Its vibrations
compose no piece, exhaust no theme, achieve no melody, carry out no
programme, but they express the innermost life of man.
June 1, 1880.--Stendhal's "La Chartreuse de Parme." A remarkable book.
It is even typical, the first of a class. Stendhal opens the series of
naturalist novels, which suppress the intervention of the moral sense,
and scoff at the claim of free-will. Individuals are irresponsible; they
are governed by their passions, and the play of human passions is the
observer's joy, the artist's material. Stendhal is a novelist after
Taine's heart, a faithful painter who is neither touched nor angry, and
whom everything amuses--the knave and the adventuress as well as honest
men and women, but who has neither faith, nor preference, nor ideal. In
him literature is subordinated to natural history, to science. It no
longer forms part of the humanities, it no longer gives man the honor of
a separate rank. It classes him with the ant, the beaver, and the
monkey. And this moral indifference to morality leads direct to
immorality.
The vice of the whole school is cynicism, contempt for man, whom they
degrade to the level of the brute; it is the worship of strength,
disregard of the soul, a want of generosity, of reverence, of nobility,
which shows itself in spite of all protestations to the contrary; in a
word, it is _inhumanity_.
Pages:
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611