III.
At our last meeting we endeavored to secure some solid basis for ourideas of form in general, and to develop thereupon some conceptions ofform in art, and especially of literary form, which would enable us tosee our way clear among misconceptions of this subject which prevail.We there addressed ourselves towards considering particularly three ofthese misconceptions. The first we examined was that which predictsthe total death of imaginative literature--poetry, novels and all--inconsequence of a certain supposed quality of imagination by virtue ofwhich, like some ruin-haunting animals, it cannot live in the light;so that the destructive explanations of advancing science, it wasapprehended, would gradually force all our imaginative energies backinto the dark crevices of old fable and ruined romance, until finally,penetrating these also, it would exterminate the species. We firsttested this case by laying it alongside the historic facts in thecase: confining our view to England, we found that science and poetryhad been developing alongside of each other ever since early in theseventeenth century; inquiring into the general effect of this longcontact, we could only find that it was to make our general poetrygreatly richer in substance and finer in form; and upon testing thisabstract conclusion by a concrete examination of Tennyson--as a poetmost likely to show the influence of science, because himself mostexposed to it, indeed most saturated with it--we found from severalreadings in _In Memoriam_ that whether as to love or friendship, orthe sacredness of marriage, or the pure sense of beauty, or the truerelation of knowledge to wisdom, or faith in God, the effect ofscience had been on the whole to broaden the conceptions and toclarify the forms in which they were expressed by this great poet.
And having thus appealed to facts, we found further that in the natureof things no such destruction could follow; that what we callexplanation in science is at bottom only a reduction of unfamiliarmysteries to terms of familiar mysteries, and that, since to the trueimaginative mind, whether of poet or novelist, the mysteries of thisworld grow all the greater as they grow more familiar, the necessaryeffect of scientific explanations is at last the indefinite increaseof food for the imagination. The modern imagination, indeed, shallstill love mystery; but it is not the shallow mystery of those smalldarks which are enclosed by caves and crumbling dungeons, it is theunfathomable mystery of the sunlight and the sun; it is thisinexplicable contradictory shadow of the infinite which is projectedupon the finite; it is this multitudinous flickering of all the other_ego's_ upon the tissue of my _ego_: these are the lights and shadesand vaguenesses of mystery in which the modern imaginative effortdelights. And here I cannot help adding to what was said on thissubject in the last lecture, by declaring to every young man who mayentertain the hope of poethood, that at this stage of the world youneed not dream of winning the attention of sober people with yourpoetry unless that poetry, and your soul behind it, are informed andsaturated at least with the largest final conceptions of currentscience. I do not mean that you are to write "Loves of the Plants;" Ido not mean that you are to versify Biology; but I mean that you mustbe so far instinct with the scientific thought of the time that yourpoetic conceptions will rush as it were from under these pure, coldfacts of science like those Alpine torrents which flow out ofglaciers. Or,--to change the figure for the better--just as thechemist, in causing chlorine and hydrogen to form hydrochloric acid,finds that he must not only put the chlorine and hydrogen together,but he must put them together in the presence of light in order tomake them combine; so the poet of our time will find that his poeticcombinations, his grandest syntheses of wisdom, own this law; andthey, too, must be effected in the presence of the awful light ofscience.
Returning to our outline of the last lecture: After we had discussedthis matter, we advanced to the second of the great misconceptions ofthe function of form in art--that which holds that the imaginativeeffort of the future will be better than that of the present, and thatthis improvement will come through a progress towards formlessness.After quoting several sentences from Whitman which seemed to containthe substantial argument--to-wit, that the poetry of the future is tobe signalized by independence of form, and is, by virtue of thisindependence, to gain strength, and become a democratic poetry, ascontrasted with the supposed weak and aristocratic poetry of thepresent--I called your attention to a notable circumstance which seemsto throw a curious light along this inquiry: that circumstance beingthat the two English poets who have most exclusively laid claim torepresent the people in poetry, to express nothing but the people'sheart in the people's words, namely Wordsworth and Whitman, areprecisely the two whose audience has been most exclusively confined tothe other extreme of culture. Wordsworth, instead of appealing toHodge, Nokes, and Stiles; instead of being found in penny editions onthe collier's shelves; is most cherished by Mr. Matthew Arnold, thehigh-priest of culture. And so with Whitman: we may say with safetythat no preacher was ever so decisively rejected by his own:continually crying democracy in the market-place, and crying it informs or no-forms professing to be nothing but products of thedemocratic spirit; nevertheless the democracy everywhere have turned adeaf ear, and it is only with a few of the most retired thinkers ofour time that Whitman has found even a partial acceptance.
And finally, by way of showing a reason for this state of things inWhitman's case, the last lecture closed with the assertion thatWhitman's poetry, in spite of his belief that it is democratic, isreally aristocratic to the last degree; and instead of belonging, ashe asserts to an early and fresh-thoughted stage of a republic, isreally poetry which would be impossible except in a highly civilizedstate of society.
Here, then, let us take up the thread of that argument. In thequotations which were given from Whitman's paper, we have really theideal democracy and democrat of this school. It is curious to reflectin the first place that in point of fact no such democracy, no suchdemocrat, has ever existed in this country. For example: when Whitmantells us of "the measureless viciousness of the great radicalrepublic, with its ruffianly nominations and elections; its loudill-pitched voice; its fights, errors, eructations, dishonesties,audacities;" _et cetera_: when he tells us this, with a sort ofcaressing touch upon all the bad adjectives, rolling the "errors" andthe "audacities" and the "viciousness" under his tongue and faithfullybelieving that the strength which recommends his future poetry is tocome out of viciousness and ruffianly elections and the like; let usinquire, to what representative facts in our history does thispicture correspond; what great democrat who has helped to "block out"this present republic, sat for this portrait? Is it George Washington,that beautiful, broad tranquil spirit whom, I sometimes think, even weAmericans have never yet held quite at his true value,--is itWashington who was vicious, dishonest, audacious, combative? ButWashington had some hand in blocking out this republic. Or what wouldour courtly and philosophic Thomas Jefferson look like, if you shouldput this slouch hat on him, and open his shirt-front at the bosom, andset him to presiding over a ruffianly nomination? Yet he had some handin blocking out this republic. In one of Whitman's poems I find himcrying out to Americans, in this same strain: "O lands! would you befreer than all that has ever been before? If you would be freer thanall that has been before, come listen to me." And this is thedeliverance:
"Fear grace--fear elegance, civilization, delicatesse, Fear the mellow sweet, the sucking of honey-juice; Beware the advancing mortal ripening of nature, Beware what precedes the decay of the ruggedness of States and men."
And in another line, he rejoices in America because--"Here are theroughs, beards, ... combativeness, and the like".
But where are these roughs, these beards, and this combativeness? Werethe Adamses and Benjamin Franklin roughs? was it these who taught usto make ruffianly nominations? But they had some hand in blocking outthis republic. In short, leaving each one to extend this list of namesfor himself, it may be fairly said that nowhere in history can onefind less of that ruggedness which Whitman regards as the essentialof democracy; nowhere more of that grace which he considers fatal toit, than among
the very representative democrats who blocked out thisrepublic. In truth, when Whitman cries "fear the mellow sweet," and"beware the mortal ripening of nature", we have an instructiveinstance of the extreme folly into which a man may be led by mistakinga metaphor for an argument. The argument here is, you observe, thatbecause an apple in the course of nature rots soon after it mellows,_argal_ a man cannot mellow his spirit with culture without decayingsoon afterwards. Of course it is sufficient only to reflect _nonsequitur_; for it is precisely the difference between the man and theapple, that, whereas every apple must rot after ripeness, no man isbound to.
If therefore after an inquiry ranging from Washington and Jeffersondown to William Cullen Bryant (that surely unrugged and gracefulfigure who was so often called the finest American gentleman) andLowell, and Longfellow, and the rest who are really the men that areblocking out our republic, if we find not a single representativeAmerican democrat to whom any of these pet adjectives apply,--not onewho is measurelessly vicious, or ruffianly, or audacious, or purposelyrugged, or contemptuous towards the graces of life,--then we areobliged to affirm that the whole ideal drawn by Whitman is a fancypicture with no counterpart in nature. It is perfectly true that wehave ruffianly nominations; but we have them because the realdemocrats who govern our republic, who represent our democracy, stayaway from nominating conventions and leave them to the ruffians.Surely no one can look with the most cursory eye upon our everydayAmerican life without seeing that the real advance of our society goeson not only without, but largely in spite of that ostensibleapparatus, legislative, executive, judicial which we call theGovernment, &c.; that really the most effective legislation in ourcountry is that which is enacted in the breasts of the individualdemocrats who compose it. And this is true democratic growth, everyday; more and more, each man perceives that the shortest and mosteffectual method of securing his own rights is to respect the rightsof others; and so every day do we less and less need outsideinterference in our individual relations; so that every day weapproach nearer and nearer towards that ideal government in which eachman is, mainly, his own legislator, his own governor or president, andhis own judge, and in which the public government is mainly a concertof measures for the common sanitation and police.
But again: it is true as Whitman says that we have dishonesties; butwe punish them, they are not representative, they have no morerelation to democracy than the English thief has to Englisharistocracy.
From what spirit of blindness is it alleged that these things arepeculiar to our democracy? Whitman here explicitly declares that theover-dainty Englishman "can not stomach the high-life below stairs ofour social status so far;" this high-life consisting of themeasureless viciousness, the dishonesty, and the like. Cannot stomachit, no; who could? But how absurd to come down to this republic, toAmerican society for these things! Alas, I know an Englishman, who,three hundred years ago, found these same things in that aristocracythere; and he too, thank heaven, could not stomach them, for he hascondemned them in a sonnet which is the solace of all sober-thoughtedages. I mean Shakspeare, and his sonnet
LXVI.
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,-- As, to behold desert a beggar born, And needy nothing trimmed in jollity, And purest faith unhappily foresworn, And gilded honor shamefully misplaced, And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted, And right perfection wrongfully disgraced, And strength by limping sway disabled, And art made tongue-tied by authority, And folly (doctor-like) controlling skill, And simple truth miscalled simplicity, And captive good attending captain ill: Tired of all these, from these would I be gone, Save that, to die, I leave my love alone.
It is true that we have bad manners; yet among the crowds at theCentennial Exposition it was universally remarked that in no countryin the world could such vast multitudes of people have assembled dayafter day with so few arrests by the police, with so little disorder,and with such an apparent universal and effective sentiment of respectfor the law.
Now if we carry the result of this inquiry over into art; if we arepresented with a poetry which professes to be democratic becauseit--the poetry--is measurelessly vicious, purposely eructant, strivingafter ruggedness, despising grace, like the democracy described byWhitman; then we reply that as matter of fact there never was any suchAmerican democracy and that the poetry which represents it has noconstituency. And herein seems a most abundant solution of the factjust now brought to your notice, that the actually existing democracyhave never accepted Whitman. But here we are met with the cry ofstrength and manfulness. Everywhere throughout Whitman's poetry the"rude muscle," the brawn, the physical bigness of the Americanprairie, the sinew of the Western backwoodsman, are apotheosized, andall these, as Whitman asserts, are fitly chanted in his "savage song."
Here, then, is a great stalwart man, in perfect health, all brawn andrude muscle, set up before us as the ideal of strength. Let us examinethis strength a little. For one, I declare that I do not find itimpressive. Yonder, in a counting-room--alas, in how manycounting-rooms!--a young man with weak eyes bends over a ledger, andpainfully casts up the figures day by day, on pitiful wages, tosupport his mother, or to send his younger brother to school, or somesuch matter. If we watch the young man when he takes down his hat,lays off his ink-splotched office-coat, and starts home for dinner, weperceive that he is in every respect the opposite of the stalwartWhitman ideal; his chest is not huge, his legs are inclined to bepipe-stems, and his dress is like that of any other book-keeper. Yetthe weak-eyed pipe-stem-legged young man impresses me as more of aman, more of a democratic man, than the tallest of Whitman's roughs;to the eye of my spirit there is more strength in this man's dailyendurance of petty care and small weariness for love; more of the sortof stuff which makes a real democracy and a sound republic, than in anarmy of Whitman's unshaven loafers.
I know--and count it among the privileges of my life that I do--awoman who has spent her whole life in bed for twenty years past,confined by a curious form of spinal disease which prevents locomotionand which in spite of constant pain and disturbance leaves the systemlong unworn. Day by day she lies helpless, at the mercy of all thosetyrannical small needs which become so large under such circumstances;every meal must be brought to her, a drink of water must be handed;and she is not rich, to command service. Withal her nature is of thebrightest and most energetic sort. Yet, surrounded by theseunspeakable pettinesses, enclosed in this cage of contradictions, thewoman has made herself the centre of an adoring circle of thebrightest people; her room is called "Sunnyside;" when brawny men aretired they go to her for rest, when people in the rudest physicalhealth are sick of life they go to her for the curative virtue of hersmiles. Now this woman has not so much rude muscle in her whole bodyas Whitman's man has in his little finger: she is so fragile that longago some one called her "White Flower," and by this name she is muchknown; it costs her as much labor to press a friend's hand as it costsWhitman's rough to fell a tree; regarded from the point of view ofbrawn and sinew, she is simply absurd; yet to the eye of my spiritthere is more manfulness in one moment of her loving andself-sacrificing existence than in an aeon of muscle-growth andsinew-breeding; and hers is the manfulness which is the only solutionof a true democrat, hers is the manfulness of which only can arepublic be built. A republic is the government of the spirit; arepublic depends upon the self-control of each member: you cannot makea republic out of muscles and prairies and Rocky mountains; republicsare made of the spirit.
Nay, when we think of it, how little is it a matter of the future, howentirely is it a matter of the past, when people come running at uswith rude muscle and great mountain, and such matters of purelyphysical bigness to shake our souls? How long ago is it that theybegan to put great bearskin caps on soldiers with a view to make themlook grisly and formidable when advancing on the enemy? It is so longago that the practice has survived mainly as ceremonial, and thelittle boys on the streets now laugh at this ferociousness when thesappers and miners come by who affect
this costume.
Yet, here in the nineteenth century we behold artists purposelysetting bearskin caps upon their poetry to make it effective. Thissort of thing never yet succeeded as against Anglo-Saxon people. Icannot help thinking here of old Lord Berners' account translated fromFroissart, of how the Genoese cross-bowmen attempted to frighten theEnglish warriors at the battle of Crecy. "Whan the Genowayes wereassembled togayder, and beganne to aproche, they made a great leapeand crye, to abasshe thenglysshmen, but they stode styll, and styreddenot for all that; thane the Genowayes agayne the seconde tyme madeanother leape, and a fell crye, and stepped forward a lytell, andthenglysshmen remeved not one fote; thirdly, agayne they leapt andcryed, and went forthe tyll they come within shotte; thane shotfeersley with their crosbowes; than thenglysshe archers stept fortheone pase, and lette fly their arowes so hotly, and so thycke, that itsemed snowe; when the Genowayes felt the arowes persynge throughheedes, armes, and brestes, many of them cast downe their crosbowes,and dyde cutte their strynges, and retourned dysconfited."
And so the Poetry of the Future has advanced upon us with a great leapand a fell cry, relying upon its loud, ill-pitched voice, but thedemocracy has stirred not for all that. Perhaps we may fairly say,gentlemen, it is five hundred years too late to attempt to captureEnglishmen with a yell.
I think it interesting to compare Whitman's often expressed contemptfor poetic beauty--he taunts the young magazine writers of the presenttime with having the beauty disease--with some utterances of one whopraised the true function of ruggedness in works the world will notsoon forget. I mean Thomas Carlyle, who has so recently passed intothe Place where the strong and the virtuous and the beautiful soulsassemble themselves. In one of Carlyle's essays he speaks as followsof Poetic Beauty. These words scarcely sound as if they came from thelover of Danton and Mirabeau:
"It dwells and is born in the inmost Spirit of Man, united to all loveof Virtue, to all true belief in God; or rather, it is one with thislove and this belief, another phase of the same highest principle inthe mysterious infinitude of the human Soul. To apprehend this beautyof poetry, in its full and purest brightness, is not easy, butdifficult; thousands on thousands eagerly read poems, and attain notthe smallest taste of it; yet to all uncorrupted hearts, someeffulgences of this heavenly glory are here and there revealed; and toapprehend it clearly and wholly, to require and maintain a sense ofheart that sees and worships it, is the last perfection of all humaneculture."
In the name of all really manful democracy, in the name of the truestrength that only can make our republic reputable among the nations,let us repudiate the strength that is no stronger than a human biceps;let us repudiate the manfulness that averages no more than six feethigh. My democrat, the democrat whom I contemplate with pleasure; thedemocrat who is to write or to read the poetry of the future, may havea mere thread for his biceps, yet he shall be strong enough to handlehell, he shall play ball with the earth, and albeit his stature may beno more than a boy's, he shall still be taller than the great redwoodsof California; his height shall be the height of great resolution, andlove and faith and beauty and knowledge and subtle meditation; hishead shall be forever among the stars.
But here we are met with the cry of freedom. This poetry is free, itis asserted, because it is independent of form. But this claim is alsotoo late. It should have been made at least before the FrenchRevolution. We all know what that freedom means in politics which isindependent of form, of law. It means myriad-fold slavery to a mob. Asin politics, so in art. Once for all, in art, to be free is not to beindependent of any form, it is to be master of many forms. Does theyoung versifier of the Whitman school fancy that he is free becauseunder the fond belief that he is yielding himself to nature, stoppingnot the words lest he may fail to make what Whitman proudly calls "asavage song," he allows himself to be blown about by every wind ofpassion? Is a ship free because, without rudder or sail, it is turnedloose to the winds, and has no master but nature? Nature is the tyrantof tyrants. Now, just as that freedom of the ship on the sea meansshipwreck, so independence of form in art means death. Here one recurswith pleasure to the aphorism cited in the last lecture; in art, aselsewhere, "he who will not answer to the rudder shall answer to therocks." I find all the great artists of time striving after this samefreedom; but it is not by destroying, it is by extending the forms ofart, that all sane and sober souls hope to attain. In a letter ofBeethoven's to the Arch-duke Rudolph, written in 1819, I find himdeclaring "But freedom and progress are our true aim in the world ofart, just as in the great creation at large."
We have seen how in the creation at large progress is effected by thecontinual multiplication of new forms. It was this advance whichBeethoven wished: to become master of new and more beautiful forms,not to abolish form. In a letter of his to Matthisson, as early as1800 accompanying a copy of _Adelaide_, we may instructively gatherwhat he thought of this matter: "Indeed even now I send you _Adelaide_with a feeling of timidity. You know yourself what changes the lapseof some years brings forth in an artist who continues to makeprogress; the greater the advances we make in art the less we aresatisfied with our works of an early date." This unstudied declarationbecomes full of significance when we remember that this same_Adelaide_ is still held, by the common consent of all musicians, tobe the most perfect song-form in music; and it is given to youngcomposers as a type and model from which all other forms are to bedeveloped. We may sum up the whole matter by applying to these personswho desire formlessness, words which were written of those who havebeen said to desire death:
Whatever crazy Sorrow saith, No life that breathes with human breath Has ever truly longed for death.
'Tis life whereof our nerves are scant, O life, not death, for which we pant; More life, and fuller, that I want.
In art, form and chaos are so nearly what life and death are innature, that we do not greatly change this stanza if we read:
'Tis form whereof our art is scant, O form, not chaos, for which we pant, More form, and fuller, that I want.
I find some deliverances in Epictetus which speak so closely to morethan one of the points just discussed that I must quote a sentence ortwo. "What then", he says--in the chapter "About Freedom" "is thatwhich makes a man free from hindrance and makes him his own master?For wealth does not do it, nor consulship, nor provincial government,nor royal power; but something else must be discovered. What then isthat which when we write makes us free from hindrance and unimpeded.The knowledge of the art of writing. What then is it (which givesfreedom) in playing the lute? The science of playing the lute." IfWhitman's doctrine is true, the proper method of acquiring freedom onthe lute is to bring lute-music to that point where the loud janglingchord produced by a big hand sweeping at random across the strings isto take the place of the finical tunes and harmonies now held inesteem. "Therefore" continues Epictetus, "in life, also, it is thescience of life.... When you wish the body to be sound, is it in yourpower or not?--It is not. When you wish it to be healthy? Neither isthis in my power." (I complain of Whitman's democracy that it has noprovision for sick, or small, or puny, or plain-featured, orhump-backed, or any deformed people, and that his democracy is reallythe worst kind of aristocracy, being an aristocracy of nature'sfavorites in the matter of muscle.) And so of estate, house, horses,life and death, Epictetus continues; these are not in our power, theycannot make us free. So that, in another chapter, he cries: This isthe true athlete, the man who exercises himself against suchappearances. Stay, wretch, do not be carried away. Great is thecombat, divine is the work: it is for kingship, for freedom, forhappiness.
And lastly, the Poetry of the Future holds that all modern poetry,Tennyson particularly, is dainty and over-perfumed, and Whitman speaksof it with that contempt which he everywhere affects for the dandy.But what age of time ever yielded such a dandy as the founder of thisschool, Whitman himself? The simpering beau who is the product of thetailor's art is certainly absurd enough; but what difference is therebetween that and
the other dandy-upside-down who from equal motives ofaffectation throws away coat and vest, dons a slouch hat, opens hisshirt so as to expose his breast, and industriously circulates hisportrait, thus taken, in his own books. And this dandyism--thedandyism of the roustabout--I find in Whitman's poetry from beginningto end. Everywhere it is conscious of itself, everywhere it isanalysing itself, everywhere it is posing to see if it cannot assume anaive and striking attitude, everywhere it is screwing up its eyes,not into an eyeglass like the conventional dandy, but into anexpression supposed to be fearsomely rough and barbaric and frightfulto the terror-stricken reader; and it is almost safe to say that onehalf of Whitman's poetic work has consisted of a detailed descriptionof the song he is going to sing. It is the extreme of sophisticationin writing.
But if we must have dandyism in our art, surely the softer sort, whichat least leans toward decorum and gentility, is preferable; for thatat worst becomes only laughable, while the rude dandyism, when it doesacquire a factitious interest by being a blasphemy against realmanhood, is simply tiresome.
I have thus dwelt upon these claims of the Whitman school, not so muchbecause of any intrinsic weight they possess, as because they areadvanced in such taking and sacred names,--of democracy, of manhood,of freedom, of progress. Upon the most earnest examination, I can findit nothing but wholly undemocratic; not manful, but dandy; not free,because the slave of nature; not progressive, because its wholemomentum is derived from the physically-large which ceased to astonishthe world ages ago, in comparison with spiritual greatness.
Indeed, this matter has been pushed so far, with the apparent, butwholly unreal sanction of so many influential names, that in speakingto those who may be poets of the future, I cannot close these hastywords upon the Whitman school without a fervent protest, in the nameof all art and all artists, against a poetry which has painted a greatscrawling picture of the human body, and has written under it: "_Thisis the soul_;" which shouts a profession of religion in every line,but of a religion that, when examined, reveals no tenet, no rubric,save that a man must be natural, must abandon himself to everypassion; and which constantly roars its belief in God, but with acamerado air as if it were patting the Deity on the back, and biddingHim, _Cheer up_, and hope for further encouragement.
We are here arrived at a very fitting point to pass on and considerthat third misconception of the relation between science and art,which has been recently formulated by M. Emile Zola in his work called_Le Roman Experimental_. Zola's name has been so widely associatedwith a certain class of novels, that I am fortunately under nonecessity to describe them, and I need only say that the work inquestion is a formal reply to a great number of objections which havecome from many quarters as to the characters and events which Zola'snovels have brought before the public.
His book, though a considerable volume, may be said to consist of twosentences which the author has varied with great adroitness into manyforms. These two sentences I may sum up, as follows: (1) every novelmust hereafter be the entirely unimaginative record of an experimentin human passion; and (2) every writer of the romantic school inFrance, particularly Victor Hugo, is an ass.
You are not to suppose that in this last sentiment I have strengthenedZola's expressions. A single quotation will show sufficient authority.As, for example, where M. Zola cries out to those who are criticizinghim: "Every one says: 'Ah yes, the naturalists! they are those menwith dirty hands who want all novels to be written in slang, andchoose the most disgusting subjects.' Not at all! you lie!... Do notsay that I am idiot enough to wish to paint nothing but the gutter."
But with this quarrel we are not here concerned; I simply wish toexamine in the briefest way Zola's proposition to convert the novelinto a work of science. His entire doctrine may be fairly, indeedamply gathered in the following quotations:
"We continue by our observations and experiments the work of the physiologist, who has himself employed that of the physicist and the chemist. We after a fashion pursue scientific psychology in order to complete scientific physiology; and in order to complete the evolution, we need only carry to the study of nature and man the invaluable tool of the experimental method. In a word, we should work upon characters, passions, human and social facts, as the physicist and chemist work with inorganic bodies, as the physiologist works with living organisms. Determinism controls everything.
"This, then, is what constitutes the experimental novel,--to understand the mechanism of human phenomena, to show the machinery of intellectual and emotional manifestations as physiology shall explain them to us under the influence of heredity and surrounding circumstances; then to show man living in the social _milieu_ which he has himself produced, and which he modifies every day, while at the same time experiencing in his turn a continual transformation. So we rest on physiology; we take man isolated from the hands of the physiologist to continue the solution of the problem and to solve scientifically the question, How men live as members of society.--We are, in a word, experimental philosophers, showing by experiment how a passion exhibits itself in certain social surroundings. The day when we shall understand the mechanism of this passion, it may be treated, reduced, made as inoffensive as possible."
These propositions need not detain us long. In the first place, let usleave the vagueness of abstract assertions and, coming down to theconcrete, let us ask who is to make the experiment recorded in thenovel? Zola says, "We (the novelists) are experimental philosophers,showing by experiment how a passion exhibits itself in certain socialsurroundings." Very well; in one of Zola's most popular novels, theheroine Nana, after a remarkable career, dies of small-pox; and agreat naturalistic ado is made over this death. A correspondent of the_Herald_, writing from Paris, says: "In a very few days we are to betreated to the stage version of _Nana_, at the Ambigu. Nana, it willbe remembered, dies at the end of the story of small-pox. We are to begiven every incident of the agony, every mark of the small-pox. PrettyMlle. Massin (who is to play this death-scene) is to be the crowningattraction of this new play.... We shall be shown a real death ofsmall-pox, or the nearest possible approach to it. Mlle. Massin, whois to sustain the pleasing part of the "heroine," will make her prettyface hideous for the occasion. At half past 11 every evening she willissue from behind the drapery of a bed, clad only in the mostindispensable of nightly raiment--and that "in most admireddisorder"--her neck, cheeks and forehead disfigured, changed andunrecognizable for simulated pustules. At twenty minutes to 12 thepustules will be too much for her, and she will expire. At a quarterto 12 the deafening applause of the public will call her to lifeagain, and she will bow her acknowledgments."
Applying Zola's theory, sociology is to find here a very instructiverecord of how a woman such as Nana would comport herself when dying ofsmall-pox; and furthermore, his description of it must be an exactrecord of an experiment in death from small-pox conducted by M. Zolain person. But now recurring to our question, let us ask, how could M.Zola conduct this experiment? It would certainly be inconvenient forhim to catch the small-pox and die, with a view to recording hissensations; and yet it is perfectly apparent that the conditions ofscientific experiment could not be satisfied in any other way. M. Zolawould probably reply with effusion, that he had taken pains to go to asmall-pox hospital and to study with great care the behavior of apatient dying with that disease. But, we immediately rejoin, this isvery far from what his theory bound him to show us; his theory boundhim to show us not some person, any person, dying of small-pox, butNana with all her individuality derived from heredity and from her ownspontaneous variation--it was Nana dying of small-pox that he must setbefore us; one person dies one way and another person dies anotherway, even of the same disease; Smith, a very tragic person, would makea death-scene full of tragic message and gesture; Brown might closehis eyes and pass without a word; Nana, particularly, with herpeculiar career and striking individuality, would naturally make apeculiar and str
iking death. Now since Nana is purely a creation ofZola, (unless indeed the novel is a biography, which is not pretended)Zola is the only person in the world who understands Nana's feelingsin death or on any occasion; and this being so, it is simplyimpossible that Zola could make a scientific experiment of Nana'sdeath from small-pox without dying himself. This seems so absurd thatone goes back to _Le Roman Experimental_ to see if Zola's idea of ascientific experiment has not something peculiar about it; and onequickly finds that it has. It is in fact interesting to observe thatthough Zola has this word experiment continually on his lips, yet henever means that the novelist is to conduct a real, gross, downright,actual brute of an experiment; and the word with him is whollyPickwickian, signifying no more than that the novelist, availinghimself of such realistic helps as he can find in hospitals and thelike, is to evolve therefrom something which he believes to be thenatural course of things. Examine the book wherever you may, theboasted experiment, the pivot of the whole system, fades into this.
The experiment of Zola is as if a professor of chemistry, knowingsomething of the properties of given substances desiring to see how acertain molecule would behave itself in the presence of a certainother molecule, hitherto untried in this connection, instead of goinginto his laboratory and bringing the molecules together and observingwhat they actually did, should quietly sit before his desk and writeoff a comfortable account of how he thought these molecules wouldbehave, judging from his previous knowledge of their properties. It isstill more interesting to find that Zola is apparently unconscious ofthe difference between these two modes of experiment. About thisunconsciousness I have my own theory. I think it entirely probablethat if these two kinds of experiment were described to Zola he wouldmaintain with perfect good faith that they were exactly the same.There is a phase of error--perhaps we may call it hallucination--inwhich certain sorts of minds come to believe that two things whichhave been habitually associated are always the same. For instance, afriend of mine has told me that a certain estimable teacher of theFrench language, who, after carrying on his vocation for many years,during which English and French became equally instinctive tongues tohim, was accustomed to maintain that English and French wereabsolutely one and the same language. "When you say _water_," he wasaccustomed to argue to my friend, "you mean water; when I say _l'eau_I mean water; _water--l'eau_, _l'eau--water_; do you not see? We meanthe same thing; it is the same language."
However this may be, nothing is clearer than that Zola's conception ofan experiment is what I have described it--namely, an evolving fromthe inner consciousness of what the author _thinks_ the experimentalsubjects would do under given circumstances. Here are some of Zola'sown words: and surely nothing more naive was ever uttered: "Thewriter" (of the novel) "employs both observation and experiment. Theobserver gives the facts as he has observed them ... and establishesthe solid ground on which his characters shall march, and thephenomena shall develop themselves. _Then the experimenter appears andconducts the experiment; that is to say_" (I am quoting from M. Zola)"_he moves the characters in a particular story to show that thesequence of facts will be such as is determined in the study ofphenomena_." That is to say, to carry Zola's "experiment" intochemistry: knowing something of chlorine and something of hydrogenseparately, a chemist who wishes to know their behavior under eachother's influence may "experiment" upon that behavior by giving hisopinion as to what chlorine and hydrogen would likely do under givencircumstances.
It seems incredible, but it is logically beyond question, that by thisshort process we have got to the bottom of this whole elaborate systemof the Experimental Novel, and have found that it is nothing but arepetition of the old, old trick of the hand of Jacob and the voice ofEsau. Think how much self-sacrifice and labor, of how many noble andbrave spirits, from Horrox and Hooke in the seventeenth century downto the hundreds of scientific men who at this moment are livingobscure and laborious lives in the search of truth,--think, I say, howmuch fervent and pious labor has gone to invest the mere name ofscientific experiment with that sacredness under which the Zola schoolis now claiming the rights and privileges of science, for what we haveseen is _not_ science, and what, we might easily see if it were worthshowing, _is_ mere corruption. The hand is the hand of science; butthe voice is the voice of a beast.
To many this animal voice has seemed a portentous sound. But if wethink what kind of beast it is, we cease to fear. George Eliot,somewhere in _Adam Bede_, has a _mot_: when a donkey sets out to sing,everybody knows beforehand what the tune will be. This voice has beenheard many times before. Long before Zola came on the stage, I findSchiller crying in his sweet silver tones to some who were likewisemisusing both art and science: "Unhappy mortal, that, with science andart, the noblest of all instruments, effectest and attemptest nothingmore than the day-drudge with the meanest; that in the domain ofperfect Freedom bearest about in thee the spirit of a slave."
In these words, Schiller has at once prophesied and punished TheExperimental Romance.
But there is another view of Zola's claims which leads us into somethoughts particularly instructive at the present time, and which willcarry us very directly to the more special studies which will engageour attention.
After the views of form which have been presented to you, it will notbe necessary for me to argue that even if Zola's Experimental Novelwere a physical possibility, it would be an artistic absurdity. If you_could_ make a scientific record of actual experiment in humanpassion, very well: but why should we call that record a novel, if wedo not call Professor Huxley's late work on the crayfish a novel, orif we do not call any physician's report of some specially interestingclinical experience to the _Medical and Surgical Journal_ a novel?
Here we are put upon securing for ourselves perfectly clearconceptions as to certain relations between that so-called _poetic_activity and _scientific_ activity of the human mind which findthemselves in a singularly interesting contact in the true and worthynovel which we are going to study. Merely reminding you of thedistinction with which every one is more or less familiartheoretically, that that activity which we variously call "poetic,""imaginative," or "creative," _is_ essentially synthetic, is a processof putting together, while the scientific process seems distinctivelyanalytic, or a tearing apart; let us pass from this idea to thoseapplications of the poetic faculty which are made whenever ascientific searcher goes further than the mere collection of facts, toclassify them and to effect generalizations. This is an activity ofwhat is well called the scientific imagination. Now what is thedifference between a work of the scientific imagination and a work ofthe poetic imagination? Without going into subtleties, I think theshortest way to gain a perfectly clear working idea of this differenceis to confine our attention to the differing results of theseactivities: the scientific imagination results in a formula, whoseparamount purpose is to be as _short_ and as comprehensive aspossible; the poetic imagination results in a created form of forms,whose paramount purpose is to be as _beautiful_ and as comprehensiveas possible. For example, the well-known formula of evolution: thatevolution is a process from the uniform and indefinite to themultiform and definite; that is a result of long efforts of thescientific imagination; while on the other hand Tennyson's _InMemoriam_, in which we have deep matters discussed in the mostbeautiful words and the most musical forms of verse, is a poetic work.
And now if we pass one step farther and consider what would happen ifthe true scientific activity and the true poetic activity shouldengage themselves upon one and the same set of facts, we arrive at thenovel.
The great modern novelist is at once scientific and poetic: and here,it seems to me, in the novel, we have the meeting, the reconciliation,the kiss, of science and poetry. For example: George Eliot, havingwith those keen eyes of hers collected and analyzed and sorted manyfacts of British life, binds them together into a true poeticsynthesis, in, for instance, _Daniel Deronda_, when instead of givingus the ultimate relations of all her facts in the shape of a formula,like that of evolution, she give
s them to us in the beautiful creationof Gwendolen Harleth and all the other striking forms which movethrough the book as embodiments in flesh and blood of the scientificrelations between all her facts.
Perhaps we will find it convenient here, too, to base perfectly clearideas of the three existing schools of novel-writing upon theseforegoing principles. It has been common for some time to hear of theRomantic and the Realistic school, and lately a third term has beenbrought into use by the Zola section who call themselves theNaturalistic school. It is easy to see that these terms have arisenfrom the greater or less prominence given now to the poetic activity,now to the scientific activity, in novel writing; those who most relyon the poetic being the Romantic, those on a combination of the poeticand scientific the Realistic, and those who entirely reject theimagination (as Zola professes to do) the Naturalistic school. At allevents, then, not troubling ourselves with the Naturalists who, as wehave seen, call that an experiment which is only an imaginativeproduct; we are prepared to study the Novel as a work in which scienceis carried over into the region of art. We are not to regard the noveltherefore as ought else but a work of art, and the novelist as anartist.
One rejoices to find Emerson discussing the novel in this lightpurely, in his very suggestive essay on "Books":--
"Whilst the prudential and economical tone of society starves theimagination, affronted Nature gets such indemnity as she may. Thenovel is that allowance and frolic the imagination finds. Everythingelse pins it down, and men flee for redress to Byron, Scott, Disraeli,Dumas, Sand, Balzac, Dickens, Thackeray and Reade.
"The imagination infuses a certain volatility and intoxication. It hasa flute which sets the atoms of our frame in a dance, like planets;and, once so liberated, the whole man reeling drunk to the music, theynever quite subside to their old stony state."
Nay, we have such beautiful novels in the world, novels far from theexperimental romances by which we are not _perfected_ but _infected_(_non perficitur_, _inficitur_), as old Burton quotes in the_Anatomy_; novels in which scientific harmony has passed into itsheavenly after-life of wisdom, novels in which the pure sense ofpoetic beauty is so tenderly drawn out, that I love to think of themin the terms which our most beauty-loving of modern poets has appliedto beauty, in the opening of _Endymion_:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever; Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness, but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing; Therefore on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'erdarkened ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make 'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake, Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms; And such too is the grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead; All lovely tales that we have heard or read: An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.