Part 21
But now is the time for the approach of ratiocinative mediocrity; it advances with lofty assumption, bearing the staff of office, availing itself of these expositions in order to erect, by means of them, a clumsy structure of exact formulas--burlesquing these delicate and cautious explanations by resolving them into pedantic precepts, and appealing to lesser spirits to experiment upon their select list of instructions, practical precepts, and petty routines. At its bidding, the laborers set to work. Equipped with their rule and compass, they draw the lines and measure out the compartments, they dissect most methodically the mighty productions of men of genius, plundering on the right hand and on the left, pillaging from one a posture, from another a stroke of sentiment, from a third an idea, from a fourth a poetic touch, and, readjusting all these bits according to the best of their ability, they at length produce a sorry, complicated piece of mosaic, dressed in truly harlequin gear. Hence arises, in all languages which have received a small amount of culture, a deluge of bastard productions, which are neither good nor bad, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither interesting nor ridiculous, and which have no other fault than the irremediable one of corresponding to nothing whatever that exists either in Man or nature, neither in the mind of the would-be poet nor in that of his unfortunate reader. {261} Hence, for example, the amusement which so many poets of the last century gave themselves, of composing tens of thousands of pastoral verses, which gave no indication that during the whole period of their existence they had so much as cast a glance upon any tree in the Tuileries, or watched the course of any river in the Gobelins. Hence arose, in a word, all that rendered literature dull and poetry fantastic.
Criticism that is worthy of the name--true criticism, indeed--has nothing to do with this foolish attempt to construct the agreeable and the beautiful into a fabric. Its aim is not to teach how beautiful things may be made, but to exhibit before all eyes, and help all minds to understand the lustre of those things which are beautiful. Its aim is to increase the number of lofty and refined spirits--minds of liberality and sagacity, of delicacy and enlightenment; it is to prepare for men of genius and of talent, whenever nature may please to inspire such, a public worthy of receiving them, whose admiration may animate them, and whose severe taste may calm and moderate their too exuberant activity.
This being granted, may we say that the new criticism, that criticism to which has been imputed, whether advisedly or not--or, rather, we would question whether or not it is fitting to impute to this criticism alone and entirely--the revolution which has been declared in our theatre, may we say that this criticism has entirely failed in its object? If it has not, by one stroke of any magic wand, transformed men of moderate talent into great poets, may it not have smoothed the way before great poets who may yet arise? If it has not caused beautiful works of art to spring forth from the bosom of the earth, may it not have opened many eyes, and unstopped many deafened ears? May it not, to a certain extent, have so prepared the way for great works, if ever Heaven shall grant them to us, that they may, on their arrival, find an audience disposed to appreciate them and qualified to estimate them?
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Far are we from thinking that, in this respect, its labors have been entirely unavailing. On the contrary, we are much more disposed to suspect that, in more than one relation, and we will by no means limit ourselves to unimportant relations, the new criticism has succeeded beyond its expectations, and perhaps even beyond its desires; we are disposed to suspect that it has made something which is of greater value than itself--that it has involuntarily disencumbered us of more shackles than it was itself aware of, of more even than it had estimated. What is, in fact, the error of criticism in general--we mean of all criticism that has any weight (the smaller species are not worth our notice)--a kind of error from which the new criticism is not exempt to any great extent?
It is, as it seems to us, a certain absence of mental liberty when absorbed in the contemplation of things which the mind either approves or condemns; a certain impulsive, passionate, intolerant disposition, which prevents it from reproving with the severity of justice any thing faulty in that which it admires, and of admiring with generous self-abandonment whatever may be excellent in the productions which it condemns.
The ancients, for example, are admired every where--and unquestionably they are entitled to be so: they are admired in France, in Germany, in England; they are admired from very different motives, sometimes from motives contradictory to one another, and certainly this admiration rests upon very different principles in different cases. {263} But, in truth, where have they as yet been judged? where have they been appreciated without conventional enthusiasm, without an unquestioning devotion? Will not the man who shall first venture openly to expose their defects, whatever respect he may retain for them, stand a chance of being browbeaten, and abused as a Barbarian and a Goth? We ourselves, who dare to hint such an insinuation--what a storm of wrath may possibly be preparing to burst over our head?
The great masters of our language have been very ably appreciated, analyzed, and commented upon by La Harpe--for La Harpe was no vulgar critic--but, on the one hand, he would not have deemed that sufficient homage had been shown to Racine and Voltaire, had he not fastened Shakspeare by the heels to their triumphal car, and dragged him along in the mud; and, on the other hand, he can not venture, except at rare intervals, and with faltering accents, to expose any trifling imperfection in the objects of his adoration; the enormous defects of our drama do not at all shock him; he does not even seem to have perceived them.
On the other hand, let us take, as representative of the new criticism, the man who is undeniably its glory and ornament--the man who, by the extent and variety of his knowledge, by the profundity and originality of his views, by the lively appreciation of the beautiful, which ever animates him, and by that ingenious sagacity which never forsakes him, has had the greatest influence on the ideas and opinions of his contemporaries--Wilhelm Schlegel. He will be found to exhibit the obverse side of the medal.
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He admires Shakspeare most thoroughly; he has translated him with all the fondness of a pupil for a master; he has also a passionate admiration for Calderon and the Spanish drama. But, in order to balance his excesses in these directions, he habitually judges our drama with something more than rigor; to the admirable unaffectedness and comic vein of Molière he is entirely insensible; he deprecates the "Phedre" of Racine as much inferior to the "Phædra" of Euripides; to many of our merits he frequently grants neither sympathy nor justice; to our most venial defects he is mercilessly severe. He admires Shakspeare, and, in his enthusiasm, not only is Shakspeare perfect in all respects, but all that appertains, either immediately or more remotely to Shakspeare, participates in the perfection of this ideal.
According to his judgment, the period in which Shakspeare flourished was not only a great and remarkable period, but a period of taste and politeness; it was not only learned, but refined; urbanity, grace, and refined pleasantry were its most prominent and characteristic features.
Shakspeare himself is not only a great poet, but a profound philosopher, whose thoughts have sounded, down to their lowest depths, all the mysteries of the world, and all the intricacies of the human soul. Not only are his pieces in the highest degree effective, but they are composed with a marvelous and irreproachable art; every thing, whether it be great or small, finds its proper place and its just estimate in his writings. The gross obscenities with which he abounds are bursts of native humor; the puns, quips, and quibbles which are to be met with at every step, even in the most pathetic passages, are sallies of the most irreproachable taste; his anachronisms have their merits; his errors in geography, in history, in the portraiture of men and manners, all have their explanations.
The same idolatry, the same superstitious ardor is shown for the Spanish drama.
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It must be admitted that those of our French critics who were the first to adopt the doctrines of Schlegel have taken care not to go quite so far as he. They were sensible of his exaggerations. They have maintained their former admiration for Racine side by side with their more recent admiration for Shakspeare; and they have persisted in throwing the blame of the mistakes of Shakspeare himself upon the times in which he lived, and upon the rare genius with which Heaven endowed him.
But we must confess, also, that this wisdom has been neither general nor of long duration. To see how the leaders of our modern school express themselves when speaking of the English and the Germans--of Schiller, of Shakspeare, and of Goëthe--we may easily perceive that they occupy, with reference to these writers, the same mental posture which La Harpe occupied with reference to Racine or Voltaire; that while they are quite willing to express censure on a point of trifling importance, they do so on the implied condition that nothing of a serious or fundamental character shall be questioned by them.
For example, in the attempt to present "Othello" in its complete form for the Théâtre Français (an attempt which, moreover, we will applaud from the very bottom of our heart), in this attempt to reproduce "Othello," verse by verse, without any abridgment, except of a part which the police would not have suffered to pass--the part of a girl of vicious life, a part besides which is quite useless, and a crowd of indecent equivoques and disgusting obscenities--who could be persuaded to see in all this a design to offer to the public, not a spectacle interesting on account of its novelty, or curious because of the period to which it carries us back, but an accomplished model of art--a work perfect in all its features?
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Well! we will venture to assert that the time for these exaggerations has already passed in France; we will venture to predict that there is in the general good sense of the people--a good sense which the controversies that have been going on for the last fifteen or twenty years have developed and prepared--something which will prove an invincible obstacle to these adorations of individuals, and will prevent them from ever so gaming ground as to become common opinions and recognized doctrines. We have, with some trouble, emancipated ourselves from one extreme--we will not allow ourselves to run heedlessly into its opposite. We have disencumbered ourselves from some thousands of small prejudices--we will not allow ourselves to be swathed in a host of prejudices of another kind.
Every time that the attempt which has just been made at the Théâtre Français shall be renewed (and we hope it may be often renewed--this will be a much more worthy thing than the presentation before us of new and mediocre pieces), the problem which has already been once offered will be repeated--whether the public will consent to abandon the freedom of its judgment in favor of any thing, by whatever sanctions it may be supported--whether many of the things which it is asked to admire it will be contented only to tolerate--whether other things, similarly presented, it will condemn--whether others will be received with admiration, but from new motives, of a more immediate and personal character--whether, so far at least as impartiality is concerned, it will show itself to be superior to its leaders--and whether it will regard what is presented to it from a point of view more elevated than theirs.
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We say that this has already been once realized; and we say so, not only because the mass of the public refused to take a decided stand either with the detractors of Shakspeare or with his enthusiastic admirers--this neutrality was rather owing, as we have already explained, to the unsettled state of its ideas and doctrines than to the fear lest they should be compromised--but because the impression which the piece made, in its general effect and in its details, appeared to us to involve a true judgment, an unconscious, not a premeditated judgment, which could only be read on the countenances of the audience, a judgment which did not always square (far from it) with those ideas which the most accredited critics endeavor to give us on the English work, but which was more original, and, in our judgment, more worthy of respect than theirs.
The drama in question is divided into two nearly equal parts; in the first part, which comprises the first two acts and some scenes of the third, the comic element is most conspicuous; the tragic, or to speak more exactly, the dignified, the serious, element only appears once for a brief space; in the second part, on the contrary, the tragic element predominates, the comic only appears in transient flashes.
This distinction is made with such precision in the original, that, in general, the comic part is written in prose, while the tragic part is written almost uniformly in verse; a kind of mixture which Shakspeare ordinarily used with most marvelous dexterity, but which the French translator has not ventured to introduce upon our stage.
The comic part appeared to be long and rather overdrawn; the general effect which it produced was a feeling of disapprobation and impatience.
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To what is this to be attributed? Was it merely the effect of the admixture of comedy and tragedy? a feeling of the incompatibility of these equally simultaneous impressions? Doubtless the majority of the audience would thus have interpreted what they felt. But suppose the comic part had been of a different character--that it had been better managed, disposed more judiciously, distributed according to a juster proportion--would the same effect have been produced? There was nothing to indicate that it would; and the favor with which some salient points were received, and the universal laughter which they excited, may even induce a contrary opinion.
The idea of allotting an equal, or nearly an equal share of attention to two opposite elements, appears to us a violation of due proportions, and to rest upon a false principle. We are not usually sticklers for the unities; still, however, we believe that a certain fundamental unity is, in every case, a condition under which the beautiful is manifested here below. The effect, the legitimate effect of the beautiful, whatever it may be, is to raise the soul above itself, to transport it, by a kind of magic enchantment, into a sphere where all its transitory interests disappear, and to abolish for a time the sentiment of its individuality. Now the soul of man, as it is at present constituted, can not entirely abandon itself; it can not forget itself, and lose itself, either in simultaneous, or in two successive impressions of a precisely opposite character and of equal force. To attempt this is to do violence to its constitution.
If the subject of "Othello" had been perfectly unknown to the public, if the public could have freely allowed itself to be carried unresistingly along with the constant mysteriousness that is connected with Roderigo, the surprise and the wrath of Brabantio, the drunkenness of Cassio, and the ill-natured jokes of the buffoon, uttered in a strain of mere pleasantry, it would from the first have ascended to the proper elevation of gladness and hilarity; but the shock could not but be unpleasant to them when they were so soon to pass abruptly from this gay and playful disposition to the terrible pathos of the gigantic scenes of jealousy which terminate the third act.
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But as they, on the contrary, had entered the theatre with their expectations directed entirely to those scenes of jealousy, and to other scenes not less terrible, which were to grow out of these, as they were anxiously looking forward to the catastrophe, two or more acts full of sarcasms, facetiæ, and jokes appeared to the public a severe trial, a somewhat grim preparation; they saw in it something not merely contrary, but opposed and shocking to their tastes, something which overshot the mark, whatever that mark may be.
Were they wrong? Was this mere prejudice? We, for our part, can hardly think so.
The mixture of comedy and tragedy is not, or certainly ought not to be, a purely arbitrary thing. The two are not brought together merely for the sake of the union. Opposition, antithesis, in works of art, is not in itself a merit, has no intrinsic value. They are brought together when a certain kind of beauty results naturally from their juxtaposition; they are united because, in the vicinity of those events which change and reverse an entire life, there are the world, society, and the crowd of indifferent egotists who move on without caring for these events, whose movements are neither disturbed nor disarranged by them, who pursue their individual interests, ruled by their habits, abandoned to selfishness; and because the contrast between situations of such an opposite character, and sentiments so unlike to one another, after it has compelled us to smile, opens to us a point of view from which human life is seen shaded with a fanciful and melancholy tinge. {270} Comedy and tragedy are blended, because a flash of unpremeditated gayety sometimes crosses the minds of those who are corroded by remorse or stricken by despair, and restores them for an instant to a state which is lost to them--irremediably and hopelessly lost--leaving them immediately afterward, as a ray of light which only glittered for a moment to exhibit more clearly the depth of the abyss:
Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.
The two are blended, because the same fact often presents varying aspects, and the waning light, which exhibits the one, brings the other into bolder relief. Lastly, they are blended, because an accidental link is often found to connect a terrible misfortune with a fantastic incident--some singular relation which involuntarily and unexpectedly takes hold upon us, and which our spirit not unwillingly grasps as if to find some kind of unbending to regain its equilibrium and recover breath.
Never should the contrast be allowed unless under the condition that the dominant impression, which is chiefly to be regarded, should be developed and not destroyed, should not be lost sight of, but rendered more lasting and profound. No one knew this better than Shakspeare, no one has illustrated it by more numerous and beautiful examples. But we confess we can not find them in "Othello." In this play the comic element is purely arbitrary; it is, in some sort, appended to the tragic, while there is no intimate relation between the one and the other, no common aim, no alliance to be ratified by the deep experiences of the soul.
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Let Roderigo be eliminated from the piece--a genuine melodramatic simpleton, who only appears that he may serve as a butt to Iago, to be beduped and befooled by him; you can do so; what Roderigo does might be done quite as well by any one else; no one, Iago excepted, would know or care for his absence. Let Brabantio, the firm and prudent senator, full of ability and self-possession, dignified and respected, be true to his proper character; let him not be transformed, during the two whole scenes, merely to suit the whim of the author, into a Géronte or a Sganarelle. Let Cassio fall into disgrace with his general from some more worthy motive than that supplied by taking a glass of wine at an unseasonable time, which would also be much more in keeping both with his good qualities, and with the defects which are attributed to him. Lastly, erase entirely the part of the clown, a part so false that the French imitator, though he has in general adhered most conscientiously to the original, did not think himself bound to preserve it; all that is comic in the piece will have disappeared, it will have disappeared without being observed at all by any of the essential characters, without producing any chasms in the representation of the principal positions; it may be detached, as two objects are separated which have nothing in common but the circumstance of their both being in the same vessel. This is assuredly quite sufficient to explain the impression produced upon the spectators; they might, without any injustice, have shown a greater degree of severity, and doubtless they would have done so if they had had to express themselves upon the work as one entirely unknown to them. But they were placed, as we have already said, in a more rational point of view than that occupied by the French translator; they had come, not to behold a marvel, but to study, with a true and living sympathy, an ancient and renowned work. {272} They were unpleasantly surprised at first, but they showed patience, and gave due credit. One circumstance, we think, proves most convincingly the freedom of their minds and the docility of their attention, the fact that this deluge of tiresome pleasantries did not at all injure the effect of the three beautiful scenes in the first act--the scene in which Othello calmly meets the violent passion of Desdemona's father; that in which he explains to the Senate how he managed to conquer the young girl's heart; and that in which Desdemona herself appears, and demands to be permitted to follow the Moor, as her lord and master, to Cyprus.
The effect of Othello's narration was irresistible. This portion of the play is translated into all languages--its beauty is perfectly entrancing, its originality is unequaled. Even La Harpe could not refuse to it the tribute of his admiration. But perhaps the scene which precedes and that which follows are even still more adapted to exhibit Shakspeare in all his greatness. How wonderful a painter of human nature was this man! How true is it that he has received from on high something of that creative power which, by breathing on a little dust, can transform it into a creature of life and immortality!
In the interview with Brabantio, Othello only utters some fifteen lines; before the Senate, Desdemona only about thirty; and yet already both Othello and Desdemona stand before us as complete characters: there they both are, showing themselves without any constraint, in all the gracefulness and singularity of their characters, in all their native and imperishable individuality. Suppress the rest of the piece, you can never efface Desdemona and Othello from your memory; place them, if you please, in another order of circumstances, use your utmost, but do not think you can obliterate them; we know them, and we know beforehand what they must do and say.
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And yet what complexities, what contrasts, what delicate shades, belong to these characters!