The Methods of French Criticism
I — (1817)
A wealth of terms for unfavorable criticism:—
A. abandonnée, absurde, arrogance, astuce.
B. bafoué, bête, bêtise, bouffissure, bouquin, bourgeois, boursouflure, boutade, brisé, brutalité.
C. cabale, cagot, canaille, carcan, clique, contraire, créature.
D. déclamatoire, décrié, dégoût, dénigrement, dépourvu, déprayé, désobligeant, détestable, diabolique, dur.
E. échoppe, enflure, engouement, ennui, ennuyeux, énorme, entortillé, éphémères, épluché, espèce, étourneau.
F. factice, fadaise, faible, fainéant, fané, fastidieux, fatigant, fatuité, faux, forcé, fou, fourré, friperie, frivole, furieux.
G. gâte, gauchement, gaucher, grimace, grossier, grossièrement.
H. haillons, honnêtement, honte, horreur.
I. imbécile, impertinence, impertinent, impuissant, incorrection, indécis, indéterminé, indifférence, indignités, inégalité, inguérissable, insipide, insipidité, insoutenable, intolérant, jouets, irréfléchi.
L. laquais, léger, lésine, louche, lourd.
M. maladresse, manque, maroud, mauvais, médiocre, mépris, méprise, mignardise, mordant.
N. négligé, négligence, noirceur, non-soin.
O. odieux.
P. passable, pauvreté, pénible, petites-maisons, peupropre, pie-grièche, pitoyable, plat, platitude, pompeux, précieux, puérilités.
R. rapsodie, ratatiné, rebattu, réchauffé, redondance, rétréci, révoltant, ridicule, roquet.
S. sans succès, sifflets, singerie, somnifère, soporifique, sottise, subalterne.
T. terrassé, tombée, traînée, travers, triste.
V. vague, vexé, vide, vieillerie, volumineux.
A scanty store for praise:—
A. animé, applaudie.
B. brillant.
C. charmant, correct.
E. esprit.
F. facile, finesse.
G. goût, grâce, gracieux, grave.
I. invention, justesse.
L. léger, légèreté, libre.
N. nombreux.
P. piquant, prodigieux, pur.
R. raisonnable.
S. spirituel.
V. verve.
“Words are the image of the soul; yet not an image, but rather a shadow! Expressing roughly, and signifying gently, all that we have, all that we have had in our experience! What was,—where has it gone? and what is that which is with us now? Ah! we speak! Swiftly we catch and seize the gifts of life as they fleet by us.”
The insight and character of a man express themselves most clearly in his judgments. In what he rejects, and what he accepts, he confesses to what is alien to him and what he has need of; and so each year designates unconsciously its present spiritual state, the compass of its past life.
Thus is it also with nations; their praise and censure must always be strictly consonant to their situation. We possessed Greek and Roman terminology of this sort; the foregoing would give an occasion for examining recent criticism. Like the individual man, the nation rests on traditional ideas, foreign more often than native, both inherited and original. But only in so far as a people has a native literature can it judge and understand the past as it does the present. The Englishman clings earnestly and stubbornly to classic antiquity, and will not be convinced that the Orient has produced poets, unless he can be shown parallel passages from Horace. What advantages, on the other hand, Shakespeare’s independent genius has brought to the nation can hardly be expressed.
The French by the introduction of badly understood classical principles and an over-nice sense of form so constrained their poetry that it must finally quite disappear, since it could not become more similar to prose. The German was on the right road and will find it again, as soon as he gives up the unhappy attempt to rank the Nibelungen with the Iliad.
The favorable opinion which an excellent foreign writer has concerning us Germans may be appropriately related here. The Privy Councilor of the Russian Empire, Count Uvaroff, speaks thus in our honor, in a preface addressed to an old friend and partner, and contained in his valuable work on Nonnus of Panopolis, the Poet (St. Petersburg, 1817): “The renaissance of archæology belongs to the Germans. Other peoples may have contributed preparatory work, but if the more advanced philological studies are ever developed to a complete whole, such a palingenesis or regeneration could only take place in Germany. For this reason, certain new views can hardly be expressed in any other language, and on that account I have written in German. I hope we have now given up the perverse notion of the political preëminence of this or that language. It is time that every one, unconcerned about the instrument itself, should select the language which fits most closely the circle of ideas in which his thought is moving.”
Here speaks an able, talented, intellectual man, whose mind is above the petty limitations of a cold literary patriotism, and who, like a master of musical art, draws the stops of his well-equipped organ which express the thought and feeling of each moment. Would that all cultivated Germans would take thankfully to heart these excellent and instructive words of his, and that intellectual youths would be inspired to make themselves proficient in several languages, as optional instruments of life!