The Modern Spirit bears two hallmarks. Baptised in Christianity, it is at heart spiritualist, and from this baptismal inheritance it has preserved one cardinal tendency: it is analytical to such a degree that the novel of psychological analysis can justly be said to have sprung from the Confessional22. Indeed, so thoroughly analytical that it could only attain Synthesis by making a decisive break with its earliest education23 and marrying the speculative and intuitive gifts of its Asian heritage to the scientific and deductive powers of its Greek inheritance. In this magnificent attempt to forge unity from the diverse strands of its intellectual life, it runs one great risk: that of losing—or at least diluting—the spiritualist or mystical character that has thus far been its governing force, that most sharply sets it apart from the men of antiquity, and that bathes it in the most precious light the Gospel ever kindled in the world.
Yet before we come to this momentous contemporary question of Synthesis, we must once more consult History—though now only the History of Beauty’s expression through the Written Word—to show how the modern spirit, in pursuing its aesthetic vision of “Man in the World”, has from the first instinctively dissected its subject into fundamental, constituent parts, then subjected each part in turn to the same analytical scrutiny.
To keep within reasonable bounds, we shall not venture back to where logic might lead us—to that far-off dawn after the Ancient World’s twilight, when the Middle Ages broke dimly upon us, and man, still drunk on pagan pleasures yet newly converted to the Religion of Tears, began to mumble his ignorance and pain, to surrender himself to priestly guidance, and, though not always checking his innocent exuberance, at least struggled through the stern alphabet of Contrition and raised, with smarting hands, the heavy veil that hid beatitudes still far beyond reach. How Christ, step by step, banished from the minds of rising generations—who still harboured vague memories of the Pantheon—every deity save himself, and through his Apostles to the Nations imposed a wholly priestly literature, into which only men of learning like Rabelais smuggled echoes of ancient truths. Such themes would richly repay attention but would lead us far astray! Since we must limit ourselves to French literature, let us begin at the close of the sixteenth century, which—as though staging a perfect emblem for our purposes—brought paganism back to life, nearly smothered the authentic modern inspiration (which is Christian), yet ultimately bowed to the contrived but commanding force of a Christianity likewise reborn, and made Homer and Virgil submit to Bossuet.
Léon Hennique Novel 