No, such literature is not the modern voice of society; popular opinion is not the true spirit of nations. A literature that refused to pander to the Barbarians would speak only for a society that has all but vanished, save for a vanishing elite who dwell beyond industry’s racket, politics’ bleating, the vapid applause of…

The democratic rabble is not the Crowd. Ignorant and naive, the Crowd joyfully commits and submits its numberless forces to acclaimed leaders, and it is the Crowd—in service to ideas it adores without understanding them—that has driven the great movements of history. It is the Crowd too, in its obscurity, that bestows what it does…

Théophile Gautier dozing through Racine whilst Rachel holds the stage: could there be a more perfect image of the modern mind exhausted by thought? Its natural calling now, the fresh and logical use of its powers, lies in feeling, in stirring itself up, in fashioning a costume that both reflects and magnifies its restlessness. Ask…

This book might well close here. I have addressed Past and Present. I could trust the reader’s insight to discern the Future. I have given pride of place to the representatives of the Past95 to show how the modern spirit proceeds through Analysis. It decomposes the human compound, studying in turn: the Soul in its…

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 country I am entering is the strangest on earth. From a distance, glimpsed through mists, it seems warm and pale. Yet draw closer and you will discover it lies under the fiercest sun—though that sun sheds no light. From afar, you would swear it was the realm of rest and indifference but look more…

Summary. — I. Between that precious generation of the Parnassians and our own, there remains to observe the almost negligible—though curiously so—passage of those who occupy this void without filling it: transitions of feverish exhaustion, courting perpetual commotion whilst having precious little to show for it. — II. There remains also to note the solitary…

The most striking characteristic of the seventeenth century is its obsession with thought. To this altar it sacrifices everything: the soaring imagination of the chansons de geste, even its pride in national glory. One thing alone matters—to fathom the essence of those mysteries its forebears were happy simply to dream about. Many who have judged…

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…