The process by which one type of beauty becomes popular, imposes its tyranny for a period and then is displaced by a dissimilar type is a mysterious one. It may be that patient historical scholars will end by discovering some law to explain the transformation of the Du Maurier type into the flat-face type, the tea-leaf foot into the baroque foot, the crescent calf into the normal calf. As far as one can see at present, these changes seem to be the result of mere hazard and arbitrary choice. But a time will doubtless come when it will be found that these changes of taste are as ineluctably predetermined as any chemical change. Given the South African War, the accession of Edward VII. and the Liberal triumph of 1906, it was, no doubt, as inevitable that Du Maurier should have given place to Fish as that zinc subjected to sulphuric acid should break up into ZnSO4 + H2. But we leave it to others to formulate the precise workings of the law.
XVII: GREAT THOUGHTS
To all lovers of unfamiliar quotations, aphorisms, great thoughts and intellectual gems, I would heartily recommend a heavy volume recently published in Brussels and entitled Pensées sur la Science, la Guerre et sur des sujets très variés. The book contains some twelve or thirteen thousand quotations, selected from a treasure of one hundred and twenty-three thousand great thoughts gleaned and garnered by the industry of Dr. Maurice Legat—an industry which will be appreciated at its value by any one who has ever made an attempt to compile a commonplace book or private anthology of his own. The almost intolerable labour of copying out extracts can only be avoided by the drastic use of the scissors; and there are few who can afford the luxury of mutilating their copies of the best authors.
For some days I made Dr. Legat’s book my livre de chevet. But I had very soon to give up reading it at night, for I found that the Great often said things so peculiar that I was kept awake in the effort to discover their meaning. Why, for example, should it be categorically stated by Lamennais that “si les animaux connaissaient Dieu, ils parleraient”? What could Cardinal Maury have meant when he said, “L’éloquence, compagne ordinaire de la liberté [astonishing generalization!], est inconnue en Angleterre”? These were mysteries insoluble enough to counteract the soporific effects of such profound truths as this, discovered, apparently, in 1846 by Monsieur C. H. D. Duponchel, “Le plus sage mortel est sujet à l’erreur.”
Dr. Legat has found some pleasing quotations on the subject of England and the English. His selection proves with what fatal ease even the most intelligent minds are lured into making generalizations about national character, and how grotesque those generalizations always are. Montesquieu informs us that “dès que sa fortune se délabre, un anglais tue ou se fait voleur.” Of the better half of this potential murderer and robber Balzac says, “La femme anglaise est une pauvre créature verteuse par force, prête à se dépraver.” “La vanité est l’âme de toute société anglaise,” says Lamartine. Ledru-Rollin is of opinion that all the riches of England are “des dépouilles volées aux tombeaux.”
The Goncourts risk a characteristically dashing generalization on the national characters of England and France: “L’Anglais, filou comme peuple, est honnête comme individu. Il est le contraire du Français, honnête comme peuple, et filou comme individu.” If one is going to make a comparison Voltaire’s is more satisfactory because less pretentious. Strange are the ways of you Englishmen,
qui, des mêmes couteaux,
Coupez la tête au roi et la queue aux chevaux.
Nous Français, plus humains, laissons aux rois leurs têtes,
Et la queue à nos bêtes.
It is unfortunate that history should have vitiated the truth of this pithy and pregnant statement.
But the bright spots in this enormous tome are rare. After turning over a few hundred pages one is compelled, albeit reluctantly, to admit that the Great Thought or Maxim is nearly the most boring form of literature that exists. Others, it seems, have anticipated me in this grand discovery. “Las de m’ennuyer des pensées des autres,” says d’Alembert, “j’ai voulu leur donner les miennes; mais je puis me flatter de leur avoir rendu tout l’ennui que j’avais reçu d’eux.” Almost next to d’Alembert’s statement I find this confession from the pen of J. Roux (1834-1906): “Emettre des pensées, voilà ma consolation, mon délice, ma vie!” Happy Monsieur Roux!
Turning dissatisfied from Dr. Legat’s anthology of thought, I happened upon the second number of Proverbe, a monthly review, four pages in length, directed by M. Paul Eluard and counting among its contributors Tristan Tzara of Dada fame, Messrs. Soupault, Breton and Aragon, the directors of Littérature, M. Picabia, M. Ribemont-Dessaignes and others of the same kidney. Here, on the front page of the March number of Proverbe, I found the very comment on Great Thoughts for which I had, in my dissatisfaction, been looking. The following six maxims are printed one below the other: the first of them is a quotation from the Intransigeant; the other five appear to be the work of M. Tzara, who appends a footnote to this effect: “Je m’appelle dorénavant exclusivement Monsieur Paul Bourget.” Here they are:
Il faut violer les règles, oui, mais pour les violer il faut les connaître.
Il faut régler la connaissance, oui, mais pour la régler il faut la violer.
Il faut connaître les viols, oui, mais pour les connaître il faut les régler.
Il faut connaître les règles, oui, mais pour les connaître il faut les violer.
Il faut régler les viols, oui, mais pour les régler il faut les connaître.
Il faut violer la connaissance, oui, mais pour la violer il faut la régler.
It is to be hoped that Dr. Legat will find room for at least a selection of these profound thoughts in the next edition of his book. “Le passé et La pensée n’existent pas,” affirms M. Raymond Duncan on another page of Proverbe. It is precisely after taking too large a dose of “Pensées sur la Science, la Guerre et sur des sujets très variés” that one half wishes the statement were in fact true.
XVIII: ADVERTISEMENT
I have always been interested in the subtleties of literary form. This preoccupation with the outward husk, with the letter of literature, is, I dare say, the sign of a fundamental spiritual impotence. Gigadibs, the literary man, can understand the tricks of the trade; but when it is a question, not of conjuring, but of miracles, he is no more effective than Mr. Sludge. Still, conjuring is amusing to watch and to practise; an interest in the machinery of the art requires no further justification. I have dallied with many literary forms, taking pleasure in their different intricacies, studying the means by which great authors of the past have resolved the technical problems presented by each. Sometimes I have even tried my hand at solving the problems myself—delightful and salubrious exercise for the mind. And now I have discovered the most exciting, the most arduous literary form of all, the most difficult to master, the most pregnant in curious possibilities. I mean the advertisement.
Nobody who has not tried to write an advertisement has any idea of the delights and difficulties presented by this form of literature—or shall I say of “applied literature,” for the sake of those who still believe in the romantic superiority of the pure, the disinterested, over the immediately useful? The problem that confronts the writer of advertisements is an immensely complicated one, and by reason of its very arduousness immensely interesting. It is far easier to write ten passably effective Sonnets, good enough to take in the not too inquiring critic, than one effective advertisement that will take in a few thousand of the uncritical buying public. The problem presented by the Sonnet is child’s play compared with the problem of the advertisement. In writing a Sonnet one need think only of oneself. If one’s readers find one boring or obscure, so much the worse for them. But in writing an advertisement one must think of other people. Advertisement writers may not be lyrical, or obscure, or in any way esoteric. They must be universally intelligible. A good advertisement has this in common with drama and oratory, that it must be immediately comprehensible and directly moving. But at the same time it must possess all the
