Part 21

This offensive attitude towards the past is the first symptom of the approaching breach with that past's whole system of ideas, from which Hugo's significance as an author and leader of a literary movement dates.[4]

[1] Villemain, _M. de Féletz et les salons de son temps_.

[2] Any one interested in their real story will find it told according to the original historical documents in Cuvillier-Fleury's _Portraits Politiques_, 1851, pp. 377, &c.

[3] For example, Émile Deschamps, _Poésies_, edition of 1841, p. 124. "Une page des martyrs."

[4] Lamartine, _Mémoires; Voyage en Orient; Méditations poétiques; Nouvelles méditations poétiques; Harmonies poétiques et religieuses_, i. ii; Victor Hugo, _Odes et Ballades_; Edmond Biré, _Victor Hugo avant 1830_.

X

LOVE IN THE LITERATURE OF THE PERIOD

Of great significance as regards the whole character of the period is the answer to the question: What is the nature of the amatory sentiment in the writings of the authors of this group?

Of all the emotions treated of in literature the emotion of love is that which receives most attention, and as a rule makes most impression on the reader. Knowledge of the manner in which it is apprehended and represented is an important factor in any real understanding of the spirit of an age. In the age's conception of the passion of love we have, as it were, a gauge by which we can measure with extreme accuracy the force, the nature, the temperature of its whole emotional life. We see gallantry transformed into passion in the works of Rousseau. In the writings of Germany's great poets this passion is chastened and humanised. The German Romanticists turn love into a sort of moonlight sentimentality. In revolutionary times it is represented as at war with existing and regular social relations. In the works of the sceptical authors of the nineteenth century, such as Heine, it is undermined by doubt of its existence.[1]

In such a period as that at present under consideration, a period which rejects the claims of the body, pins its faith to authority, and prizes order above all things, love necessarily receives a characteristic imprint. If we glance at the most notable descriptions of love which the period has bequeathed to us, we gain some idea of its main types of humanity, male and female.

The first pair to meet our eyes are Eudore and Velléda in _Les Martyrs_.

The hero of _Les Martyrs_ is peculiarly interesting to us because Chateaubriand has painted him with many of the features of his own expressive countenance. So great is the similarity of their circumstances that the words and the reflections with which Chateaubriand and Eudore begin to tell the stories of their lives are almost identical. Eudore says: "Born at the foot of Mount Taygetus, the melancholy murmur of the sea was the first sound that fell upon my ear. On how many shores have I since then watched those waves break that I am now gazing on! Who could have told me a few short years ago that I should hear the waves moaning on the beaches of Italy, on the shores of the Batavians, the Britons, and the Gauls, which I then saw laving the bright sands of Messenia?" And Chateaubriand, in his _Voyage en Italie_, writes: "Born on the rocky shores of Brittany, the first sound which fell on my ear when I came into the world was the roar of the sea; and on how many shores have I since then seen the billows break on which I am now gazing! Who could have told me a few short years ago that I should hear moaning by the graves of Scipio and Virgil the waves that rolled at my feet on English beaches and the shores of Maryland?" &c.

Both these heroes are, thus, far-travelled and sorely tried men of the type of Odysseus and Æneas. Common to both are astonishment at the many and strange adventures of their own lives, and admiration of themselves, who have been protected throughout all these dangers by higher powers. But more significant is another feature which they have in common. Eudore, like Chateaubriand, is the hero who brings about the triumph of Christianity upon earth. Chateaubriand does in the reign of Napoleon what Eudore did in the reign of Galerius; and it is not his fault that he is not a martyr; the thought of martyrdom was one which often occupied him in his youth; he repeatedly said to friends that he would not have drawn back if his life had been required of him. The heroic figure always present to his imagination as a pattern is nothing less than the sacrificial victim who atones for the ungodliness and apostasy of the age, and who by his life-work and his sufferings appeases an angry God. In the first edition of _Les Martyrs_ Eudore is plainly called a lesser Christ. In writing of him the author uses the expression that the Almighty demanded "une hostie entière." In the later editions this particular expression was, on religious grounds, omitted, but in another place the same idea has been inadvertently retained, with an almost comic effect. In the account of Eudore's martyrdom we read: "The chair of fire was now ready. Seated on its glowing bars, the Christian teacher preached the Gospel more eloquently than before. Seraphims shed the dew of heaven on him, and his guardian angel sheltered him with his wings. _Il paraissait dans la flamme comme un pain délicieux préparé pour les tables célestes_."

We have here the fundamental idea that distinguishes the type. The first sacrifice, the first saviour, the first "host," is not enough. Although he is a Christian, Chateaubriand does not believe that the sacrificial death of Christ has been a complete atonement, has done all that was required. To ensure the triumph of religion minor saviours, such as Chateaubriand himself and his hero Eudore, are still needed. In German Romanticism even a miserable creature like Golo in Tieck's _Genoveva_ is understood to have a resemblance to Christ; the same is the case with Eudore.[2] Though he errs in his youth and for a short time treads the path of destruction in beautiful Naples (Chateaubriand knew by experience that the best resolutions are no security against such backsliding), he reforms, stands steadfast in every trial, and dies a shining light.

His love for Velléda is one of these trials.

Velléda is undoubtedly the most remarkable and most influential female character in the French literature of this period. She is a Gallic maiden of the third century, and in her Chateaubriand depicts the French national type. "This was no ordinary woman. She had that attractive waywardness which distinguishes the women of Gaul. Her glance was quick and keen, the expression of her mouth slightly satirical, her smile peculiarly gentle and expressive. Her bearing was now proud, now voluptuous. Her whole personality was a mixture of gentleness and dignity, of artlessness and art." But Velléda is not simply French; she bears the distinct impress of the age of her creation; she is an ideal of 1808. She is a priestess, and belongs to the family of the Arch-Druid. In the first decade of the nineteenth century the feminine character was not perfect unless it was marked by religious enthusiasm. It was also obligatory that Velléda should not be purely and simply the child of nature; she is so only to the same extent as were the ladies of 1808. We are expressly and somewhat pedantically told of her that in the family of the Arch-Druid she had been "carefully instructed in the literature of Greece and in the history of her own country." Velléda is the last priestess of the Druids, as Cymodocée is the last priestess of Homer. A short time ago Corinne had been the model of the ambitious young Frenchwoman, now she was supplanted by Velléda; and, literature not being merely a medium of expression for society, but also an important agent in remoulding it, we see the type pass from the world of imagination into the world of reality. What is Madame de Krüdener, standing in front of the Russian army, but a Christian Velléda?

When we make the acquaintance of the young priestess she is seated in a boat which is tossing on the waves of a tempestuous sea, trying to still the storm with her incantations; for she, like Fouqué's Undine, has, or believes she has, a certain power over the sea. Later we hear her, in an eloquent speech, calling on her countrymen to take up arms against the Romans and reconquer their liberty. We see her, as the priestess of Teutates, sharpening her sickle to offer a human sacrifice. How beautiful she is as her creator describes her to us--tall and straight, scantily clothed in a short, black, sleeveless tunic, her golden sickle hanging from a girdle of steel! Her eyes are blue, her lips rose-red; her fair flowing hair is bound with a slender oak-branch or a wreath of verbena.

Hardly has she seen Eudore than she loves him. But such simple and natural passion is not enough for the age; it demands that Velléda shall be a devotee of Vesta, shall have taken the oath of eternal virginity. "I am a virgin, the virgin of the island of the Seine; whether I keep my oath or break it I die--die for your sake." Eudore admires her, but does not love her. His relation to her is that of the pious Æneas to Dido, a fact to which the author makes him draw our attention. The unfortunate Velléda tries all her magic arts. At one time she determines to steal her way in to Eudore on the moonbeams; at another she is preparing to fly into the tower which he inhabits and win his love in the shape of another woman, but the very thought arouses her jealousy and causes her to desist. Eudore, though he does not return her passion, feels himself, as it were, infected by its atmosphere when he is beside her. As a Christian he shrinks with horror from the temptation. "At least twenty times while Velléda was telling me of her sad and tender feelings, I was on the point of throwing myself at her feet, announcing her victory, and making her happy by the acknowledgment of my defeat. At the moment when I was about to succumb, the compassion with which the unhappy woman inspired me saved me. But this very compassion, which saved me at first, in the end proved my destruction; for it deprived me of the last remnant of my strength." Looking at the matter from the purely artistic point of view, it offends our taste to hear a man dilate thus upon his struggles to preserve his virtue; Eudore's outbursts of shame and remorse do not become him well. "O Cyrille," he says, "how can I go on with such a story! I blush with shame and confusion." When at last, after Velléda has attempted to kill herself, this knight of the doleful countenance has yielded and is lying at her feet, nothing less will serve him than to set all the powers of hell loose on the occasion. "I fell at Velléda's feet. ... Hell gave the signal for these terrible nuptials; the spirits of darkness howled from their abyss, the chaste spouses of our forefathers turned away their faces, my guardian angel hid his with his wings and returned to heaven." Even at the supreme moment this depressing hero is incapable of self-surrender; he is ashamed; he resembles a boy who, with a feeling compounded of gluttony and fear of flogging, devours a stolen apple. "My happiness resembled despair, and any one seeing us in the midst of our rapture would have taken us for two criminals who had just received their sentence of death. From that moment I felt that I was stamped with the seal of divine wrath. Thick darkness spread like a smoke-cloud in my soul; I felt as if a host of rebellious spirits had suddenly taken possession of it. Thoughts filled my mind which until this moment had never occurred to me; the language of hell poured from my lips; I uttered such blasphemies as are heard in the place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth."

It is, thus, on a background of hell-fire that Chateaubriand depicts the love of the Christian confessor and the heathen prophetess. In _Atala_, where we have a kindred representation of combined suffering and pleasure, the insincere anathema against earthly love was not yet launched.

We come upon much the same idea in one of Alfred de Vigny's youthful works, _Eloa_, a beautiful and notable poem which describes the seduction of a charming young angel of the female sex by the Prince of Darkness. The Satan of _Les Martyrs_ was a revolutionist, but De Vigny's Satan is hardly to be distinguished from the Eros of the ancients. Without telling who he is, he ensnares the fair angel with his personal charms and his eloquence, and draws her with him into the abyss. He himself describes his power in the following words:

Je suis celui qu'on aime et qu'on ne connaît pas. Sur l'homme j'ai fondé mon empire de flamme Dans les désirs du cœur, dans les rêves de l'âme, Dans les liens des corps, attraits mystérieux, Dans les trésors du sang, dans les regards des yeux. C'est moi qui fait parler l'épouse dans ses songes; La jeune fille heureuse apprend d'heureux mensonges; Je leur donne des nuits qui consolent des jours, Je suis le Roi secret des secrètes amours.

We are irresistibly reminded of the song to Eros in the _Antigone_ of Sophocles.

As the period is now rapidly descending the incline leading to the conception of Eros as the devil himself, it is only natural that in the descriptions of "real" love on which it prides itself it should be more frigid and impotent, more seraphic and platonic than any other age we are acquainted with. Let us see how the Velléda of the day, Madame de Krüdener herself, describes love in _Valerie_.

Although _Valerie_ is an imitation of _Werther_, it is in many ways extremely unlike _Werther_. It is the story of a young Swede, Gustave Linar by name, who in his childhood learned from his mother "to love virtue," and who continues to love it until he dies. Along with virtue he loves Valérie, but Valérie is the wife of the Count, his master and ideal, and is herself such a quintessence of all the virtues that he regards her with a reverence which makes desire impossible. Alexander Stakjev confessed his feelings to Krüdener, but Gustave utters not a word to the Count, nor does he ever speak of his sufferings to the woman he loves.[3] Preyed upon by uncomprehended and unavowed love, and far too well-behaved to shoot himself, he dies of consumption.

This is his style: "O my friend, how criminal of me to have yielded to a passion which I was well aware would be my destruction! But I will at least die in the love of virtue and sacred truth; I will not charge Heaven with my misfortunes, as so many men in my plight do (what virtue); I will endure without complaint the suffering which I have brought upon myself, and which I love, although it is killing me. I will go when the Almighty calls me, burdened with many sins, but not with that of suicide." (ii. 63.)

Gustave is not a man. It is generally acknowledged that the portraiture of men is not the strong point of female authors. They almost invariably depict them as entirely absorbed in their relations with women. Gustave is, as already observed, a Scandinavian; but Scandinavians have no reason to be proud of this compatriot, in whom the vigour of the Northerner is conspicuously absent. The national colouring of the story is confined almost entirely to the Teutonic sentimentality in which the descriptions are immersed, and to a variety of Swedish names, which, it goes without saying, are as a rule incorrectly spelt. At Venice Gustave gives a fête in Valerie's honour; the decorations are intended to remind her of the home of her youth, amongst the birches and pines; when she catches sight of them she cries: "Ah! c'est Dronnigor" (Drottninggård).

There is nothing characteristically Swedish about Gustave. Really beautiful in the description of his character is the gleam of youthful philanthropic enthusiasm shed over his confessions. It seems to him that in most men's lives the period of love is succeeded by that of ambition. There is something fine and sincere in the language in which he tells that the glory others desire is not that which in his eyes has seemed desirable. "The glory of which I dreamed was won by occupying one's self with the happiness of all, as love occupies itself with the happiness of a single individual. It was virtue in the man who possessed it, before his fellow-men gave it the name of fame." And he adds: "What has real glory in common with the petty vanity of the many, with the pitiful contention that one is something because one is striving hard to be it?" It is strange to find sentiments like these in a book the fame of which was due to such artifices as were employed to puff _Valérie_.

The heroine is equipped with all the charms which a lady as passionately in love with herself as Madame de Krüdener was could communicate to her own portrait. She is a thorough woman, whilst the unfortunate Gustave, though quite aware of the foolishness and hopelessness of his passion, is absolutely unable to burst his bonds and begin to live the life of a man. He is obliged to content himself with such humble expressions of his adoration as kissing a child whom his mistress has kissed on the spot which her lips have touched, or kissing the outside of the window-pane on the inside of which she is resting her bare arm during the pause between two dances at a ball, or pressing her hand and feeling the ring given her by her husband, or fainting in her presence, so that she is obliged to bathe his brow with eau-de-Cologne.

A faint perfume of eau-de-Cologne may be said to pervade the whole story. It is significant that the first service which Valérie asks Gustave to do her after they have become intimate is to procure her secretly a little rouge, which her husband objects to her using. With the odour of eau-de-Cologne is blended an odour of propriety and veneration which is so powerful that it is almost obnoxious, and a supernaturalness in the matter of the affections which is both silly and unbeautiful. Valérie is _enceinte_ when Gustave conceives his passion for her, but this circumstance has no curative effect on him, though he lives in intimate companionship with her until her son is born. They wax enthusiastic together over Ossian and Clarissa Harlowe. Gustave never feels the slightest jealousy of the Count, nor does the Count of him. It is with the Count's hand in his that Gustave dies. Love is, in short, so purified, so unnaturally seraphic, that with its passion it has also lost its poetry. This is doubly significant when we happen to know how little seraphic was the life with which this poetess of love had prepared herself to write her novel, and how cleverly she herself managed to reconcile the sacred with the more carnal aspects of love.

Lamartine and his Elvire are the last couple on whose relations we have time to dwell.

Lamartine's youthful poems treated of love, but of a love so pure that it was called "une prière à deux." It was depicted with the transfiguring ideality which is the result of the death of the beloved one. The poet presses to his lips the crucifix which she kissed before she died, and the poem _Le Crucifix_ is so soulful that we believe Lamartine when he tells us in a note appended to it: "I never re-read these verses." In his novel, _Raphael_, a much later work, he gives us the real facts of the same love story, and these throw a new light on the famous poems.

Julie, to give the lady known by the name of Elvire her real name, is a créole, aged twenty-eight. She is an orphan, and has married a man of seventy, a famous scientist, that she may have a protector; but her actual relation to him has never been anything but that of a daughter to a father. She has an affection of the heart which may at any time prove fatal. By the Lake of Bourget in Savoy (the lake of which Lamartine has sung so beautifully), where she is spending the autumn for the sake of her health, she meets Raphael, the young hero of the book, a man differing in nothing but name from its author, who in its pages gives us not only real facts, but even calls his friends and acquaintances by their real names. He describes himself as he was then--twenty-four years old, young and poor, solitary and shy, tender-hearted and given to enthusiasms, already a little _blasé_ from much dissipation, tired of all the commonplace and dissolute amours in which he had hitherto indulged.

It cannot be said that Lamartine gave an altogether too unfavourable description of himself. The delicacy and refinement of Raphael's feelings was such that his comrades used laughingly to declare that he was home-sick for heaven. In a somewhat clumsy manner Lamartine attempts to give us an idea of this refinement: "If he had wielded the brush, he would have painted the Madonna of Foligno; if the chisel, he would have sculptured Canova's Psyche. If he had been a poet, he would have written the lamentations of Job, Tasso's Herminia stanzas, Shakespeare's moonlight scene in _Romeo and Juliet_, and Lord Byron's description of Haydee." Fortunately it was not required of him to do any of these things, as they had been done by others. We know that in his efforts at a later period in one of the three directions, namely, as a poet, he did not attain to the level of the masters named.

In _Raphael_ we have a masterly description of a young man's ardent love, a love which, though it has taken possession of him heart and soul, is of an almost altogether spiritual nature, partly because its object inspires such a degree of reverence and compassion that the senses are not allowed to come into play, partly because the young man, after leading a loose life with women for whom he has felt no respect, shudders at the very idea of his relation to this woman, whom he reveres, becoming one of the same nature with his past amours.

He has had love affairs, but he has never been truly in love before. It seems to him as if, when she looks at him, there is a remoteness in her gaze which he has never felt before in human eye. It reminds him of the gleam of the stars, which has traversed millions of miles of space. He has a hesitation in approaching her which makes the distance between them seem impassable. When he at last succeeds in making her acquaintance, it is the name and the position of a brother which she gives him, and with this he is contented and happy. No sooner have they found one another than he feels as if he were relieved from a heavy burden--the burden of his heart. As soon as he gives it away he learns what life in all its fulness is. He feels as if he were floating in the purest ether; his joy is infinite and luminous as the air of heaven. During the first hours which he spends with her he loses all perception of time; he is certain that a thousand years spent thus would to him be so many seconds. He does not feel like a human being, but like a living hymn of praise.

And this ecstatic mood lasts as long as he breathes the same air with her. They are happy together during the beautiful summer days, and prolong their summer into autumn: "Our summer was in ourselves."

We feel that this description of the bliss of young love is a description of something that really has existed. The young couple are living not far from the place where Rousseau, as a youth, loved Madame de Warens. Raphael is rather younger than Julie--he is twenty-four, she twenty-eight; this gives their relation a certain resemblance to that between Rousseau and his protectress; but the emotions of Raphael and Julie are as incorporeal and romantic as those of the other couple were substantially human.

And not only the happiness produced by the presence of the loved one, but the pain of separation, the longing for letters, the fever of expectation when the time of meeting draws near, and the agonies of parting are described, with many admirable realistic touches, in a manner worthy of a great writer.