George Sand and Her French Style 7 



which visits the author without warning and relieves him of the 

 labor of preparation, it is doubtful whether the Frenchman has 

 ever yet quite succeeded in appreciating; whether Shakespeare 

 does not still appear to him under the image of Voltaire's 

 drunken god adream ; as the English have never learned, prob- 

 ably never can learn thoroughly to admire the pale, refrigerated 

 shimmer of Racine. "We are very much mistaken," cries Zola/ 

 "when we think that the characteristic of a good style is a sub- 

 lime confusion with just a dash of madness in il ; in reality the 

 merit of a style depends upon its logic and clearness." The 

 Frenchman, in short, tends always to subjectivize his emotion 

 and possess it, thereby making his literature objective, while 

 the Englishman tends to objectivize his and to allow it to possess 

 him, thereby making his literature largely subjective. 



And yet this difference, which is just the difference between 

 art and genius, is the one critically differential of the two litera- 

 tures. Language is at best an inadequate medium, no matter 

 how well handled. And one in accordance with his tempera- 

 ment will prefer the relatively imperfect embodiment of a lofty 

 ideal ; and another, the well-rounded embodiment of a relatively 

 low ideal. The former produces a literature of aspiration, in 

 which the whole structure of language is bent and strained by 

 the stress of meaning forced upon it, a romantic literature, 

 strong in poetry and weak in prose, like English. The latter 

 produces a finished and finite literature, neat, elegant, and lim- 

 ited, strong in prose and weak in poetry, a classic literature, like 

 French. For the exuberance of life always tends to shatter and 

 demolish form ; and it is only by painful labor, by clipping and 

 paring and pruning that a fresh and modern existence can be 

 forced into vessels and moulds. This is probably something of 

 what Flaubert meant by his celebrated and oft-quoted remark, 

 "The idea springs from the form,"- a saying so hard for the 

 Englishman, and yet almost a shibboleth to his own disciples. 

 At all events the remark has this much truth : in Goethe's words. 

 "die Kunst ist nur Gestaltung," art is only form ; and in deter- 



^Le Roman experimental. 

 *The Goncourts' y^wrwa/. 



20: 



