30 APRIL 1892, Page 3

BOOKS.

THE TURN OF THE TIDE.* IF the time has not yet come when we may affirm with regard to so-called Realistic literature in France, " Le Roi est mort," it is certainly at hand ; but it yet remains to be seen whether we shall be able to hail the new Symbolist school with the words, " Vive le Roi ! " The whole movement towards a purer literature, a more poetical ideal, and a complicated symbolism, will be watched with interest on this side of the water, where we ourselves are wavering between several schools of literary expression, and where we can point to few pre-eminently great novelists or original thinkers to prove to the world that we are in advance of our neighbours. Indeed, we may almost say that, with the exception of Shakespeare and Scott, France has always taken the lead in the realm of fiction and art, and that her rest- less activity, like a troubled sea, casts up beautiful shells and seaweed, as well as ugly wreckage, upon the various shores round which the tide of her mental energy ebbs and flows.

The critics and the writers of magazine articles on both sides of the Channel are striving to prophesy rightly con- cerning this new turn of the tide; they all agree, and this is indeed a good sign, that anything is better than Zolaism, but they are strangely puzzled when called upon to tell us the real worth of the Symbolists. Will these latter reform literature, will they clear away the offal of Realism, and make a clean sweep of all the filth ?—or will they merely substitute something which, if certainly better than Zolaism, will prove of little real use in strengthening the mind of the masses, but will give them merely subtle poison instead of undisguised arsenic ?

The nineteenth century is closing upon many strange human complications, and not the least strange is this great question of its literature, a literature which, for good or for evil, is one of the greatest powers of our time ; so that it is no wonder that many are anxious to know what will be the end of this spiritualisation of thought in France. Any question that affects French literature affects us now far more than it did at the beginning of this century, when the great inter- national literary engine had hardly began to be set in motion, and when it was not possible, as it now is, to procure transla- tions of our neighbour's thoughts almost as soon as the originals appear; so that English or French ideas are im- mediately wafted with strange rapidity over an area undreamt of even sixty years ago.

If the French critic M. Brunetiere is himself puzzled by

the new school, it is hardly for us to prophesy with certainty about his countrymen ; but his remarks, in the early part of this year, in the Revue des Deur Mondes are fall of wisdom. This is his welcome to the Symbolists :—

"Encore que la plume de nos symbolistes ne soit pm toujours chaste, ni leur imagination remplie d'idees parfaitement puree., felicitous-les done d'abord de in campagne gulls menent contre ce qui subsist° encore du naturalism° contemporain. Nulle n'etait plus urgente, ni ne doit etre plus encouragee."

Farther on, he owns that what is presented to us in symbols impresses us more than naked fact ; but then he adds this severe criticism :-

" On ne saurait done donner de meilleur conseil aux symbolistes que de renoncer a ce style habituellement inintelligible dont ils font profession, quand aussi bien eta ne serait que pour eviter le reproche de le faire servir d'enveloppe a l'indigence de lours pensees, car apres tout it n'y a rien de plus facile que d'eerire in- intelligiblement, mais sous cet inintelligible, s'il y a par hasard quelque chose, le difficile serait preeisement de reussir 1 Pen degager. Nos symbolistes n'y sont pas encore parvenus."

Two more lines we must quote, which forcibly strike at the root of the controversy :— " S'il faut etre an moms deux pour qu'il y ait symbole, celui qui

le propose et celui qui le eomprend c'est une espeee de consentement commun qui fait in verite du symbole, ils n'ont pas encore decouvert le moyen de coneilier ces contraires."

In M. Huret's Enquete sur l'Svolution Litteraire, we find in M. Mallarme's mouth the answer the Symbolists give to such • (1.) Sous 1' Ma acs .,Barbaree.—(2.,) un KOM111.19 LZ4.—(3.) Le Jdrdi, ds Bh*qice.—(4.) Examen des Trois Volumes. By Maurice Barris. Paris: Perrin and CO.

an accusation :—" The Symbolists will choose rather to suggest than to depict ; they will not fear the indefinite or the mys- terious. If they present an object, it will be in order that the object may call up or adumbrate some spiritual, some emo- tional state or mood, or they will, through some state of the soul, shadow forth an object. They will be charged with obscurity, but all art which demands the co-operation of the spectator or the reader's feelings and imagination, is obscure to those who do not bring the one thing needful."

Let us glance for a moment at the work of one of these Symbolists, and see whether the critic or the author finds most

justification in our eyes. In an interesting article in the September Fortnightly, M. Ed. Bernie introduced M. Maurice

Barres to English readers. The writer also threw a stone at the dying king of Realism : " The art admirable and exqui- site ; the artist so often very nearly the reverse ; " but, unlike Brunetiere, he finds no fault with this Symbolist : " With M. Maurice Barres, nearly alone amid such a number of soul- less artists, or else of inartistic honest writers, art and feeling

go hand-in-hand." M. Belle then goes on to review the three books M. Barres has brought out,—Sous l'CEil des Barbares, Un Ilomme Libre, and Le Tardin de Berenice ; but as his interesting paper on this triptych is still fresh in our memories, we will not recapitulate it. Since that time, how- ever, and as if to emphasise M. Brunetiere's words, M. Barres has written and caused to be bound up with his first volume a short paper called "Examen des Trois Volumes." We can- not help smiling a little over this explanation, and wondering how it is that the author, who has such a keen sense of humour, should have deigned to answer his critics, and to explain his meaning to " Les Barbares," whom he so thoroughly despises :—

" Que pent-on demander a cis trois livres ? Us ne sent pas de la psychologie, mail des memoires spirituels. Rs presentent un triple interat : ils donnent des formules aux esprits de mime races; ils seront des documents ; it fournissent un enseignement."

Whatever they may do for the future, it seems that it was the present which humbly asked for an explanation, and it is

told to beware of seeking for any psychology in them. Psychologists are tiresome people who find causes for every- thing, and extract general laws out of minute facts ; but this trilogy is written by one who finds the Imitation and the Vita Nuova intensely satisfying, and who merely chronicles emotions. Alas 1 the public has said : " We don't understand this chronicle." " That is the worst of this manner of writing,"

says M. Barres, " for to those who do not share its sentiments it is unintelligible ; " and we feel inclined to answer : " But if written only for the initiated, it is of no great value !" But M. Barres further explains that the obscurity in his books is not owing to style or to the paucity of ideas, but to the omission of psychological explications, and very naively adds

that when writing under the impulse of emotion, he can only chronicle, he cannot explain, and repeats that the work is meant for those who appreciate lee crises de reline. (Would not a Baudelaire, a Gautier, a Flaubert, a Zola, and certainly a De Goncourt, have said the same?) Why, he continues, should not a generation weary of many things enjoy for a change metaphysical romance P—but M. Barres forgets he does not write for a generation, but merely for the select few who will understand him and his triple aim, "precise formula of feeling," " the enlightenment of a special type of young man," and " un enseignement," and yet, in spite of writing for the understanding few, the

author had to sit down to explain his trilogy. The

Culte the Moi, he objects, has been found fault with and called by the vulgar name of " egotism ; " this ignorance makes the author smile,—what is patriotism if not egotism?— but he adds that it is necessary to combine the personal with the general interest, so that both may aim at a common object. To us—but we are barbarians—the personal is very prominent through all three volumes, whilst the general is certainly not combined with it in any great degree, not even in Le Tardin du Berenice.

We must hasten to explain that " Barbarians " must by no means be confounded with " Philistines." We confess that we had made this mistake before reading the" Examen," and that the idea did not fit in badly ; but the true explanation of " Barbarian" versus "Ego" is : "Notre Moi c'est la maniere don,ft nptre Orgamisme s'agit,aux excitations du milieu et sous la cOnerddietion du Barba're." If this were not symbolieal language, we should translate it : " The irritation we feel at any opposition from less highly cultured persons than our- selves." Soon after, however, we come upon a very deep psychological truth, in spite of M. Barres' scorn of psychology : "Notre Moi en effet n'est pas immuable, it nous faut le defendre chaque jour, et chaque jour le creer." This, says he, is the twofold truth on which his books are founded, and then he plunges into symbolical explanation of the " Ego" question, till at last we reach a plain fact put plainly that Sous rCEil des Barbares is the awakening of a young man, first among his books, and next in the midst of the stern reality of Paris life. When M. Barres speaks plainly, no one speaks better. He next proceeds to the examination of Un Somme Libre. The hero Philippe has made another step, and under the symbolism of the history of his native Lorraine, he discovers that the present must have had a beginning in the far dis- tance, and that there is no annihilation in the future. " Philippe se comprit comme un instant d'une chose im- mortelle," and no one can doubt the beauty of his Lorraine symbol and his treatment of it. He next passes on to an examination of Le Jardin de Berenice, where the " Ego " is not to disappear into space, but to be strengthened and ennobled by the forces of humanity and universal life. The Barbarians have asked : " Who or what is Berenice? Is she a girl, or is she rcime populaire?" and M. Barres answers loftily : " What is Beatrice in the Vita Nuova ? Is she Dante's mistress, or the Church, or Theology ?"—and thus the Barbarians are answered. But more light still is thrown on the " Ego " question. "Let us protect our personality against strangers, against barbarians. It is not enough that this ego is a reality and exists ; it must be cultivated by study, research, travels; if it is still hungry, it must have action, and find satis- faction in a search for glory, politics, commerce, or finance; if still unsatisfied, let it give its sympathies to the poor, the miserable, and find consolation in the intensely pathetic anguish seen in the eyes of the tender-hearted seals, les freres de chiens des noires !"

This is not very difficult to understand; but, we ask our- selves, is it very new? Self-culture is not an original creed ; the Greeks believed in it : and egotism is no new vice. Benevo- lence and philanthropy were preached tons more than eighteen hundred years ago in very simple language, and in very plain symbols. Has M. Barres improved upon this revelation? This is what we ask ourselves when we have finished the trilogy and its explanation; but, in spite of this criticism, we do not hesitate to recommend these books to all who care for thought, for well-chosen epithets, for poetry and poetical metaphor; only we must warn them, that when they have unravelled the symbols, they need expect no startling discovery, and no very new philosophy, but rather the resurrection of an old-world philosophy given to a Paris whose literary section had discarded belief of any kind.

Doubtless to that sceptical centre it may seem new to read this dogmatic assertion :—" L'iime qui habite aujonrd'hui en moi est faite des parcelles qui survecnrent 1 des millers de worts; et Bette somme, grossie du meilleur de moi-meme, me survivra en perdant mon souvenir." Surely this remark should be addressed only to those who still believe they have a soul, and by such this creed (which strongly contradicts the author's " Ego " theory) will hardly be received with rapturous joy, or make the holders of it' look forward with great eagerness to that future to which they must bequeath the best part of themselves, and receive in return nothing but oblivion.