Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely love’s contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vain ego, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The contrast is perfect.
Jealousy is a terrible thing. It resembles love, only it is precisely love’s contrary. Instead of wishing for the welfare of the object loved, it desires the dependence of that object upon itself, and its own triumph. Love is the forgetfulness of self; jealousy is the most passionate form of egotism, the glorification of a despotic, exacting, and vain ego, which can neither forget nor subordinate itself. The contrast is perfect.
Doubting Amiel still thinks that Christ is better than Buddha:
Sorrow is the most tremendous of all realities in the sensible world, but the transfiguration of sorrow, after the manner of Christ, is a more beautiful solution of the problem than the extirpation of sorrow, after the method of Cakyamouni [Buddha].
Sorrow is the most tremendous of all realities in the sensible world, but the transfiguration of sorrow, after the manner of Christ, is a more beautiful solution of the problem than the extirpation of sorrow, after the method of Cakyamouni [Buddha].
Amiel was a naturally noble spirit, not equal to making for himself the career that he needed. But the right career, made for him, would have left to history and to literature a very different man from the writer of Amiel’s “Journal.”
The very latest conspicuous French candidate for renown as a writer ofpenséesis JosephRoux, a rural Roman Catholic priest, and a man still living. Out of a volume of his “Thoughts” lately translated and published in America under the title of “Meditations of a Parish Priest,” we show the following specimen of literary criticism peculiarly pertinent to the subject of the present chapter:
Pascal is somber, La Rochefoucauld bitter, La Bruyère malicious, Vauvenargues melancholy, Chamfort acrimonious, Joubert benevolent, Swetchine gentle.Pascal seeks, La Rochefoucauld suspects, La Bruyère spies, Vauvenargues sympathizes, Chamfort condemns, Joubert excuses, Swetchine mourns.Pascal is profound, La Rochefoucauld penetrating, La Bruyère sagacious, Vauvenargues delicate, Chamfort paradoxical, Joubert ingenious, Swetchine contemplative.
Pascal is somber, La Rochefoucauld bitter, La Bruyère malicious, Vauvenargues melancholy, Chamfort acrimonious, Joubert benevolent, Swetchine gentle.
Pascal seeks, La Rochefoucauld suspects, La Bruyère spies, Vauvenargues sympathizes, Chamfort condemns, Joubert excuses, Swetchine mourns.
Pascal is profound, La Rochefoucauld penetrating, La Bruyère sagacious, Vauvenargues delicate, Chamfort paradoxical, Joubert ingenious, Swetchine contemplative.
Pensée-writing has gained such headway in France, there is so much literary history behind it there, and it is in itself so fascinating a form of literary activity, that, in that country at least, the fashion will probably never pass away.
XXV.
EPILOGUE.
Howmuch author’s anguish of self-tasking and of self-denial, in exploration, study, selection, rejection, condensation, retrenchment, to say nothing of the anxiety to be clear in expression, to be true, to be proportionate, to be just, finally, too, to be entertaining as well as instructive—this little book has cost the producer of it, no one is likely ever to guess that has not tried a similar task with similar application of conscience himself.
For instance, to name Ronsard, the brilliant, the once sovereign Ronsard—lately, after so long occultation of his orb, come, through the romanticists of to-day, or shall we write “of yesterday”? almost to brightness again—to name this poet, without at least giving in specimen the following celebrated sonnet from his hand, which, for the sake of making our present point the clearer, we may now show in a neat version by Mr. Andrew Lang (but why should Mr. Lang, in his fourth line, change Ronsard’s “fair” to “young”?):
When you are very old, at eveningYou’ll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,Humming my songs, “Ah well, ah well-a-day!When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing.”None of your maidens that doth hear the thing,Albeit with her weary task foredone,But wakens at my name, and calls you oneBlest, to be held in long remembering.I shall be low beneath the earth, and laidOn sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade,While you beside the fire, a grandame gray,My love, your pride, remember and regret;Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet,And gather roses while ’tis called to-day:
When you are very old, at evening
You’ll sit and spin beside the fire, and say,
Humming my songs, “Ah well, ah well-a-day!
When I was young, of me did Ronsard sing.”
None of your maidens that doth hear the thing,
Albeit with her weary task foredone,
But wakens at my name, and calls you one
Blest, to be held in long remembering.
I shall be low beneath the earth, and laid
On sleep, a phantom in the myrtle shade,
While you beside the fire, a grandame gray,
My love, your pride, remember and regret;
Ah, love me, love! we may be happy yet,
And gather roses while ’tis called to-day:
—then, for another instance, to pass over Boileau and not bring forward from him even so much as the following characteristic epigram, wherein this wit and satirist pays his sarcastic respects to that same poet Cotin whom (pp. 81 ff.) we showed Molière mocking under the name of “Trissotin” (here we must do our own translating):
In vain, with thousandfold abuse,My foes, through all their works diffuse,Have thought to make me shocking to mankind;Cotin, to bring my style to shame,Has played a much more easy game,He has his verses to my pen assigned—
In vain, with thousandfold abuse,
My foes, through all their works diffuse,
Have thought to make me shocking to mankind;
Cotin, to bring my style to shame,
Has played a much more easy game,
He has his verses to my pen assigned—
to achieve, we say, these abstinences, and abstinences such as these, was a problem hard indeed to solve.
The result of all is before the reader; and, good or bad,it is, we are bound to confess, the very best that, within the given limits, we could do. Such students of our subject as we may fortunately have succeeded in making hungry for still more knowledge than we ourselves supply, we can conscientiously send, for further partial satisfaction of their desire, to that series of books, already once named by us, which has lately been published at Chicago, under the title, “The Great French Writers.” Messrs. A. C. McClurg & Co. have done a true service to the cause of letters in general, and in particular to the cause of what may be called international letters, in reproducing this series of books. They are good books, they are well translated, and they appear in handsome form. Madame de Sévigné, Montesquieu, Bernardin de St. Pierre, and three names that, together with all of their several kinds, economists, philosophers, historians, we here have been obliged to omit, Turgot, Victor Cousin, Thiers, are in the list of authors treated in the volumes thus far issued.
An interesting doubt may, in retrospect of all, be submitted, without author’s solution supplied, to entertain the speculation of the wisely considerate reader. Let the earlier still living French literature, that part of the whole body, we mean, ending, say, with the date of Montesquieu, which, in a rough approximate way, may be described as dominated by the spirit of classicism—let this be compared with the later French literature, that section in which the leaven of romanticism has strongly worked, and do you find existing an important fundamental difference in intimate quality between the one and the other? Is the later literature of a certain softer fiber, a more yielding consistence, than characterizes the earlier? Does the earlier present a harder, more quartz-like structure, a substance better fitted to resist yet for ages to come the slow but tireless tooth of time?
INDEX.
The merest approximation only can be attempted in hinting here the pronunciation of French names. In general, the French distribute the accent pretty evenly among all the syllables of their words. We mark an accent on the final syllable chiefly in order to correct a natural English tendency to slight that syllable in pronunciation. In a few cases we let a well-established English pronunciation stand.Nnotes a peculiar nasal sound, ü, a peculiar vowel sound, having no equivalent in English.