Part 13 (1/2)
It is cheering to know how great is the influence such a writer as Sue exerts, from his energy of feeling on some subjects of moral interest.
It is true that he has also much talent and a various experience of life; but writers who far surpa.s.s him here, as we think Balzac does, wanting this heart of faith, have no influence, except merely on the tastes of their readers.
We observe, in a late notice of Sue, that he began to write at quite mature age, at the suggestion of a friend. We should think it was so; that he was by nature intended for a practical man, rather than a writer. He paints all his characters from the practical point of view.
As an observer, when free from exaggeration, he has as good an eye as Balzac, but he is far more rarely thus free, for, in temperament, he is unequal and sometimes muddy. But then he has the heart and faith that Balzac wants, yet is less enslaved by emotion than Sand; therefore he has made more impression on his time and place than either. We refer now to his later works; though his earlier show much talent, yet his progress, both as a writer and thinker, has been so considerable that those of the last few years entirely eclipse his earlier essays.
These latter works are the ”Mysteries of Paris,” ”Matilda,” and the ”Wandering Jew,” which is now in course of publication. In these, he has begun, and is continuing, a crusade against the evils of a corrupt civilization which are inflicting such woes and wrongs upon his contemporaries.
Sue, however, does not merely a.s.sail, but would build up. His anatomy is not intended to injure the corpse, or, like that of Balzac, to entertain the intellectual merely. Earnestly he hopes to learn from it the remedies for disease and the conditions of health. Sue is a Socialist. He believes he sees the means by which the heart of mankind may be made to beat with one great hope, one love; and instinct with this thought, his tales of horror are not tragedies.
This is the secret of the deep interest he has awakened in this country, that he shares a hope which is, half unconsciously to herself, stirring all her veins. It is not so warmly outspoken as in other lands, both because no such pervasive ills as yet call loudly for redress, and because private conservatism is here great, in proportion to the absence of authorized despotism. We are not disposed to quarrel with this; it is well for the value of new thoughts to be tested by a good deal of resistance. Opposition, if it does not preclude free discussion, is of use in educating men to know what they want. Only by intelligent men, exercised by thought and tried in virtue, can such measures as Sue proposes be carried out; and when such a.s.sociates present themselves in sufficient numbers, we have no fear but the cause of a.s.sociation, in its grander forms, will have fair play in America.
As a writer, Sue shows his want of a high kind of imagination by his unshrinking portraiture of physical horrors. We do not believe any man could look upon some things he describes and live. He is very powerful in his description of the workings of animal nature; especially when he speaks of them in animals merely, they have the simplicity of the lower kind with the more full expression of human nature. His pictures of women are of rare excellence, and it is observable that the more simple and pure the character is, the more justice he does to it. This shows that, whatever his career may have been, his heart is uncontaminated.
Men he does not describe so well, and fails entirely when he aims at one grand and simple enough for a great moral agent. His conceptions are strong, but in execution he is too melodramatic. Just compare _his_ ”Wandering Jew” with that of Beranger. The latter is as diamond compared with charcoal. Then, like all those writers who write in numbers that come out weekly or monthly, he abuses himself and his subject; he often _must_; the arrangement is false and mechanical.
The att.i.tude of Sue is at this moment imposing, as he stands, pen in hand,--this his only weapon against an innumerable host of foes,--the champion of poverty, innocence, and humanity, against superst.i.tion, selfishness, and prejudice. When his works are forgotten,--and for all their strong points and brilliant decorations, they may ere long be forgotten,--still the writer's name shall be held in imperishable honor as the teacher of the ignorant, the guardian of the weak, a true tribune for the people of his own time.
One of the most unexceptionable and attractive writers of modern France is De Vigny. His life has been pa.s.sed in the army; but many years of peace have given him time for literary culture, while his acquaintance with the traditions of the army, from the days of its dramatic achievements under Bonaparte, supply the finest materials both for narrative and reflection. His tales are written with infinite grace, refined sensibility, and a dignified view. His treatment of a subject shows that closeness of grasp and clearness of sight which are rarely attained by one who is not at home in active as well as thoughtful life.
He has much penetration, too, and has touched some of the most delicate springs of human action. His works have been written in hours of leisure; this has diminished their number, but given him many advantages over the thousands of professional writers that fill the coffee-houses of Paris by day, and its garrets by night. We wish he were more read here in the original; with him would be found good French, and the manners, thoughts, and feelings of a cosmopolitan gentleman.
To sum up this imperfect account of the merits of these Novelists: I see De Vigny, a retiring figure, the gentleman, the solitary thinker, but, in his way, the efficient foe of false honor and superst.i.tious prejudice; Balzac is the heartless surgeon, probing the wounds and describing the delirium of suffering men for the amus.e.m.e.nt of his students; Sue, a bold and glittering crusader, with endless ballads jingling in the silence of the night before the battle. They are all much right and a good deal wrong; for instance, all who would lay down their lives for the sake of truth, yet let their virtuous characters practise stratagems, falsehood, and violence; in fact, do evil for the sake of good. They still show this taint of the old regime, and no wonder! La belle France has worn rouge so long that the purest mountain air will not, at once, or soon, restore the natural hues to her complexion. But they are fine figures, and all ruled by the onward spirit of the time. Led by that spirit, I see them moving on the troubled waters; they do not sink, and I trust they will find their way to the coasts where the new era will introduce new methods, in a spirit of n.o.bler activity, wiser patience, and holier faith, than the world has yet seen.
Will Balzac also see that sh.o.r.e, or has he only broken away the bars that hindered others from setting sail? We do not know. When we read an expression of such lovely innocence as the letter of the little country maidens to their Parisian brother, (in Father Goriot,) we hope; but presently we see him sneering behind the mask, and we fear. Let Frenchmen speak to this question. They know best what disadvantages a Frenchman suffers under, and whether it is possible Balzac be still alive, except in his eyes. Those, we know, are quite alive.
To read these, or any foreign works fairly, the reader must understand the national circ.u.mstances under which they were written. To use them worthily, he must know how to interpret them for the use of the universe.
THE NEW SCIENCE, OR THE PHILOSOPHY OF MESMERISM OR ANIMAL MAGNETISM.[21]
Man is always trying to get charts and directions for the super-sensual element in which he finds himself involuntarily moving. Sometimes, indeed, for long periods, a life of continual activity in supplying bodily wants or warding off bodily dangers will make him inattentive to the circ.u.mstances of this other life. Then, in an interval of leisure, he will start to find himself pervaded by the power of this more subtle and searching energy, and will turn his thoughts, with new force, to scrutinize its nature and its promises.
At such times a corps is formed of workmen, furnished with various implements for the work. Some collect facts from which they hope to build up a theory; others propose theories by whose light they hope to detect valuable facts; a large number are engaged in circulating reports of these labors; a larger in attempting to prove them invalid and absurd. These last are of some use by shaking the canker-worms from the trees; all are of use in elucidating truth.
Such a course of study has the civilized world been engaged in for some years back with regard to what is called Animal Magnetism. We say the civilized world, because, though a large portion of the learned and intellectual, to say nothing of the thoughtless and the prejudiced, view such researches as folly, yet we believe that those prescient souls, those minds more deeply alive, which are the life of this and the parents of the next era, all, more or less, consciously or unconsciously, share the belief in such an agent as is understood by the largest definition of animal magnetism; that is, a means by which influence and thought may be communicated from one being to another, independent of the usual organs, and with a completeness and precision rarely attained through these.
For ourselves, since we became conscious at all of our connection with the two forms of being called the spiritual and material, we have perceived the existence of such an agent, and should have no doubts on the subject, if we had never heard one human voice in correspondent testimony with our perceptions. The reality of this agent we know, have tested some of its phenomena, but of its law and its a.n.a.lysis find ourselves nearly as ignorant as in earliest childhood. And we must confess that the best writers we have read seem to us about equally ignorant. We derive pleasure and profit in very unequal degrees from their statements, in proportion to their candor, clearness of perception, severity of judgment, and largeness of view. If they possess these elements of wisdom, their statements are valuable as affording materials for the true theory; but theories proposed by them affect us, as yet, only as partially sustained hypotheses. Too many among them are stained by faults which must prevent their coming to any valuable results, sanguine haste, jealous vanity, a lack of that profound devotion which alone can win Truth from her cold well, careless cla.s.sification, abrupt generalizations. We see, as yet, no writer great enough for the patient investigation, in a spirit liberal yet severely true, which the subject demands. We see no man of Shakspearian, Newtonian incapability of deceiving himself or others.
However, no such man is needed, and we believe that it is pure democracy to rejoice that, in this department as in others, it is no longer some one great genius that concentrates within himself the vital energy of his time. It is many working together who do the work. The waters spring up in every direction, as little rills, each of which performs its part. We see a movement corresponding with this in the region of exact science, and we have no doubt that in the course of fifty years a new spiritual circulation will be comprehended as clearly as the circulation of the blood is now.
In metaphysics, in phrenology, in animal magnetism, in electricity, in chemistry, the tendency is the same, even when conclusions seem most dissonant. The mind presses nearer home to the seat of consciousness the more intimate law and rule of life, and old limits, become fluid beneath the fire of thought. We are learning much, and it will be a grand music, that shall be played on this organ of many pipes.
With regard to Mr. Grimes's book, in the first place, we do not possess sufficient knowledge of the subject to criticise it thoroughly; and secondly, if we did, it could not be done in narrow limits. To us his cla.s.sification is unsatisfactory, his theory inadequate, his point of view uncongenial. We disapprove of the spirit in which he criticises other disciples in this science, who have, we believe, made some good observations, with many failures, though, like himself, they do not hold themselves sufficiently lowly as disciples. For we do not believe there is any man, _yet_, who is ent.i.tled to give himself the air of having taken a degree on this subject. We do not want the tone of qualification or mincing apology. We want no mock modesty, but its reality, which is the almost sure attendant on greatness. What a lesson it would be for this country if a body of men could be at work together in that harmony which would not fail to ensue on a _disinterested_ love of discovering truth, and with that patience and exactness in experiment without which no machine was ever invented worthy a patent! The most superficial, go-ahead, hit-or-miss American knows that no machine was ever perfected without this patience and exactness; and let no one hope to achieve victories in the realm of mind at a cheaper rate than in that of matter.
In speaking thus of Mr. Grimes's book, we can still cordially recommend it to the perusal of our readers. Its statements are full and sincere.
The writer has abilities which only need to be used with more thoroughness and a higher aim to guide him to valuable attainments.
In this connection we will relate a pa.s.sage from personal experience, to us powerfully expressive of the nature of this higher agent in the intercourse of minds.