Laughing Truths/Nations and Individuals
That high appreciation of the poetic and artistic personality, which seems almost self-evident, really implies an advanced stage of culture. The ordinary mortal enjoys a work of art as he does a cake; he knows it tastes good, and doesn't bother about who made it or what his name is.
The child acts in the same way with his picture-books; it makes no odds to him whether they come from Meggendorfer or Flinzer, or anyone else.[1] When the message-boy whistles an operatic air, he has not the least interest in its source. Our servant-girls, after a visit to the theatre, can give us a very fair resume of the plot, but it is ten to one that they don't know the playwright's name. And the same consideration covers the case of the school-teacher, of whom we are told that, when asked the meaning of the words "Uhland" and "Schiller" in a book of poems, he replied that they were technical directions for the guidance of the compositor.
In unliterary ages a whole nation acts with the same sangfroid. Works, colossal both in extent and beauty, have come down to us without any author's name attached to them, such as (e.g.) the Homeric cycle and the Nibelungenlied. This is usually known as folk poetry—a phrase which gives currency to a very significant misunderstanding. What is called folk poetry is really anonymous poetry. How this anonymity originated and how it still originates may be verified any day. Now, as two thousand years ago, the plain man, i.e. the people, enjoys every work of art without reference to the author, passes it on without any name attached, and so, in a short time, stereotypes its anonymity. If you go into a village and ask the inhabitants who wrote the "Guter Kamerad" or "Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten", they will not be able to tell you; they may have learned the names at school but they have since forgotten them. Indeed, if it were not for the histories of literature, they would soon pass into oblivion. As a matter of fact the popular poems of such men as the literary histories do not deem worth mention become practically anonymous in the course of two generations, even though the names of the authors were once well and widely known. This has been the fate of the "Vereli" song, "Doctor Eisenbard", "Du lieber Augustin", and all national anthems. The scholar may still know the authors' names, the people have already forgotten them. Sometimes the scholars have the pleasure of resuscitating at the eleventh hour an identity that had been wellnigh lost for ever. This, e.g., was the case with the "Wacht am Rhein" and "Struwelpeter".[2]
How light-heartedly, I might almost say how ruthlessly, the people annexes as its own national product everything and anything that was originally personal may be most easily appreciated if we take into account physical as well as temporal distance by simply crossing the nearest frontier. Something that on one side of the boundary is duly accredited to its actual author passes on the other side as folk poetry. Heine's universally known and a hundred times reprinted song of the Loveliest Eyes ("Lied von den schönsten Augen") was cheerfully offered to me in Russia as a Russian folk-song. But what would you say if I suggested the possibility of Beethoven's sonatas masquerading as popular melodies? Well, that was an actual experience of my own. A band of gypsies announced that they were about to sing an old gypsy air, and then proceeded to render the first movement of the Sonate Pathétique, with introduction and runs all complete. Such experiences and observations are well calculated to make thinking men revise the current ideas about folk poetry. For popular poetry is not impersonal poetry, not the product of some sort of a collective folk-soul; it is simply an anthology, that has eventually become anonymous, of various authors, generally cultured dilettantes, who have now and again, by accident, produced a masterpiece. To pass from the great individual authors to popular poetry is simply to exchange the masters of art for schoolmasters, parsons, and lawyers.
If, then, the people, i.e. the ordinary man, is so confirmed a devotee of anonymity, it is clear that an enormous journey must be made to reach the modern cult of personality.
First of all we have to learn that a work of art represents an Ideal Value of immeasurable extent—a conception that very easily escapes the average man. Poems which the modern cultivated community weighs with gold and which bring fame, honours, orders, and pensions to the happy savants who discover them, pass from mouth to mouth of the public and from grandmother to grandchild as mere unconsidered trifles. What trouble the collectors had to secure a recitation of the noble popular epics of the Serbs! For the singers were ashamed of the "childish stuff". Grimm had the same experience in collecting the wonderful fairy tales of Germany. Everywhere and always the unlettered folk considered art as tomfoolery and the artists as triflers. Anyone who has spent his youth among peasants can bear witness to the truth of this.
Again, we must not forget that really sterling work is rarer in art than in the handicrafts; that much admirable productivity flows from the same source; that thousands fail altogether; that one man may produce a superabundance of the beautiful. Astonishment at this originates the popular reputation, which is won rather by the man who can accomplish many showy feats than by him who does one really great thing. The public also, when it has once painfully learned the name of an eminent master, is wont to ascribe to him every nameless and otherwise unclaimed work of art it comes across. The literary history of ancient nations shows many examples of this. Nine-tenths of the psalms of David and of the proverbs of Solomon are "spurious"—i.e. they are by anonymous authors. The popular slogan in regard to works of art is "to him that hath shall be given"—not "to each his own".
A farther and very difficult step was to see that perfection, whether in small things or in great, could be attained only by a Great Personality. How extraordinarily difficult the recognition of this fact is is testified by the troop of lyrical amateurs, who in their sweet innocence have no idea that even the shortest poem presupposes eminent originality on the part of the poet, but, in all seriousness, hope for success from any brand of inspiration. The "favouring hour" or the "kiss of the Muse" is all very well. But, unfortunately, this favour comes only to him who is already a favourite; the Muse kisses only those faces that have a clearly defined profile. So potent in every art is the personality, that genuine artists can determine from the most trifling example whether the man who wrote this single page is one of the elect or a casual weakling.
The question of the literary personality of the poet and artist is, therefore, one of no mean importance. Indeed, in the long run, all true art criticism is based on it.
This question, however, is capable of distortion, and, in fact, has been distorted. This happens whenever an exaggerated literary or artistic criticism relegates the work of art itself to the second place and drags the personality of the artist into the first. Many and various causes have misled our generation in this way. There is, e.g., the Byzantine humbug manifested in idol-worship and the clustering of hagiographic legends round the artist. Then there is the adoring and romantic gossip, which cannot die in peace until it has provided a picturesque love-story for every artist (for all our art-wisdom finds its final outlet in women). Next, there are all sorts of crazy attempts to decide how and in what degree the artist's life is his highest work of art—a theory that would reduce Shakespeare to the dimensions of a bungler. And, finally, the chief cause is our growing incapacity to enjoy a work of art honestly. Therefore, instead, we leave our visiting card on the artist.
Thus the cult of poetry and the mania for genius have become endemic, with baleful results, which naturally I cannot develop here in short order. If, however, you are inclined to believe that this hero-worship is pleasing to the objects of it, I beg to assure you that the very reverse is the truth. This is not because the lofty personages feel their good taste affronted by the exaggerated estimate of their work. For the artist or author is yet to be born who would own in his heart of hearts that he was really overpraised. But, simply, because the running after the personality of the artist is naturally accompanied by readymade preconceptions and (consequently) by demands which the real Simon Pure finds it impossible to satisfy, while his superficial and invertebrate imitator takes to them very kindly. The intended honours suffer a fate similar to crumbs scattered for blackbirds. The sparrows eat the crumbs, and the cat eats the blackbirds.
The demands of any generation upon a poet are infallibly unreasonable. In the first place, because they expect him to resemble the touched-up picture that has been handed down by a previous generation. Next, because the demands vary every fifteen years and are apt to be contradictory, so that the poor slave of the Muses must possess at least four different characters in order to satisfy the popular desires. And, in the third place, because the demands have generally quite a touch of the childish.
History is my witness that I do not exaggerate. In one decade the indispensable condition for the recognition of a poet is that he shall always be sighing and sobbing. At another time he must strut about like a silly poodle with an openwork collar and a snappish temper, and must blight three hearts between every two thymes. Anon he must be a symmetrical figure, posed delicately on his left toe, with his little finger pressed elegantly on his lips like a statue of Terpsichore. Then, suddenly the cry is to be dishevelled and tattered. He who has no bristles to show, who is not a dyed-in-the-wool Philistine, who is not an arch-pedant, is ruthlessly denied the possession of the poetic gift. And scarcely has one recovered from this terror before he is bound to be, from head to heel, as psychopathic as a stigmatic nun.
And please note that examples of all these different demands lie before us both in history and in present fact, and that each of them in its turn has been put forth as absolutely imperative.
What then, in contradistinction to all this, are the genuine common marks of a poetic personality? For it is not only a prying curiosity that takes an interest in this; there is also the worthy feeling of gratitude which incites us to get into closer touch with him whose work has given us pleasure of the most intimate nature. Moreover, the point has a psychological, I might almost say a (natural) scientific attraction.
I hope you will acquit me of a Mephistophelian cast of thought if I try to show that closer acquaintance with the private personality of a poet is usually unprofitable; we may rather congratulate ourselves on our distance from him, whether of space or time. I do not mean that appreciation is diminished by familiarity. I am convinced, just as you are, that the merits outweigh the faults and foibles. But the merits are not always on immediate view, while the faults easily affect social intercourse and may very possibly turn it into a vexation. Even one short and fleeting visit awakens, in many cases, a feeling of disappointment, which is not always due to the childish preconceptions of the visitor. More important is the presumptive loss through frequent companionship. In that case the nimbus provided by the would-be admirer generally fades into thin air. Repeated intercourse, if it remains superficial, is, indeed, the surest means to depreciate an eminent man. La Bruyère was both wise and witty when he wrote: "Who knows a great man least well? His acquaintances."[3] It takes real friendship and real affection to appreciate the personal worth of the private character, in spite of its many foibles; and a kindly and great heart is necessary for this. For the matter is not so much one of enjoyment and admiration as of patience and tolerance. When Charles XIII of Sweden congratulated the widow of the famous poet Bellman on having had so great a man for her husband, she replied: "Good Lord, your Majesty, if you only knew how unbearable he was!" The reason of the unbearableness or (better and juster) the unsatisfactoriness of the private character of the poet is not (as the envy of the mediocre is apt to assume) a pettiness that forms the obverse of the artistic greatness; the unamiability is really an occupational disease, an inevitable pathological consequence of his creative activity. While other trades impair the body only, the continuous productive work of the imagination sympathetically affects the temperament and even the character.
The average man can form hardly the dimmest conception of the enormous strain that the poet's function, if tackled in a serious and "grand" manner, inflicts upon him, or of the painful throes of conscience and agony of soul that precede the actual task of composition. It is nothing less than the sacrifice of a whole life, renewed daily. The Muse does not "visit" her votary; she tyrannises over him unsparingly from his earliest youth to his latest breath.
When you read the biographies of eminent poets, you will find that even their childhood generally passed as a time of continuous warfare. That quality which I might call the germ of all talent—viz. absolute truth to oneself—is in perpetual conflict with authority and conventions. Disputes with parents or teachers belong to the commonplaces of their existence.
The so-called period of development is usually marked by the most terrible psychic storms, which lead to the brink of the grave; and similar storms overwhelm the heart with those lightning flashes of which, in maturity, the great works are made.
In connection with these youthful storms we may note one striking and highly significant fact. Instead of the mirroring of the external world being at its clearest when the soul is most peaceful, as the analogy of water would suggest and as the popular belief takes for granted, we find that the best observers are precisely those poets who have weathered the most violent tempests of the soul. The famous gift of observation shown by great poets does not rest on a conscious appreciation of what goes on before them; on the contrary, the making of notes and rummaging among records is an unmistakable hallmark of amateurism. The real facts of the case are as follows. The attention is directed inwards; in the meantime all that is merely external and unprofitable for the artist flows past the observing glass as a fly crosses the lens of a telescope. This external matter is by act of will pushed aside, though it remains, like everything else, in the subconscious self, where it may be found later if the poet ever has any use for it.
The remarkable thing here is that the capacity for this unconscious storage of memory increases in proportion to the agitation of the soul at the moment of the experience. This is a law which you can verify by your own life. Which human beings, which natural scenes, which places abide most firmly in your recollection? Those which you observe intentionally, as a leisurely tourist studies towns, men, and landscapes? Not at all; rather those which you passed with indifference while your spirit was stirred by some momentous experience. What we see, e.g., when run away with by an unruly steed, with death staring us in the face, is stamped ineradicably on our memory, down to the minutest detail. The same is true of the accompaniments of a great sorrow (as at the burial of a friend) or a great joy. The more fundamentally the soul is harrowed and the mind obsessed, the more keenly and involuntarily are the accidental concomitants noted. The poet's gift of observation is thus actually based on his withdrawal from reality, in combination with his deep inner life. Now you will begin to understand why the professional naturalists find it so difficult to describe reality, and why the idealists succeed so well with great realistic works, as in the case (e.g.) of Paludan Müller of Denmark.[4] In order to be a great realist, one must have looked deep into the internal. The pretty picture of the Almanack of the Muses,[5] which represents the poet as imbibing nature with super-objective calm, through Olympian eyes of crystal, is therefore wholly misleading.
Out of the increasing hurricanes of the soul there bursts forth at last, with volcanic force, a maiden work, the success or failure of which is often decisive for the emotional sphere of the whole future life. Failure either breeds discouragement or (what is more often the case with the genuine poet) bitterness. Self-consciousness, much heightened by the rebuff, assumes an attitude of antagonism, and every expression thereafter shows a touch of the liver. Even greatness of character, if the failure is often repeated, does not prevent this, as was seen (e.g.) in the case of Grillparzer, one of our really great men. He who can sneer at failure producing such a destructive reaction, instead of a courageous and cheerful prosecution of one's work, forgets that the poet has put his whole soul into his work, especially if it were the firstfruits of his genius, and that consequently its fate strikes him to the heart.
Of this embittered and misapprehended type I need say no more, for everyone allows that it is difficult to find a mote unsociable or more unpleasant class of men than poets who have either been misunderstood or fancied themselves to be so.
If, on the other hand, success has crowned the work, the public simply expects a continuance of it and becomes perplexed if it does not materialise. Such success, however, is generally long of coming, because there are a huge difference and a vast chasm between a single instinctive, eruptive act of creation and a conscious, steady flow of art-production. One has first to gain firm footing in the art, to investigate all forms, and select that field in which the given individual can attain his highest level. This is a hard and anxious problem, which can be solved only by trial and error and by an untiring force of will. Half, or even a whole, decade may easily pass in this manner.
The real labour begins when the artist has at last discovered and conquered the territory over which he is henceforth to exercise sway as lord and master. This is a happy and enviable labour, because it is one of harvesting the crop; but it is a work demanding more intensity of effort than any other. And it should be clearly understood that a fresh start has to be made with each new work, and that the proper form cannot be determined without struggle. There are no masters who, as the vulgar suppose, have once for all set themselves at ease in the Zion of art. Even a Schiller compassed each of his dramas only through care and toil. And such toil will last till the artist has drawn his last breath. For the man who is visited by immortal motifs is not free to accept or reject or even postpone them. He must work hard at them, even if his own poor existence thereby comes to grief. With artists whose gift is a rich one, the drive of production, after the corresponding skill in execution has been attained, can therefore be described only as an actual fever.
Thus a never-resting, though by no means joyless work, ranging from meticulous attention to actual obsession, is an inevitable condition of the life of an artist or poet in the grand style. Occupation or preoccupation, with never a complete pause. Can you hope for satisfactory social intercourse with a man thus fettered to his daily task? Can you expect that he will join in your enthusiasms or be inspired with a deep interest in outside topics? Impossible. He will ruthlessly avoid, or even destroy, all that clogs his feet, whether human or circumstantial. And rightly so; for men and conditions pass, while his work is for all time. This, of course, exposes him (as indeed every busy man) to the reproach of egoism. It is a pity that we have not more of the egoism which sacrifices itself to an ideal work! Balzac has given us a happy phrase to characterise the way in which energetically productive artists are, through the nature of the case, preoccupied with the theme of the moment and consequently rendered callous and blind to any other interest. When a friend on one occasion was telling him some important news, Balzac interrupted him with "Let us now rather speak of realities" and proceeded to discuss the characters in his novels. This hits the nail on the head. For every artist and poet of the first order his own work is the reality; everything else is behind a veil. This is not on account of "inspiration", for a great soul is never "inspired"; it is due to a feeling of duty, or, rather, to a consciousness of what he can do and therefore must do.
I must, however, give some explanation of what I mean by the paradoxical denial of inspiration to the poet. A feeling of elevation, yea even of lofty elevation, accompanies every creative effort, and is, indeed, its fundamental condition; but it is only in the young artist that this is felt as exaltation. Later, the productive artist lives so constantly in the upper air of fancy that any "uplift" in himself is no longer perceptible. The vision or conception itself, or whatever you like to call the sudden germination of the intellectual creation, does not present itself amid convulsions of the whole man, as in first youth, but in a glow of the soul tremulously permeated by a profound sadness. For every truth, seen from the height of life, is sad; and the visions that press on the mature poet wear the shroud of buried hopes. No real master ever dreams of working up his inner enthusiasm so as to go chasing ideas in the upper air. He has enough to do in either banning or satisfying the dead visions that resuscitate of their own motion. Just as Odysseus, when the Shades besieged him in the cave, begging for life and physical bodies, had to ward them off with his sword. Most of the Shades allowed themselves to be beaten back; some of them, however, were so persistent, so troublesome, and so menacing that their demands had to be granted. These form the material which one actually exploits, the books which one actually writes. Even in accomplishment the master denies himself the joy of inspiration from his own works. His categories are raw material and labour, problem and solution. His anxious care is to execute correctly and accurately what his genius has conceived. If anything beautiful appears in the process, he garners it eagerly, but without spending time over it or rolling it under his tongue, as the novice does and as eventually the reader does and may and should do. All progress rests on the ability to take the marvellous as self-evident. In the following paradox La Bruyère has well characterised the whole matter—I mean the distinction between the poetic gush of the pretender and the cold-bloodedness of the master in face of the most exquisite visions. "The difference between the genius and the second-rater is that the second-rater exerts himself to be elevated, while the genius contents himself with trying to be exact." The following figure will make this even plainer. The poet who works himself up is like a boy desperately leaping up at the sprays overhanging the wall of a vineyard, in the hope of pulling down a bunch or two. He, however, who is tall enough to reach the vines, stands firm, selects the choicest varieties, and is mainly concerned to see that no berries are dropped in the act of plucking.
In this restless weaving and working in the domain of the intellect and the imagination, it is inevitable that serious disturbances of the temperament and the nervous system should occur. No one can dispute this, unless he does not know what a work of the imagination is or has committed himself to a contradictory theory.
From examples which they have really failed to understand, people have tried to construct a gospel of health and strength for the poet, including an obligatory hygiene. Everyone agrees that art must be sane and sound. But a robust poet or artist with the nerves of a day-labourer, is simply an impossibility. With such stuff as that nature makes a fireman or a bombardier, never even a captain. Alexander, Napoleon, and Frederick the Great all showed nervous sentimental symptoms. As long as the globe endures, men of imagination will suffer from serious neurasthenic disturbances. I am sorry, but so it is. And no one can object that the case of the very great is otherwise. Dante, as far as I know, is a star of the first magnitude; and probably no one would dare to call his art morbid or unsound. All the same, on the modern theory of health, he would to-day be regarded as an "unfortunate weakling" on account of his hallucinations and fainting fits, and would be energetically treated with cold water. Shakespeare, whose art, as I am informed, is both vigorous and healthy, has been derided for his personal "sweetness". Our robust critic would certainly prescribe a little railsplitting for him.
The least insight into the human organism is enough to teach us that it cannot be otherwise, that continuous and concentrated imaginative activity, complicated, moreover, with assaults on the emotions, must inevitably produce a pathological mood. Intense mental work has a very bad reputation with the doctors, and none but a manual labourer could possess the impervious nervous system that one expects in artists. Lotze and several other thinkers have declared that, from the health point of view, the mind is a useless, if not injurious, parasite of the body.
Of the imagination this is true in a much higher degree. Moreau of Tours, one of the most celebrated French psychiatrists, ranks every imaginative activity as a pathological condition of the soul. Thus he reports a case of illness in which the patient could at will recall absent persons, with all the details of their features. So it appears that the learned doctor regards a strong and accurate memory as a symptom of spiritual disturbance. The fact that your mistress appears to you in a rosy and shining light is a proof of erotomania, a recognised form of mental disease. No matter how exaggerated and senseless this psychiatric "police-constable" criticism may be, it at least shows us the path we are following. Whenever a man prefers the life of imagination to that concerned only with the external world, he is on the highway to disease; in the meantime he is paying a rich tribute to neurasthenia and all its train. An artist, and still more a poet, while he is busy with a great work, shares the condition of those mental patients who have a so-called double personality. The offence against nature may long go unpunished, but at times a mere trifle, an external visitation of fate, or a depressing affection of the spirits, is enough to bring about an undisguised manifestation of dementia. The history of literature provides all too many proofs of this. Here, however, we must guard against a misunderstanding. Genius in itself is not madness; on the contrary it implies an unusual depth and sharpness of insight. The great poets have always been among the best thinkers. But the activities of genius, its continual preoccupation, its tense life of imagination, its fatiguing and gigantic labour, easily lead viâ the stages of neurasthenia and hysteria to disturbances of the mental equilibrium.
If you will allow a man, who has practised and compared many very different forms of mental work, to speak from his own experience, I would venture to say that the smallest poetic creation, even if it flows easily, quickly, and without apparent spiritual exertion, exhausts the nerves more than days of concentrated and systematic thinking.
Every poet, therefore, if he is dealing vigorously with far-reaching plans, must show, more or less, the symptoms of a nervous patient. This is the explanation of his "inexplicable" foibles. To reproach him on this account is just as reasonable as it would be to blame a crippled soldier for halting.
I grant you that this morbid irritability is no more a source of pleasure for the neighbours than intercourse with a hysterical woman.
I have often asked myself whether the irritability of the artist shows any specific marks that would distinguish it from ordinary nervous irritability. We might, perhaps, see such a distinction in its boundless and lasting reaction to impressions from without. A word of blame, an involuntary piece of neglect, is felt as a deadly insult; a contemptuous phrase sticks in the memory and assumes greater importance from day to day. And this may culminate in the complex of fancied persecution, such as we find in the case of Goethe's Tasso and in our own experience.
The psychological explanation of this is easy enough to find. Keen sensibility cannot exist without sensitiveness. The soul of the artist has keys which respond to a lighter touch, and strings that vibrate longer, than is the case with the normal man. The ear of the man who is wont to listen to the whispers of the imagination is apt to feel the actual material speech of his neighbour as a violent interruption. He fancies himself injured at every turn and, in his reaction against a supposed ill-will, may show himself unjust. This is an example of how neurasthenia may alter character.
The tendency to want of tact, visible in Simonides, Ovid, Rousseau, and many notable examples in our own time, is psychologically interesting, because at first sight it seems quite unintelligible. One would imagine that tactlessness would be the very last frailty of men possessed with an exquisite, almost feminine delicacy of feeling. But tactlessness may arise from an excessive refinement of feeling as well as from dullness of feeling; for tact means the harmony of an external experience with the normally tempered feeling of the average man. He whose own feeling differs from this normal temperature, either by excess or deficiency, will fail to gauge the actual state of his neighbour's mind and will as a result express himself with inappropriate freedom. Thus it is that want of tact is almost always a feature of the solitary life.
To speak of artists and poets without mention of their traditional vanity might seem to many a serious lapse. I confess, however, that this property of the great has escaped me; I view the reproach as emanating from a misapprehension, combined, perhaps, with a little malice.
What is vanity? An excessive appreciation of one’s own private personality. The mere fact that great artists live solitary lives by preference seems to negate this charge of vanity. For vain men require an audience to show off to.
If, however, we are to understand by this accusation of vanity that authors like to speak of their work, that they are pleased by commendation, that they are pained by depreciation, that they take some general interest in the appreciation of their efforts by their contemporaries—then I admit the fact, but not the reproach. Quite apart from the fact that self-consciousness over a worthy, important, and laboriously created effort is a manly attitude and not a vain one, the pleasure one shows in talking of what is most important to him, of that of which his mind is full, is simply naïveté. The poet likes to talk about the work he is engaged in just as a mother talks about the child for whom she is anxious.
The urgent need to guard the reputation of his work is, however, a very serious matter. We must not forget that every author and poet has to play grandissimo against nullissimo.[6] He must be either everything or nothing; there is no middle course. Now, no one is so certain of himself and of the value of his efforts that he does not have to face hours of depressing doubt or even of despair. Even Beethoven had times in which he felt no other consolation than that he was fairly sure of some kind of a place in the history of music. In order to be absolutely free from torturing doubt, everyone needs to have his own opinion countersigned by his contemporaries. This is also the reason of the terrible reaction to lack of recognition. In that case faith in himself can be maintained only at the heavy price of contempt for others. Critics therefore should be a little more careful with their accusations of vanity. Besides, in my judgment, the vogue of this charge comes simply from a confusion. It is not the poets and artists who are vain, but certain classes which produce their effects by personal exhibitions and are mistakenly called by the public "artists" or "artistes". I refer to actors, opera-singers, circus-riders, and (last but not least) the honourable tribe of amateurs.
I must acquit the poet also of envy. When anyone tells me that an eminent writer envies his colleague, my instinctive retort is simply "that is not true"—even when I do not know him. For where real talent is present, the appreciation of another's work is so powerful that the feeling for it invariably takes the form of respect and friendship. Of course it is possible to set one genius against another by artful intrigues and partisan injustice, as happened with Mendelssohn and Schumann, but this leads only to a certain antagonism, which vanishes when the mob ceases its hue and cry, when the two masters find themselves face to face and alone. The history of art and literature shows brilliant examples of good fellowship and camaraderie. If (e.g.) you compare the painters and poets of the Renaissance with the Humanists, you will find that it is not the former who hate, envy, and maltreat each other, but another class, looked upon by the State with a more favourable eye.
Much still remains unmentioned that has close connection with our theme. Thus we might well consider why it is that poets and painters seem especially prone to so-called "sensuality", better described as intoxication of the imagination by the beauty of the female form. This question would lead to a study of the connection of the imagination with the erotic nerve-system; it has been well and conclusively treated by Nietzsche.
But my time is up. What has already been said is quite enough to show you why I regard habitual intercourse with great poets as a difficult duty rather than as a pleasure. But at the same time a very serious one. For one may injure deeply and destroy what can never be replaced. Toleration must be constant. Not that they are entitled to claim it. It would be a queer world, if we set the artist above the law. But if allowances be made for an artist, of their own free will, by a loving wife, by a generous Maecenas, by a magnanimous generation or nation (as in the case of France and Rousseau), then history gives the choicest blessing to their noble and considerate protectors. Those, however, who have not been called on by destiny to occupy themselves with this class of mortals, would be wise to keep at a distance, remembering the proverb "Distance from the guns makes long-lived soldiers". For the literati not only claim patience towards themselves, but also the right to be impatient towards others. To speak plainly, they are often very rude.
One exception I must make: their bearing towards their colleagues. Brothers of the pen or pencil derive enormous benefit from intercourse with their fellows, whether temporary or enduring, through interchange of information, instruction, and encouragement. For all others, conversations with literary notorieties are wholly unprofitable. The gentleman either speaks to us about the weather or how to make a salad, instead of about Schiller and Goethe, or he overwhelms us with technicalities which happen to interest him for the moment but have no meaning for us. In no case will he do what we want and act the part. A true poet never behaves "poetically". For that sort of thing you must go to your "cultured" friends and acquaintances.
And now, in conclusion, I shall try to leave off on a higher note by a mere mention of the two cardinal virtues of a genuine poet: nobility (the sense of noblesse oblige) and magnanimity. The hardest virtues are for him the easiest: the devotion of a whole life to an ideal purpose, without reward and often without hope; self-denial; forgiveness; and the traditionary return of good for evil.
All these things flow as naturally from his character as water from a spring. He can no other.
If, however, you find that the unique virtue of magnanimity is counterbalanced by a whole rosary of disfiguring weaknesses, I shall not gainsay you.
A few years ago there crept (and there still creeps) a sort of literary measles through Europe, which relieved itself in various romances, the common theme of which was the spiritual disgust felt by an artist who had become at odds with his art. Zola set the ball rolling with his L'Œuvre. This document may claim value in the history of literature—not, however, as the author intended, as a record of the spiritual struggles of an artist of genius, but rather as a warning example of the mood of god-forsaken mediocrity, of a natural and inveterate amateur. A great man never despairs, never even doubts, of his art. He may doubt or despair of himself, i.e. his own relation to his art, but he never questions the art itself. Melancholy and depression, gloominess amounting almost to madness, may visit him; but no real master ever feels disgust with the tools he has to use. Every decent violinist, even if God and the world failed him, would still believe in his violin. He never has any scepticism about that.
Art, when one is capable of it at all, lends the feeling of power; it produces self-confidence and self-esteem. And self-esteem, when well founded, brings happiness. Art is, indeed, a burden and even a heavy burden, sometimes one may have to groan under it as Sindbad did under his Old Man of the Sea; but it is a godlike Old Man and the servitude is a blissful one.
Once more, then, I assert that artistic strength and greatness produce happiness, tempered it may be, but still the deepest happiness to be found on earth. Only the weakling is without resource, and only poltroons give way to disgust.
(GREAT CITIES AND THEIR CITIZENS)
The German word "Gross-Stadt" ("world city") is not synonymous with "grosse Stadt". Thus Lyons and Bordeaux, in spite of their half million population, are really "provincial" towns. In a Metropolis or Great City proper the native or indigenous citizens must be distinguished and separated from the national and international inhabitants. The "Indigenous Citizens", as a body, are, even in the first cities of Europe, essentially bourgeois, even more so than in the most parochial or "Gothamite" of country-towns, because they have lost touch with nature and the civic conscience. Nowhere is the horizon so narrow, the intellect so limited, the mode of thinking so petty, and tittle-tattle so common as in the "first circles" of the "Gross-Städte". No matter how fluently they talk or how great a show of wit they make, it is all a thin veneer; it is a harlequin garment of boulevard trivialities, behind which stands a cipher; it is a faded Philistia, which has lost even the naïve and amusing features we meet in small places.
In each of our "million inhabitant" towns there exists a dull Philistine nucleus, the denatured relic of a former civic individuality. As this class of citizens has an exaggerated idea of its own importance, derived from the monuments which they pass in their daily walks, they know well how to make themselves distinctly annoying on their summer migrations. This is by no means an exclusive prerogative of the "properly born" citizens of Berlin; the genuine Parisian bourgeois, the shopkeepers of St. Petersburg and Vienna, do not yield to them in this matter. The only difference is that they do not travel so much, because they do not like to give up their habitual atmosphere of metropolitan gossip for even a few weeks.
Alongside and above these heaven-born Philistines we find the first characteristic element of the Great City in the Monde, or Society in its most exclusive sense. Historically considered, this is an offshoot of the Court; its representatives were the courtiers or court noblesse, its manners were "courtly". The phrase "la cour et la ville" indicated that the court set the fashion and the town imitated it. In the court life of past centuries the most important elements of "Society" in the modern sense of the word were already included—viz. a certain levelling of all classes before the monarch's precedence and (above all) a recognition of the aristocracy of intellect. Long before the French Revolution, a "noblesse de l'esprit" was practically in existence; this was seen in miniature at the courts of the Italian Renaissance, on a grand scale at that of the French Bourbons.
Modern gallantry, or the predominance of women, had been established at the French Court as the chief element of "Society" by the end of the seventeenth century. So long, it is true, as the Court formed the centre round which Society grouped itself, the latter lacked the peculiar features of the "Great Town"; we had court gossip side by side with town gossip, and generally both together. When we read the French Memoirs of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, we are astounded at the virtuose dexterity with which they manage to treat everything, even questions of European politics, from the viewpoint of the gossip. There came, however, a moment when Society freed itself intellectually from the Court, and began to make its laws for itself and to criticise the Throne. When we find the Maréchale de Luxembourg contemptuously calling King Gustavus of Sweden "provincial", because he did not know how to dress (i.e. because he wore pink silk ribbons); when we find the ladies of the French noblesse asking whether Joseph II, the venerable Roman Emperor of the German nation, knew how to behave properly—we have before us the modern Monde or "Society", though not yet exactly of the metropolitan type.
The "Great City" society needs yet another trait, viz. the predominance of the masses over the classes. This change came to pass in the nineteenth century. On the attainment of a certain population, or (rather) of a certain excess of population, the intellectual or aristocratic élite loses the power of dictating the social laws of a town. An invasion from below takes place. The Boulevard triumphs over the Faubourg, the cocotte over the lady, the man-in-the-street over the fine gentleman. Between these two forces there emerges at last a continual process of equalisation, which is of great importance in impressing its character on a Great Town, while the provincial citizen remains as before. Though strictly separated in private society, the two "great town" elements are found together in public life, on the streets, at banquets, in the theatre. They borrow from each other. The fashionable man likes to let himself down a little, the climber tries to accommodate his manners to those of good society; both one and the other regard the provincial with mocking indifference. "Canaille" passes for a legitimate genre, but "provincial" is beyond the pale. A prince may fraternise with a groom, but not with a bourgeois professor. This fused "big city" population shows quite distinct characteristics, which repeat themselves almost exactly in every place and at every time, in similar conditions. We find them in the Athens of Nicias, in the Rome of the Cæsars, and in modern Paris and St. Petersburg. The ancient Syracuse, in the days of the Hieros, also shows "great townish" symptoms.
Above all, there exists here what does not exist in small towns—viz. a genuine society, consisting of daily private associations of persons of both sexes, selected not for their position, or their family, or their profession, but simply for their powers of entertainment. For this, the predominance of woman is needed; where woman does not set the fashion, we have neither society nor a metropolis.
That the influence of woman upon society is fraught with benefit needs to be neither asserted nor proved. It is a factor in culture of the very first rank. Of great importance, too, is the wonderful system of recruiting by which the great cities attract, among other classes, the élite of the nation. Nor must we forget the salutary give and take arising from the meeting of highly cultured men, the daily emulation in the most delicate regions of moral and spiritual life. From all these considerations it would have been easy to foretell what we see in actual fact: viz. that the great towns are the collecting basins of culture. They also produce an intellectual life of their own, superficial, perhaps, but still intellectual. Flexibility, and readiness, and amiability are among the chief marks of the urban intellect. The wit is sharp and quizzical, but seldom venomous. Those who come from a great city to a small town are struck by the spiteful nature of the provincial judgments on their neighbours.
The citizen of a metropolis knows all and pardons all; he mocks, but he does not condemn. His easy good nature in the matter of spending is rightly proverbial; he knows how to give without humiliation to the recipient, a talent that is often absent from the charitable manifestations of smaller towns. His intellect is not exactly virile, it is rather childlike, and he shows a marked inclination for nonsense, with which he likes to coquette. This must not, however, be confounded with stupidity or thick-headedness. He draws his instability and good temper from the child, his elasticity and keenness from the woman, his dependence on others from both. The metropolitan cannot think when he is alone, he requires company. Removed to a small town, he acts like a fish out of water; in the country he is like a strayed fowl.
Freedom from prejudice is one of the chief ornaments of a metropolis; life in it is, accordingly, easier and freer. The inhabitants plume themselves on their receptivity, equally hospitable to the highest and the most absurd. This receptivity, however, arises from a pressing need, the need of acquiring intellectual and conversational material. How it happens does not matter, if they can only get hold of something that will minister to the common entertainment. For the metropolitan always thinks collectively, and considers that the final end of all that happens is conversation, the strongest lever of sociability.
The metropolitan's love of mockery is nothing but affirmation of his broad-mindedness, for wit illuminates and badinage makes free. This broad-mindedness goes so far, that raillery directed against himself really gives him pleasure, whereas there is nothing that the ordinary man resents more bitterly. And his pleasure in this is really unbounded. In a great town the man who most unmercifully derides the metropolitans themselves becomes inevitably, if he does it with cleverness and wit, the most popular figure in society.
The metropolitan is not only elegant, but well-built and (contrary to the general belief) usually healthy. This is because he takes plenty of exercise, is fond of sport, keeps himself clean, and (as a rule) eats and drinks in moderation. In the great towns there are no considerable sections of the population that could be described as imbecile, stagnant, dirty, deformed, or habitually drunken. The metropolitan is not a lounger. His good health, however, does not usually amount to genuine delight in living, to joy in the possession of a strong muscular development, to a solid and permanent feeling of well-being. The charming, cheerful, and naïve laughter and smile of the countryman are seldom his. In order to get some enjoyment out of his life, the metropolitan has to be conscious that he is properly dressed. Till that end is achieved, he mourns over existence in general and his own lot in particular. At the hour of waking, a plaintive moan is emitted from every bed, for our metropolitan lives in rather strained relations with his digestion. Towards evening, however, the life-weary gentleman becomes notably lively. And at night, about the time the provincial is sitting, rather melancholy, over his glass, the metropolitan is just beginning his revels. And his jokes (i.e. his own "chestnuts") give him a highly exaggerated sense of jollity.
Art meets in this field a welcome, which at first sight seems pure gain. Above all, it finds here fame, which nowadays is taken for granted by the great cities as their especial province. Fame in the big cities is comparatively free from envy; it is given rather extravagantly than grudgingly. To him that hath much shall be given. This is because it is accorded by the fashionable world, the most responsive section of mankind. Fame in great cities is also sweeter than elsewhere, for its dividends are paid by a refined society. This is why artists and poets are so ready to fix their residence in the metropolis. On closer inspection, indeed, the conditions seem a little less favourable. I am not speaking of the "spoiling" of celebrities or of the danger of the "swelled head". I mean rather that the unrest, the whirl of the faster life, are unfavourable for creative work. The observation has often been made that the great cities produce relatively few creative intellects.
The most ominous point seems to me, however, to be the fact that the taste of the great cities indirectly prescribes the laws of the arts, or, at least, seduces those artists who are not absolutely firm and independent in character. This taste, in contrast to that of the old Courts, is neither choice nor delicate; in fact, not to put too fine a point upon it, it is simply crude. Preference is given to the outré, the loud, and (what belongs to the same category) the over-refined. The judgments proceed from cliques, groups, and classes rather than from individuals. A "success" immediately becomes fashionable and is worshipped without discrimination, until, one sad morning, its turn comes to be thrown on the rubbish heap. Those artistic pleasures that are enjoyed in solitude (such as home music and reading) are pushed into the background, whereas collective institutions occupy the whole interest: concerts, festivals, and the theatre in every form, whether gladiatorial sports and fights with wild beasts as in Ancient Rome, or operas and dramas as nowadays. I am no enemy of opera and drama; but I cannot shut my eyes to the conclusion that, whenever a nation devotes itself to an unlimited cult of the theatre, its great literature comes to an end. The case, therefore, is not free from apprehension. If only art reigned in the theatre and not merely the mass-instinct of the big-city public! If the latter come to pass, we shall live to see that he who devises the most ultrarefined effects or invents the most logical methods will drive all the others out of the field.
The taste of the great cities moves in a series of contrasts; the motive force, however, is disgust with itself. Every decade sees the idol of the previous decade condemned and trodden under foot. And when a metropolis has tried everything else and has sampled every form of dissatisfaction, it falls back on the puerile, in the hope of thereby effecting a return to nature.
Free as the metropolitan may be in the intellectual field, he is still a slave in point of character. He who lives a wholly social life, who thinks collectively, and feels with the herd, is quite incapable of being individual and independent. You may demand every form of courage from him, and every sacrifice, but you must not ask him to wear an unfashionable necktie or profess views that are commonly laughed at. No oriental despot tyrannises over his subjects with more resistless force than the social laws of the great cities. Since, nowadays, art, literature, and the theatre are subject to the rules of society, the citizen of any metropolis is the most docile, the least self-willed, the least independent member of a herd. The mot d'ordre of the day lashes him at its will towards the right or the left, just as the wind blows the clouds whither it listeth. And even if he mocks, he does not move in the direction of his mockery, but in that of the very catchword he is making fun of. Thus even the most cultured metropolitan behaves in matter of art like one of the rabble. He allows the literary material, upon which his judgment is often very shrewd, to be prescribed for him by fashion. The metropolitan may sneer at a fashionable book, but he will scarcely leave it unread.
The deepest and most pitiable serfdom, however, is that of the inhabitant of a large town which wishes to be a real metropolis, but has hardly attained that standard. He must hum (incorrectly) tunes that he has never heard, obey laws that he does not know, and speak a tongue that he does not understand; in other words, he must serve the alien. For only the very greatest cities have the honourable privilege of giving birth to their own follies; the other big towns import them from foreign parts, chiefly from Paris. And the importation is generally effected through middlemen, not directly. Thus, in German art and literature, during the last thirty years, we have witnessed a toilsome series of evolutions, carried on at the command of unseen drill-masters, especially since Berlin and Munich have been getting up on their toes.
Thus, e.g., when Paris, in its grim and blasé humour, plays the coquette with fin de siècle and décadents, we see the fairly robust young men of military age in Berlin, Vienna, and Munich adopting a rotten form of literature, merely to prove that they too are really "metropolitan". This means that when a neighbour is ill, or affects to be ill (for Paris gets over all her follies as easily and with as few evil results as if they were measles), we paint boils on our own cheeks. The humour of the situation is that, as Paris revolves more quickly than we, we are always one or two "isms" in the rear. Berlin has scarcely had time to import Realism from Paris, before Realism has become unfashionable there and has been replaced by Naturalism. When the Berliners have begun to grasp that, Naturalism has disappeared in Paris, and the key to existence has become Symbolism, or Pre-Raphaelitism, or Primitivism. Each of these must, of course, be hastily overtaken, so far as one understands them. But the understanding is generally rather shaky. In short, we have breathless haste and unholy confusion. That does not matter, however, since we feel that we are at least really and truly Citizens of the World.
- ↑ As we might say, whether they are by Kate Greenaway, or Randolph Caldecott, or Miss Florence Upton, of Golliwog fame.
- ↑ So, in England, practically no one could name, at a moment's notice, the writers of such popular songs as "Hearts of Oak" or "Men of Harlech". Perhaps even "Tipperary" has already passed into this class.
- ↑ Compare "a man is never a hero to his own valet."
- ↑ Paludan Müller was an idealistic Danish poet, whose idealistic work was often more truly realistic than that of professed realists.
- ↑ A work like our Keepsakes and Books of Beauty.
- ↑ In bridge parlance, to play for a grand slam with nullo as the alternative, To go nap or nothing. Aut Cæsar aut Nullus.
- ↑ A "Gross-Stadt" means a large town which is also great as a focus of the best spiritual and intellectual life of the country, which is most truly "urbane". It might be translated "Metropolis", with the proviso that this need not necessarily mean the political capital. Edinburgh and Boston might reasonably claim to be (or, at least, to have once been) more "gross-städtisch" than Glasgow or New York.