CHAPTER V

_SYMBOLISM AND LOGIC_

The French symbolists, and all poets and artists who move in the world of emotions, are invited by Nordau to “take their place at the table of science, where there is room for all.” Were they to accept the invitation, how would the emotional nature of our race find expression? Would it be possible, or wise, to ignore emotions in face of the fact that our lives are essentially emotional? Or does Nordau push his scientific superstition to such a point as to believe that human emotions can ever be investigated by means of the lancet, the microscope, and the thermometer? In spite of his sneer at Rossetti’s remark regarding his indifference as to whether the sun turned round the earth or the earth turned round the sun, he cannot fail to acknowledge that what humanity yearns for is beautiful and pleasing emotions, not scientific facts. The glorious sunshine, the balmy breeze, the radiant flowers, the inscrutable attractions of woman, her love, her esteem, her faith, the affection of children, the confidence of our fellow-beings, our trust in the good, our struggle against evil—such are the elements of life and happiness. Science acquires all its importance from being the means by which beautiful and pleasing emotions are safeguarded, and unpleasant emotions are avoided. When science mistakes its mission, when it attempts to distort and vilify their expressions, it has become unreal and fatal.

Nordau wishes us to regard science—progressing as it has done by replacing old errors of our senses by new errors of our senses—as embodying all facts worth noticing, and to disregard emotions which are eternally unchangeable.

To turn our back upon emotions and to take our place at the table of science means to ignore all that is beautiful, lovable, ennobling, and hopeful, to shut our eyes to the charms of form, colour, motion, and our ears to music, and to concentrate our attention upon the repast spread on the table of science: the pleasure of discovering bacteria in human tissue, the curiosity of counting the throbs of a frog’s heart after being torn from the living body, the sensation of ascertaining the effect of the gastric juices on the foot of a living rabbit inserted into a living dog’s stomach.

We take no side in the question of vivisection, or any other scientific methods, but without in the least minimizing the great services rendered, and to be rendered, by science to humanity, we must express our astonishment that any sound mind, knowing what scientific methods are, and must be, can seriously suggest that scientific investigation should supersede art and poetry. If we believed in degeneration, such opinions would be the first examples of it we should quote.

Poets and philosophers who deal with emotions, so to say with immaterial phenomena, impalpable to every one of our senses, but demonstrated as eternally real by their effects, must needs make use of symbols, or, to be more exact, of more symbols, vaguer symbols, and bolder symbols than those which naturally enter into language. To deny them this right is equal to denying the mathematician the use of the letter _X_, which stands for unknown quantities, and which is handled by him as dexterously as if it were the most familiar object in the world. If human beings were not allowed to speak about what their imagination conjures up, what their feelings prompt, and what irresistible instincts point to, they would be brought alarmingly near to the level of the beast.

The French symbolists being poets, might not have formulated into distinct thoughts what we have said above, but they have certainly felt it all, and much more. They have felt themselves surrounded by undefined and undefinable _X’s_ of far greater moment to their lives, to their happiness, and to their best instincts, than all the known and half-known quantities of science. In attempting to give expression to their feelings and to their thoughts regarding the all-important unknown, and to evoke among their fellow-beings an interest in them, they have found themselves justified in using any means, including symbolism, for their purpose.

Nordau has entertained no such considerations in dealing with the French symbolists. In obedience to his professional prejudices, he looks for no other causes, no other influences, than those that can be found in the mechanism of their brains. This is all the more amazing as he over and over again recognises that external circumstances, conditions of life and habits, exercise a strong influence on the brain, or, in other words, that the mechanism which connects the _Ego_ with matter may be influenced by the _Ego_. The result of his criticism presents therefore a want of fairness which to the English mind is especially objectionable.

The manner in which he pries into the private life and antecedents of Paul Verlaine, and the indelicate manner in which he refers to the personal appearance of the poet, impress us English people as so many unfair means of giving plausibility to his conclusions. When a hunchback is good-humoured enough to make fun of his own deformity, those of gentle feelings sympathize all the more with his misfortune, and become all the more anxious not to refer to it. When a poet, in his love of truth and in his anxiety to rouse a certain emotion, makes confessions, when he instances his own sad experiences and failings, when he, so to say, throws himself into the flames on the altar of truth, we in England count it indelicate and unfair to base criticism on facts thus revealed. Had Nordau read Verlaine’s poetry with an unbiassed mind, he could not have failed to be struck by the extent to which the poet typifies the movement going on around him: his failings, his errors, and, maybe, his bad habits—all this is the fate of millions who have been induced by the materialist tendencies of recent times to disregard personal responsibility, and who, after rejecting such guides as the nobler instincts of humanity had proffered, attempt to follow the dictates of the lower instincts and animal impulses. His terrible remorse and despair, while he is still unmoved by religion, bear witness to aspirations which the materialist would fain deny. His instinctive groping for the consolations of religion shows to what an extent he attributes his failings to an irreligious life, and that he experiences within him yearnings for a happiness which the gratification of the senses, prompted by atheism, has never afforded him.

Nordau would object to this expression—the gratification of his senses prompted by atheism—and would tell us that atheism ought to have implanted into Verlaine the religion of humanity, and that he should have sacrificed all his inclinations for the future happiness of his race. But, surely, it would require a good dose of hypocrisy for a man, sincerely convinced that death puts him personally beyond any consequences of his life, to persuade himself that he is practising a life-long abnegation for the good of posterity. Is it not much more likely that in so frank a nature as Verlaine’s the disbelief in personal responsibility would turn him into a devil-may-care vagabond until he learned in the school of experience the dangerous mistakes of materialism? Does Nordau not recognise the logic and the frankness in a young man who, in the exuberance of his animal life, when convinced of personal irresponsibility, lives up to the motto of a “short life and a merry one”?

The need of love and affection—a need generally so strongly felt by all poets—Nordau is pleased to call eroticism, and when the poet finds that he has profaned love, implanted in his soul by God, Nordau fancies he has discovered in Verlaine that blending of religious fervour and morbid eroticism which, when irrational, is a sign of lunacy.

When Paul Verlaine invokes the Virgin Mary, a form of religious expression which millions of sane people indulge in daily, Nordau at once imagines he has discovered another trace of insanity. In order to show that we are not unfair to our alienist, we will quote one of the poems of Verlaine he refers to, and the conclusions he draws from it,—

Et comme j’étais faible, et bien méchant encore, Aux mains lâches, les yeux éblouis des chemins, Elle baissa mes yeux, et me joignis les mains, Et m’enseigna les mots par lesquels on adore.

“The accents here quoted,” says Nordau, “are well known to the clinics of psychiatry. We may compare them to the picture which Legrain gives of some of his patients. ‘His speech continually reverts to God and the Virgin Mary, his cousin.’ [The case in question is that of a degenerate subject who was a tramway conductor.] ‘Mystical ideas complete the picture. He talks of God, of heaven, crosses himself, kneels down, and says that he is following the commandments of Christ.’ [The subject under observation is a day-labourer.] ‘The devil will tempt me, but I see God who guards me. I have asked of God that all people might be beautiful,’ etc.”

So far Nordau.

Because a mad tramway conductor thinks he is cousin of the Virgin Mary, Verlaine, who symbolizes in the Virgin Mary the power that draws him towards the good, is on the road to madness! From this it follows that, if a mad tramway conductor were to believe himself the cousin of Professor Lombroso, Nordau’s quasi-worship of that authority would indicate degeneracy in Nordau’s mind.

One of Nordau’s characteristics is a weak or dull logical faculty, often to be observed in those who over-study for examination and in specialists fanatically inclined. Without this peculiarity he could not possibly have omitted to ask himself the question, “How about all other worshippers of Christ?” when he concludes that Verlaine’s mind is degenerate because he speaks devotedly of the Virgin Mary, while a lunatic labourer says that he follows the commandments of Christ. Nordau does not see that in this manner he completely gives himself away, and lets us perceive that it is not the symbolist whom he considered degenerate, but the whole Christian populations of the world that have existed during two thousand years, and that still exist. Only his lack of a sense of the ridiculous, already pointed out, has prevented him from remembering that the man in his cups considers himself the only sober man of the company.

The verses which Verlaine has written in praise of a vagabond life Nordau holds up as a sure sign of lurking lunacy. Are then all poets who write in praise of a vagabond life degenerates? Is not the true secret of Nordau’s conclusion to be found in the fact that he entirely misses the satire against our modern system which underlies Verlaine’s and other writers’ poems on this same subject? He does the same with regard to Verlaine’s poem addressed to the demented king, Louis II. of Bavaria. When we behold the follies of reigning sovereigns, who are supposed to be in the full enjoyment of their faculties, making such poor use of their opportunities, degrading and ruining their people, rousing a hatred against themselves and their dynasty, or striving at low _bourgeois_ aims, or even, to use Nordau’s own expression, selling their royalty for a big cheque; when we read of the monarchs of the past, of their crimes and their meanesses, how can we wonder that the unfortunate King Louis should inspire sympathy in a poet, and that he should satirize the so-called reasonable monarchs by eulogizing the demented one?

Nordau makes much of that form of mental weakness which manifests itself in echolalia, or the mania of repeating for no reason the same words and the same sentences. But to deny the poet, who aims at conveying an emotion and for that purpose wishes to create a certain mood in his listeners, the use of choruses, refrains, and cadenced repetitions, he runs counter to the oldest literary tradition in the world. He would surely not object to repetitions in verses intended to be sung; and if we are right in placing poetry half way between speech and music in the list of the vehicles of thought, as we have done in a previous chapter, euphonies, musicalities of words, and repetitions are both permissible and rational.

Many poetical emotions may be quickened by reminiscences from childhood; and a style of writing, or the use of words or sounds, reminding us of early days, might be the most effective methods of expression. Thus, for instance, a drowsy repetition of pleasant-sounding words may be very telling in a lullaby, even if they convey no scientific meaning, or do not contribute to the sense of the poem, and so long as they do not distort it. The examples of repetitions from degeneracy in Verlaine are chosen so unhappily as to place Nordau in the wrong and Verlaine in the right in the judgment of unbiassed persons; the one is a serenade, and the other is entitled “Chevaux du Bois,” in which the sensation of a child on a merry-go-round is suggested. Another is supposed to be sung by, or suggests, Pierrot Gamin, that is a young idiot. When Verlaine wishes to qualify a noun in a manner which is difficult to express in ordinary adjectives, he, like millions of his fellows, has recourse to the method of giving a new, or symbolic, signification to an old adjective, and this, according to Nordau, is a sign of mental degeneration. To prove his case he quotes such terms as “a narrow and vast affection,” “a slow landscape,” “a slack liqueur,” “a gilded perfume,” “a terse contour,” etc. He does not seem to know that the paucity of language renders such expressions not only legitimate but extremely useful in many professions and trades, let alone poetry. Has he never heard of a warm colour, a lively tint, a cold tone, etc.? Are the French wine-growers mad when they say that wine is heavy, light, full, dead, alive, slack, round, green, angular, smooth, velvety, etc.?

We are glad to see that he recognises Verlaine’s ability as a poet and does not find fault with some of his poems. Thus he says of “Chanson d’Automne” that “there are few poems in French literature that can rival” it. While rejoicing at the fairness that Nordau here displays, we must however point out the eccentricity of his logic. He desires to warn us against degeneration, and therefore points to a poet whose degeneracy has not prevented him from writing a masterpiece of literature. It should also be noticed that the “Chanson d’Automne,” which meets with such ample praise from Nordau, is on the same theme which underlies other pieces of poetry quoted in his work as examples of legitimate and sane poetry. When he does intimate that a poet might burst into song over flowers, trees, books, and twittering birds, but not over the sympathy he feels in his consciousness with the powers that have called them forth, simply because science has not so far been able to analyse and classify those powers, he only shows that he is illogical enough to proffer his limited view of what is poetical as an infallible standard of the poetry of the world.

Nordau blames Verlaine and other symbolists for dealing with moods instead of with definite ideas. But is there a single poet in the past or the present who did not largely deal in moods, and who did not labour to give the world an impression of his own feelings? Nordau’s ideal author—Goethe—has gone further. He wrote a whole novel, _Werther’s Leiden_, which is little else than a lengthy description of his hero’s moods.

Another symbolist, Stephane Mallarmé, who in France as well as in England enjoys a reputation as a poet, or rather as an authority on poetry, is attacked by Nordau in a manner which suggests other motives than fair criticism. He gibes at the symbolists and at all who consider Mallarmé a poet, because he has produced only a few original works and translations. As our alienist cannot very well put this down as a sign of degeneration, having treated those who write much as graphomaniacs, he gives us no other reasons for placing Mallarmé among the examples of degeneration than that he has “long, pointed, faun-like ears,” a fact which he seems not to have noticed personally but which he has obtained, like most of his facts, from a book.

He distinctly insinuates that the admiration for Mallarmé’s poetical gift indicates degeneration, especially as Mallarmé has written so little. We meet here again with a striking example of his curious logic. He imagines that he strengthens his case by quoting from Lessing, who in _Amelia Galotti_ makes Conti say that Raphael would have been the greatest genius in painting, even if he had unfortunately been born without hands. From this, English readers who happen to know nothing of Lessing or Conti would conclude that either Lessing was a lunatic or that his character, Conti, was mad. But neither is the case, and the quotation consequently tells against Nordau. Whoever would deny that a man cannot be a poet and an authority on poetry without publishing verse must attach an extremely narrow meaning to the word poet. If Lessing, or Conti, means by the word painter, not the craftsman, but the man with the painter’s soul, the symbolist may surely be allowed to call Mallarmé a poet. Has Nordau never met with mute poets, blind painters, and deaf musicians? One of the greatest musicians of the world composed marvellous music while stone-deaf. Now if we suppose that Beethoven had lost his hearing before he had mastered the technicalities of music, would he therefore not have remained a musician?

Nordau is very severe on several other symbolists and certainly does his best to represent them in an unfavourable light. In order to show that Charles Morice, the author of _La Littérature de tout à l’heure_ is literally insane and a graphomaniac, he quotes Morice’s rhapsodical conception of God, which he pretends to take as an exact definition in order to reduce it to twaddle. To any unprejudiced reader it is evident that Morice intended to convey by this wild attempt at description how impossible it is to define God. Nordau’s prejudice against the French nation becomes palpable when speaking of the fact that the French language lends itself badly to blank verse and that a freer treatment of it in French poetry is a comparatively modern departure which by other countries was taken long ago. He says: “But to any one but a Frenchman, they merely make themselves ridiculous when they trumpet their painful hobbling after the nations who are far in front of them, as an unheard-of discovery of new paths and opening up of new roads and as an advance inspired by the ideal into the dawn of the future.” This gratuitous insult of a whole nation gives us a vivid insight into the working of his mind. He would not have penned a sentence of such bad taste, and so marked by the echolalia he condemns in others, had he not been prompted by feelings stronger than his judgment.