Chapter 6

Bien qu'elle ne fût pas insensibleau plaisirouà la vanité d'inspirer un sentiment sérieuxà un homme aussi légerque l'était Max dansson opinion, elle n'avait jamais pensé que cetteaffection pût devenirun jourdangeureusepourson repos.[6]Sensible au plaisir d'attirersérieusement un homme aussiléger, elle n'avait jamais penséque cette affection pût devenirdangeureuse.

It cannot, at least, be denied that the severe professor's style is economical, since it reduces the number of lines by nearly one-half. Subjected to this treatment, poor Mérimée, already far from fertile, would find himself the father of a few thin opuscules, symbolic thenceforth of his legendary dryness. Having become the Justin of all the Pompeius Troguses, Albalat places Lamartine himself upon the easel to tone down, for example,la finesse de sa peau rougissante comme à quinze ans sous les regards, tosa fine peau de jeune fille rougissante. What butchery! The words stricken out by M. Albalat are so far from being hackneyed that they would, on the contrary, correct and counteract the commonplaceness of the improved sentence. This surplusage conveys the exceedingly subtle observation of a man who has made a close study of women's faces—a man more tender than sensual, and touched by modesty rather than by carnal prestige. Good or bad, style cannot be corrected. Style is inviolable.

M. Albalat gives some very amusing lists ofclichés, or hackneyed phrases; but this criticism, at times, lacks measure. I cannot accept asclichés"kindly warmth," "precocious perversity," "restrained emotion," "retreating forehead," "abundant hair," or even "bitter tears," for tears can be "bitter" and can be "sweet." It should be understood, also, that the expression which exists as aclichéin one style, can occur as a renewed image in another. "Restrained emotion" is no more ridiculous than "simulated emotion," while, as for "retreating forehead," this is a scientific and quite accurate expression, which one has only to be careful about employing in the proper place. It is the same with the others. If such locutions were banished, literature would become a kind of algebra and could no longer be understood without the aid of long analytical operations. If the objection to them is that they have been overworked, it would be necessary to forego all words in common use as well as those devoid of mystery. But that would be a delusion. The commonest words and most current expressions can surprise us. Finally, the truecliché, as I have previously explained, may be recognized by this, that, whereas the image which it conveys, already faded, is halfway on the road to abstraction, it is not yet sufficiently insignificant to pass unperceived and to take its place among the signs which owe whatever life they may possess to the will of the intelligence.[7]Very often, in thecliché, one of the words has kept a concrete sense, and what makes us smile is less its triteness than the coupling of a living word with one from which the life has vanished. This can be seen clearly in such formulas as: "in the bosom of the Academy," "devouring activity," "open his heart," "sadness was painted on his face," "break the monotony," "embrace principles." However, there areclichésin which all the words seem alive—une rougeur colora ses joues; others in which all seem dead—il était au comble des ses vœux. But this last was formed at a time when the wordcomblewas thoroughly alive and quite concrete. It is because it still contains the residue of a sensible image that its union withvœuxdispleases us. In the preceding example the word colorer has become abstract, since the concrete verb expressing this idea iscolorier, and goes badly withrougeurand joues. I do not know just where a minute work on this part of the language, in which the fermentation is still unfinished, would lead us; but no doubt in the end it would be quite easy to demonstrate that, in the true notion of thecliché, incoherence has its place by the side of triteness. There would be matter in such a study for reasoned opinions that M. Albalat might render fruitful for the practice of style.

It is to be regretted that he has dismissed the subject of periphrasis in a few lines. We expected an analysis of this curious tendency to replace by a description the word which is the sign of the thing in question. This malady, which is very ancient, since enigmas have been found on Babylonian cylinders (that of the wind very nearly in the terms employed by our children), is perhaps the very origin of all poetry. If the secret of being a bore consists of saying everything, the secret of pleasing lies in saying just enough to be, not understood even, but divined. Periphrasis, as handled by the didactic poets, is perhaps ridiculous only because of the lack of poetic power which it indicates; for there are many agreeable ways of not naming what it is desired to suggest. The true poet, master of his speech, employs only periphrases at once so new and so clear in their shadowy half-light, that any slightly sensual intelligence prefers them to the too absolute word. He wishes neither to describe, to pique the curiosity, nor to show off his learning; but, whatever he does, he employs periphrases, and it is by no means certain that all those he creates will remain fresh long. The periphrasis is a metaphor, and thus has the same life-span as a metaphor. It is far indeed from the vague and purely musical periphrases of Verlaine:

Parfois aussi le dard d'un insecte jalouxInquiétait le col des belles sous les branches,

to the mythological enigmas of a Lebrun, who calls the silkworm

"L'amant des feuilles de Thisbé."

Here M. Albalat appropriately quotes Buffon to the effect that nothing does more to degrade a writer than the pains he takes to "express common or ordinary things in an eccentric or pompous manner. We pity him for having spent so much time making new combinations of syllables only to say what is said by everybody." Delille won fame by his fondness for the didactic periphrasis, but I think he has been misjudged. It is not fear of the right word that makes him describe what he should have named, but rather his rigid system of poetics, and his mediocre talent. He lacks precision because he lacks power, and he is very bad only when he is not precise. But whether as a result of method or emasculation, we are indebted to him for some amusing enigmas:

Ces monstres qui de loin semblent un vaste écueil.L'animal recouvert de son épaisse croûte,Celui dont la coquille est arrondie en voûte.L'équivoque habitant de la terre et des ondes.Et cet oiseau parleur que sa triste beautéNe dédommage pas de sa stérilité.

It should not, however, be thought that theHomme des Champs, from which these charades are taken, is a poem entirely to be despised. The Abbé Delille had his merits and, once our ears, deprived of the pleasures of rhythm and of number, have become exhausted by the new versification, we may recover a certain charm in full and sonorous verses which are by no means tiresome, and in landscapes which, while somewhat severe, are broad and full of air.

...Soit qu'une fraîche auroreDonne la vie aux fleurs qui s'empressent d'éclore,Soit que l'astre du monde, en achevant son tour,Jette languissamment les restes d'un beau jour.

Yet M. Albalat asks how it is possible to be personal and original. His answer is not very clear. He counsels hard work and concludes that originality implies an incessant effort. This is a very regrettable illusion. Secondary qualities would, doubtless, be easier to acquire, but is concision, for example, an absolute quality? Are Rabelais and Victor Hugo, who were great accumulators of words, to be blamed because M. de Pontmartin was also in the habit of stringing together all the words that came into his head, and of heaping up as many as a dozen or fifteen epithets in a single sentence? The examples given by Albalat are very amusing; but if Gargantua had not played as many as two hundred and sixteen different and agreeable games under the eye of Ponocrates, we should feel very sorry, though "the great rules of the game are eternal."

Concision is sometimes the merit of dull imaginations. Harmony is a rarer and more decisive quality. There is no comment to be made on what Albalat says in this connection, unless it be that he believes a trifle too much in the necessary relations between the lightness or heaviness of a word, for example, and the idea which it expresses. This is an illusion which springs from our habits of thought, and an analysis of the sounds destroys it completely. It is not merely, says Villemain, imitation of the Greek or the Latinfremerethat has given us the wordfrémir; it is also the relation of its sound to the emotion expressed.Horreur, terreur, doux, suave, rugir, soupirer, pesant, léger, come to us not only from Latin, but from an intimate sense which has recognized and adopted them as analogous to the impression produced by the object.[8]If Villemain, whose opinion M. Albalat accepted, had been better versed in linguistics, he would doubtless have invoked the theory of roots, which at one time gave to his nonsense an appearance of scientific force. As it stands, the celebrated orator's brief paragraph would afford very agreeable matter for discussion. It is quite evident that ifsuaveandsuaireinvoke impressions generally remote from each other, this is not because of the quality of their sound. In English,sweetandsweatare words which resemble each other.Douxis not moredouxthantouxand the other monosyllables of the same tone. Isrugirmore violent thanrougirorvagir?Légeris the contraction of a Latin word of five syllables,leviarium. Iflégèrecarries with it its own meaning, doesmégèrelikewise?Pesantis neither more nor less heavy thanpensant, the two forms being, moreover, doublets of a single Latin original, pensare. As forlourd, this isluridus, which meant many things: yellow, wild, savage, strange, peasant, heavy—such, doubtless, is its genealogy.Lourdis no more heavy thanfauveis cruel. Think also ofmauveandvelours. If the Englishthinmeans the same as the Frenchmince, how does it happen that the idea of its opposite,épais, is expressed bythick? Words are negative sounds which the mind charges with whatever sense it pleases. There are coincidences, chance agreements, between certain sounds and certain ideas. There arefrémir, frayeur, froid, frileux, frisson. Yes; but there are also:frein, frère, frêle, frêne, fret, frime, and twenty other analogous sonorities, each of which is provided with a very different meaning.

M. Albalat is more successful in the balance of the two chapters where he treats successively word harmony and sentence harmony. He is right in calling the Goncourts' styleun style désécrit. This is still more strikingly true applied to Loti, in whose work there are no longer any sentences. His pages are thickets of phrases. The tree has been felled, its branches have been lopped; there is nothing left but to make faggots of them.

Beginning with the ninth lesson,L'Art d'écrirebecomes still more didactic, and we encounter Invention, Disposition and Elocution. I should find it hard to explain just how M. Albalat succeeds in separating these three phases of composition, which are really one. Theart of developing a subjecthas been refused me by Providence. I leave all that to the unconscious, nor do I know anything more of theart of invention. I believe that an author invents by reversing the method of Newton—that is, without ever thinking about it, while, as for elocution, I should hesitate to trust myself to the method of recasting. One does not recast, one remakes, and it is so tedious to do the same thing twice, that I approve of those who throw the stone at the first turn of the sling. But here is what proves the inanity of literary counsels: Théophile Gautier wrote the complicated pages ofCapitaine Fracasseat odd moments on a printer's table, among half-opened bundles of papers, in the stench of oil and ink, and it is said that Buffon recopied eighteen times theÉpoques de la Nature.[9]This divergence is of no importance, since, as M. Albalat should have said, there are writers who make their corrections mentally, putting on paper only the swift or sluggish product of the unconscious, while there are others who need to see exteriorized what they have written, and to see it more than once, in order to correct it—that is, to understand it. Yet, even in the case of mental corrections, exterior revision is often profitable, provided, as Condillac puts it, the writer knows how to stop, to bring to a conclusion.[10]But too often the demon of Betterment has tormented and sterilized intelligence. It is also true that it is a great misfortune to lack self-criticism. Who will dare to choose between the writer who does not know what he is doing, and the one who, endowed with a double nature, can watch himself as he works? There is Verlaine and there is Mallarmé. One must follow the bent of one's own genius.

M. Albalat excels in definitions. "Description is the animated depiction of objects." He means that, in order to describe, a writer must, like a painter, place himself before the landscape, whether this be real or imaginary. Judging by the analysis that he makes of a page ofTélémaque, it seems clear that Fénelon was only moderately endowed with visual imagination, and more moderately still with the gift of words. In the first twenty lines of the description of Calypso's grotto, the worddouxoccurs three times, and the verbformerfour. This has, indeed, become for us the very type of the inexpressive style, but I persist in believing that it once had its freshness and grace, and that the appeal which it made when it appeared was not unjustified. We smile at this opulence of gilt paper and painted flowers—the ideal of an archbishop who had remained a theological student—and forget that no one had described nature sinceAstrée. Those sweet oranges, those syrups diluted with spring-water, were refreshments fit for Paradise. It would be cruel to compare Fénelon, not with Homer, but even with the Homer of Leconte de Lisle. Translations too well done—those that may be said to possess literary literalness—have in fact the inevitable result of transforming into concrete, living images everything which had become abstract in the original. Did λευκοβραχίων mean one who had white arms, or was it merely a worn-out epithet? Did λευκάκανθα suggest an image such asblanche épine, or a neutral idea like aubépine, which has lost its representative value? We cannot tell; but, judging dead languages by the living, we must suppose that most of the Homeric epithets had already reached the stage of abstraction in Homer's own time.[11]It is possible that foreigners may find in a work as outworn for us asTélémaque, the same pleasure which we derive from theIliaddone in bas-relief by Leconte de Lisle.Mille fleurs naissantes émaillaient les tapis vertsis aclichéonly when read for the hundredth time. New, the image would be ingenious and pictorial. Poe's poems, translated by Mallarmé, acquired a life at once mysterious and precise which they do not possess to the same degree in the original, and, from Tennyson's Mariana, agreeable verse full of commonplaces and padding, grey in tone, the same poet, by substituting the concrete for the abstract, made a fresco of lovely autumnal colouring. I offer these remarks merely as a preface to a theory of translation. They will suffice here to indicate that, where it is a question of style, comparison should be made only between texts in the same language and belonging to the same period.

It is very difficult, after fifty years, to appreciate the real originality of a style. To do so, one should have read all the notable books in the order of their publication. It is at least possible to judge of the present, and also to accord some weight to the contemporary opinions of a work. Barbey d'Aurevilly found in Georges Sand a profusion ofanges de la destinée, oflampes de la foi, and ofcoupes de miel, which certainly were not invented by her any more than the rest of her washed-out style; but "these decrepit tropes" would have been none the better if she had invented them. I feel sure that the cup, whose brim has been rubbed with honey, goes back to the obscure ages of pre-Hippocratic medicine. Hackneyed expressions enjoy a long life. M. Albalat notes justly "that there are images which can be renewed and rejuvenated." There are many such, and among them some of the commonest; but I cannot see that, in calling the moon themorne lampe, Leconte de Lisle has been very successful in freshening up Lamartine'slampe d'or. M. Albalat, who gives evidence of wide reading, should attempt a catalogue of metaphors by subject: the moon, the stars, the rose, the dawn, and all the "poetic" words. We should thus obtain a collection of a certain utility for the study of words and psychology of elementary emotions. Perhaps we should learn at last why the moon is so dear to poets. Meanwhile he announces his next book,La Formation du style par l'assimilation des auteurs; and I suppose that, once the series is complete, everyone will write well—that there will henceforth be a good medium style in literature, as there is in painting and in the other fine arts, which the State protects so successfully. Why not an Académie Albalat, as well as an Académie Julian?

Here, then, is a book which lacks almost nothing except not having a purpose, except being a work of pure and disinterested analysis; but, were it to have an influence, were it to multiply the number of honourable writers, it would deserve our maledictions. Instead of putting the manual of literature and all the arts within the reach of all, it would be wiser to transport their secrets to the top of some Himalaya. Yet there are no secrets. To be a writer, it is enough to have natural talent for the calling, to practise with perseverance, to learn a little more every morning, and to experience all human sensations. As for the art of "creating images," we are obliged to believe that this is absolutely independent of all literary culture, since the loveliest, truest and boldest images are enclosed in the words we use every day—age-old products of instinct, spontaneous flowering of the intellectual garden.

1899.

[1]On the importance and influence of Protestantism at this time, see the work of E. Hugues, pilfered by Protestant writers for the last twenty-five years:Histoire de la Restauration du Protestantisme en France au XVIIIesiècle(1872).

[2]A book so little known and disfigured in its pious editions. Nothing could be less pious, however, or less edifying, after the first volume, than this curious and confused encyclopedia, where we findRenéand statistical tables,Atalaand a catalogue of Greek painters. It is a universal history of civilization and a plan of social reconstruction.

[3]In speaking of the eighteenth century, exception must always be made of the grandiose and solitary Buffon, in his tower at Montbard, who was, in the modern sense of these words, a scientist, a philosopher, and a poet.

[4]An attempt will be made some day in a study in theWorld of Words, to determine whether words have really a meaning—that is to say, a constant value.

[5]De l'Enseignement de notre langue.

[6]M. Albalat has italicized everything he deems "banal or useless."

[7]See the chapter on thecliché, in my book,L'Esthétique de la Langue française.

[8]L'Art d'écrire, p. 138.

[9]Or rather, had them copied by his secretaries. He afterwards reworked the clean copy. There is a whole volume on this subject:Les Manuscrits de Buffon, by P. Flourens, Paris, Garnier, 1860.

[10]There is, on this point, a pretty passage from Quintilian, quoted by M. Albalat, p. 213.

[11]I take it for granted that the reader no longer believes that the Homeric poems were composed at haphazard by a multitude of rhapsodists of genius, and that it was enough to string these improvisations together to get theIliadand theOdyssey.

Certain men have received a special gift, which distinguishes them in a striking fashion from their fellows. The moment discus-throwers or generals, poets or clowns, sculptors or financiers rise above the common level, they demand the particular attention of the observer. The predominance of one of their faculties marks them out for analysis, and for that analytical method which consists in successive differentiation. We come thus to discern in mankind a class whose distinguishing trait is difference, just as, for common humanity, this trait is resemblance. There are men who let us know nothing of what they are going to say when they begin to speak. These are few. There are others who tell us all, as soon as they open their mouths. It is alleged that in this class there are marked disparities; for it is undeniable that, even among those who, at first sight, resemble each other most closely, there are no two creatures who are not, at bottom, contradictory. It is the highest glory of man, and the one that science has been unable to wrest from him, that there is no science of man.

If there be no science of the common man, still less is there a science of the different man, since the manifestation of this difference makes him solitary and unique, that is to say, incomparable. Yet, just as there is a general physiology, so there is a general psychology, also. Whatever their nature, all the beasts of the earth breathe the same air, and the brain of the genius, like that of the ordinary mortal, derives its primordial form from sensation. We have only a rough idea by what mechanism sensation is transformed into action. All we know is that the intervention of consciousness is not needed to bring about this transformation. We know also that this intervention may prove harmful through its power to modify the predetermined logic, to break the series of associations in order to create in the mind the first link of a new volitional chain.

Consciousness, which is the principle of liberty, is not the principle of art. It is possible to express quite clearly what has been conceived in the unconscious shades. Intellectual activity, far from being intimately allied with the functioning of consciousness, is more often disconcerted by it. We listen badly to a symphony, when we know we are listening. We think badly, when we know we are thinking. Consciousness of thinking is not thought.

The subconscious state is the state of automatic cerebration in full freedom, while intellectual activity pursues its course at the extreme limit of consciousness, a little below it and beyond its reach. Subconscious thought may remain for ever unknown. It may, on the other hand, come to light, either at the precise moment when the automatic activity ceases, or later—even after several years. These facts of cogitation do not, then, belong to the domain of the unconscious, properly speaking, since they can become conscious. Besides, it will doubtless be preferable to reserve to this rather vast word the meaning given it by a particular philosophy. The subconscious state differs also from the state of dreams, though dreams may be one of its manifestations. The dream is almost always absurd, with a special sort of absurdity, and is incoherent or orderly, according to its associations which are entirely passive,[2]and whose procession differs even from that of ordinary passive associations, conscious or unconscious.[3]

Imaginative intellectual creation is inseparable from the frequency of the subconscious state, and in this category of creations must be included the discovery of the scientist and the ideological construction of the philosopher. All who have invented or discovered something new in any field whatsoever, are imaginatives as well as observers. The most deliberate, the most thoughtful, the most painstaking writer is constantly, and in spite of himself, enriched by the effort of the subconscious. No work is so completely a product of the will that it does not owe some beauty or novelty to the subconscious. No sentence, perhaps, however worked over, was ever spoken or written in absolute accord with the will. The search for the right word in the vast, deep reservoir of verbal memory is itself an act which escapes so completely from the control of the will, that very often the word on its way flees at the very moment when consciousness is about to perceive and to grasp it. Everyone knows how hard it is to find, by sheer force of will, the word wanted, and also with what ease and rapidity certain writers summon up, in the heat of composition, the rarest or the most appropriate words.

It is, however, imprudent to say: "Memory is always unconscious."[4]Memory is a secret pool where, unknown to us, the subconscious casts its net. But consciousness fishes there quite as readily. This pond, full of chance fish previously caught by sensation, is particularly well known to the subconscious. Consciousness is less skilful in provisioning itself from this source, though it has at its service several useful tricks, such as the logical association of ideas and the localization of images. Man acquires a different personality, according as the brain works in the darkness or by the lantern-light of consciousness; but, save in pathological cases, the second of these states is not so well defined that the first cannot intervene without interrupting the effort. It is under these conditions, and in accordance with this concert, that most works conceived, in the first instance either by the will or by the dream faculty, are completed.

In Newton's case (as a result of constant attention) the work of the subconscious is continuous, but connects itself periodically with voluntary activity. Now conscious, now unconscious, his thought explores all the possibilities. With Goethe, the sub-conscious is almost always active and ready to deliver to the will the multiple works which it elaborates without its aid and far from it. Goethe himself has explained this in a marvellously lucid and instructive page:[5]"Every faculty of action, and consequently every talent, implies an instinctive force at work unconsciously and in ignorance of the rules whose principle is, however, implicit. The sooner a man becomes educated, the sooner he learns that there is a technique, an art, which will furnish him the means of attaining the regular development of his natural faculties. It would be impossible for what he acquires to injure in any way his original individuality. The supreme genius is he who assimilates and appropriates everything without prejudice to his innate character. Here we are confronted with the divers relations between consciousness and unconsciousness. Through an effort of exercise, of apprenticeship, of persistent and continuous reflection, through results obtained, whether good or bad, through the movements of resistance and attraction, the human organs amalgamate, combine unconsciously the instinctive and the acquired, and from this amalgam—from this chemistry at once conscious and unconscious—there issues at last a harmonious whole which fills the world with words. It is nearly sixty years since, in the full flush of my youth, the conception ofFaustcame to me perfectly clear and distinct, all its scenes unfolding before my eyes in the order of their succession. From that day the plan never left me, and living with it in view, I took it up in detail and composed, one after the other, those bits which, at the moment, interested me most, with the result that, when this interest has failed me, there have occurred gaps, as in the second part. The difficulty, at such points, was to obtain, by sheer force of will, what, in reality, is obtainable only by a spontaneous act of nature." It also happens conversely that a work conceived in advance and deferred in execution, comes at last to impose itself upon the will. The subconscious then seems to overflow and submerge the conscious, dictating things that are written only with repugnance. This is the obsession which nothing discourages, and which triumphs over even the most lackadaisical laziness, the most violent aversion. Later, once the work is completed, there is often experienced a sort of satisfaction. The idea of duty, which, ill understood, causes so many ravages in timid consciences, is no doubt an elaboration of the subconscious. Obsession is perhaps the force which impels to sacrifice, just as it is that which incites to suicide.

Schopenhauer used to compare the obscure and continuous effort of the unconscious, in the midst of impressions imprisoned in the memory, to rumination. This rumination, which is purely physiological, may suffice to modify convictions or beliefs. Hartmann discovered that a hostile idea, at first brushed aside, succeeded, after a certain time, in supplanting in his mind the idea which he was accustomed to entertain of man or of a fact: "If you wish or have the occasion to express your opinion upon the same subject, after days, weeks, or even months, you discover, to your great surprise, that you have undergone a veritable mental revolution—that you have completely abandoned opinions which, up to that time, you had firmly believed to be yours, and that new ideas have completely taken their place. I have often noted this unconscious processus of digestion and mental assimilation in my own case, and have always instinctively refrained from disturbing the process by premature reflection, whenever it involved important questions affecting my conceptions of the world and of the mind."[6]This observation might be extended to the exceedingly interesting problem of conversion. There is no doubt that people have suddenly felt themselves brought, or brought back, to religious ideas, when they had neither wish nor fear nor hope for this change. In conversion the will can act only after a long effort on the part of the subconscious, and when all the elements of the new conviction have been secretly assembled and combined. This new force, which supports the convert, and whose origin is unknown to him, is what theology calls grace. Grace is the result of a subconscious effort. Grace is subconscious.

Like Hartmann, but instinctively, and not, in his case, by philosophic preconception, Alfred de Vigny entrusted to the subconscious the nurture of his ideas. When they were ripe, he recovered them. They came back of their own accord to offer themselves rich with all the consequences of their secret burgeoning. It may be supposed that, like Goethe, he was a subconscious whose promissory notes were on very long time, since Vigny left, between certain of his works, unusually long intervals. It is highly probable that, if there are individuals whose subconsciousness is inactive, there are others who, after a period of activity, cease suddenly to produce, either as a result of premature exhaustion, or through a modification in the relations of the brain cells. Racine offers the singular example of a twenty years' silence broken just halfway by two works which have only a formal resemblance to those of his first phase. Can it be supposed that it was through religious scruple that he so long refused to listen to the suggestions of the subconscious? Can it be supposed that religion, which had modified the nature of his perception, had, at the same time, diminished the physiological power of his brain? Such a supposition would run counter to all other observations, which go to show, on the contrary, that a new belief is a new excitant. It seems, then, probable that Racine became silent simply because he had almost nothing more to say. It is a common adventure, and he found in religion the common consolation.

A distinction should then be made between two sorts of subconscious individuals—those whose energy is short-lived and strong, and those whose force is less ardent but more sustained. The two extremes are exemplified by the man who produces a remarkable work in his early youth, then ceases, and by the man who offers for sixty years the spectacle of a mediocre, useless and continuous effort. I am speaking, of course, of those works in which the imaginative intelligence plays the major part—works in which the subconscious is always the master-collaborator.

More practically, and from a totally different point of view, M. Chabaneix, having studied the continuous subconscious, divides it into nocturnal and waking subconsciousness. If the former be a question of sleep or of the moments preceding sleep, it is oneiric or pre-oneiric. Maury, who was particularly afflicted by them, has carefully considered the hallucinations which are formed the moment the eyes close in sleep. It is not clear that these hallucinations which are called hypnagogic, and which are almost always visual, can have a special influence on the ideas undergoing elaboration in the brain. They are rather embryonic dreams which influence the course of the thought only as dreams influence it. It happens, at times, that the conscious effort of the brain is prolonged during the dream, even reaching its goal there, and that, on awaking, the dreamer finds himself, without reflection or difficulty, master of a problem, a poem, a combination, which had baffled him previously. Burdach, a Koenigsberg professor, made, in his dreams, several physiological discoveries which he was afterwards able to verify. A dream was sometimes the point of departure for an undertaking. Sometimes a work was entirely conceived and executed during sleep. It is highly probable, however, that it is the conscious reason which, at the moment of awaking, judges and rectifies the dream spontaneously, gives it its true value, and divests it of that incoherence peculiar to all dreams, even the most rational.

Inspiration, during the waking state, seems the clearest manifestation of the subconscious in the domain of intellectual creation. In its most pronounced form, it would seem to come very close to somnambulism. Certain attitudes of Socrates (according to Aulus Gellius), of Diderot, of Blake, of Shelley and of Balzac, give force to this opinion. Doctor Régis[7]says that almost all men of genius have been "waking sleepers" butt the waking sleeper is not infrequently an "absent-minded" individual—one whose mind tends to become concentrated upon a problem. Thus the excess and the absence of psychological consciousness would seem, in certain cases, to manifest themselves by identical phenomena. Of what did Socrates think days when he remained motionless? Did he think? Was he conscious of his thought? Do the fakirs think? And Beethoven, when, hatless and coatless, he let himself be arrested as a tramp? Was he under voluntary obsession, or in a quasi-somnambulistic condition? Did he know what he was pondering so deeply, or was his cerebral activity unconscious? John Stuart Mill composed his work on logic in the streets of London, as he went daily from his house to the offices of the India Company. Will anyone believe that this work was not planned in a state of perfect consciousness? What was subconscious in Mill, says M. Chabaneix, was the effort to make his way in a crowded street. "There was here automatism of the inferior centres." This reversal of terms—more frequent than certain psychologists have believed—may suggest doubts as to the true nature of inspiration. One ought at least to ascertain whether, from the moment when the realization—even purely cerebral—of a work begins, it is possible for this effort to remain wholly subconscious. Mozart's letter explains nobody but Mozart: "When I feel well and am in a good humour, whether riding in a carriage or taking a walk after a hearty meal, or at night when I cannot sleep, thoughts come thronging to me, and without the slightest effort. Where do they come from, and by what avenue do they reach me? I know nothing about it, have nothing to do with it. I keep in my head those that please me, and hum them—at least, so others have told me. Once I have my air, another soon comes to join it. The work grows, I hear it continually and get it more and more distinct, till at last the composition is entirely completed in my head, though it may be a long one.... All this takes place in me as in a beautiful, distinct dream.... If I start to write afterwards, I have nothing to do but to take out of the sack of my brain what has previously accumulated there, as I have explained to you. Thus it takes scarcely any time at all to put the whole thing on paper. Everything is already in perfect shape, and my score seldom differs very much from what I had in my head beforehand. It does not bother me to be interrupted while I am writing...."[8]With Mozart, the whole process is, therefore, subconscious, and the material labour of execution amounts to little more than mere copying.

I have seen a writer hesitate to correct his spontaneous composition for fear of marring the tone. He was aware that the state in which he corrected would be quite different from that in which he had written, and in which he had, at the same time, conceived his work. Often a word overheard, an attitude caught sight of, a singular individual passed in the street, gave him the sole suggestion for his tales, which he improvised in three or four hours. If he attempted to follow a preconceived plan, he almost always abandoned it after the first page, and finished his story in accordance with a new logic, reaching a conclusion quite different from that which had seemed best to him when he began. Some of these plans had been drafted under so strong a subconscious influence, that later he no longer understood them, recognized them only by the writing, and was able to determine their date only by the kind of paper he had used, and by the colour of the ink. On the contrary, other projects (for longer works) recurred to him quite frequently. He was conscious of thinking of them several times a day, and was convinced that it was these reveries, even when vague and inconsistent, that rendered the work of execution comparatively easy. In fact, I have never seen him seriously preoccupied with regard to works which were, however, supposed to be the result of a rather arduous effort. He never spoke of them, and I believe firmly that he never gave them a conscious thought till the moment when he wrote the terrible first lines. But, once the work was under way, almost all his intellectual life concentrated on it, the periods of subconscious rumination perpetually returning to join those of voluntary meditation.

As nearly as I have been able to make out, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam had this same method of working. Once an idea had entered his mind—and it sometimes entered quite suddenly, in the course of a conversation most often, for he was a great talker, and profited by everything—this idea, which had come in timidly and silently through the side-door, soon installed itself as if it were at home, and invaded all the reserve spaces of the subconscious. Then, from time to time, it rose to the conscious level, and really obliged Villiers to act under its obsession. At such moments, no matter who was with him, he talked. He talked even when he was alone. Indeed he always talked as if he were alone, when he talked of his idea. I heard thus, fragmentary, several of his last stories, and once when we were seated in front of a café on the boulevard, I had the impression that I was listening to veritable mental wanderings in which this assertion recurred periodically: "There was a cock! There was!" It was only some months later, whenLe Chant du Coqappeared, that I understood. He spoke in a low voice, without addressing me. Yet his conscious aim, in thus turning over his ideas aloud, was to attempt to divine their effect upon a hearer. But, little by little, this purpose became obscured. It was the subconscious that was talking in his stead. He worked slowly. There exist five or six superimposed manuscripts ofL'Ève Future, and the first differs so much from the last that Edison's name alone serves to link them together. It is often said of a man, who has written little, that he has done little work; but I am convinced that Villiers de l'lsle-Adam never stopped working an instant, even when asleep. In spite of the often absolute blockade that his ideas established about his attention, no mind ever worked more rapidly or was better gifted for conversation. He knew nothing of the twilight moments of awaking. After the fewest hours of sleep, he found himself, at a bound, in full possession of his verve and of his lucidity. Though, he was unquestionably the man of his books, it would, however, be possible to find in him the sketch of a dual personality, in which the conscious and unconscious so overlapped that it would be difficult to disentangle them. It would, on the other hand, be easy to write two lives of Mozart—one on the social individual, the other on the man in his second state, both perfectly legitimate.

Baudelaire used to say: "Inspiration means working every day"; but this aphorism does not appear to epitomize his personal experience. Regular daily work is, so to speak, inspiration regularized, domesticated, enslaved. These terms do not involve a contradiction, for it is certain that the second state can only gain in depth by becoming periodic. Habit, so powerful, reinforces nature to strengthen a psychological state which then comes to be a veritable necessity. Those who depart from a daily routine experience a certain uneasiness both during and after their regular working-hours—sometimes a real distress—especially if they remain in the same surroundings. Remorse has, perhaps, no other origin, whether it be connected with an habitual act which has not been accomplished, or with an act which is not habitual, and which has violently interrupted the customary procession of the days.

If inspiration be a second state, it may, then, be a second state induced voluntarily. There is no doubt that artists, writers, scientists can work without preparation when obliged to, spurred on only by necessity, and that, on the other hand, the work thus produced is quite as good as that done entirely for its own sake. This does not mean that the subconscious has remained inactive during the effort initiated by the will, but that its activity has been induced. There is, then, a subconscious state which is not spontaneous, which comes to mingle with the conscious when required by the will, but which, little by little, as the work progresses, substitutes itself for the will. It is often enough to set to work, in order to feel all the difficulties that had paralyzed effort vanish one by one; but perhaps this reasoning is paralogical, and the work has precisely become possible only because of the preliminary breaking-down of the obstacles which had confronted the mind in the first place. In either case, however, there is evident intervention of the subconscious forces.

How does a sensation become an image, the image an idea? How does the idea develop? How does it assume the form which seems best to us? How, in writing, is contribution levied upon the verbal memory? These are all questions which seem to me insoluble, yet whose solution would be necessary in order to formulate a precise definition of inspiration. "Neither reflection nor will-power can take the place of inspiration for the purpose of original creation," writes M. Ribot.[9]No doubt; but reflection and force of will may nevertheless have their rôle in the evolution of this mysterious phenomenon, and then, too; on the other hand, cases of pure intellectual automatism are rather rare. It must doubtless be supposed that those who are capable of experiencing the happy influence of inspiration, are also those most capable of feeling with force and with frequency the shocks of the external world. Imaginatives are also sensitives. Their brain reserves must be very rich in elements. This supposes a constant supply of sensations, as well as a very lively sensibility and an incessantly renewed capacity for feeling. This sensibility, too, belongs, in large part, to the domain of the subconscious. There are, according to Leibnitz's expression, "thoughts which our soul does not perceive." There are also sensations which our senses do not perceive, and it is perhaps these sensations which leave our brain as they entered it—subconsciously. The most fruitful observations are those which we make without knowing it. To live without thinking of life is often the best means for coming to know life. After half a century and more, a man sees the surroundings, the scenes, and the events of his unreflecting childhood rise before him. As a child, he had dwelt in the external world as in an extension of himself, with a purely physiological concern. He had seen without seeing. Yet now, while the middle distance remains veiled in mist, it is this period of his most fleeting impressions that returns and takes on life before his eyes. It is very evident that the sensation, which has entered us without our being aware of it, can never, at any moment, be voluntarily evoked; but the conscious sensation, on the contrary, can return suddenly, without any assistance from the will. The subconscious has, then, dominion over two orders of sensations, whereas consciousness has but one at its disposal. This may explain why will and reflection have so restricted a share in the creations of literature and of art.

But what is their rôle in the rest of life?

In principle, man is an automaton, and it would seem that in him consciousness is an acquisition, an added faculty. Let us not be deceived. Because man walks, acts, talks, he is not necessarily conscious, nor is he ever completely conscious. Consciousness, if we take the word in its precise, absolute sense, is without doubt the possession of the few. In crowds men become particularly automatic. Indeed, their very instinct to herd together, to do all of them the same thing at the same time, is unmistakable evidence as to the nature of their intelligence. How can we suppose consciousness and will to exist in the members of those dense throngs which, on days of festivals or during disorders, move forward in a mass toward the same point, with the same cries and the same gestures? They are ants, that come out from under the blades of grass after a rain, and nothing more. The conscious man, who mingles without reflection in the crowd, who acts as the crowd acts, loses his personality. He is now merely one of the tentacles of the great artificial octopus, and almost all his sensations die away in the collective brain of the hypothetical animal. From this contact he will bring back next to nothing. The man who comes out of the crowd, like the man saved from drowning, has one recollection only—that of having fallen into the water.

It is among the small number of the conscious élite that must be sought the veritably superior examples of a humanity of which they are, not the leaders—that would be a pity, and too contrary to instinct—but the judges. However—and this is a subject for serious meditation—these individuals, raised above the rest, attain their full power only at moments when the conscious, becoming subconscious, opens the locks of the brain and lets the renewed floods of sensation rush back to the world whence they were derived. They are magnificent instruments on which the subconscious alone plays with genius, for it, too, is subconscious. Goethe is the type of these dual men, and the supreme hero of intellectual humanity.

There are other men, not less rare, but less complete, in whom the will plays but a very ordinary rôle, and who are nothing the moment they cease to be under the influence of the subconscious. Their genius is often only the purer and more energetic because of this. They are more docile instruments under the breath of the unknown God. But, like Mozart, they do not know what they do. They obey an irresistible force. That is why Gluck had his piano moved out into the middle of a meadow, in the full sunlight. That is why Haydn gazed at a ring, why Crébillon lived surrounded by dogs, why Schiller frequently inhaled the odour of rotten apples with which he had filled the drawer of his table. Such are the most innocent fantasies of the subconscious. There are others that are both more insistent and more terrible.

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