M. Taine’s thought has been my constant companion throughout this journey. Though only obliquely connected to our thoroughly modern artistic evolution, absorbed as he is now, to our great loss, in historical studies, this admirable mind has watched with the keenest eye of all observers those earlier movements which were destined to carry Art towards the supreme conclusions we now sense within reach. He has witnessed the human mind embarking upon the paths of metaphysical mysticism, venturing “into abstraction, dream and symbol,” growing ever “more capable of abstraction” whilst proving itself worthy of an increasingly fluid ideal of Beauty, expanding at once in both conception and expression.
“Does not every living creature in this world share a common nature? Certainly, each thing possesses a soul. The universe itself has one. Whatever the being—brute or thinking, distinct or nebulous—a secret essence always gleams beyond its sensible form, something divine we glimpse in sublime flashes yet never grasp or penetrate. Here lies the presentiment and yearning that lift all modern poetry skyward, now through Christian meditations, as in Campbell and Wordsworth, now through pagan visions, as in Keats and Shelley. They hear the great heart of nature beating; they long to reach it; they explore every avenue, spiritual or sensible—the way of Judaea and the way of Greece, the path of hallowed dogma and that of forbidden doctrine. In this magnificent, impossible quest, the greatest spend themselves and perish. The poetry they carry with them along these sublime roads comes apart at the seams.“
So speaks Monsieur Taine. For all the menace in those closing lines, his admiration and allegiance remain unmistakable. Meanwhile, a most circumspect critic—admittedly somewhat confined by his singular perspective—surveys from the heights of a century’s teaching and tradition, whose very grandeur leaves him disenchanted with any prospect of the future, and passes severe judgement on these new endeavours, bracing himself against the fortunate and inexorable tide carrying our age towards the ultimate apotheosis of Integral Art.
I respect M. Brunetière’s unquestionable sincerity. I cherish the matchless masters of the seventeenth century as deeply as he does. Yet I am convinced that they themselves would have been innovators in our time, just as they were in their own. Moreover, I believe M. Brunetière’s resistance serves a purpose. How providential that a voice of his authority should regularly summon—however sternly—our youthful aspirations back to reverence for ancient beliefs, to cherishing what remains vital and generative within them.
In a third critic, Count Melchior de Vogüé—a writer to the manner born, traditional in principle yet modern in sensibility—reverence for the past and hunger for the future find their meeting ground. M. de Vogüé was introduced early to Russia through circumstances of fortune. There he encountered a young nation closer than our own to the Orient, yet one that had welcomed Western influence since the mid-eighteenth century. He has brought home from Russia a magnificent literature—the fruit of that grafted Western influence and indigenous Russian youth. It is a literature both bitter and tender, innocent yet intricate, spiritual and sensual at once. It blazes with love exalted into charity, yet remains fierce in all its gentleness. Dostoevsky, Tolstoy—sharp-etched figures whose influence ripples outward, growing fainter yet more particular. This is Russian Literature. Young French Literature embraced it as a kindred spirit, recognising in it the fulfilment of certain distant longings, whilst drawing from it a salutary lesson in simplicity and force.
Finally, a most remarkable spirit—utterly distinctive, possessed of exquisite subtlety and penetrating insight. An artist besotted with life, yet one for whom the Plastic Arts reveal themselves as life’s most potent expression. He offers invaluable witness in the name of Art. If M. Jean Dolent never became a painter himself, despite gifts peculiarly suited to grasping pictorial Beauty, it is because “the painter sees only within” and he holds that “amongst those who observe, some must truly observe and see.” Yet this Devotee of art, who beholds life through the transfiguring lens of great paintings, has distilled certainties from his ceaseless contemplation. These have shifted considerably over time, he admits93. All to the good: such fluctuations attest to his integrity. His conclusions, strikingly, chime with our own: “What seizes me most forcefully is the work in which the artist carries me beyond his apparent stopping-point… My ideal: Truths invested with the enchantment of Dream.”94
Léon Hennique Novel 