
patriotism. This twofold struggle constituted the interest
of the person brought upon the scene, and this superior law,
which he strove to accomplish, constituted the morality of
his character. According to the incidents of the piece, each
passion might take the ascendant, none being represented as
irresistible; and the moral law which predominated over the
drama, did not prevent this play of the passions--it being
visibly suspended during the whole piece over the heads of
the personages, and receiving its fulfilment only at the
close. In the present day dramatic characters are composed
differently. Instead of representing the whole of the
character, and the struggle between its good and evil
passions, one only passion is selected, which is made
violent, irresistible, fatal, the absolute mistress of all
the others; that is to say, a part is taken instead of the
whole. At the same time the moral law which, in the ancient
drama, (_i.e._ the drama of Racine and Corneille,) sustained
also a struggle against the passions--this law which those
even avowed who transgressed it, which had always its place
in the piece, whether through virtue or remorse--this law
also disappears before the ascendency of the sovereign
passion. No counterpoise of any kind, whether on the side of
rival passions or on the side of duty. What remains, then,
to struggle against this arbitrary passion? Nothing but
chance--circumstance--the hazard of events. And thus it is
that, in the modern drama, the interest resides rather in
the strange complication of events than in the shock of
opposite passions. The poet has only the power of chance, a
power sovereignly capricious, to contend against the passion
he has chosen to represent. And thus it is that the modern
drama has something also of arbitrary and fantastic.
Incidents and theatrical effects are accumulated, but the
incidents do not spring from the natural movement of the
passions brought upon the stage; they have no longer their
cause in the characters of the drama; they issue from the
fancy of the poet, who, feeling the necessity of arousing
his spectators from time to time, complicates the action
after a strange fashion, and aims always at surprise.

M. Girardin has a lecture upon suicides, in which he attacks that
sentimentality--a mixture, in reality, of weakness and impatience--which
in modern literature, and in modern life, often conducts to suicide. The
following passage will be acknowledged to be eloquent, and even poetic,
unless our translation of it shall have entirely obscured its beauty.
After having described the proud and _philosophical_ suicides of ancient
Rome, he adds:--

There is another species of suicide more in credit in our
days, which is rather occasioned by the weakness and
impatience of men than by the violence of their passions, or
the eccentricity of their philosophies. This species of
suicide is so much the peculiar malady of our times, that we
are tempted to think that men are now for the first time
infected by it. But no; there exists a literature which has
already expressed this our state of restlessness and
disquietude, which has described men consuming with
melancholy in the midst of riotous joys, and seeking suicide
rather as the natural termination of their career than the
remedy of their evils. It is the literature of the fathers
of the church.

I find amongst the homilies of St Chrysostom a certain
Stagyra who was possessed by a demon. To be possessed by a
demon is certainly not a malady of our times; but yet we do
not wander from our theme. For the demon of Stagyra--it is
melancholy, despondency, or, in the much more powerful
expression of the Greek, it is _athumia_--exhaustion of all
energy, all vitality of the soul. This is the demon of
Stagyra. He is one of those sick and agitated souls who
think they belong to the selected portion of mankind,
because they want the energy of the vulgar; who contrive for
themselves pleasures and afflictions apart from the rest of
the world, and who (last trait of weakness and impatience)
at once despise and envy the simplicity and the calm of
those whom they call little souls. Stagyra, in order to
deliver his spirit from its disquietudes, had entered into a
monastery; but neither there did he find the peace and
lightness of heart which he craved; for man finds at first,
in solitude, that only which he brings to it. Stagyra
complains to the saint--and the complaint is curious, for it
indicates the knowledge of a cure for the evils which
torment him, and shows that Stagyra, like many other
patients, had neither resolution to support his disease, nor
to accept its remedy. 'You complain,' says St Chrysostom,
'that while you, with all your fasts, and vigils, and
monastic austerities, have failed to appease your
disquietudes, others who, like yourself, had been tormented
by the demon of melancholy, while living in the midst of
idle pleasures and luxurious indulgence, have found a remedy
in marriage, and felt themselves cured the moment they
became fathers.' A sentence this full of sound instruction.
It is not, then, because life is devoid of pleasure, that
men are the prey of melancholy. That demon pierced, it is
true, like a gnawing worm, through all the luxuries of the
Roman world; there was no resource against it, either in
beautiful slaves, or Ionian dances, or magnificent repasts,
or the combats of gladiators, or Milesian tales, or the
voluptuous pictures which garnish the walls of Pompeii and
Herculaneum. _Athumia_ poisoned all, and the demon possessed
the voluptuary in the midst even of the debauch. But if,
fatigued with these alternate pleasures and disgusts, he
adopted regular and simple manners, married and had
had children, then, as if by enchantment the demon quitted him.
No more despondency, no more bitterness. The spirit of the
possessed was revived, refreshed, renewed by the caresses of
his children. There is no demon, not even the demon of
melancholy, which dares to encounter the presence of a
little child. There is in the innocent fresh breathing of
these creatures, something mortal to evil spirits, and a
cradled infant in the house is sure talisman against all
demoniac possession.

What is it, in fact, which man requires, in order to escape
from this _athumia_, this exhaustion of the heart? Hope--a
future. He must have a faith in the future. This is the
nourishment of his soul; without it he cannot live, he
despairs and dies. Well, the very charm of children, that
which has ranked them, from of old, amongst the blessings of
God, is this, that they form the future of every family--
that they sustain in every house that sentiment by which the
soul of man lives. Children represent the future, and in a
form the most joyous and attractive. It is this which
constitutes their irresistible fascination--it is this which
sheds around their little heads that light of happiness and
joy which reflects itself on the countenances of the
parents--which warms the heart--which gives to the poor the
force to labour, and to the miserable the force to live.
Blessed be infancy, which chases the demon!--Blessed be
infancy, which keeps alive in each family the sentiment of
hope, indispensable to run as the air and the light!

Amongst the faults of his contemporaries, M. Girardin remarks a
disposition to _materialize_ the expression of passion, depicting it
constantly by violent physical distortions; and also, a tendency to
carry that expression to the extremity of rage, where, as he finely
observes, all distinction between the various passions is lost, and man
deserts his rational nature.

According to the ancient classic imagination, when passion becomes
excessive, the man disappears; and this, he adds, is the foundation of
what we call the philosophy of the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid.

In the course of this censure he makes use of a common-place expression,
which, we think, includes a common-place error, and therefore we pause
for a moment to take notice of it. "It is the pretension of modern art,"
he tells us, "to say all. What then is left to the imagination of the
public? It is often well to trust to the spectator to complete the idea
of the poet or the statuary."

This is a mode of expression frequently made use of. Even Lessing has
sanctioned it, when in his _Laocoon_, he speaks of "the highest
expression leaving nothing to the imagination."

The leaving something to the imagination can mean this only, that the
expression of the artist is suggestive, and kindles thought, and in fact
conveys more than is found in its literal interpretation. Now, whatever
is highest in art, and especially in poetry, is pre-eminently
suggestive; and the highest expression does in fact leave most, or, in
other words, suggest most, to the imagination. M. Girardin, in common
with many others, speaks of this suggestive quality, the characteristic
of the highest form of art, as if it were the result of a voluntary
surrender of something by the poet to the reader, as if it were an act
of moderation on his part. Surely the poet does not proceed on the
principle of saying half, and permitting us to say the other half--out
of compliment, perhaps, to our understanding, and as a little bribe to
our vanity. The more vivid and powerful his expressions, the more must
he leave, or rather the more must he give, indirectly as well as
directly, to the imagination of the reader. He will sometimes even
bestow what he himself never possessed. The great poet, in pouring out
his feelings, must always give something less and something _more_ than
was in him at the time.

It has been the fashion to illustrate the principle of leaving something
to the imagination, by the ancient picture of the sacrifice of
Iphigenia, where we are told that Agamemnon, the father, was painted
hiding his face in his robe. The expression of grief and horror had been
given in the countenance of the other bystanders, and it was left to the
imagination to divine what passion would have been seen depicted on the
face of Agamemnon if that robe had been torn aside. Lessing, and after
him M. Girardin, have indeed given a different account of the intention
of the painter. The Greek artist, say they, sedulously avoided that
distortion of features through excessive grief, which was incompatible
with beauty of form. They would _tone down_ the expression, as Lessing
argues that the sculptor did in the features of Laocoon, until it became
consistent with the lines of beauty. Timanthes, therefore, finding that,
in order to render with fidelity the expression of Agamemnon, he must
admit such a distortion of the features as would violate the rule, chose
rather to veil the countenance. But we would suggest that something else
must have weighed with the artist; for if it was an acknowledged
principle of Greek art rather to sacrifice a portion of the passion, so
to speak, than to admit a distortion of the features, why should
Timanthes have felt any scruple, in this instance, in modifying the
expression of the father's countenance in obedience to a known rule of
art? Why should he have thought himself obliged to resort to the
expedient of concealing the face?

We make bold to adopt neither one account nor the other. We neither
believe that Timanthes concealed the expression of the father's face
upon some principle of "leaving it to the imagination of the reader,"
nor that he acted in obedience to the rule of art which Lessing lays
down with so much ingenuity. We are persuaded that Timanthes painted
Agamemnon in the attitude he did, simply because it was the most
natural--because it was, in fact, the only attitude in which it was
possible to conceive a father present at the sacrifice of his own
daughter. Other spectators might have looked on with different degrees
of grief or horror, but we feel that the father could not _look_; he
must veil his head. This natural attitude, bespeaking the grief it only
seemed to hide, was no doubt highly expressive.

And in this point of view, it may afford no bad illustration of that
suggestive language of poetry, which sometimes throws the veil, not to
conceal the passion, or to leave it to another imagination to discover,
but as the best means of betraying it.

We repeat that we do not profess to give any thing approaching to an
analytical review of the lectures of M. Girardin; the illustrations,
being taken from the poetry of another nation, would often require a
length of explanatory detail quite inconsistent with our limits. We
persist, therefore, in regarding them in the one point of view already
indicated-namely, as a protest against certain vitiated tastes and
deleterious sentiments which prevail at the present day.

We again revert, therefore, to the lecture upon suicide, for the sake of
a remark that we find there upon _Werther,_ and on its celebrated
author. It is rarely that we hear any one speak out so plainly upon
Goethe. After speaking of the "moral vitality" which supports the
fatigues and inures us to the self-denials of life, he says:--

There are characters, on the contrary, who we perceive, at
first sight, are predestined to die. Ardent and enthusiastic,
wanting force and patience--life is evidently not made for them.
Such is Werther. Goethe had not created him to live, and he knew
this well; so that when some German author, I know not whom,
undertook to correct the catastrophe of the romance, and make
Werther live instead of committing suicide, Goethe said--'The poor
man has no idea that the evil is without remedy, and that a mortal
insect has stung our Werther in the flower of his youth.'

What is this mortal insect that has stung the youth of
Werther? Mistake it not, it is the spirit of doubt, the
spirit of the eighteenth century; and it is not Werther only
that the insect has stung--it is Goethe himself. Goethe
belongs to the eighteenth century; he is its disciple, its
heir; he is, like it, the sceptic, but he is also the poet.
It is this which conceals his universal doubt. Besides, as
he perceived, with that admirable tact which accompanies his
genius, that his scepticism would injure his poetry, he has
laboured to correct its influence, and, for this purpose,
has called to his aid all the resources of art and science.
He has adored nature, he has been a pantheist, he has distributed
God everywhere, to compensate for not having him in his own heart;
he has adored Greece, and rendered a sort of worship to beauty
such as the Greeks conceived it, and endeavoured to find an
enthusiasm in the arts; he has adored the south, and sung the Land
of the orange grove, because the south is the region of strong
faiths, and is repugnant to scepticism; he has adored the middle
ages, because they were ignorant of doubt, everywhere he has
sought to cure the wound of that insect which had stung his youth.
But no; his scepticism pierces through all his enthusiasm, and the
very variety of his inspirations proves his indifference. He is
neither philosopher, nor devotee, nor Christian, nor pagan, nor
courtier, nor citizen, nor of times ancient or modern, nor of the
north, nor of the south-or rather, he is all these at once. He is
the echo of nature, he repeats to us all her harmonies; but he
fails to add that utterance, which unites so well with the
harmonies of the world the utterance of his own heart. Ask of
Goethe to represent man and nature in all their variety and
extent, and he will do it. There is one thing you must not ask of
him--himself. This _self_ fails in Goethe; not the self which
knows it is a great poet, and will to be one; but that other self,
which has a thought, a principle to contend for, which, in
short, believes in something. It is there the insect stung; both
in Goethe and in Werther.

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