Rousseau and Romanticism

105

Byron, Sardanapalus, IV, 5. Cf. Rousseau, Neuvième Promenade: “Dominé par mes sens, quoi que je puisse faire, je n’ai jamais pu résister à leurs impressions, et, tant que l’objet agit sur eux, mon cœur ne cesse d’en être affecté.” Cf. also Musset, Rolla:

Ce n’était pas Rolla qui gouvernait sa vie,C’étaient ses passions; il les laissait allerComme un pâtre assoupi regarde l’eau couler.

106

Modern Painters, Part V, ch. XX.

107

Confessions, Pt. II, Livre IX (1756).

108

With nature never do they wageA foolish strife; they seeA happy youth and their old ageIs beautiful and free.Wordsworth: The Fountain.

109

The phrase imaginative insight is, I believe, true to the spirit of Plato at his best, but it is certainly not true to his terminology. Plato puts the imagination (φαντασία) not only below intuitive reason (νοῦς) and discursive reason or understanding (διάνοια), but even below outer perception (πίστις). He recognizes indeed that it may reflect the operations of the understanding and even the higher reason as well as the impressions of sense. This notion of a superior intellectual imagination was carried much further by Plotinus and the neo-Platonists. Even the intellectual imagination is, however, conceived of as passive. Perhaps no Greek thinker, not even Plato, makes as clear as he might that reason gets its intuition of reality and the One with the aid of the imagination and, as it were, through a veil of illusion, that, in Joubert’s phrase, “l’illusion est une partie inté, grante de la réalité” (Pensées, Titre XI, XXXIX). Joubert again distinguishes (ibid., Titre III, XLVII, LI) between “l’imaginative” which is passive and “l’imagination” which is active and creative (“l’œil de l’âme”). In its failure to bring out with sufficient explicitness this creative rôle of the imagination and in the stubborn intellectualism that this failure implies is to be found, if anywhere, the weak point in the cuirass of Greek philosophy.

110

See Xenophon, Memorabilia, IV, 16, 3.

111

Σωφροσύνη.

112

See his Lettre à d’Alembert.

113

Varieties of Religious Experience, 387.

114

Blütezeit der Romantik, 126.

115

“Parfaite illusion, réalité parfaite” (Alfred de Vigny). “Die Welt wird Traum, der Traum wird Welt” (Novalis). “This sort of dreaming existence is the best; he who quits it to go in search of realities generally barters repose for repeated disappointments and vain regrets” (Hazlitt).

116

Lit. Ang., IV, 130.

117

About 1885.

118

Le Théâtre en France, 304.

119

Je suis une force qui va!

Agent aveugle et sourd de mystères funèbres.

120

E.g., Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity (1736) had a marked influence on the rise of the German fate tragedy.

121

Wo ist der, der sagen dürfe,So will ich’s, so sei’s gemacht,Unser Taten sind nur WürfeIn des Zufalls blinde Nacht.Die Ahnfrau.

122

“So that in the first place, I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death.” Leviathan, Part I, ch. XI.

123

See Unpopular Review, October, 1915.

124

E. Seillière has been tracing, in Le Mal romantique and other volumes, the relation between Rousseauism and what he terms an “irrational imperialism.” His point of view is on the constructive side very different from mine.

125

The best account of Rousseau’s German influence is still that of H. Hettner in his Literaturgeschichte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Compared with Rousseau’s German influence, says Professor Paul Hensel in his Rousseau (1907), “his influence in France seems almost trifling.” In Germany “Rousseau became the basis not of a guillotine but of a new culture (Kultur). … We have drawn his spirit over to us, we have made it our own.” (121.) See also Professor Eugen Kühnemann, Vom Weltreich des deutschen Geistes (1914), 54-62, and passim. German idealism is, according to Kühnemann, the monument that does the greatest honor to Rousseau.

126

A robin redbreast in a cagePuts all Heaven in a rage.…He who shall hurt the little wrenShall never be belov’d by men.He who the ox to wrath has mov’dShall never be by woman lov’d.…Kill not the moth nor butterfly,For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.Auguries of Innocence.

127

See Hart-Leap Well.

128

Beyond Good and Evil, ch. IV.

129

“Out into distant futures, which no dream hath yet seen, into warmer souths than ever sculptor conceived. … Let this love be your new nobility, – the undiscovered in the remotest seas,” etc. (Thus Spake Zarathustra, translated by Thomas Common, 240, 248.)

130

“On trouverait, en rétablissant les anneaux intermédiaires de la chaîne, qu’à Pascal se rattachent les doctrines modernes qui font passer en première ligne la connaissance immédiate, l’intuition, la vie intérieure, comme à Descartes … se rattachent plus particulièrement les philosophies de la raison pure.” La Science française (1915), I, 17.

131

Cf. Tennyson:

Fantastic beauty, such as lurksIn some wild poet when he worksWithout a conscience or an aim —

132

Addison writes:

’Twas then great Marlbro’s mighty soul was proved,That, in the shock of changing hosts unmoved,Amidst confusion, horror, and despair,Examin’d all the dreadful scenes of war;In peaceful thought the field of death survey’d.

So far as Marlborough deserved this praise he was a general in the grand manner.

133

“Beauty resides in due proportion and order,” says Aristotle (Poetics, ch. VII).

134

A Survey of English Literature, 1780-1830 (1912), II, 191.

135

Confucius and the Chinese sages were if anything even more concerned than Plato or Aristotle with the ethical quality of music.

136

Like Bishop Blougram’s his “interest’s on the dangerous edge of things.”

137

Does he take inspiration from the church,Directly make her rule his law of life?Not he: his own mere impulse guides the man.…Such is, for the Augustine that was once,This Canon Caponsacchi we see now.X, 1911-28.

138

See X, 1367-68.

139

Letter to Joseph d’Ortigue, January 19, 1833.

140

Here is an extreme example from Maigron’s manuscript collection (Le Romantisme et les mœurs, 153). A youth forced to be absent three weeks from the woman he loves writes to her as follows: “Trois semaines, mon amour, trois semaines loin de toi! … Oh! Dieu m’a maudit! … Hier j’ai erré toute l’après-midi comme une bête fauve, une bête traquée. … Dans la forêt, j’ai hurlé, hurlé comme un démon … je me suis roulé par terre … j’ai broyé sous mes dents des branches que mes mains avaient arrachées. … Alors, de rage, j’ai pris ma main entre mes dents; j’ai serré, serré convulsivement; le sang a jailli et j’ai craché au ciel le morceau de chair vive … j’aurais voulu lui cracher mon cœur.”

141

Maxime Du Camp asserts in his Souvenirs littéraires (I, 118) that this anæmia was due in part to the copious blood-letting to which the physicians of the time, disciples of Broussais, were addicted.

142

This perversion was not unknown to classical antiquity. Cf. Seneca, To Lucilius, XCIX: “Quid turpius quam captare in ipso luctu voluptatem; et inter lacrymas quoque, quod juvet, quærere?”

143

Nouvelle Héloïse, Pt. III, Lettre VI.

144

Confessions, Livre IV.

145

The New Laokoon, ch. V.

146

Franciscae meæ laudes, in Les Fleurs du mal.

147

Architecture and Painting, Lecture II. This diatribe may have been suggested by Byron’s Don Juan, Canto XIII, IX-XI:

Cervantes smiled Spain’s chivalry away:A single laugh demolished the right armOf his own country, etc.

148

“Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quærebam quid amarem, amans amare.”

149

Cf. Shelley’s Alastor:

Two eyes,Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thoughtAnd seemed with their serene and azure smilesTo beckon.

150

“Some of us have in a prior existence been in love with an Antigone, and that makes us find no full content in any mortal tie.” Shelley to John Gisborne, October 22, 1821.

151

Confessions, Livre XI (1761).

152

Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe, November, 1817.

153

“Je me faisais une félicité de réaliser avec ma sylphide mes courses fantastiques dans les forêts du Nouveau Monde.”

Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe, December, 1821.

154

Peacock has in mind Childe Harold, canto IV, CXXI ff.

155

Rousseau plans to make a nympholept of his ideal pupil, Emile: “Il faut que je sois le plus maladroit des hommes si je ne le rends d’avance passionné sans savoir de quoi”, etc. Emile, Liv. IV.

156

Cf. René’s letter to Céluta in Les Natchez: “Je vous ai tenue sur ma poitrine au milieu du désert, dans les vents de l’orage, lorsque, après vous avoir portée de l’autre côté d’un torrent, j’aurais voulu vous poignarder pour fixer le bonheur dans votre sein, et pour me punir de vous avoir donné ce bonheur.”

157

The romantic lover, it should be observed, creates his dream companion even less that he may adore her than that she may adore him.

158

Walter Bagehot has made an interesting study of the romantic imagination in his essay on a figure who reminds one in some respects of Gérard de Nerval – Hartley Coleridge.

159

Don Juan bids his servant give a coin to the beggar not for the love of God but for the love of humanity.

160

Demandant aux forêts, à la mer, à la plaine,Aux brises du matin, à toute heure, à tout lieu,La femme de son âme et de son premier voeu!Prenant pour fiancée un rêve, une ombre vaine,Et fouillant dans le cœur d’une hécatombe humaine,Prêtre désespéré, pour y trouver son Dieu.A. de Musset, Namouna.

“Don Juan avait en lui cet amour pour la femme idéale; il a couru le monde serrant et brisant de dépit dans ses bras toutes les imparfaites images qu’il croyait un moment aimer; et il est mort épuisé de fatigue, consumé de son insatiable amour.” Prévost-Paradol, Lettres, 149.

161

See Scott’s (2d) edition of Swift, XIII, 310.

162

Aimer c’est le grand point. Qu’importe la maîtresse?Qu’importe le flacon pourvu qu’on ait l’ivresse?

163

It has been said that in the novels of George Sand when a lady wishes to change her lover God is always there to facilitate the transfer.

164

“Tous les hommes sont menteurs, inconstants, faux, bavards, hypocrites, orgueilleux ou lâches, méprisables et sensuels; toutes les femmes sont perfides, artificieuses, vaniteuses, curieuses et dépravées; le monde n’est qu’un égout sans fond où les phoques les plus informes rampent et se tordent sur des montagnes de fange; mais il y a au monde une chose sainte et sublime, c’est l’union de deux de ces êtres si imparfaits et si affreux. On est souvent trompé en amour; souvent blessé et souvent malheureux; mais on aime et quand on est sur le bord de sa tombe, on se retourne pour regarder en arrière, et on se dit: J’ai souffert souvent, je me suis trompé quelquefois, mais j’ai aimé. C’est moi qui ai vécu, et non pas un être factice créé par mon orgueil et mon ennui.” (The last sentence is taken from a letter of George Sand to Musset.) On ne badine pas avec l’Amour, II, 5.

165

Table-Talk. On the Past and Future.

166

The Plain Speaker. On Reading Old Books.

167

The Round Table. On the Character of Rousseau.

168

“Aujourd’hui, jour de Pâques fleuries, il y a précisément cinquante ans de ma première connaissance avec Madame de Warens.”

169

Even on his death-bed the hero of Browning’s Confessions gives himself up to impassionated recollection:

How sad and bad and mad it was —But then, how it was sweet.

In his Stances à Madame Lullin Voltaire is at least as poetical and nearer to normal experience:

Quel mortel s’est jamais flattéD’un rendez-vous à l’agonie?

170

See especially Lyceum fragment, no. 108.

171

A well-known example of the extreme to which the romanticists pushed their Fichtean solipsism is the following from the William Lovell of the youthful Tieck: “Having gladly escaped from anxious fetters, I now advance boldly through life, absolved from those irksome duties which were the inventions of cowardly fools. Virtue is, only because I am; it is but a reflection of my inner self. What care I for forms whose dim lustre I have myself brought forth? Let vice and virtue wed. They are only shadows in the mist,” etc.

172

Beyond Good and Evil, ch. IV.

173

On Contemporary Literature, 206. The whole passage is excellent.

174

M. Legouis makes a similar remark in the Cambridge History of English Literature XI, 108.

175

I scarcely need say that Wordsworth is at times genuinely ethical, but he is even more frequently only didactic. The Excursion, as M. Legouis says, is a “long sermon against pessimism.”

176

“Quia fecisti nos ad te et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te.”

177

Eth. Nic., 1177 b.

178

Cf. the chapter on William Law and the Mystics in Cambridge History of English Literature, IX, 341-67; also the bibliography of Boehme, ibid., 560-74.

179

See Excursion, I, VV. 943 ff.

180

In his attitude towards sin Novalis continues Rousseau and anticipates the main positions of the Christian Scientist.

181

Prune thou thy words,The thoughts controlThat o’er thee swell and throng.They will condense within the soulAnd change to purpose strong.But he who lets his feelings runIn soft, luxurious flow,Shrinks when hard service must be doneAnd faints at every foe.

182

Wesley had no liking for Boehme and cut out from Brooke’s book the theosophy that had this origin.

183

Writing was often associated with magic formulæ. Hence γράμμα also gave Fr. “grimoire.”

184

Thus Spake Zarathustra, LXIX (The Shadow to Zarathustra).

185

Katha-Upanishad. The passage is paraphrased as follows by P. E. More in his Century of Indian Epigrams:

Seated within this body’s carThe silent Self is driven afar,And the five senses at the poleLike steeds are tugging restive of control.And if the driver lose his way,Or the reins sunder, who can sayIn what blind paths, what pits of fearWill plunge the chargers in their mad career?Drive well, O mind, use all thy art,Thou charioteer! – O feeling Heart,Be thou a bridle firm and strong!For the Lord rideth and the way is long.

186

See Brandes: The Romantic School in Germany, ch. XI.

187

Alfred de Musset saw his double in the stress of his affair with George Sand (see Nuit de Décembre), Jean Valjean (Les Misérables) sees his double in the stress of his conversion. Peter Bell also sees his double at the emotional crisis in Wordsworth’s poem of that name.

188

Thus Spake Zarathustra, LXIX.

189

F. Schlegel: Lyceumfragment, no. 42.

190

E.g., canto III, CVII-CXI.

191

Confessions, Livre XII (1765).

192

Cf. Th. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, I, 402.

193

Wordsworth: Miscellaneous Sonnets, XII.

194

In much the same spirit the Japanese hermit, Kamo Chōmei (thirteenth century), expresses the fear that he may forget Buddha because of his fondness for the mountains and the moon. – See article on nature in Japan by M. Revon in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics.

195

Confessions, Bk. X, ch. IX.

196

Cf. Cicero: “Urbem, urbem, mi Rufe, cole et in ista luce vive.” (Ad Fam., II, 22.)

197

March 23, 1646.

198

It was especially easy for the poets to go for their landscapes to the painters because according to the current theory poetry was itself a form of painting (ut pictura poesis). Thus Thomson writes in The Castle of Indolence:

Sometimes the pencil, in cool airy halls,Bade the gay bloom of vernal landskips rise,Or autumn’s varied shades embrown the walls:Now the black tempest strikes the astonish’d eyes;Now down the steep the flashing torrent flies;The trembling sun now plays o’er ocean blue,And now rude mountains frown amid the skies;Whate’er Lorrain light touch’d with softening hue,Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew.(C. I, st. 38.)

199

Disparaissez, monuments du génie,Pares, jardins immortels, que Le Nôtre a plantés;De vos dehors pompeux l’exacte symmétrie,Etonne vainement mes regards attristés.J’aime bien mieux ce désordre bizarre,Et la variété de ces riches tableauxQue disperse l’Anglais d’une main moins avare.Bertin, 19e Elégie of Les Amours.

200

Pt. IV, Lettre XI.

201

Nouvelle Héloïse, Pt. IV, Lettre XI.

202

Ibid.

203

Ibid., Pt. IV, Lettre XVII.

204

Confessions, Livre V (1732).

205

See especially Childe Harold, canto II, XXV ff.

206

Ibid., canto II, XXXVII.

207

Ibid., canto III, LXXII.

208

Ibid., canto IV, CLXXVII.

209

See La Perception du changement, 30.

210

ASIAMy soul is an enchanted boat,Which like a sleeping swan, doth floatUpon the silver waves of thy sweet singing;And thine doth like an angel sitBeside a helm conducting it,Whilst all the winds with melody are ringing.It seems to float ever, for everUpon that many-winding river,Between mountains, woods, abysses,A paradise of wildernesses!…Meanwhile thy spirit lifts its pinionsIn music’s most serene dominions;Catching the winds that fan that happy heaven.And we sail on away, afar,Without a course, without a star,But by the instinct of sweet music driven;Till through Elysian garden isletsBy thee, most beautiful of pilots,Where never mortal pinnace glidedThe boat of my desire is guided;Realms where the air we breathe is love — Prometheus Unbound, Act II, Sc. V.

211

“Si tu souffres plus qu’un autre des choses de la vie, il ne faut pas t’en étonner; une grande âme doit contenir plus de douleurs qu’une petite.”

212

Cf. Shelley, Julian and Maddalo:

I love all wasteAnd solitary places; where we tasteThe pleasure of believing what we seeIs boundless, as we wish our souls to be.

213

Cf. for example, the passage of Rousseau in the seventh Promenade (“Je sens des extases, des ravissements inexprimables à me fondre pour ainsi dire dans le système des êtres,” etc.) with the revery described by Wordsworth in The Excursion, I, 200-218.

214

O belles, craignez le fond des bois, et leur vaste silence.

215

Faust (Miss Swanwick’s translation).

216

Artist and Public, 134 ff.

217

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:What if my leaves are falling like its own!The tumult of thy mighty harmoniesWill take from both a deep, autumnal tone,Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!Drive my dead thoughts over the universeLike withered leaves, etc.

Cf. Lamartine:

Quand la feuille des bois tombe dans la prairie,Le vent du soir s’élève et l’arrache aux vallons;Et moi, je suis semblable à la feuille flétrie;Emportez-moi comme elle, orageux aquilons.L’Isolement.

218

Cf. Hettner, Romantische Schule, 156.

219

See appendix on Chinese primitivism.

220

G. Duval has written a Dictionnaire des métaphores de Victor Hugo, and G. Lucchetti a work on Les Images dans les œuvres de Victor Hugo. So far as the ethical values are concerned, the latter title is alone justified. Hugo is, next to Chateaubriand, the great imagist.

221

The French like to think of the symbolists as having rendered certain services to their versification. Let us hope that they did, though few things are more perilous than this transfer of the idea of progress to the literary and artistic domain. Decadent Rome, as we learn from the younger Pliny and others, simply swarmed with poets who also no doubt indulged in many strange experiments. All this poetical activity, as we can see only too plainly at this distance, led nowhere.

222

Grant Allen writes of the laws of nature in Magdalen Tower:

They care not any whit for pain or pleasure,That seems to us the sum and end of all,Dumb force and barren number are their measure,What shall be shall be, tho’ the great earth fall,They take no heed of man or man’s deserving,Reck not what happy lives they make or mar,Work out their fatal will unswerv’d, unswerving,And know not that they are!

223

Fragment de l’Art de jouir, quoted by P. – M. Masson in La Religion de J. – J. Rousseau, II, 228.