LITERATURE
The lovers of solid literature in the British colonies and India are under obligation to Mr Heinemann for his enterprise in starting what he terms the Empire Library of standard works, by means of which they have access in a cheap form to high class books hitherto procurable only in expensive editions. Max Nordau's is the first of the series, and the estimate formed of it by readers in the mother country may be gathered from the fact that seven editions have been sold in England since its first publication rather more than twelve months ago. The book is gratefully dedicated to Professor Lombroso, of the Royal University of Turin, "without whose labours it could never have been written." The task undertaken by the author is one of great importance, and he has carried it through on strictly scientific principles, employing language which, whatever else may be said of it, is certainly not equivocal. The notion of degeneracy, Max Nordau says, was first introduced by Morel, and developed with much genius by Lombroso in whose hands it has already shown itself extremely fertile in the most diverse directions. By the latter especially a flood of light has been poured on many obscure points of psychiatry, criminal law, politics, and sociology; but there is a domain still unexplored, that of art and literature, and into this Nordau has boldly advanced. Degenerates, he tells us, are not always criminal, prostitutes, anarchists, and pronounced lunatics ; they are often authors and artists. "These, however, manifest the same mental characteristics, and for the most part the same somatic features as the members of the above mentioned anthropological family, who satisfy their unhealthy impulses with the knife of the assassin or the bomb of the dynamiter, instead of the pen and pencil. Some among those degenerates in literature, music, and painting have in recent years come into extraordinary prominence, and are revered by numerous admirers as the creators of a new art, and heralds of the coming centuries. This phenomenon is not to be disregarded. Books and works of art exercise a powerful suggestion on the masses. It is from these productions that an age derives its ideals of morality and beauty. If they are absurd and anti-social, they exert a disturbing and corrupting influence on a whole generation. Hence the latter, especially the impressionable youth, easily excited to enthusiasm for all that is strange and seemingly new, must be warned and enlightened as to the real nature of the creations so blindly admired. This warning the ordinary critic does not give,"
because he is not acquainted with the pathological characters of the works of degenerates, and he is incapable of judging if these works are the productions of a shattered brain, and also the nature of the mental disturbance expressing itself by them.
Now it is just this kind of criticism that Nordau has undertaken: he has investigated the tendencies of the fashions in art and literature, and has proved that they have their source in the degeneracy of their authors, and that the enthusiasm of their admirers is for manifestations of more or less pronounced moral insanity, imbecility, and dementia. Nor is he blind to the personal consequences which his action involves. "There is at the present day no danger in attacking the church, for it no longer has the stake at its disposal. To write against rulers and governments is likewise nothing venturesome, for at the worst nothing more than imprisonment would follow, with compensating glory of martyrdom. But grievous is the fate of him who has the audacity to characterise æesthetic fashions as forms of mental decay. The author or artist attacked never pardons a man for recognising in him a lunatic or a charlatan."
Nevertheless Nordau plunges fearlessly into the fight, and holds up to well merited scorn the weak and ribald garbage that seems for the passing hour to meet popular taste. It is probable that only a small proportion of general readers will follow Nordau through his closely reasoned and well illustrated argument, but those who can do so can scarcely fail to be convinced. We cannot pretend to even sketch a continuous outline of the work, yet we may give a few extracts as specimens of the aim and style. Here are some peculiarities manifested by a degenerate:—
He is tormented by doubts, seeks for the basis of all phenomena, especially those whose first causes are completely inaccessible to us, and is unhappy when his inquiries and ruminations lead, as is natural, to no result. He is ever supplying new recruits to the army of system-inventing metaphisicians, profound expositors of the riddle o' the universe, seekers for the philosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle, and perpetual motion. These last three subjects have such a special attraction for him that the Patent office at Washington is forced to keep on hand printed replies to the numberless memorials in which patents are constantly demanded for the solution of these chimerical problems. In view of Lombroso's researches it can scarcely be doubted that the writings and acts of revolutionists and anarchists are also attribitable to degeneracy. The degenerate is incapable of adapting himself to existing circumstances. This incapacity, indeed, is an indication of morbid variation in every species, and probably a primary cause of their sudden extinction. Be therefore rebels against conditions and views of things which he necessarily feels to be painful, chiefly because they impose upon him the duty of self control of which he is incapable on account of his organic weakness of will. Thus he becomes an improver of the world, and devises plans for making mankind happy, which, without exception, are conspicuous quite as much by their fervent philanthropy, and often by their pathetic sincerity,as by their absurdity and monstrous ignorance of all real relations. Finally a cardinal mark of degeneration which I have reserved to the last is mysticism. . . It must not be supposed that all degeneration is synonymous with absence of talent. Nearly all the inquirers who have had degenerates under their observation expressly establish the contrary. "The degenerate," says Legrain, " may be a genius. A badly balanced mind is susceptible of the highest conceptions, while, on the other hand, one meets in the same mind with traits of meanness and paltriness all the more striking from the fact that they co-exist with the most brilliant qualities."
Our author is very severe on the fashionable term " fin-de-siecle," which, he declares, has all the necessary vagueness that fits it to convey all the half-conscious and indistinct drift of current ideas. Mysticism is then attacked, and he gives its symptoms very minutely. It is displayed in art as well as in literature : the preRaphaelites represent the former, and Tolestoi and Richard Wagner the latter. Egomania is a pronounced form of degeneration, and this form of the mental disease is dwelt upon very fully. Another phase of it is realism, and M. Zola is its exponent. This is what Nordau says of Zola:—
The confusion of thought which is shown in his theoretic writings, in his invention of the word "naturalism," in his conception of the " experimental novel," his instinctive inclination to depict demented persons, animals, prostitutes, and semi-maniacs, his anthropomorphism, and his symbolism, his pessimism, his coprolalia, and his predilection for slang, sufficiently characterise M. Zola as a high class degenerate, but he shows in addition some peculiarly characteristic stigmata, which completely establish the diagnosis. That he is a sexual psychopath is betrayed on every page of his novels. He revels continually in representations from the regions of the basest sensuality, and interweaves them in all the events of his novels without being able in any way to assign an artistic reason for this forced introduction. His consciousness is peopled with images of unnatural vice, bestiality, passivism, and other aberrations; and he is not satisfied with lingering libidinously over human acts of such a nature, but he even produces pairing animals. . . The extraordinary success of Zola among his contemporaries is not explained by his qualifications as an author, that is, by the extraordinary force and power of his romantic descriptions, and by the intensity and truth of his pessimistic emotion, which makes his representation of suffering and sorrow irresistibly impressive ; but by his worst faults, his triviality and lasciviousness. . . With three exceptions all his works owe their success to the lowest instincts of the masses, to its brutish passion for the sight of crime and voluptuousness. Of course Zola has admirers and imitators, and these mainly resolve themselves into two groups. One class, who are described as "the noxious insects who crawl behind him," know nothing and can do nothing; they cultivate pessimism and accept his obscenities into the bargain, though without enthusiasm and often even with visible embarrassment and secret repugnance. The other group is composed of "people who morally and mentally stand on a level with supporters of evil; who instead of the trade of night birds, have chosen the less dangerous and hitherto more esteemed vocation of authors of novels and dramas, when the theory of naturalism has made it accessible to them. This brood has only taken immodesty from M. Zola, and conformably with the degree of culture has carried it into obscenity without circumlocution. .... This group stands outside of literature. It forms a portion of that riff-raff of great towns who professionally cultivate immorality, and have chosen this trade with full responsibility, solely from horror of honest work and greed for lucre. It is not mental therapeutics,but criminal justice, which is competent to judge them."
Such are the views Nordau holds respecting the novels of Zola and his imitators, and scathing as are his comments, they are not an atom too pungent. Equally severe in his criticism on the "Young German" movement, and though himself a German he confesses to a feeling of "deep shame and sorrow at the spectacle of the literature which has been so long and so brutally proclaimed, with flourish of trumpets and with systematic disdain of all that did not bear his seal as the unique and exclusively German literature of the present time, and even that of the future." In truth many of these remarks apply, we regret to say, to many English novelists whose writings are not fit to enter respectable homes.
Briefly recapitulating what he has written on the various kinds of degenerates, our author says it is possible that the disease may not have yet attained its culminating point. If it should become more violent, certain phenomena which are perceived as exceptions or in an embryo condition would henceforth increase to a formidable extent and develop consistently; others, which at present are observed only among inmates of lunatic asylums, would pass into the daily habitual of whole classes of the population. An appalling picture is drawn of the state of society under the reign of degeneracy, and then our author asks "Will it come to this ?" and he answers, "Well, no, I think not." And this for two reasons. First, because humanity has not yet reached the term of its evolution : it is still young and can recover itself; and secondly,because degenerates are not capable of adaptation, and must therefore succumb. Should this not be the case future generations, perhaps in the twentieth century, will settle the matter in another way. They will renounce the highly sublimated acquisitions of civilisation which extract too much from the nervous system, and return to barbarism.
Nordau sums up his admirable enquiry with an appeal to medical specialists to enlighten the public concerning the leading facts in mental therapeutics. Let them show the mental derangement of degenerate artists and authors, and that the works in fashion are written and painted delirium.
" Such is the treatment of the disease of the age which I hold to be efficacious; characterisation of the leading degenerates as mentally diseased; unmasking and stigmatising of their imitators as enemies to society; cautioning the public against the lies of these parasites."
We had marked several passages which we should have been glad to extract, but space will not permit; and we must conclude by very strongly recommending Dr. Nordau's excellent book to the careful perusal of our readers.
because he is not acquainted with the pathological characters of the works of degenerates, and he is incapable of judging if these works are the productions of a shattered brain, and also the nature of the mental disturbance expressing itself by them.
Now it is just this kind of criticism that Nordau has undertaken: he has investigated the tendencies of the fashions in art and literature, and has proved that they have their source in the degeneracy of their authors, and that the enthusiasm of their admirers is for manifestations of more or less pronounced moral insanity, imbecility, and dementia. Nor is he blind to the personal consequences which his action involves. "There is at the present day no danger in attacking the church, for it no longer has the stake at its disposal. To write against rulers and governments is likewise nothing venturesome, for at the worst nothing more than imprisonment would follow, with compensating glory of martyrdom. But grievous is the fate of him who has the audacity to characterise æesthetic fashions as forms of mental decay. The author or artist attacked never pardons a man for recognising in him a lunatic or a charlatan."
Nevertheless Nordau plunges fearlessly into the fight, and holds up to well merited scorn the weak and ribald garbage that seems for the passing hour to meet popular taste. It is probable that only a small proportion of general readers will follow Nordau through his closely reasoned and well illustrated argument, but those who can do so can scarcely fail to be convinced. We cannot pretend to even sketch a continuous outline of the work, yet we may give a few extracts as specimens of the aim and style. Here are some peculiarities manifested by a degenerate:—
He is tormented by doubts, seeks for the basis of all phenomena, especially those whose first causes are completely inaccessible to us, and is unhappy when his inquiries and ruminations lead, as is natural, to no result. He is ever supplying new recruits to the army of system-inventing metaphisicians, profound expositors of the riddle o' the universe, seekers for the philosopher's stone, the squaring of the circle, and perpetual motion. These last three subjects have such a special attraction for him that the Patent office at Washington is forced to keep on hand printed replies to the numberless memorials in which patents are constantly demanded for the solution of these chimerical problems. In view of Lombroso's researches it can scarcely be doubted that the writings and acts of revolutionists and anarchists are also attribitable to degeneracy. The degenerate is incapable of adapting himself to existing circumstances. This incapacity, indeed, is an indication of morbid variation in every species, and probably a primary cause of their sudden extinction. Be therefore rebels against conditions and views of things which he necessarily feels to be painful, chiefly because they impose upon him the duty of self control of which he is incapable on account of his organic weakness of will. Thus he becomes an improver of the world, and devises plans for making mankind happy, which, without exception, are conspicuous quite as much by their fervent philanthropy, and often by their pathetic sincerity,as by their absurdity and monstrous ignorance of all real relations. Finally a cardinal mark of degeneration which I have reserved to the last is mysticism. . . It must not be supposed that all degeneration is synonymous with absence of talent. Nearly all the inquirers who have had degenerates under their observation expressly establish the contrary. "The degenerate," says Legrain, " may be a genius. A badly balanced mind is susceptible of the highest conceptions, while, on the other hand, one meets in the same mind with traits of meanness and paltriness all the more striking from the fact that they co-exist with the most brilliant qualities."
Our author is very severe on the fashionable term " fin-de-siecle," which, he declares, has all the necessary vagueness that fits it to convey all the half-conscious and indistinct drift of current ideas. Mysticism is then attacked, and he gives its symptoms very minutely. It is displayed in art as well as in literature : the preRaphaelites represent the former, and Tolestoi and Richard Wagner the latter. Egomania is a pronounced form of degeneration, and this form of the mental disease is dwelt upon very fully. Another phase of it is realism, and M. Zola is its exponent. This is what Nordau says of Zola:—
The confusion of thought which is shown in his theoretic writings, in his invention of the word "naturalism," in his conception of the " experimental novel," his instinctive inclination to depict demented persons, animals, prostitutes, and semi-maniacs, his anthropomorphism, and his symbolism, his pessimism, his coprolalia, and his predilection for slang, sufficiently characterise M. Zola as a high class degenerate, but he shows in addition some peculiarly characteristic stigmata, which completely establish the diagnosis. That he is a sexual psychopath is betrayed on every page of his novels. He revels continually in representations from the regions of the basest sensuality, and interweaves them in all the events of his novels without being able in any way to assign an artistic reason for this forced introduction. His consciousness is peopled with images of unnatural vice, bestiality, passivism, and other aberrations; and he is not satisfied with lingering libidinously over human acts of such a nature, but he even produces pairing animals. . . The extraordinary success of Zola among his contemporaries is not explained by his qualifications as an author, that is, by the extraordinary force and power of his romantic descriptions, and by the intensity and truth of his pessimistic emotion, which makes his representation of suffering and sorrow irresistibly impressive ; but by his worst faults, his triviality and lasciviousness. . . With three exceptions all his works owe their success to the lowest instincts of the masses, to its brutish passion for the sight of crime and voluptuousness. Of course Zola has admirers and imitators, and these mainly resolve themselves into two groups. One class, who are described as "the noxious insects who crawl behind him," know nothing and can do nothing; they cultivate pessimism and accept his obscenities into the bargain, though without enthusiasm and often even with visible embarrassment and secret repugnance. The other group is composed of "people who morally and mentally stand on a level with supporters of evil; who instead of the trade of night birds, have chosen the less dangerous and hitherto more esteemed vocation of authors of novels and dramas, when the theory of naturalism has made it accessible to them. This brood has only taken immodesty from M. Zola, and conformably with the degree of culture has carried it into obscenity without circumlocution. .... This group stands outside of literature. It forms a portion of that riff-raff of great towns who professionally cultivate immorality, and have chosen this trade with full responsibility, solely from horror of honest work and greed for lucre. It is not mental therapeutics,but criminal justice, which is competent to judge them."
Such are the views Nordau holds respecting the novels of Zola and his imitators, and scathing as are his comments, they are not an atom too pungent. Equally severe in his criticism on the "Young German" movement, and though himself a German he confesses to a feeling of "deep shame and sorrow at the spectacle of the literature which has been so long and so brutally proclaimed, with flourish of trumpets and with systematic disdain of all that did not bear his seal as the unique and exclusively German literature of the present time, and even that of the future." In truth many of these remarks apply, we regret to say, to many English novelists whose writings are not fit to enter respectable homes.
Briefly recapitulating what he has written on the various kinds of degenerates, our author says it is possible that the disease may not have yet attained its culminating point. If it should become more violent, certain phenomena which are perceived as exceptions or in an embryo condition would henceforth increase to a formidable extent and develop consistently; others, which at present are observed only among inmates of lunatic asylums, would pass into the daily habitual of whole classes of the population. An appalling picture is drawn of the state of society under the reign of degeneracy, and then our author asks "Will it come to this ?" and he answers, "Well, no, I think not." And this for two reasons. First, because humanity has not yet reached the term of its evolution : it is still young and can recover itself; and secondly,because degenerates are not capable of adaptation, and must therefore succumb. Should this not be the case future generations, perhaps in the twentieth century, will settle the matter in another way. They will renounce the highly sublimated acquisitions of civilisation which extract too much from the nervous system, and return to barbarism.
Nordau sums up his admirable enquiry with an appeal to medical specialists to enlighten the public concerning the leading facts in mental therapeutics. Let them show the mental derangement of degenerate artists and authors, and that the works in fashion are written and painted delirium.
" Such is the treatment of the disease of the age which I hold to be efficacious; characterisation of the leading degenerates as mentally diseased; unmasking and stigmatising of their imitators as enemies to society; cautioning the public against the lies of these parasites."
We had marked several passages which we should have been glad to extract, but space will not permit; and we must conclude by very strongly recommending Dr. Nordau's excellent book to the careful perusal of our readers.
*DEGENERATION, by Max Nordau, author of "Conventional Lies of our Civilisation," "Paradoxes," etc. Pp. 560. London: Wm. Heinemann (Empire Library).
Launceston Examiner 4 April 1896,
Launceston Examiner 4 April 1896,
No comments:
Post a Comment