Suspended Judgments Part 16

One comes to understand from it that the soul of poetry is and was and must always be no other thing than _music_--music not merely of the superficial sound of words, but of those deeper significances and those vaguer a.s.sociations which words carry with them; music of the hidden spirit of words, the spirit which originally called them forth from the void and made them vehicles for the inchoate movements of man's unuttered dreams.

Paul Verlaine--and not without reason--became a legend even while he lived; and now that he is dead he has become more than a legend.

A legend and a symbol! Wherever the spirit of art finds itself misunderstood, mistrusted, disavowed, disinherited; driven into the taverns by the stupidity of those who dwell in "homes," and into the arms of the submerged by the coldness and heartlessness of those who walk prosperously upon the surface; the figure of this fantastic child, this satyr-saint with the Socratic forehead, this tearful mummer among the armies of the outcasts, will rise up and write his prophecy upon the wall.

For the kingdom of art is as the kingdom of heaven. The clever ones, the wise ones, the shrewd ones, the ones that make themselves friends with Mammon, and build themselves houses of pleasure for their habitation, shall pa.s.s away and be forgotten forever.

The justice of the G.o.ds cancels the malice of the righteous, and the devoted grat.i.tude of humanity tears up the contemptuous libels of the world.

He has come into his own, as all great poets must at last, in defiance of the puritan, in defiance of public opinion, and in spite of all aspersion. He has come into his own; and no one who loves poetry can afford to pa.s.s him by.

For while others may be more witty, more learned, more elaborate, none can be more melodious. His poetry is touched with the music that is beyond all argument. He lives by his sincerity. He lives by his imagination.

The things that pertain the deepest to humanity are not its fierce fleshly pa.s.sions, its feverish ambitions, its proud reasonings, its tumultuous hopes. They are the things that belong to the hours when these obsessing forces fade and ebb and sink away. They are the things that rise up out of the twilight-margins of sleep and death; the things that come to us on softly stepping feet, like child-mothers with their first-born in their arms; the things that have the white mists of dawn about them and the cool breath of evening around them; the things that hint at something beyond pa.s.sion and beyond reason; the things that sound to us like the sound of bells heard through clear deep water; for the secret of human life is not in its actions or its voices or its clamorous desires, but in the intervals between all these--when all these leave it for a moment at rest--and in the depths of the soul itself the music becomes audible, the music which is the silence of eternity.

REMY DE GOURMONT

The death of Remy de Gourmont is one of the greatest losses that European literature has suffered since the death of Oscar Wilde. The supreme critic is as rare as the supreme artist, and de Gourmont's critical genius amounted to a miracle of clairvoyance.

He wrote of everything--from the etymological subtleties of the French language down to the chaste reluctances of female moles. He touched everything and he touched nothing that he did not adorn.

In America he is unfortunately far less well known than he deserves, though an admirable translation of "A Night in the Luxembourg,"

published in Boston, and a charming and illuminating essay by Mr.

Robert Parker, have done something to remove this disgrace. As Mr.

Parker truly observes, the essence of de Gourmont's genius is to be found in an insatiable curiosity which the absolute closing of any vista of knowledge by the final and authoritative discovery of truth would paralyse and petrify. He does not, as Mr. Parker justly says, seek for truth with any hope or even any particular wish, to find it.

Truth found would be truth spoiled. He seeks it from sheer love of the pursuit. In this respect he is precisely of the stuff out of which great essayists are made. He is also placed in that special position from which the illusive phenomena of this challenging world are best caught, best a.n.a.lysed, and best interpreted, as we overtake them in their dreamy pa.s.sage from mystery to mystery.

The mere fact of his basic a.s.sumption that final truth in any direction is undiscoverable--possibly undesirable also--sets him with the wisest and sanest of all the most interesting writers. It sets him "en rapport" with nature, too, in a very close and intimate affiliation.

It sets him at one spring at the very parting of the ways where all the mysteries meet. Nature loves to reveal the most delicate side-lights and the most illuminating glimpses to those who take this att.i.tude.

Such disinterestedness brings its own reward.

To love truth for the sake of power or gain or pride or success is a contemptible prost.i.tution; to love it for its own sake is a tragic foolishness. What is truth--in itself--that it should be loved? But to love it for the pleasure of pursuing it, that is the temper dear to the immortal G.o.ds. For this is indeed their own temper, the very way they themselves--the shrewd undying ones--regard the dream shadows of the great kaleidoscope.

It is a subtle and hard saying this, that truth must be played with lightly to be freely won, but it has a profound and infinite significance. Illuminating thoughts--thoughts with the bloom and gloss and dew of life itself upon them--do not come to the person who with puritanical austerity has grown lean in his wrestling. They come when we have ceased to care whether they come or not. They come when from the surface of the tide and under the indifferent stars we are content to drift and listen, without distress, to the humming waters.

As Goethe says, it is of little avail that we go forth with our screws and our levers. Tugged at so and mauled, the magic of the universe slips away from out of our very fingers. It is better to stroll negligently along the highways of the world careless of everything except "the pleasure which there is in life itself," and then, in Goethe's own phrase, "Such thoughts will come of themselves and cry like happy children--'Here we are.'"

There is indeed required--and herein may be found the secret of Remy de Gourmont's evasive talent--a certain fundamental _irresponsibility,_ if we are to become clairvoyant critics of life. As soon as we grow responsible, or become conscious of responsibility, something or other comes between us and the clear object of our curiosity, blurring its outline and confusing its colours. Moral scruples, for instance, as to how precisely this new fragment of knowledge or this new aspect of art is likely to affect the inclinations of the younger generation; religious scruples as to whether this particular angle of cosmic vision will redound to the glory of G.o.d or detract from it or diminish it; political or patriotic scruples as to whether this particular "truth" we have come to overtake will have a beneficial or injurious effect upon the fortunes of our nation; domestic scruples as to whether we are justified In emphasising some aspect of psychological discrimination that may be dangerous to those stately and ideal illusions upon which the more sacred of human inst.i.tutions rest.

Looked at from this point of view it might seem as if it were almost impossible for a thoroughly responsible or earnest-minded man to become an ideal critic. Such a one keeps his mind so closely and gravely fixed upon his ethical "point d'appui," that when he jumps he misses the object altogether. In a certain sense every form of responsibility is obscurantism. We are concerned with something external to the actual thing under discussion; something to be gained or lost or betrayed or guarded; and between the pure image of what we are looking at and our own free souls, float a thousand distorting mists.

The whole philosophical att.i.tude of Remy de Gourmont is full of interest and significance for those who are watching the deeper movements of European thought. At one, in a limited sense, with Bergson and William James in their protests against final or static "truth," de Gourmont's writings, when taken as a whole, form a most salutary and valuable counterpoise to the popular and vulgar implications of this modern mysticism. That dangerous and pernicious method of estimating the truth of things according to what James calls somewhere their "cash-value" receives blow after blow from his swift and ironic intelligence.

Things are what they are and their hidden causes are what they are, quite apart from whether they produce a pleasant or unpleasant effect upon individual lives. The sordid and utilitarian system of judging the value of thoughts and ideas in proportion to their efficiency in the world of practical exigencies does not appeal to this rational and cla.s.sical mind.

The pragmatism of William James and the instinct-doctrines of Bergson have both been pounced upon by every kind of apologist for supernatural religion and categorical morality; while the method of appealing to the optimistic prejudices of shallow minds by the use of colloquial and mystical images has of recent years been introducing into European thought what might be called "Metaphysical Americanism."

Against this tendency, a tendency peculiarly and especially Anglo-Saxon, the ingrained _Latinity_ of de Gourmont's mind indignantly revolts. His point of view is entirely and absolutely cla.s.sical, in the old French sense of that suggestive word and in accordance with the great French traditions of Rabelais, Voltaire, Stendhal, Renan, and Anatole France.

The new pseudo-philosophy, so vague, so popular, so optimistic, so steeped in mystical morality, which one a.s.sociates with the writings of so many modern Americans and which finds a certain degree of support in the work of Maeterlinck and Romain Rolland, leaves the intelligence of Remy de Gourmont entirely untouched. He comes to modern problems with the free, gay, mocking curiosity of a twentieth century Lucian. Completely out of his vein and remote from his method is that grave pedagogic tone which has become so popular a note in recent ethical writing, and which, for all his slang of the marketplace, underlies the psychological optimism of William James.

One has only to read a few pages of Remy de Gourmont to be conscious that one has entered once again the large, s.p.a.cious, free, irresponsible, _heathen_ atmosphere of the great writers of antiquity.

The lapse of time since those cla.s.sic ages, the superficial changes of human manners and speech, seem abolished, seem reduced to something that does not count at all. We have nothing here of that self-conscious modernity of tone, that fussy desire to be original and popular, which spoils the charm of so many vigorous writers of our age. It is as though some pleasant companion of Plato--some wise and gay Athenian from the side of Agathon or Phaedrus or Charmides--were risen from his tomb by the blue Ionian seas to discourse to us upon the eternal ironies of nature and human life under the lime trees and chestnuts of the Luxembourg gardens. It is as though some philosophic friend of Catullus or Propertius had returned from an age-long holiday within the olive groves of Sirmio to wander with clear-eyed humorous curiosity along the banks of the Seine or among the book-stalls of the Odeon.

Like a thick miasmic cloud, as we read this great pagan critic, all the fogs and vapours of turgid hyperborean superst.i.tion are driven away from the face of the warm sun. Once more what is permanent and interesting in this mad complicated comedy of human life emerges in bold and sharp relief.

Artists, novelists, poets, journalists, occultists, abnormalists, essayists, scientists and even theologians, are treated with that humorous and pa.s.sionate curiosity, full of a s.p.a.cious sense of the amplitude of and diversity of life's possibilities, which we a.s.sociate with the cla.s.sic tradition.

Only in France is the appearance of a writer of this kind possible at all; because France alone of all the nations, and Paris alone of all the cities, of the modern world, has kept in complete and continuous touch with the "open secret" of the great civilisations.

There is no writer more required in America at this moment than Remy de Gourmont, and for that very reason no writer less likely to be received. Curiously enough, in spite of the huge influx of foreigners into the harbour reigned over by the Statue of Liberty, not even England itself is more enslaved by the dark fogs of puritanical superst.i.tion than the United States; for there is no place in the world where the brutal ignorance and complacent self-righteousness of the commercial middle cla.s.ses rampage and revel and trample upon distinction and refinement more savagely than in America. The blame for this must fall entirely upon the English race and upon the descendants of the Puritans. Perhaps a time will come when all these Jews and Slavs and Italians will a.s.sert their _intellectual_ as they are beginning to a.s.sert their _economic,_ independence, and then no doubt led by the cities of the West--the ones furthest from Boston--there will be a Renaissance of European intelligence in this great daughter of Europe such as will astonish even Paris itself. But this event, as Sir Thomas More says so sadly of his Utopia, is rather to be hoped for than expected.

One hears so often from the mouths of middle-cla.s.s apologists for the modern industrial system expressions of fear as to the loss of what they call "initiative" under any conceivable socialistic state.

One is inclined to ask "initiative towards what"? Towards growing unscrupulously rich, it must be supposed; certainly not towards intellectual experiments and enterprises; for no possible revolutionary regime could be less sympathetic to these things than the one under which we live at present.

The Puritan rulers of America are very anxious to "educate"

foreigners in the free "inst.i.tutions" of their new home. One can only pray that the persons submitted to this process will find some opportunity of adding to their "education" some cursory acquaintance with their own cla.s.sics; so that when the hour arrives and we wake to find ourselves under the rule of trade-unions or socialistic bureaucrats, our new authorities will know at least something of the "inst.i.tution," as Walt Whitman somewhere calls it, of intellectual toleration.

Remy de Gourmont himself is very far from being a socialist. He has imbibed with certain important differences, due to his incorrigible Latin temperament, many of the doctrines of Nietzsche; but Nietzsche himself could hardly be more inimical to any kind of mob-rule than this exponent of "subjective idealism."

Remy de Gourmont does not interest himself greatly in political changes. He does not interest himself in political revolutions. Like Goethe, he considers the intellectual freedom of the artist and philosopher best secured under a government that is stable and lasting; better still under a government that confines itself rigidly to its own sphere and leaves manners and morals to the taste of the individual; best of all under that Utopian absence of any government, whether of the many or of the few, whereof all free spirits dream.

Remy de Gourmont has written one immortal philosophical romance in "A Night in the Luxembourg." He has written some exquisite poetry full of a voluptuous and ironic charm; full of that remoteness from sordid reality which befits a lonely and epicurean spirit, a spirit pursuing its own way on the shadowy side of all human roads where the old men dream their most interesting dreams and the young maidens dance their most unreserved dances.

He has written many graceful and lovely prose poems--one hesitates to call them "short stories"--in which the reader is transported away beyond all modern surroundings into that delicate dream world so dear to lovers of Watteau and Poussin, where the nymphs of Arcadia gather, wondering and wistful, about the feet of wandering saints, and where the symbols of Dionysian orgies blend with the symbols of the redemption of humanity.

He has written admirable and unsurpa.s.sed criticism upon almost all the contemporary figures of French literature--criticism which in many cases contains a wisdom and a delicacy of feeling quite beyond the reach of the particular figure that preoccupies him at the moment. He has done all this and done it as no one else in Europe could have done it. But in the last resort it does not seem as though his reputation would rest either upon his poetry or his prose poetry or even perhaps upon his "masks," as he calls them, of personal appreciation.

It rather seems as though his best work--putting "A Night in the Luxembourg" aside--were to be found in that long series of psychological studies which he ent.i.tles "Promenades Litteraires,"

"Promenades Philosophiques" and "Epilogues." If we add to these the volumes called "La culture des Idees," "Le chemin de Velours,"

and "Le Probleme du style" we have a body of philosophical a.n.a.lysis and speculation the value of which it would be impossible to overrate in the present condition of European thought.

What we have offered to us in these illuminating essays is nothing less than an inestimable ma.s.s of interpretative suggestion, dealing with every kind of topic under the sun and throwing light upon every species of open question and every degree of human mystery.

When one endeavours to distil from all this erudite ma.s.s of criticism--of "criticism of life" in the true sense of that phrase--the fundamental and quintessential aspects of thought, one finds the attempt a much easier one than might be expected from the variety, and in many cases from the occasional and transitory nature, of the subjects discussed. It is this particular tone and temper of mind diffused at large through a discussion of so immense a variety of topics that in the last resort one feels is the man's real contribution to the art of living upon the earth. And when in pursuing the transformations of his protean intelligence through one critical metamorphosis after another we finally catch him in his native and original form, it is this form, with the features of the real Remy de Gourmont, which will remain in our mind when many of its incidental embodiments have ceased to interest us.

The man in his essential quality is precisely what our generation and our race requires as its antipodal corrective. He is the precise opposite of everything most characteristic of our puritan-souled and commercial-minded Democracy. He is all that we are not--and we are all that he is not.

For an average mind evolved by our system and subjected to our influence--the mind and influence of modern English-speaking America--the writings of Remy de Gourmont would be, if apprehended in any true measure according to their real content and significance, the most extreme intellectual and moral outrage that could be inflicted upon us. Properly understood, or even superficially understood, they would wound and shock and stagger and perplex every one of our most sacred prejudices. They would conflict with the whole method and aim of the education which we have received, an education of which the professed object is to fit us for an active, successful and energetic life in the sphere of industrial or commercial or technical enterprises, and to make of us moral, socially-minded, conventional and normal persons. Our education, I mean our American education--for they still teach the cla.s.sics in a few schools in England--is, in true pragmatic manner, subordinate to what is called one's "life work"; to the turning, as profitably to ourselves as possible, of some well-oiled wheel in the industrial machine.

Such an education, though it may produce brilliant brokers and inspired financiers, with an efflorescence of preachers and base-ball players, certainly cannot produce "humanists" of the old, wise Epicurean type.

But it is not only our education which is at fault. Our whole spiritual atmosphere is alien and antagonistic to the spiritual atmosphere of Remy de Gourmont. He is serious where we are flippant, and we are serious where he is ironical.

Any young person among us who imbibed the mental and moral att.i.tude of Remy de Gourmont would cause dismay and consternation in the hearts of his friends. He would probably have a library.

He might even read Paul Claudel.

I speak lightly enough, but the point at issue is not a light one. It is indeed nothing less than a parting of the ways between two civilisations, or, shall we say, between a civilisation which has not lost touch with Athens and Rome and a commercial barbarism b.u.t.tressed up with "modern improvements."