A history of French literature : from the earliest times to the great war

Preface

The present History of French Literature, intended both for the general reader and for students, does not aim to be exhaustive. It is divided into three parts: Medieval, Renaissance and Modern; and within these parts it emphasizes in turn the chief literary movements and writers, leaving minor tendencies and figures out of consideration or mentioning them only incidentally. Mere lists of names and dates, valuable as they are for reference, belong rather to bibliography than to literary history as such. Thus our aim has been to give a connected account of the " main currents " of French literature from the earliest times down to the present day.

In this attempt we have had several further considerations to guide us. In the first place, the book is written primarily for American and English readers. The one key to literary \ treasures is not erudition but sympathy. Needless to say, we would instill in our readers a liking for French literature; but such sympathy will come only through an appreciation of the French, as distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon, point of view. Hence the introductory chapter on the " Spirit of French Letters " and, in the body of the book, the frequent references to what appear to be dominant French traits. Another result of this method is the attention we give to the historical and social background. Whether we have succeeded or not, we have consistently tried to depict for each age the historical and social elements that produced it; briefly of course, with the expectation that the reader will complete the outline by reference to works dealing directly with these subjects.

In the second place, the authors are convinced that a literature must be learned — if learned is the proper word — by the stimulus of suggestion rather than by any dogmatic method. The opinions we state are by no means new. They necessarily reflect the views of others on the subject; in fact, for each particular movement and author, we have tried to discover the best iv PREFACE

authorities, from a scholarly and critical point of view, and to incorporate their conclusions in the text and the titles of their treatises in the bibliography. Yet in each case we have stated these opinions in our own way, with reference to our general plan of treatment, and we have not shunned the expression of an original opinion when circumstances justified it. We make no claim for the absolute value of these views, but we venture to hope that they will rouse the reader's interest and lead him to formulate ideas of his own on the authors and books we have considered. If our book wins new readers for French literature itself, our main purpose will have been achieved.

Again, the authors are well aware that in a work of condensation such as a history of literature the statement of " facts " is necessarily difficult to make. One reason is that the facts in a given case are not always ascertainable. We have, as far as we have been able, given the correct dates for both writers and works of literature. With regard to other facts, such as literary sources and influences, we have — especially in doubtful cases — cited and even quoted the best authorities on the subject. But truth in literary matters, depending as it does on interpretation and taste, is of course relative; and we have no doubt that many readers, more competent than ourselves, will regard much of our material as open to question or in need of correction. We do not cling to the determinism of Taine, nor do we deny that it expresses a great truth. The French may not be a " race," but they are certainly a " nation " with a distinct civilization of their own; and it is the history of the literary manifestations of this civilization that we have attempted to write. If our critics will take the same pains to correct our mistakes as we have taken to avoid them, they will earn our gratitude and, what is even better, help us to mend our ways.

As for matters of detail, it may be pointed out that the collaborators have divided their task in such a way that the responsibility for the treatment of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (through French Classicism) belongs to W. A. Nitze, and for that of Modern Times to E. P. Dargan. Provengal literature is not treated by us, nor is the rich Latin literature of the Middle Ages, except as these incidentally affect French literature in one

PREFACE v

of its own stages. The substance as well as the structure of our book owes much, of course, to the admirable treatises of Gaston Paris, Lanson and Brunetiere, and in the Medieval and Renaissance periods to the works of Suchier and Mori In the field of criticism, Saintsbury's important work has again and again been laid under contribution. For Modern Times, the essays of Sainte-Beuve and Brunetiere, the treatises of Villemain and Taine have been found particularly valuable. To these and to our numerous special authorities we here acknowledge obligation. For all titles we refer the reader to the selected bibliography at the end of the work.

As regards the question of proportion, a word remains to be said. The increasing number of chapters and authors in Part III is due to the increasing complexity or " heterogeneity " of French literature in the last two centuries. Since our intention is to stress both ideas and form, a full treatment has been accorded to the liberalism of the eighteenth century and to the various artistic currents of the nineteenth. This has been done, it is hoped, without detracting from the importance of previous periods, especially the great Classical Age.

The illustrations have been chosen to symbolize the spirit of each epoch. They are masterpieces dating, in each case, from the period under consideration.

In conclusion, we most sincerely thank those friends and colleagues whose guidance and criticism have been at our disposal. Professors Jenkins and Pietsch of the University of Chicago have assisted us materially with their knowledge of the Middle Ages. In particular, our selections from the Chanson de Roland have had the benefit of Professor Jenkins' revision. Our colleague, Professor Coleman, has been gracious enough to revise the chapters on the early seventeenth century. Professors Lancaster, Lovejoy and Chinard of Johns Hopkins University have performed a similar service for portions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and Professor Guerard of the Rice Institute has been unsparing in his help on matters concerning modern French thought. For additional services, willingly and carefully rendered, we are indebted to Professors Albert Schinz of Smith College, Henri David of the University of Chicago, B. E. Young of Vanderbilt University and Henry M. Dargan of

VI

PREFACE the University of North Carolina. Obviously none of these friends are responsible for the errors and imperfections of our book. It is owing to them, to their generous suggestions and criticisms, that its sins of omission and commission are not more numerous. On the other hand, if our book has — as we hope — points to commend it, their assistance should not be forgotten:

Chicago, September, 1921.

W. A. N.

E. P. D.

Note. — In spelling French words, our aim has been to modernize the titles of important works. The titles of less well-known works are often given in their archaic forms. Citations of text, however, are not modernized until we reach the seventeenth century. At the same time, Montaigne's Essais are cited in a modernized form according to Jeanroy's Principaux chapitres et extraits de Montaigne.

Contents

PAGE

Part I: The Middle Ages Book I. Feudalism And Chivalry Chapter

I. The Middle Ages and the Epic 13

II. The Lyric and the Romance 30

III. The Allegory and the Early Drama 55

IV. History, Didactic Literature and Storiology 73

Book II. The Bourgeois Influence

I. The Lyric Poets of the School op Machaut and Deschamps . 87 II. The University and the Humanism of the Fourteenth

Century 98

III. The Cyclic Drama and the Farce of MaItre Pathelin. . 104

IV. Three Individuals: Antoine de La Sale, Villon, Commines. . 114

PART H: THE RENAISSANCE

BOOK I. HUMANISM AND THE REFORMATION

I. The Influence of Italy and the Rhetoriqueur Poets . . . 127

II. Marot and His Immediate Followers 136

III. Rabelais and Calvin: the Epicurean and the Stoic 145

IV. Platonists and Neo-Platonists 161

BOOK II. LITERARY THEORY AND THE RETURN OF THE BOURGEOIS IDEAL

I. The Doctrine of Imitation and the Pleiade 170

II. The Chief Poets of the Pleiade 178

III. Amyot, Montaigne and Brantome 193

IV. The Age of Henry IV and the Common-sense of Malherbe 207

Book VI. Romanticism

4 I. The Romantic Movement 517

II. Immediate Predecessors: Nodier, Beranger, Lamartine. . . 527

III. The Poets : Victor Hugo 534

IV. The Poets : Musset, Vigny, Gautier 544

V. The Romantic Drama 553

VI. The Romantic Novel 564

VII. Critics and Historians 576

Book VII. Realism

I. The Transition: Balzac 585

II. Augier, Dumas Fils and Henry Becque 595

II. The Reaction in Poetry : Baudelaire and the Parnassians . 602

IV. Realistic Fiction: Flaubert and Maupassant 612

V. Fiction (Continued) : Zola, the Goncourts, Daudet 623

Book VIII. The Age Of Science And Doubt

I. The Critics: Sainte-Beuve' 634

II. The Philosophers: Comte, Taine, Renan 645

III. Miscellaneous Writers 657

BOOK IX. THE END OF THE CENTURY I.* In Fiction : Naturalism, Psychology and Other Currents . . 663

II. In Drama : the Three Movements 679

III. In Poetry : Sentiment and Symbolism 695

IV. In^Criticism 711

Index 767

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING PAGE

Illustration from a Graal Lancelot (Manuscript) 12

Illustration from Froissart's Chroniques (Fifteenth Century

Manuscript) 86

Raphael, "School of Athens" 126

Rigaud, "Louis XIV" 272

Watteau, "L'Embarquement pour Cythere" 364

Pils, "Rouget de l'lsle chantant la Marseillaise" 448

XI

Introduction

THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH LETTERS

"L'histoire de la litterature (Tun peuple, j'ai eu occasion de vous le dire souvent deja, est l'histoire de sa vie morale, et partieulierement de sa conscience nationale." Gaston Paris, La Poem du moyen age, I, 94.

It is said that distinctions are invidious. But surely only for the unintelligent or uneducated. If we find pleasure in Shakespeare, this does not prove that we must dislike Racine. On the contrary, a thorough understanding of both authors should lead us to like both — but for different reasons. The qualities we admire in the Englishman are not and cannot be the traits we find in the Frenchman, quite aside from the fact that each is a different individual and not the same person. Thus every literature, so-called, is an embodiment of the national life. And while certain writers, and especially certain literary epochs, are less clearly national than others, yet it remains true that no author can divorce himself from his people and represent a point of view that is really alien to them. Indirectly, at least, he will reflect their type of emotion, their brand of ideas, their particular way of viewing and expressing things — in a word, their psychology or vie morale,' 1 as Gaston Paris says in the quotation made above. Hence literature is not only a matter of individuals but of groups; and not the least of its functions is to portray the interactions between the poet and the social consciousness of the nation to which he belongs.

If, then, French literature has certain essentials or fundamental traits, they are not always easy to define, since national characteristics appear only by contrast with those of other peoples. At the same time, as far as they can be ascertained, they are seen in the selection French writers make of their materials and in the tendencies they follow in working them out. It will be the object of this introductory chapter to state what are some of the distinguishing features of French literature.

1 Let us note, at the outset, that the French word moral means "psychological."

The remark has been repeatedly made that the French value truth more than beauty — not that they scorn the beautiful, but their attachment to truth is stronger. To quote one of their modern critics: " Ce qu'il nous faut, c'est le vrai dans Part encore plus que le beau." As early as the seventeenth century Boileau crystallized this ideal when he wrote:

Rien n'est beau que le vrai, le vrai seul est aimable; II doit regner partout, et meme dans la fable.

If we substitute the word " rational " for the word " true " in these quotations, 2 we shall come nearer to the French point of view; for French art, and especially French literature, is largely a product of the human reason. With English literature it thus offers an interesting contrast.

We of English tradition are accustomed to look upon a literary work as " holding the mirror up to nature " — to use Shakespeare's phrase. We see life as an endless complexity, and by nature we mean not only man but man in his surroundings, as part of the natural world that enfolds him. To a greater degree than the French, we are conscious of the fact that the universe holds us in its grip; and we struggle to be " free," to make ourselves felt for what we are as " individuals." But whatever the problem may be with which man contends, to us the human being is never separated from the background of reality in which life is passed. So that Dickens, like Wordsworth, like Milton, like Chaucer, deals with the setting of human character as a matter of prime and essential importance. " Character," said Emerson, " is nature in the highest form." Thus English literature is primarily the record and the product of individuals, in their manifold surroundings. It is varied rather than homogeneous. It deals with things rather than with ideas. It is imaginative rather than logical; concrete rather than abstract. It tends to embrace creation and not merely the life of man.

In comparison, French literature is essentially a reflection of the mind. Not only the treatment of life but the French conception of it is intellectual. Types, not individuals, appeal to the logical sense of the French; and types are not direct obser-

2 French distinguishes between the two types of truth, rational truth and truth to fact, by the two expressions le vrai and la viritL vations of life but deductions or classifications we make from it. The Frenchman views' life primarily as idea, secondarily as fact. His chief interest lies not so much in character or nature as in the permanent traits of humanity and the universality of their application. Hence his method is analytic and comparative, whereas ours is empirical and absolute. He works from the surface of life inward, not from the kernel to the surface. Metaphysics is not his forte — that " art de s'egarer avec methode," as Michelet called it. The French have no counterpart to a great lyric genius like Shelley, who takes his own visions for reality, who hopes

till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates.

Yet England has no equivalent to Voltaire: the embodiment of the pure reason and the sworn enemy of all illusion. The following selection from Montaigne might be taken as a general definition of the French point of view, so widespread is its application to the French:

I propose a life mean and without luster, but 'tis all one; all moral philosophy is applied as well to a private life as to one of the greatest employment. Every man carries the entire form of the human condition. Authors have hitherto communicated themselves to the people by some particular and foreign mark; I, the first of any, by my universal being, as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian, a poet or a lawyer. If the public complain that I speak too much of myself, I complain that they do not think exclusively of themselves.

French literature, therefore, is social. " La critique etrangere et la critique franchise se sont accordees a le proclamer," said

« • ^.,.x Gaston Paris. The public, whose approval Mon- Sociability , . . , < . ' _ , -. A ,

taigne craves, is always in a French writer s confidence. He writes to the public, for the public, about public questions generally. Discussion is the breath of French life, as conversation is one of its greatest arts. Even so individual a writer as Pascal addresses his Pensees to an unseen companion; and Pascal said, "the ego is hateful." The dialogue is a favorite form in French, from the medieval debat down to the confidente role in Classical French drama. Descartes defined reading as " a conversation with the best people of bygone ages." And one of the most personal of modern poets, Musset, liked poetry because " it is intelligible to the world, though spoken by the poet alone."

As a consequence, French writers choose their themes broadly with reference to their application. They seem to ask not only: is this my problem? but also, is it your problem? because, in Montaigne's words, it is a fundamentally human problem, as well as the problem of a grammarian, a poet or a lawyer. Look at any representative French work and you will see how generally true this is. The author makes an abstraction of his experience and then views it in the form of action. He exploits his idea or emotion to the full extent of its social value.

This accounts for the hospitality of French art, to which in a very real sense nothing human is inacceptable. " The [French] cathedrals," says Mr. Brownell, " are not feudal. They are the products of a spirit partly ecclesiastical, partly secular, but always social — the true Gallo-Roman spirit which, great as was the perfection attained by German feudalism in France, constantly struggled against and finally conquered its foreign Frankish foe." The same thing is true of French letters. Time and again, the French have borrowed an idea from without: it is they who socialize the idea, widen its application, standardize it, and thereupon send it broadcast over the world to bear fruit in a larger, more extended form. Thus during the Middle Ages France took over the Germanic idea of obligation and, through the efforts of her scholars and her poets, made it dominant over Europe; likewise in the Renaissance she chose the Italian idea of formal perfection or virtu, and in the later eighteenth century the northern idea of personality, and worked them over into their broadest, most social expression. France has been, and still is, the intellectual clearing-house of Europe.

A literature that is social is necessarily a literature of forrr^ fully as much as of content. To be sure, the sense of form has grown in France since the sixteenth century, Form ^owing to the cult of antiquity. But the trait is

nevertheless inherent in French culture. Kant once said: " The French may have the flowers of the tree of knowledge but they rarely possess its roots," and sweeping as the generalization is, there is this truth in it: that to them the form is j)ften as important as the idea. By form the French mean technique; that is, the observed principles or laws of form rather than the ethos of form itself, which is always individual, as it is in the Divine Comedy or in Goethe's Faust, or in most of Shakespeare's tragedies. A French play or novel is a very conscious product: the author is an adept in the laws of the genre, and his work is generally the best that training and talent can produce. At least, a minimum is left to chance or individual inspiration; the maximum is artistry, schooling, the interaction of critical power and the creative mind. The result is a high average: general proficiency in place of sporadic preeminence. " La FranclTest^n tout un pays de moyennes," said a distinguished Russian in a spirit of praise. Probably no literature has been so productive or so continuous as that of France. Certainly none is so rich in criticism, in reflections on the manner of life. Thus, in a very real sense, it is possible to speak of the " schools " of French literature, in which the critics play an important role. And the highest literary expression in France is, as Anatole France says of the landscape about Florence, une parfaite et mesuree ceuvre d'art. On the other hand, idiosyncrasy of genius has never flourished there as it has elsewhere, and it would be useless to look in French literature for a Hamlet, an Iliad or a Don Quixote.

It is clear that whatever the French may lack in range, they make up in homogeneity and poise. Witness their language with its strong Latin tradition toward balance and unity. The few words which the Roman conquerors of Gaul took over from the Celts did not perceptibly affect the word-stock of French. Even the Franks, whose conquest of Gaul in the fifth century gave to France her name and many of her institutions, did not alter the language except by the addition of a few hundred new words. So that in structure and even vocabulary French is an offspring of Popular Latin as it was spoken by Caesar's soldiers in Gaul, supplemented from time to time by other elements, one of which is Literary Latin. Here again, England presents an interesting contrast. There the Germanic form of speech, Anglo-Saxon, triumphed; until in the eleventh century (after

1066) it was temporarily thrust aside and French became the language of the higher classes, and consequently of literature. Hence English is dual in nature; at once Teutonic and Latin, a mixture of two opposing tendencies, which manifest themselves again and again in English writing; whereas, comparatively speaking, Fr<ench is a unit, and the literature as well as the language is informed throughout with the Latin genius of clarity and precision. " Ce qui n'est pas clair, n'est pas frangais," said Rivarol in a famous essay on the universality of French. To state a thing in French is to state it well ; that is, with accuracy and distinction. Renan affirmed that " truth lies in a shading " (" la verite est dans une nuance ") . The shadings, those subtle boundaries of truth, rarely escape a French writer's eye.

At the same time, there is a tendency in French to overstate an idea or emotion, to make it more pressing and effective than it really is. An excellent example is the French drama, where the difficulty presented so often leads to a logical but not to a very convincing conclusion. Hervieu's Le Dedale and Bernstein's Samson, to cite only modern instances, are dramatic but they are inconclusive: the cases depicted are too special to warrant a general inference such as the dramatist would have us make. The best literature proves nothing since demonstration is not its function. Or take Maupassant in the realm of fiction. As an expression of irony, of human stupidity, his Necklace {La Parure) is perfect, but as a picture of reality, this story is an argumentum in vacuo. It assumes a mistake — the necklace is " paste," not genuine — and it carries this mistake to an abstract conclusion. Thus the love of argument, so strong in the French, is also a limitation; granting that logical precision makes for clearness and intelligibility, it satisfies the mind but not the imagination.) Yet, in the hands of a genius like Racine, this very control intensifies the emotion and achieves effects of flawless and inevitable beauty.

Such an attention to form and method has given to French poetry a tendency which the Anglo-Saxon may find hard to grasp. France has had many wonderful poets: Hugo, Musset, Vigny, Chenier, Ronsard, Villon; and her collected poetry fills volumes. Nevertheless, French poetry has the externality of a fine art. The Gallic spirit is inventive. It is too critical, too self-conscious, too mathematical and logical to be deeply lyrical. The social instinct works havoc with the world of illusion and mystery in which the great lyrist moves. At all events, the French illusions are short-lived. They are the illusions of the market-place, they affect the masses more than the individual: honor, vanity, glory, equality — rather than loyalty, ambition, immortality, freedom. And the loneliness of genius, while it is seen in such a writer as Vigny, is rare in France. So, too, the French poet's attachments are to the visible world — the world of light and sunshine. It has been said that no verses express more clearly this side of the French temper than Regnier's Le Secret:

Car la forme, l'odeur et la beaute des choses Sont le seul souvenir dont on ne souffre pas.

Racine, the poet of deep feeling and with a vision turned inward, manages to externalize his emotions in the most tangible of forms: " II rase la prose," observes Lamaitre, " mais avec des ailes." Or take Hugo, who has sweep and sustained utterance, and a gift of imagery such as few poets can equal: again it is the artist in him that dominates the lyrist; his power of execution is greater than his inspiration, and his verse is oratorical and brilliant far more than it is passionately deep and sincere. If, then, the " lyric cry " is rare in France, and the quality of French verse is prevailingly temperate and moderate in comparison with ours, let us not forget that French poetry is formally the more artistic. There are " gems " of French verse which as regards technical perfection it would be difficult to match in other literatures. The French are apt at seizing the fleeting and transitory aspects of man's nature, at immortalizing a mood or whim, at endowing not only the humble but the commonplace with the eternity of art. The much-quoted line of Musset:

Mon verre n'est pas grand, mais je bois dans mon verre,

well expresses the crowded experience which French verse can portray, and Musset for all his technical imperfections is a great French poet.

On the other hand, while French poetry is often like prose, it l must not be forgotten that French prose is in a class by itself.] There are pages of Pascal, Flaubert, Rabelais, Chateaubriand, Anatole France, which are superior to anything else that has ever been written. Here the national genius for expression comes to full fruition. Rarely does one find in French prose an idea that is obscure, a character whose psychology is not intelligible, a situation the outlines of which are not visible to the inner eye. Of Flaubert, Henry James says: " To be intensely definite and perfectly positive, to know so well what he meant that he could at every point strikingly and conclusively verify it, was the first of his needs." Moreover, style to the French is at once the garment and the method of thought. /The control the French show in their writing is proverbial. Limpid, de^ scriptive, harmonious, suave, picturesque, as the case may be, French prose is the elaboration of thought, the presentation of the idea in action, the concrete realization of the impression the author wishes to convey. " Le style est Fhomme meme," said Buffon, and deflected as this phrase has been from its original meaning, the statement is often literally true. It is frequently in style, rather than in newness of idea, that the individuality of the French writer triumphs ; and the personal accent we look ! for in literature the French manifest not in what they say but \ in the way they say it. Hence, of the two kinds of prose, la bonne prose and la belle prose, France exemplifies the latter.

II

To sum up: the dominant traits of French literature are poise, harmony, reason, sympathy; a sense of structure and a sense of delicacy; a preference for ideas over things, but for Summary ac tive social ideas, not metaphysical personal ones. French literature is an immediate reflection of the esprit gaulois: brilliant, vivacious, good-natured, ironic, curious of everything essentially human; as M. Lanson has said: "more sensible than sensuous, but more sensuous than ethical." A race singularly conscious of itself, firm in the conviction that:

all the world's a stage And all the men and women merely players.

Consciously to play a part in life, to be an actor and at the same time an observer and a critic, never to take life too seriously nor yet to neglect it; this is the touchstone of the French point of view, and when all is said, French literature is its expression.

Many readers will therefore find in French authors a marked uniformity; or rather they will fail to see that variety must be sought in elaboration and detail, and not in background or theme. They will miss the more pronounced display of personality, the greater emphasis on idiosyncrasy, to which English literature has made them accustomed — often overlooking the fact that they have been blind to the swift analysis, the careful distinctions, the exquisite sense of form wherewith the greatest French writers have set forth life. Thus, little can be gained by reading a French writer hastily or with insufficient knowledge of the language. The reader must weigh the phrases, evaluate the words, institute comparisons, take account of the fact that the highest art is apparently the most simple; otherwise the literature of France will remain to him, in large measure, a book sealed with seven seals.

Further, the intellectual and emotional relations of the French are not primarily moral, in the English sense of the word. This could hardly be expected of a nation which views life so clearly as contact with humanity or to which living itself is an " art." " Montaigne," says Emerson, " is the frankest and honestest of men." You cannot deal with the social ideas on a large scale and not be outspoken. On the whole, the French would rather boast of imaginary crimes than pose as more virtuous than they are. With us conduct is personal and therefore inviolate; with the French it is conventional and thus more easily shifted to others' shoulders. Moral lapses in the strict sense are more easily pardoned in France than lapses in good form or etiquette, since the former affect the individual and not society directly. Moliere remarks : " On veut bien etre mediant ; mais on ne veut point etre ridicule " — a distinctly social attitude, in harmony with his conception of comedy and its flaying of the social vices: affectation, hypocrisy, avarice and misanthropy. For Moliere's Le Misanthrope is a " comedy," however tragic its chief character may seem to Anglo-Saxon eyes. On the other hand, in our workaday world nothing is a safer guide than le bon sens — and bon sens, as the social reason is called, has generally been uppermost in French character.