15
A BOW TO THE ADVENTUROUS
What is the attitude of the critic toward the range
of subject matter suitable for literature? What is the
attitude of other literary artists toward the same?
Isidore Ducasse does not directly raise these ques
tions in the curious preface to his lost Poésies, but
they constitute the chief protuberances in my reflec
tions upon his emphatic assertions. Here was a youth,
born in 1850 and dead in 1870, author of the Chants
de Maldoror, a legend about himself, and Poésies, who
based his violent reaction, against the poetry of his
century purely upon its subject matter. „Je remplace
la mélancolie par le courage, le doute par la certitude,
le désespoir par l’espoir, la méchaneté par le bien, les
plaintes par le devoir, le scepticisme par la foi, les
sophismes par la froideur du calme et l’orgueil par la
modestie." With a dauntless courage, he denounces
Chateaubriand, Sénancourt, Jean-Jaques Rousseau, Anne
Radcliffe, Edgar Allan Poe, Mathurin, Gautier, Leconte,
Goethe. Sainte-Beuve, Lamartine, Lermontoff, Victor
Hugo, Mickiewicz, de Musset, Byron, Baudelaire and
Flaubert. „Grands-Têtes-Molles,“ he dubs them, „Si
vous êtes malheureux, il ne faut pas le dire au lecteur.
Gardez cela pour vous." There is no discussion of the
manner in which these writers employed their subject
matter nor of the esthetic states they may produce.
They chose subject matter the temperament of Ducasse
detested. He erected his prejudices into general dog
matisms and declared that, therefore, their poetry
would not endure. Lately, the Dadaists, partly through
some affinity with his views on subject matter, have
hoisted Ducasse from his obscurity.
The case of Ducasse gives, I think, a frequent
answer to our second question. A poet or a novelist
of specialized gifts seeks for subject matter which will
work like an explosive in him. Much leaves him cold,
but here and there he finds materials which heat him
into expression. Sorrow forces one poet to tearful
expression, praise of a beneficent god another to
joyful affirmatives; that which a naturalistic novelist
leaves out fires an idealistic narrator. Each, if he