Rousseau and Romanticism

1

See, for example, in vol. IX of the Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau the bibliography (pp. 87-276) for 1912 – the year of the bicentenary.

2

Literature and the American College (1908); The New Laokoon (1910); The Masters of Modern French Criticism (1912).

3

See his Oxford address On the Modern Element in Literature.

4

These two tendencies in Occidental thought go back respectively at least as far as Parmenides and Heraclitus.

5

In his World as Imagination (1916) E. D. Fawcett, though ultra-romantic and unoriental in his point of view, deals with a problem that has always been the special preoccupation of the Hindu. A Hindu, however, would have entitled a similar volume The World as Illusion (māyā). Aristotle has much to say of fiction in his Poetics but does not even use the word imagination (φαντασία). In the Psychology, where he discusses the imagination, he assigns not to it, but to mind or reason the active and creative rôle (νοῦς ποιητικός). It is especially the notion of the creative imagination that is recent. The earliest example of the phrase that I have noted in French is in Rousseau’s description of his erotic reveries at the Hermitage (Confessions, Livre IX).

6

Essay on Flaubert in Essais de Psychologie contemporaine.

7

Le Romantisme et les mœurs (1910).

8

Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, VIII, 30-31.

9

I should perhaps say that in the case of Buddha I have been able to consult the original Pāli documents. In the case of Confucius and the Chinese I have had to depend on translations.

10

See appendix on Chinese primitivism.

11

See, for example, Majjhima (Pāli Text Society), I, 265. Later Buddhism, especially Mahāyāna Buddhism, fell away from the positive and critical spirit of the founder into mythology and metaphysics.

12

Buddha expressed on many occasions his disdain for the Vedas, the great traditional authority of the Hindus.

13

I have explained the reasons for giving this place to Bacon in chapter II of Literature and the American College.

14

Eth. Nic., 1179 a.

15

I scarcely need remind the reader that the extant Aristotelian writings which have repelled so many by their form were almost certainly not meant for publication. For the problems raised by these writings as well as for the mystery in the method of their early transmission see R. Shute, History of the Aristotelian Writings (1888). The writings which Aristotle prepared for publication and which Cicero describes as a “golden stream of speech” (Acad. II, 38, 119) have, with the possible exception of the recently recovered Constitution of Athens, been lost.

16

See his Essai sur le genre dramatique sérieux.

17

Quoted in Grimm’s Dictionary.

18

Ex lectione quorundam romanticorum, i.e. librorum compositorum in gallico poeticorum de gestis militaribus, in quibus maxima pars fabulosa est.

19

Perhaps the most romantic lines in English are found in one of Camillo’s speeches in The Winter’s Tale (IV, 4):

a wild dedication of yourselves

To unpath’d waters, undream’d shores.

This “wild dedication” is, it should be noted, looked upon by Camillo with disfavor.

20

Pepys’s Diary, 13 June, 1666.

21

Thomas Shadwell, Preface to the Sullen Lovers, 1668.

22

Spectator, 142, by Steele.

23

Pope, 2d Epistle, Of the Character of Women.

24

Cf. Revue d’hist. litt., XVIII, 440. For the Early French history of the word, see also the article Romantique by A. François in Annales de la Soc. J. – J. Rousseau, V, 199-236.

25

First edition, 1698; second edition, 1732.

26

Cf. his Elégie à une dame.

27

Caractères, ch. V.

28

His psychology of the memory and imagination is still Aristotelian. Cf. E. Wallace, Aristotle’s Psychology, Intr., lxxxvi-cvii.

29

An Essay upon Poetry (1682).

30

The French Academy discriminates in its Sentiments sur le Cid between two types of probability, “ordinary” and “extraordinary.” Probability in general is more especially reserved for action. In the domain of action “ordinary” probability and decorum run very close together. It is, for example, both indecorous and improbable that Chimène in the Cid should marry her father’s murderer.

31

In his Preface to Shakespeare.

32

For a similar distinction in Aristotle see Eth. Nic., 1143 b.

33

The Platonic and Aristotelian reason or mind (νοῦς) contains an element of intuition.

34

In his Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles.

35

Rousseau contre Molière, 238.

36

Letters on Chivalry and Romance.

37

See verses prefixed to Congreve’s Double-Dealer.

38

39

See, for example, A. Gerard’s Essay on Genius (1774), passim.

40

The English translation of this part of the Critique of Judgment, edited by J. C. Meredith, is useful for its numerous illustrative passages from these theorists (Young, Gerard, Duff, etc.).

41

Mrs. Katharine Fullerton Gerould has dealt interestingly with this point in an article in the Unpopular Review (October, 1914) entitled Tabu and Temperament.

42

See Biographia literaria, ch. XXII.

43

This message came to him in any case straight from German romanticism. See Walzel, Deutsche Romantik, 22, 151.

44

“De tous les corps et esprits, on n’en saurait tirer un mouvement de vraie charité; cela est impossible, et d’un autre ordre, surnaturel.” Penseés, Article XVII. “Charité,” one should recollect, here has its traditional meaning – the love, not of man, but of God.

45

See poem, Ce siècle avait deux ans in the Feuilles d’Automne.

46

For amusing details, see L. Maigron, Le Romantisme et la mode (1911), ch. V.

47

For Disraeli see Wilfrid Ward, Men and Matters, 54 ff. Of Bulwer-Lytton at Nice about 1850 Princess von Racowitza writes as follows in her Autobiography (p. 46): “His fame was at its zenith. He seemed to me antediluvian, with his long dyed curls and his old-fashioned dress … with long coats reaching to the ankles, knee-breeches, and long colored waistcoats. Also, he appeared always with a young lady who adored him, and who was followed by a man servant carrying a harp. She sat at his feet and appeared as he did in the costume of 1830, with long flowing curls called Anglaises. … In society, however, people ran after him tremendously, and spoilt him in every possible way. He read aloud from his own works, and, in especially poetic passages, his ‘Alice’ accompanied him with arpeggios on the harp.”

48

See essay by Kenyon Cox on The Illusion of Progress, in his Artist and Public.

49

See Creative Criticism by J. E. Spingarn, and my article on Genius and Taste, reviewing this book, in the Nation (New York), 7 Feb., 1918.

50

One should note here as elsewhere points of contact between scientific and emotional naturalism. Take, for example, the educational theory that has led to the setting up of the elective system. The general human discipline embodied in the fixed curriculum is to be discarded in order that the individual may be free to work along the lines of his bent or “genius.” In a somewhat similar way scientific naturalism encourages the individual to sacrifice the general human discipline to a specialty.

51

See his poem L’Art in Emaux et Camées.

52

53

Rasselas, ch. XLIV.

54

Nouvelle Héloïse, Pt. II, Lettre XVII.

55

Rostand has hit off this change in the Balcony Scene of his Cyrano de Bergerac.

56

Essay on Simple and Sentimental Poetry.

57

The life of Rousseau by Gerhard Gran is written from this point of view.

58

59

For an excellent analysis of Shelley’s idealism see Leslie Stephen’s Godwin and Shelley in his Hours in a Library.

60

Letters, II, 292.

61

See his letter to Wordsworth, 30 January, 1801.

62

Dramatic Art and Literature, ch. I.

63

Cf. Voltaire: On ne peut désirer ce qu’on ne connaît pas. (Zaïre.)

64

Cf. Sainte-Beuve, Causeries du lundi. XV, 371: “Le romantique a la nostalgie, comme Hamlet; il cherche ce qu’il n’a pas, et jusque par delà les nuages; il rêve, il vit dans les songes. Au dix-neuvième siècle, il adore le moyen âge; au dix-huitième, il est déjà révolutionnaire avec Rousseau,” etc. Cf. also T. Gautier as quoted in the Journal des Goncourt, II, 51: “Nous ne sommes pas Français, nous autres, nous tenons à d’autres races. Nous sommes pleins de nostalgies. Et puis quand à la nostalgie d’un pays se joint la nostalgie d’un temps … comme vous par exemple du dix-huitième siècle … comme moi de la Venise de Casanova, avec embranchement sur Chypre, oh! alors, c’est complet.”

65

See article Goût in Postscriptum de ma vie.

66

Schlegel’s Dramatic Art and Literature, Lecture XXII.

67

For a discussion of this point see I. Rouge: F. Schlegel et la Genèse du romantisme allemand, 48 ff.

68

For a development of this point of view see the essay of Novalis: Christianity or Europe.

69

Confessions, Livre IX (1756).

70

This is Goethe’s very classical definition of genius: Du nur, Genius, mehrst in der Natur die Natur.

71

Greek literature, after it had lost the secret of selection and the grand manner, as was the case during the Alexandrian period, also tended to oscillate from the pole of romance to the pole of so-called realism – from the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes, let us say, to the Mimes of Herondas.

72

Emile, Livre II.

73

Etudes de la nature.

74

See, for example, Tatler, 17 November, 31 December, 1709 (by Steele).

75

See her letter to Gustavus III, King of Sweden, cited in Gustave III et la cour de France, II, 402, par A. Geffroy.

76

See Hastings Rashdall: Is Conscience an Emotion? (1914), especially ch. I. Cf. Nouvelle Héloïse. (Pt. VI, Lettre VII): “Saint-Preux fait de la conscience morale un sentiment, et non pas un jugement.”

77

Nouvelle Héloïse, Pt. V, Lettre II.

78

Ibid.

79

Ibid., Pt. IV, Lettre XII.

80

Schiller’s definition is well known: “A beautiful soul we call a state where the moral sentiment has taken possession of all the emotions to such a degree that it may unhesitatingly commit the guidance of life to instinct,” etc. (On Grace and Dignity.) Cf. Madame de Staël: “La vertu devient alors une impulsion involontaire, un mouvement qui passe dans le sang, et vous entraîne irrésistiblement comme les passions les plus impérieuses.” (De la Littérature: Discours préliminàire.)

81

Avenir de la Science, 354.

82

Ibid., 179-180.

83

Avenir de la Science, 476.

84

Madame de Warens felt the influence of German pietism in her youth. See La Jeunesse de J. – J. Rousseau par E. Ritter; ch. XIII.

85

Lettre à M. Molé (21 October, 1803).

86

Le romantisme français, 215.

87

See Les Amours de Milord Bomston at the end of La Nouvelle Héloïse.

88

Sultan Mourad in La Légende des Siècles.

89

Correspondence, III, 213 (June, 1791). The date of this letter should be noted. Several of the worst terrorists of the French Revolution began by introducing bills for the abolition of capital punishment.

90

See Burton’s Hume, II, 309 (note 2).

This sentimental trait did not escape the authors of the Anti-Jacobin:

91

92

“The bard who soars to elegize an ass” and the “laureate of the long-eared kind” (English Bards and Scotch Reviewers) is, however, not Wordsworth but Coleridge. See his poem To a Young Ass, its mother being tethered near it.

93

See the poem Acte d’accusation in Les Contemplations.

94

Le Crapaud in La Légende des Siècles.

95

See Apology 31D.

96

His Language and Wisdom of the Hindus appeared in 1808.

97

See Jugendschriften, ed. by J. Minor, II, 362.

98

Dhammapada.

99

Sutta-Nipāta, v. 149 (Metta-sutta).

100

Second Dialogue.

101

Letters, II, 298. For Ruskin and Rousseau see Ibid. I, 360: “[Ruskin] said that great parts of Les Confessions were so true to himself that he felt as if Rousseau must have transmigrated into his body.”

102

“If a poet wishes an atmosphere of indistinct illusion and of moving shadow, he must use the romantic style. … Women, such as we know them, such as they are likely to be, ever prefer a delicate unreality to a true or firm art.” Essay on Pure, Ornate, and Grotesque Art in English Poetry (1864).

103

“Die Romanze auf einem Pferde” utters the following lines in the Prologue to Tieck’s Kaiser Octavianus:

A special study might be made of the rôle of the moon in Chateaubriand and Coleridge – even if one is not prepared like Carlyle to dismiss Coleridge’s philosophy as “bottled moonshine.”

104

O. Walzel points out that as soon as the women in H. von Kleist’s plays become conscious they fall into error (Deutsche Romantik, 3. Auflage, 147).