An audience
that applauds is an audience that is given leisure from listening.
that applauds is an audience that is given leisure from listening.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v22 - Sac to Sha
Plato calls her "the beautiful
## p. 12819 (#241) ##########################################
SAPPHO
12819
Sappho"; and she is often referred to as "the tenth Muse. " An epi-
gram on the great lyric poets, after enumerating the eight men, says,
"Sappho was not the ninth among men: she is catalogued as the
tenth among the Muses. " Horace writes:-
"Still breathes the love, still live the hues,
Intrusted to the Eolian maiden's strings. "
And the great critic Longinus is even more complimentary.
Such uniform, unqualified praise for a thousand years may well
make us mourn the loss of Sappho's works. For with the exception
of two short poems (one incomplete), and about a hundred and
twenty fragments of from one to five lines, they are all lost. But
what remains is very precious, containing a wealth of deft expression
not easy to match in any other poet, and more than sufficient to
enable us to comprehend the estimate given of the poetess by Strabo:
"Sappho is a kind of miracle; for within the memory of man there
has not, so far as we know, arisen any woman worthy even to be
mentioned along with Sappho in the matter of poetry. "
Sappho left nine books and rolls of poems, the subjects of which
were so various that they were arranged according to metres, a book
being devoted to each of the nine metres in which she wrote. Of
these metres the most famous was the "Sapphic stanza," which she
seems to have invented. Another invention of hers was the plectrum
or pectis, with which the lyre was struck,— the first step toward the
piano.
We shall arrange her briefer fragments not according to metre but
to subject, premising the remark that through most of them runs
a trait to which she frankly bears testimony, the love of splendor.
She says:-
―
"I am in love with luxury:
The love of the sun hath won for me
The splendid and the beautiful. »
Her love of nature, and her power of expressing its charm in
simple, striking language, remind us of Burns and Goethe. Her
pathetic lines about her loneliness at midnight have already been
quoted. But it is not merely the pathetic in nature that she feels:
she feels all its living beauty. It is not only the night, with the
moon and the Pleiads set, that touches her: every hour of the day
comes to her with a fresh surprise. Of the morning she says:-
"Early uprose the golden-slippered Dawn;"
and of the evening:-
"O Hesperus! thou bringest all
The glimmering Dawn dispersed. »
-
## p. 12820 (#242) ##########################################
12820
SAPPHO
And again:
"O Hesperus! thou bringest all:
Thou bring'st the wine; thou bring'st the goat;
Thou bring'st the child to the mother's knee. »*
Of the night she says:-
-
"The stars about the pale-faced moon
Veil back their shining forms from sight,
As oft as, full with radiant round,
She bathes the earth with silver light. "
And again of the moon and the Pleiads:
"The moon was shining full, and they
Stood as about an altar ranged. »
And just as the hours of the day, so the seasons of the year bring
her joy. Her ear is open to-
"Spring's harbinger, the passion-warbling nightingale;">
and her eye brightens when —
"The golden chick-peas spring upon the banks. »
What a picture of the Southern summer, with its noonday siesta in
the open air, we have in these lines:
:-
"The lullaby of waters cool
Through apple-boughs is softly blown,
And, shaken from the rippling leaves,
Sleep droppeth down. "
And how we should like to hear the termination of this simile:-
"As when the shepherds on the hills
Tread under foot the hyacinth,
And on the ground the purple flower [lies crushed]. »
Along with her delight in nature goes a keen joyous feeling for
all that is festive: song, wine, and dance, garlands, gold vessels, and
purple robes are dear to her. To her lyre she says:-
And to Aphrodite she calls,-
"Come then, my lyre divine!
Let speech be thine. »
-
"Come, Queen of Cyprus! pour the stream
Of nectar, mingled lusciously
With merriment, in cups of gold. »
* Lord Byron's expansion of this in 'Don Juan' will be remembered. See
page 2968 of this work.
## p. 12821 (#243) ##########################################
SAPPHO
12821
But Aphrodite is not enough. Life requires other ennobling ele-
ments, light, sweetness, and art, represented by Hermes, the Graces,
and the Muses. Of a wedding-feast she says:-
Again she calls:-
And again:-
"Then with ambrosia the bowl was mixed,
And Hermes took a cup, to toast the gods,
While all the rest raised goblets, poured the wine,
And prayed for all brave things to bless the groom. »
-
――――
And yet again:-
"Hither come, ye dainty Graces,
And ye fair-haired Muses now! "
«Come, rosy-armed, chaste Graces! come,
Daughters of Jove! »
"Hither, hither come, ye Muses!
Leave the golden sky. "
Nay, she even calls upon Justice herself to put garlands about her
fair locks, and come to the feast; adding, characteristically enough,
that the gods turn away from worshipers that wear no wreaths.
From such sayings we see that Sappho's delight in nature, deep as
it was, was chastened and refined by a delight in art. The Grecian
grace of movement and management of drapery are particularly dear
to her. She exclaims:
"What rustic hoyden ever charmed the soul,
That round her ankles could not kilt her coats! "
But far more than all outward adornment of the body, which is
but an index of the soul, is the adornment of the soul itself with
sweetness and art. To an uncultivated woman she says:-
"When thou art dead, thou shalt lie in the earth:
Not even the memory of thee shall be,
Thenceforward and forever; for no part
Hast thou, or share, in the Pierian roses:
But, formless, even in Hades's halls shalt thou
Wander and flit with the effaced dead. "
On the other hand, to a cultivated woman she says:-
"I think no other maid, nay, not even one,
That hath beheld the sunlight, e'er shall be
Like thee in wisdom, in all days to come. "
-
She knows too that she herself will not be easily forgotten.
says:-
"I think there will be memory of us yet,
In after days. "
She
## p. 12822 (#244) ##########################################
12822
SAPPHO
But, aware of the labor required by genius, she adds:-
In another:
"I do not think with these two arms to clasp
The heavens. »
What calls forth Sappho's supreme admiration and love is the cul-
tivated, genial, loving soul, at home in a beautiful body. Her joy in
such souls expresses itself in language of the most tempestuous sort.
In one fragment she says:
-
"Love again, unnerving might,
Bitter-sweet, doth shake and smite,
Like a serpent folded tight. "
"Love again hath tossed my spirit,
Like a blast down mountain-gorges,
Rushing on the oak-tree's branches. »
-:
She is sad when her love is not returned. Of one friend she says:
"I loved thee, Atthis, once, in days gone by;
A little maid thou seemedst, nor very fair.
Atthis, thou hatest now to think of me,
And fleest to Andromeda. »
Of others she speaks pathetically:-
"The heart within their breast is cold,
And drops its wings. "
Then her sorrow is too great for utterance.
"To you, dear ones, this thought of mine may not
Be told; but in myself I know it well. "
There is a whole heart-tragedy in such snatches as this:-
"The beings that I have toiled to please,
They wound me most. »
But the strongest expression of her love occurs in the two longer
poems which follow this article. Of the second, Longinus says:—
"Do you not admire the manner in which, at one and the same time, she
loses soul, body, hearing, speech, color, everything, as if they were passing
from her and melting away? how, in self-contradiction, she is at once hot and
cold, foolish and wise? how she is afraid, and almost dead, so that not one
feeling, but a whole congregation of feelings, appears in her? For all these
things are true of persons in love. But it was the seizing of the salient points,
and the combination of them, that produced the sublime. "
And he classes the poem as sublime. Certain it is that her influ-
ence, like that of Homer, went far to determine the character of all
## p. 12823 (#245) ##########################################
SAPPHO
12823
subsequent Greek poetry and art,- to keep it pure and high, above
sensuality and above sentimentalism.
The character of Sappho's work may be thus summed up: Take
Homer's unstudied directness, Dante's intensity without his mysti-
cism, Keats's sensibility without his sensuousness, Burns's masculine
strength, and Lady Nairne's exquisite pathos, that goes straight to
the heart and stays there, and you have Sappho. What a darkened
world it must have been that allowed such poetry as hers to be lost!
And yet it is not all lost. Enough remains to show us the extent of
our loss; and of it we may say, in the words of the ancient epigram:
"Sappho's white, speaking pages of dear song
Yet linger with us, and will linger long. »
Hawar Davidha
TO APHRODITE
THO
HOU of the throne of many changing hues,
Immortal Venus, artful child of Jove,-
Forsake me not, O Queen, I pray! nor bruise
My heart with pain of love.
But hither come, if e'er from other home
Thine ear hath heard mine oft-repeated calls;
If thou hast yoked thy golden car and come,
Leaving thy father's halls;
If ever fair, fleet sparrows hastened forth,
And swift on wheeling pinions bore thee nigher,
From heights of heaven above the darkened earth.
Down through the middle fire.
Ay, swift they came; then, Blessed One, didst thou
With countenance immortal smile on me,
And ask me what it was that ailed me now,
And why I called on thee;
And what I most desired should come to pass,
To still my soul inspired: "Whom dost thou long
To have Persuasion lead to thine embrace?
Who, Sappho, does thee wrong?
## p. 12824 (#246) ##########################################
12824
SAPPHO
"For if she flee, she quickly shall pursue;
If gifts she take not, gifts she yet shall bring;
And if she love not, love shall thrill her through,
Though strongly combating. "
Then come to me even now, and set me free
From sore disquiet; and that for which I sigh
With fervent spirit, bring to pass for me:
Thyself be mine ally!
Translation of Thomas Davidson.
TO THE BELOVED
HOLD him as the gods above,
I
The man who sits before thy feet,
And, near thee, hears thee whisper sweet,
And brighten with the smiles of love.
Thou smiledst: like a timid bird
My heart cowered fluttering in its place.
I saw thee but a moment's space,
And yet I could not frame a word.
My tongue was broken; 'neath my skin
A subtle flame shot over me;
And with my eyes I could not see;
My ears were filled with whirling din.
And then I feel the cold sweat pour,
Through all my frame a trembling pass;
My face is paler than the grass:
To die would seem but little more.
Translation of Thomas Davidson.
## p. 12825 (#247) ##########################################
12825
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
(1828-)
EN ANY important first night, and on many unimportant ones,
in the theatres of Paris will be noticed among the most
attentive spectators a short, stout, comfortable-looking old
gentleman, with a white beard, a high color, and shrewd eyes. It is
Francisque Sarcey. For more than thirty years, his has been a posi-
tion of special distinction among the critics of France concerning
themselves particularly with French dramatic literature and the French
drama. No writer on these topics has so large an audience, and one
of such distinctively popular character. Of
the old school of critics, and of many old-
fashioned convictions; at swords' points with
many brother commentators and journalists
on questions of theatrical art, and of that
theatrical article the play; the object of
much good-natured ridicule (of some by no
means as good-natured as it might be),-
seen everywhere and known everywhere in
the dramatic movement of the capital, and
continually putting himself in close touch
with a wide provincial public by either his
lectures or his notices,-M. Sarcey easily
overtops in authority many new and brill-
iant confrères. He has been a voluminous
writer; he has been an incessant lecturer; and special gifts for main-
taining the courage of his convictions from the first have marked him
in both capacities.
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
M. Sarcey was born in 1828 at Dourdan, in the Department of the
Seine-et-Oise. He was an honor-pupil in the famous Charlemagne
School in Paris; and when pursuing his studies in the École Normale
in 1848, his fellow-students were About and Taine. His lively spirits
and independent ideas brought him into trouble when he was serv-
ing the Department of Public Instruction at Chaumont. He quitted
the school-teacher's desk for the newspaper office. In 1859 he began
critical work on the Figaro. He made a business of studying the
drama and dramatic criticism. He passed from the Figaro to various
other journals. Finally he became a permanent member of the staff
## p. 12826 (#248) ##########################################
12826
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
of Le Temps. To that well-known and influential newspaper he
contributes one or two articles every week in the year.
The plat-
form is also still his avocation; and his critical talks, delivered with a
charmingly colloquial manner,-a manner entirely in accord with his
theories of what a lecture should be,- are among the best attended
on the part of a public not too fond of that particular method of
receiving critical impressions.
M. Sarcey is not merely a specialist in the drama, and in the art
of acting: he is a man of fine and wide literary and artistic educa-
tion. He has a style which is like himself: clear, nervous, direct,
with touches of humor, and with occasionally the grace of true senti-
ment, but utterly opposed to the formalism which is to many writers
the only critical expression. He writes as he speaks,-off-hand, yet
never in a slipshod fashion. He has much humor, but always in good
taste. He believes in tradition on the stage; and in the making of
stage plays, he likes the melodrama better than the modern literary
play. He abhors the drama in which plot is not supreme; he hates
the faddists and the symbolists. His sense of himself is strong but
never offensive. He is respected as a philosopher of the play-house
and the play. His very weaknesses are so much a part of himself
that he would not be "Our Uncle Sarcey" without them; so no one
wishes them away. Past his middle years, he writes with the youth-
fulness of a man of twenty-five, united with the vast experience and
the maturity of a Nestor of the French theatre. His reputation is
international. All the world reads him, and nowhere else in the
world is there to be found a critic quite like him.
HOW A LECTURE IS PREPARED
From Recollections of Middle Life. ' Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
HEN you have taken all your notes, when you have possessed
yourselves of at least the substance of all the ideas of
which the lecture is to be composed,-whether you have
them already arranged in fine order, or in the mass, still con-
fused, seething in your mind; when you have reached the moment
of preparation, when you no longer seek anything but the turn
to give them, the clearest, the most vivid and picturesque man-
ner in which to express them: when you are so far,-— mind, my
friend, never commit the imprudence of seating yourself at your
desk, your notes or your book under your eyes, a pen in your
## p. 12827 (#249) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12827
hand. If you live in the country, you doubtless have a bit of
a garden at your disposal; and in default of an alley of trees
belonging to you, a turn around the town where no one passes.
If you are a Parisian, you have in the neighborhood either the
Luxembourg or the Tuileries, or the Parc Monceau, or in any
case some wide and solitary street where you can dream in the
open air without too much interruption. If you have nothing of
all this, or if the weather be execrable, you have in your house
a room larger than the others: get up and walk. A lecture is
never prepared except while walking. The movement of the
body lashes the blood and aids the movement of the mind.
You have possessed your memory of the themes from the
development of which the lecture must be formed: pick out one
from the pile,— the first at hand, or the one you have most at
heart, which for the moment attracts you most, and act as if you
were before the public; improvise upon it. Yes, force yourself
to improvise. Do not trouble yourself about badly constructed
phrases, nor inappropriate words-go your way. Push on to the
end of the development, and the end once reached, recommence
the same exercise; recommence it three times, four times, ten
times, without tiring. You will have some trouble at first; the
development will be short and meagre: little by little around the
principal theme there will group themselves accessory ideas or
convincing facts, or pat anecdotes that will extend and enrich it.
Do not stop in this work until you notice that in thus taking up
the same theme you fall into the same development; and that
this development, with its turns of language and order of phrases,
fixes itself in your memory.
For, what is the purpose of the exercise that I recommend to
you? To prepare for you a wide and fertile field of terms and
phrases upon the subject that you are to treat. You have the
idea: you must seek the expression. You fear that words and
forms of phrase will fail you. A considerable number must be
accumulated in advance; it is a store of ammunition with which
you provide yourself for the great day. If you commit the im-
prudence of charging your memory with a single development
which must be definitive, you will fall into all the inconveniences
that I have brought to your attention: the effect is that of recit-
ing a lesson, and that is chilling; the memory may fail, you lose
the thread, and are pulled up short; the phrase has no longer
that air of negligence which improvisation alone gives, and which
## p. 12828 (#250) ##########################################
12828
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
charms the crowd. But you have prepared a half-dozen develop-
ments of the same idea without fixing them either in your mem-
ory or upon paper; you come before the audience. The mind
that day, if good fortune wills that you be in train, is more
alert, keener; the necessity of being ready at call communicates
to it a lucidity and ardor of which you would not have believed
yourself capable. It draws from that mass of words and phrases
accumulated beforehand, or rather that mass itself is set in
motion and runs toward it and carries it along; it follows the
flood; it has the appearance of improvising what it recites, and
in fact it is improvising even while reciting.
This is not a new method that I am inventing. The ancients,
alas! have worn the matter threadbare, and one must always go
back to the 'De Oratore' of the late Cicero. You have, I im-
agine, heard it told that Thiers, when he had an important speech
to make in the Chamber, first tried the effect of his arguments.
upon his friends and guests. He received much company, and
every evening he improvised, for a little circle of auditors, some
parts of his future speech. Visitors succeeded one another; and
he recommenced without weariness, and indeed without wearying
them, the same developments. He was firing at a target. After
all, isn't this the same kind of preparation that I have recom-
mended to you? You are not M. Thiers, you have not at hand
a series of listeners, who relieve one another to give you a
chance. I would not advise you to inflict the suffering of these
recommencements and hesitations upon your unfortunate wife.
Improvise for yourself, as if you were speaking before an audi-
ence.
It will doubtless happen more than once, in the course of
these successive improvisations, that you will hit upon a pictur-
esque word, a witty thrust, a happy phrase. Beware of storing
it in your memory, and on your return sticking it on paper like
a butterfly fastened on a blank sheet with a pin. If you bring
it to the lecture you will certainly wish to place it; and instead
of abandoning yourself to improvisation in the development of
your idea, you will be wholly occupied with directing it toward
the ingenious or brilliant sally that you have stored away.
will appear embarrassed and awkward in spite of yourself, and
three quarters of the time you will spoil the effect upon which
you counted. You will have sacrificed the thought to a mot, and
the mot will miss fire.
You
## p. 12829 (#251) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12829
That mot,-heavens! perhaps it will not be lost, though you
have taken pains to forget it. Who knows? Perhaps on some
great day, in the flow of improvisation, it will mount to the sur-
face, and you will see it suddenly spring up in the eddy of a
phrase. Oh, then throw it in boldly: it will be more attractive
from having the air of a "find," a bit of good luck.
The great principle to which we must always return is that
every lecture must be improvised; but have a care! one does
not improvise successfully before the public until one has twenty
times improvised in solitude, as one can only draw from a fount-
ain the water that one has taken care to put into it beforehand.
Many believe that at least the exordium and the peroration
may be learned by heart. It is not my opinion. I have tried.
it. I have never succeeded by that means. The most that I
would admit is, that in speaking before a new public, if one has
first to address to it some of the phrases of courtesy and thanks
demanded by custom, one may fix the expressions; because they
are pure formulas of politeness, and it is better to know them
by heart. It would be ridiculous to stumble in the phrase used
to congratulate a person on his good health or felicitate him upon
his marriage.
But every time that you have true ideas to express,—and they
enter into the exordium and the peroration as well as into the
rest, you must improvise. For the audience is always warned,
by a change of tone or manner, of the moment when the author
passes from recitation to pure improvisation, and it begins to be
distrustful; it constantly wonders if the improvisation may not
simply be an uncertain recitation; it loses confidence and resists.
You see! there is no real success to be had- I cannot too often
repeat it — unless the audience feels itself in some sort plunged,
completely bathed, in the deep and rapid flow of improvisation.
-
Even the peroration—and between ourselves, is there any
need in the lecture of what is called a peroration? The perora-
tion is the bellow of the mediocre actor upon the last verse of the
tirade. Great artists disdain the applause that it arouses. What
do you undertake to do when you speak? You wish to explain
and prove an idea. Well, when your demonstration is finished,
you put a period to it: that is the peroration. The worth of a
lecture is not in the ingenuity of an exordium, in the brilliant
fanfare of a peroration, in the number and splendor of the lus-
trously cut phrases sown through the discourse: it is in the
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
## p. 12830 (#252) ##########################################
12830
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
ensemble of its mass. Be sure that when you have faithfully
explained, developed, and revealed your idea; when you have,
with or without applause, impressed it upon the mind of your
audience, there is no success comparable to that.
Applause! flee from it as from the plague.
An audience
that applauds is an audience that is given leisure from listening.
When it claps its hands, it's a sign that it is no longer bound
to the idea that you express; that it is no longer carried away,
rolled in the torrent of your discourse. It takes time to cry out
at a pretty phrase, to go into ecstasy over a flash of wit;-bad
business for you! for it forgets, while lingering to applaud
this, that which is the foundation of the lecture, the succession
of ideas and reasoning; you will have trouble in recapturing it
again.
I am so persuaded of this truth that I never leave my listen-
ers leisure to breathe. Of course it has happened to me, as to
my fellows, to touch here and there a corner of my discourse
with a more brilliant vivacity than usual, and to be conscious of
it; one is always conscious of that sort of thing. In such a case
I hardly launched the last word of the development before set-
ting out again at full speed for another series of ideas, cutting
short all tendency to applause. The confidence felt in an orator
evaporates in these bravos.
"Le vrai feu d'artifice est d'être magnanime," said M. Bel-
montet once upon a time, in a verse still celebrated.
The only
applause that counts, the only true applause, is the attention of
the audience, letting itself be so won by what you say that it no
longer thinks of the way in which you have said it.
You will doubtless be somewhat alarmed to know that it is
necessary to improvise a dozen times, and often more, each of
the subjects for development of which a lecture is composed.
You think to yourself that that is a tremendous task.
Yes, my
friends, there is nothing so long and so preoccupying as the prep-
aration of a lecture; you must make up your mind to it, if you
expect to follow that career. You will spend much time and
pains on it. Reassure yourselves, however: the work will become.
easier and more rapid as the habit of doing it grows with you.
Among these themes of development, as each lecturer approaches
only the subjects which relate to his studies and are within his
*True brilliancy comes from greatness of spirit. "
## p. 12831 (#253) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12831
range, some will often present themselves anew, and will only
require a summary preparation.
This humus of which I just now spoke to you— this prepared
heap of turns of speech, of exact and picturesque words — will
naturally grow richer; you will have it right at hand, and it will
serve the occasion without fresh effort.
There will come a time when, even with themes that are new
to you, you will no longer need, in order to establish the devel-
opment, ten or twelve successive improvisations. You will be
astonished to find with what facility, all at once, accessory ideas
and convincing facts will spring from the first improvisation, and
arrange themselves about the principal idea to sustain and clear
it. It will always be delicate work, but it will no longer be so
painful or so distressing. In a few hours, spread over two or
three days, you will get through the preparation of a lecture;
on condition, be it understood,—it is a prime condition,-of fully
possessing your subject.
You have improvised -picking them out one after the other
just as they came-each of the themes, so that it only remains
to put them in their place on the day of the final improvisation.
One of the great anxieties of a novice in lecturing is to know
how to pass from one theme to another; what Boileau called the
labor of transition, which used to give us blue terror in college.
Permit me to give you, just here, an axiom which I only suc-
ceeded in formulating after much reflection and many attempts:
In lecturing there is no transition.
When you have finished one development you enter upon
another; as at dinner, when you have eaten the soup you pass
to the entrée, and then to the roast. If there is no connection
between two ideas that succeed one another in your discourse,
what use is there in an imitation of one? When you speak, dis-
trust little strokes of finesse, tricks of style, bits of false ele-
gance: all this is worth nothing and serves no purpose. When
you have finished the explanation and the demonstration of the
idea, say honestly, if you must say something, "We have done
with that theme: let us pass to the next. "
But the best way would be to say nothing at all, and to enter
upon another order of development, with no warning but a short
silence.
If, on the contrary, there is a connection between the two
themes, do not disturb yourself,-you do not need expressly to
## p. 12832 (#254) ##########################################
12832
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
. mark it. It is useless to take the trouble to throw a bridge
between the two ideas: the moment that you, the orator, leap
from one to the other, the audience must leap after you, borne
on by the same impulse. The transition is no more than the
movement of your thought, that the audience necessarily follows
if you keep a firm hand upon it.
Ah, bless me! you, the lecturer, must have always present
to your mind, even through any digression you permit yourself,
your principal idea, and must not let your audience forget it;
you will have no trouble in leading them back when you yourself
return. And if by chance you are so far removed from it that
you do not know what road to take to reach it again, the sim-
plest way is frankly to announce your embarrassment. "It seems
to me that we are straying - where was I? Ah! I wished to
demonstrate to you that" and there is the thread picked up,
without great art, I confess: but I have remarked that the public
likes very well to have you make a confidant of it; speak to it
with open heart; if need be, ask counsel from it. It would not
do to make an artifice, a trick, of this means of exciting inter-
est and sympathy: the public is very sharp; it would easily see
that you played upon its credulity, and would range itself against
you. But if you have truly lost the thread, do not fear to say
frankly, "I do not know where I am put me on the right
track. " If a word escapes you, ask some one to prompt you.
They probably will not do so; but you will have had time to
find it while they search for it, or an excuse for not having
found it any sooner than the others. This excuse would not be
permitted to a man who recites, for it would pass for a failure
in memory; and to be brought up by a defeat of memory is the
worst that can happen in lecturing, as in the theatre and in the
pulpit. Laughter breaks forth invincibly. It never offends in
an orator who improvises; it may even please by a certain air
of sincerity and good-fellowship.
Is there a special tone and style for the lecture, as there is
for academic discussions,- for the pulpit, for the Sorbonne, for
the bar? That is a point to be looked into.
What is a lecture? It is, properly, to hold a conversation with
many hundreds of persons, who listen without interrupting. It
may be said, in general, that the tone of the lecture should be
that of a chat. But there it is, there are as many tones for
chatting as there are people who chat. Each one talks according
-
## p. 12833 (#255) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12833
to his temperament, his cast of mind, his turn of thought; each
talks as he is: and that which is pleasing in a chat is precisely
the discovery in it of the physiognomy of the talker. I can give
you only one piece of advice on this point: try to be, through
art, when once seated in the lecturer's chair, that which you nat-
urally are in your drawing-room, when you talk with five or six
persons and when you engross the conversation. Hear yourself
speak, observe yourself,- these introspections are become very
easy to us, thanks to the habit that we have contracted of analyz-
ing ourselves, and bend all your efforts to producing a lecture,
not according to your neighbor, who perhaps speaks better than
you, but yourself, only yourself, accentuating if possible the ren-
dering of your principal traits. I will condense my counsels in
this formula, which is not so humorous as it seems: It is permit-
ted you, it is even recommended to you, to have a "make-up »
for the lecture; but the "make-up" must be your own.
Your entire personality must shine forth in your discourse.
And that is the especial service rendered by this method of suc-
cessive improvisations that I have just prescribed for you. While
you are thus improvising alone, face to face with yourself, with-
out any witness to inspire you with a desire to pose, you are
free; you unconsciously set your entire being in full swing. The
mold is taken; you spread your personality before the public;
you are no longer a more or less eloquent, more or less affected
orator,—you are a man; you are yourself.
To be one's self: that is the essential thing.
Among the young lecturers discovered in these later times,
there is not one who has more quickly acquired a greater or
more legitimate reputation than M. Brunetière. Nevertheless
there is not one further removed in speaking from the ordinary
tone of familiar conversation. It would seem that the lecture, as
he practices it, would hardly come within the definition we have
given of the species, a conversation with an audience that holds.
its tongue. But what would you have ? That is the way that
Brunetière talks, and he talks as he is. He is a man of doc-
trine, who loves to dogmatize; he feels an invincible need of
demonstrating that which he advances, and to force conviction.
on those who hear him. He manœuvres his battalions of argu-
ments with a precision of logic and an ardor of temperament
that are marvelous. The phrases fall from his authoritative lips
with an amplitude, correctness, and force to which everything
XXII-803
---
___
## p. 12834 (#256) ##########################################
12834
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
bends. He is to be found entire in his lecture: the lecture is
excellent, then, because it is of him; or rather, because it is he.
Old Boileau had already expressed these truths in some verses
that are not among his best known:-
"Chacun pris dans son air est agréable en soi;
Ce n'est que l'air d'autrui qui peut déplaire en moi. ” *
If I should try to talk like Brunetière, I should be execrable:
it is possible, on the other hand, that if Brunetière tried to appro-
priate some of my methods he would not succeed; because, to
tell the truth, my air of good-fellowship, my familiarities of lan-
guage, my jovial anecdotes interspersed with frank laughter, my
unpolished and torrent-like phrases, are not methods, they are all
of a piece with myself; it is all I-a little more I perhaps
than I ordinarily am, but Brunetière is also probably a little more
himself in his lecture than in his chimney-corner at home.
May I be permitted to end these reflections on the art of the
lecturer with some practical advice?
Never dine before the lecture hour. A soup, some biscuits
dipped in Bordeaux, nothing more. If you fear gnawing at the
stomach, add a slice of roast beef, but without bread. Do not
fill the stomach. There is a rage in the provinces for inviting
you to a gala dinner when you have a lecture to give. It's the
worst of all preludes. It is in vain to try to restrain yourself.
You eat and you drink too much; you arrive at the lecture hall
chatting with the dinner company. You have infinite trouble in
recovering yourself.
Dine lightly and alone an hour beforehand; stretch yourself
for half an hour on a sofa, and take a good nap. Then go, en-
tirely alone, to where you are expected, improvising, reimprovis-
ing, pondering upon your exordium, so that when the curtain
rises you are in perfect working order; you are in form. I do
not know how the political orators manage to deliver their long
discourses after gala banquets. It is true that they generally do
not dine. I have seen some who all during the repast abstract-
edly roll balls of bread under their fingers, and only respond
vaguely with insignificant monosyllables to the tiresome talk of
their neighbors.
*"Every one taken in his own manner is pleasing in himself;
It is only another's manner that is displeasing in me. "
## p. 12835 (#257) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12835
Speak standing: one commands a fuller and stronger voice,
but especially the audience is dominated; you hold it with your
eye. Speak from behind a table, even though (according to the
rules that I have laid down) you have no notes to read, no
quotation to make, book in hand. One is sustained by the table,
and brought around to the conversational tone. If one has
before him the wide space of the platform, in proportion as one
warms up he makes more motions, he surprises himself strid-
ing across the stage; the voice rises, and is soon no longer in
harmony with the level of the things that are to be delivered.
Beware of these balks. Watch the play of your physiognomy and
your gestures, but not too much. I leave mine to the grace of
God; what is natural, even though it be exuberant and trivial, is
worth more than a factitious and studied correctness.
Have I other recommendations to make? No, I truly believe
that I am at the end of my list. All the rest can be put into
one sentence: "Be yourself. " It is understood, is it not, that it
is necessary first to be some one? You now know the processes
which I have used, which I still use.
FURTHER HINTS ON LECTURING
From 'Recollections of Middle Life. Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
You
ou have to speak, we will suppose, of 'Le Cid' by Corneille.
Do not weary yourself at first by reading all that has been
written on 'Le Cid': steep yourself in the play, think of
it, turn it over and over, go to see it if it is being played: if
neither the reading nor the representation of the drama suggests
to you any impression that is properly yours-good gracious,
my friend! what would you have me say? Don't meddle with
lecturing either on 'Le Cid' or any other theme drawn from
literature. Manifestly you are not born for the trade.
But if you have shuddered and thrilled at a given passage; if
there has been presented to your mind some comparison that has,
so to speak, sprung from the depths of your reading; if you have
yourself formed an opinion upon the whole or upon some scenes
of the work, you must cling to that: it is that which must be
told, it is that which I call having something to say.
-
## p. 12836 (#258) ##########################################
12836
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
Do not trouble yourself to know if others have thought it
before you, and have said it perhaps even better than you will
say it yourself. That is not the question. The idea, however old
it may be, will appear new; and will be so, indeed, because you
will strongly impress upon it the turn of your mind, because you
will tinge it unconsciously with the colors of your imagination.
As you will have made it flash from the reading, as you will
yourself have drawn this truth from its well, your passion will
go out to it, you will naturally put into its expression a good
faith, a sincerity, a transport, the heat of which will be com-
municated to the public.
Not until you have performed this first task, the only neces-
sary one, the only efficacious one, shall I permit you- pay atten-
tion: permit you, not advise you to read what your predecessors
have thought of 'Le Cid,' and written about it. If by chance
you run across some interesting point of view that had escaped
you, and that strikes you, take care, for the love of heaven, not
to transfer it just as it is to your lecture, where it would have
the mischievous effect of second-hand and veneer. No: take up
'Le Cid' anew; re-read it with this idea, suggested by another,
in mind; put that back into the text in order to draw it out
yourself, rethink it, make it something of your own; forget the
turn and the form given it by Sainte-Beuve, from whom it first
came to your notice. If you cannot succeed in taking possession
of it, in melting it so well in the crucible of your mind that it
will be no longer distinguished from the matter in fusion which
is already bubbling there, better discard it, however pleasing,
however ingenious it may be:
Be assured there will be nothing good in your lecture but
what you shall have thought for yourself; and what you shall
have thought for yourself will always have a certain seal of ori-
ginality. You have thought that Chimène sacrifices her love to
her duty, that Rodrigue is a hero boiling over with love and
youth, that Don Diègue is an epic Gascon. Do not embarrass
yourself with scruples, and repeat to yourself in a whisper, “But
every one has said that. ”
-
Every one has said it! So much the better, because there is
some chance that your audience will be enchanted, seeing you
plunged up to your ears in the truth. But every one has not
said it as you will say it; for you will say it as you have
thought it, and you have thought it yourself.
## p. 12837 (#259) ##########################################
12837
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
(1826-1886)
SUCCESS So splendid and so sustained as that which has attended
'Ekkehard' and the Trumpeter of Säkkingen,' has not be-
fore been witnessed in the history of German literature. It
is safe to regard as final an emphatic popular verdict, which has not
only stood unreversed but has annually been reaffirmed in the course
of nearly half a century. The Trumpeter' was published in 1854,
'Ekkehard' in the following year; in 1895 the former reached its two
hundred and sixteenth edition, the latter passed its one hundred and
forty-third. This great and growing demand
is the plébiscite of two generations; and
the decision of this high court of appeal
has gone in favor of Scheffel's claim to a
poet's immortality.
Joseph Victor von Scheffel was born at
Karlsruhe on February 16th, 1826; and there,
sixty years afterward, he died on April 9th.
He was another example of the young
man of many capabilities who fails at first
to find the right one. His father was an
engineer, and the son's talent for drawing
was inherited; the poetic gift came from
his mother, who, besides other works, had
written a drama which was produced at
the court theatre of Karlsruhe. But young Scheffel, through the per-
sistence of his parents, was forced to study law and prepare himself
for the career of a government official. After taking his degree he
held several public positions, and practiced law at Säkkingen.
J. V. VON SCHEFFEL
During the six years which he spent in this uncongenial employ-
ment it was his ardent desire to become a painter. At last in 1852
he abandoned his profession, and went to Rome. Fortunately, how-
ever, his friends and his own failures soon made it clear to him that
he had mistaken the direction of his genius; and the man who three
years later had completed the most popular German poem and the
most popular German novel of the century, retired to Capri in the
depths of despondency because he could not paint.
During the winter at Capri and Sorrento, he sought to comfort
himself in his disappointment by shaping the memories of his Rhine-
## p. 12838 (#260) ##########################################
12838
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
land home into the half playful, half melancholy romance of the
'Trumpeter of Säkkingen. ' The success of this poem was not im-
mediate. Scheffel returned to Germany, determined to produce a
scholarly work on the history of the Middle Ages. The 'Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica' formed a part of his systematic studies; and in
these his imagination was captivated by the Chronicles of St. Gall.
At St. Gall, and at the foot of the Hohentwiel, he spent his
Easter vacation, writing the opening chapters of 'Ekkehard. ' It was
finished at Heidelberg early in 1855. Upon the novel and the poem
together his fame was firmly established. This period of his great-
est productivity was the happiest period of his life. His high spir-
its found expression in the rollicking student songs which appeared
under the title of 'Gaudeamus. ' These songs are now the permanent
possession of the university youth of Germany, to whom they have.
doubly endeared the poet's name. The volume has passed its sixti-
eth edition.
But these happy days fled swiftly. The severe mental strain of
two years of uninterrupted literary creation left Scheffel a nervous
wreck. He planned several more historical works; but in each case
his painstaking preparations broke down his weakened health, and
his task was left unfinished. The death of his sister in 1857 was a
blow from which his spirits never recovered. The gay poet and con-
vivial student became gradually a morose and disappointed man. He
married in 1864 Fräulein von Malzen, the daughter of the Bavarian
ambassador; but his shattered nerves and erratic habits made him
an incompatible companion, and a separation followed two years later.
He wrote many more tales and novels, but none ever attained the
popularity of the first two works. The poet's fiftieth birthday was
celebrated by all Germany; and the Grand Duke of Baden conferred
upon him a patent of hereditary nobility. The last years of his life.
were spent in melancholy retirement on his estate at Radolfszell on
Lake Constance, where he had once been wont to play the generous
but eccentric host. Soon after the attainment of his sixtieth birthday
he died. On the great terrace of Heidelberg Castle stands his statue
in bronze.
It is only by comparison with 'Ekkehard' and the 'Trumpeter'
that Scheffel's other works may be called unsuccessful. Frau Aven-
tiure' (Lady Adventure) reached some twenty editions, and 'Juni-
perus five. Both works are parts of a broadly planned attempt to
portray the features of the olden time when the Nibelungenlied at
last assumed its classic form. The scheme was never carried out,
and the scholarly element in these detracts somewhat from their
directness of appeal; but the graphic touch is not altogether lost. A
lyric play called 'Der Brautwillkomm auf Wartburg' (Welcoming the
Bride on the Wartburg) was likewise a product of these mediæval
## p. 12839 (#261) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12839
studies, as were also the 'Bergpsalmen (Mountain Psalms). These
psalms appeared in 1870. Ten years later came Waldeinsamkeit '
(Woodland Solitude); which with 'Der Henri von Steier' (Henry of
Styria), and an ancient tale of Hugideo' (1884), completes the list of
the poet's works.
In a century which began with Scott and ends with Sienkiewicz, a
discussion of the historical novel as an allowable form of art would
be academic. In Germany, Hauff's 'Lichtenstein' (1826), modeled
after Scott, was the first distinctively historical novel of import-
ance. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer attained a high mastery of form in
this genre; but it is to Scheffel that we must look for the one clas-
sic example and supreme achievement. In 'Ekkehard' he skillfully
avoids the dangers of partisanship, in the delineation of well-known
characters and in the interpretation of famous events, by seeking
rather to show the thoughts, ambitions, and customs of the age in the
daily life of convent and castle; while the onrush of history is heard
only from afar,—coming for a moment, in the attack of the Huns,
to the very gates of the monastery. The book is an authentic pict-
ure of the tenth century in Suabia. Even had such men and women,
such conditions, such events, never had their actual counterparts, the
work would be still instinct with life; for its vitality is in no wise
dependent upon its historical setting. Scheffel in his own charming
preface asserts that "neither history nor poetry will lose anything by
forming a close alliance. " This depends, it is true, upon the genius
of the man who makes the treaty; but in 'Ekkehard' men will long
continue to enjoy the vivid and faithful presentation of a picturesque
age, in which the elements of poetry and history are exquisitely
blended.
<
The Trumpeter' is a romantic love tale full of playful humor
and graceful trifling, sustained by a true and tender sentiment. Of
course the humble trumpet-blower marries the high-born maiden in
the end. In its rhythmic measures the poem reminds one of Heine's
'Atta Troll'; but it is kindlier and born of a serener mood than that
brilliant piece of bitterness, in which the old Romantic School, expir-
ing, laughed in frivolous self-ridicule. Gentleness, chivalry, and love
are the themes of Scheffel's Rhineland romance; and the satirical
blows of Hiddigeigei are delivered with velvet paws.
Scheffel has himself declared that the ironical flavor of his poetry
was the result of an underlying melancholy. The events of 1848,
although he was an ardent advocate of a united Fatherland, failed
to stir him; and the hopeless, reactionary period that followed made
him a political pessimist. "My soul," he said, "took on a rust in
those days which it will never wear off. " His humor was a con-
scious concealment of an essentially melancholy disposition; and as
## p. 12840 (#262) ##########################################
12840
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
the years wore on, he was less and less able to maintain his mental
disguise. He lived in an atmosphere of medievalism, and there is
a natural touch of antiquity in his style which removes the last trace
of pedantry from his historical pictures. His mild mockery and de-
lightful drollery have an old-time flavor that mellows the effect; and
his work is wholesome and refreshing through its pure and healthy
sentiment.
## p. 12819 (#241) ##########################################
SAPPHO
12819
Sappho"; and she is often referred to as "the tenth Muse. " An epi-
gram on the great lyric poets, after enumerating the eight men, says,
"Sappho was not the ninth among men: she is catalogued as the
tenth among the Muses. " Horace writes:-
"Still breathes the love, still live the hues,
Intrusted to the Eolian maiden's strings. "
And the great critic Longinus is even more complimentary.
Such uniform, unqualified praise for a thousand years may well
make us mourn the loss of Sappho's works. For with the exception
of two short poems (one incomplete), and about a hundred and
twenty fragments of from one to five lines, they are all lost. But
what remains is very precious, containing a wealth of deft expression
not easy to match in any other poet, and more than sufficient to
enable us to comprehend the estimate given of the poetess by Strabo:
"Sappho is a kind of miracle; for within the memory of man there
has not, so far as we know, arisen any woman worthy even to be
mentioned along with Sappho in the matter of poetry. "
Sappho left nine books and rolls of poems, the subjects of which
were so various that they were arranged according to metres, a book
being devoted to each of the nine metres in which she wrote. Of
these metres the most famous was the "Sapphic stanza," which she
seems to have invented. Another invention of hers was the plectrum
or pectis, with which the lyre was struck,— the first step toward the
piano.
We shall arrange her briefer fragments not according to metre but
to subject, premising the remark that through most of them runs
a trait to which she frankly bears testimony, the love of splendor.
She says:-
―
"I am in love with luxury:
The love of the sun hath won for me
The splendid and the beautiful. »
Her love of nature, and her power of expressing its charm in
simple, striking language, remind us of Burns and Goethe. Her
pathetic lines about her loneliness at midnight have already been
quoted. But it is not merely the pathetic in nature that she feels:
she feels all its living beauty. It is not only the night, with the
moon and the Pleiads set, that touches her: every hour of the day
comes to her with a fresh surprise. Of the morning she says:-
"Early uprose the golden-slippered Dawn;"
and of the evening:-
"O Hesperus! thou bringest all
The glimmering Dawn dispersed. »
-
## p. 12820 (#242) ##########################################
12820
SAPPHO
And again:
"O Hesperus! thou bringest all:
Thou bring'st the wine; thou bring'st the goat;
Thou bring'st the child to the mother's knee. »*
Of the night she says:-
-
"The stars about the pale-faced moon
Veil back their shining forms from sight,
As oft as, full with radiant round,
She bathes the earth with silver light. "
And again of the moon and the Pleiads:
"The moon was shining full, and they
Stood as about an altar ranged. »
And just as the hours of the day, so the seasons of the year bring
her joy. Her ear is open to-
"Spring's harbinger, the passion-warbling nightingale;">
and her eye brightens when —
"The golden chick-peas spring upon the banks. »
What a picture of the Southern summer, with its noonday siesta in
the open air, we have in these lines:
:-
"The lullaby of waters cool
Through apple-boughs is softly blown,
And, shaken from the rippling leaves,
Sleep droppeth down. "
And how we should like to hear the termination of this simile:-
"As when the shepherds on the hills
Tread under foot the hyacinth,
And on the ground the purple flower [lies crushed]. »
Along with her delight in nature goes a keen joyous feeling for
all that is festive: song, wine, and dance, garlands, gold vessels, and
purple robes are dear to her. To her lyre she says:-
And to Aphrodite she calls,-
"Come then, my lyre divine!
Let speech be thine. »
-
"Come, Queen of Cyprus! pour the stream
Of nectar, mingled lusciously
With merriment, in cups of gold. »
* Lord Byron's expansion of this in 'Don Juan' will be remembered. See
page 2968 of this work.
## p. 12821 (#243) ##########################################
SAPPHO
12821
But Aphrodite is not enough. Life requires other ennobling ele-
ments, light, sweetness, and art, represented by Hermes, the Graces,
and the Muses. Of a wedding-feast she says:-
Again she calls:-
And again:-
"Then with ambrosia the bowl was mixed,
And Hermes took a cup, to toast the gods,
While all the rest raised goblets, poured the wine,
And prayed for all brave things to bless the groom. »
-
――――
And yet again:-
"Hither come, ye dainty Graces,
And ye fair-haired Muses now! "
«Come, rosy-armed, chaste Graces! come,
Daughters of Jove! »
"Hither, hither come, ye Muses!
Leave the golden sky. "
Nay, she even calls upon Justice herself to put garlands about her
fair locks, and come to the feast; adding, characteristically enough,
that the gods turn away from worshipers that wear no wreaths.
From such sayings we see that Sappho's delight in nature, deep as
it was, was chastened and refined by a delight in art. The Grecian
grace of movement and management of drapery are particularly dear
to her. She exclaims:
"What rustic hoyden ever charmed the soul,
That round her ankles could not kilt her coats! "
But far more than all outward adornment of the body, which is
but an index of the soul, is the adornment of the soul itself with
sweetness and art. To an uncultivated woman she says:-
"When thou art dead, thou shalt lie in the earth:
Not even the memory of thee shall be,
Thenceforward and forever; for no part
Hast thou, or share, in the Pierian roses:
But, formless, even in Hades's halls shalt thou
Wander and flit with the effaced dead. "
On the other hand, to a cultivated woman she says:-
"I think no other maid, nay, not even one,
That hath beheld the sunlight, e'er shall be
Like thee in wisdom, in all days to come. "
-
She knows too that she herself will not be easily forgotten.
says:-
"I think there will be memory of us yet,
In after days. "
She
## p. 12822 (#244) ##########################################
12822
SAPPHO
But, aware of the labor required by genius, she adds:-
In another:
"I do not think with these two arms to clasp
The heavens. »
What calls forth Sappho's supreme admiration and love is the cul-
tivated, genial, loving soul, at home in a beautiful body. Her joy in
such souls expresses itself in language of the most tempestuous sort.
In one fragment she says:
-
"Love again, unnerving might,
Bitter-sweet, doth shake and smite,
Like a serpent folded tight. "
"Love again hath tossed my spirit,
Like a blast down mountain-gorges,
Rushing on the oak-tree's branches. »
-:
She is sad when her love is not returned. Of one friend she says:
"I loved thee, Atthis, once, in days gone by;
A little maid thou seemedst, nor very fair.
Atthis, thou hatest now to think of me,
And fleest to Andromeda. »
Of others she speaks pathetically:-
"The heart within their breast is cold,
And drops its wings. "
Then her sorrow is too great for utterance.
"To you, dear ones, this thought of mine may not
Be told; but in myself I know it well. "
There is a whole heart-tragedy in such snatches as this:-
"The beings that I have toiled to please,
They wound me most. »
But the strongest expression of her love occurs in the two longer
poems which follow this article. Of the second, Longinus says:—
"Do you not admire the manner in which, at one and the same time, she
loses soul, body, hearing, speech, color, everything, as if they were passing
from her and melting away? how, in self-contradiction, she is at once hot and
cold, foolish and wise? how she is afraid, and almost dead, so that not one
feeling, but a whole congregation of feelings, appears in her? For all these
things are true of persons in love. But it was the seizing of the salient points,
and the combination of them, that produced the sublime. "
And he classes the poem as sublime. Certain it is that her influ-
ence, like that of Homer, went far to determine the character of all
## p. 12823 (#245) ##########################################
SAPPHO
12823
subsequent Greek poetry and art,- to keep it pure and high, above
sensuality and above sentimentalism.
The character of Sappho's work may be thus summed up: Take
Homer's unstudied directness, Dante's intensity without his mysti-
cism, Keats's sensibility without his sensuousness, Burns's masculine
strength, and Lady Nairne's exquisite pathos, that goes straight to
the heart and stays there, and you have Sappho. What a darkened
world it must have been that allowed such poetry as hers to be lost!
And yet it is not all lost. Enough remains to show us the extent of
our loss; and of it we may say, in the words of the ancient epigram:
"Sappho's white, speaking pages of dear song
Yet linger with us, and will linger long. »
Hawar Davidha
TO APHRODITE
THO
HOU of the throne of many changing hues,
Immortal Venus, artful child of Jove,-
Forsake me not, O Queen, I pray! nor bruise
My heart with pain of love.
But hither come, if e'er from other home
Thine ear hath heard mine oft-repeated calls;
If thou hast yoked thy golden car and come,
Leaving thy father's halls;
If ever fair, fleet sparrows hastened forth,
And swift on wheeling pinions bore thee nigher,
From heights of heaven above the darkened earth.
Down through the middle fire.
Ay, swift they came; then, Blessed One, didst thou
With countenance immortal smile on me,
And ask me what it was that ailed me now,
And why I called on thee;
And what I most desired should come to pass,
To still my soul inspired: "Whom dost thou long
To have Persuasion lead to thine embrace?
Who, Sappho, does thee wrong?
## p. 12824 (#246) ##########################################
12824
SAPPHO
"For if she flee, she quickly shall pursue;
If gifts she take not, gifts she yet shall bring;
And if she love not, love shall thrill her through,
Though strongly combating. "
Then come to me even now, and set me free
From sore disquiet; and that for which I sigh
With fervent spirit, bring to pass for me:
Thyself be mine ally!
Translation of Thomas Davidson.
TO THE BELOVED
HOLD him as the gods above,
I
The man who sits before thy feet,
And, near thee, hears thee whisper sweet,
And brighten with the smiles of love.
Thou smiledst: like a timid bird
My heart cowered fluttering in its place.
I saw thee but a moment's space,
And yet I could not frame a word.
My tongue was broken; 'neath my skin
A subtle flame shot over me;
And with my eyes I could not see;
My ears were filled with whirling din.
And then I feel the cold sweat pour,
Through all my frame a trembling pass;
My face is paler than the grass:
To die would seem but little more.
Translation of Thomas Davidson.
## p. 12825 (#247) ##########################################
12825
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
(1828-)
EN ANY important first night, and on many unimportant ones,
in the theatres of Paris will be noticed among the most
attentive spectators a short, stout, comfortable-looking old
gentleman, with a white beard, a high color, and shrewd eyes. It is
Francisque Sarcey. For more than thirty years, his has been a posi-
tion of special distinction among the critics of France concerning
themselves particularly with French dramatic literature and the French
drama. No writer on these topics has so large an audience, and one
of such distinctively popular character. Of
the old school of critics, and of many old-
fashioned convictions; at swords' points with
many brother commentators and journalists
on questions of theatrical art, and of that
theatrical article the play; the object of
much good-natured ridicule (of some by no
means as good-natured as it might be),-
seen everywhere and known everywhere in
the dramatic movement of the capital, and
continually putting himself in close touch
with a wide provincial public by either his
lectures or his notices,-M. Sarcey easily
overtops in authority many new and brill-
iant confrères. He has been a voluminous
writer; he has been an incessant lecturer; and special gifts for main-
taining the courage of his convictions from the first have marked him
in both capacities.
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
M. Sarcey was born in 1828 at Dourdan, in the Department of the
Seine-et-Oise. He was an honor-pupil in the famous Charlemagne
School in Paris; and when pursuing his studies in the École Normale
in 1848, his fellow-students were About and Taine. His lively spirits
and independent ideas brought him into trouble when he was serv-
ing the Department of Public Instruction at Chaumont. He quitted
the school-teacher's desk for the newspaper office. In 1859 he began
critical work on the Figaro. He made a business of studying the
drama and dramatic criticism. He passed from the Figaro to various
other journals. Finally he became a permanent member of the staff
## p. 12826 (#248) ##########################################
12826
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
of Le Temps. To that well-known and influential newspaper he
contributes one or two articles every week in the year.
The plat-
form is also still his avocation; and his critical talks, delivered with a
charmingly colloquial manner,-a manner entirely in accord with his
theories of what a lecture should be,- are among the best attended
on the part of a public not too fond of that particular method of
receiving critical impressions.
M. Sarcey is not merely a specialist in the drama, and in the art
of acting: he is a man of fine and wide literary and artistic educa-
tion. He has a style which is like himself: clear, nervous, direct,
with touches of humor, and with occasionally the grace of true senti-
ment, but utterly opposed to the formalism which is to many writers
the only critical expression. He writes as he speaks,-off-hand, yet
never in a slipshod fashion. He has much humor, but always in good
taste. He believes in tradition on the stage; and in the making of
stage plays, he likes the melodrama better than the modern literary
play. He abhors the drama in which plot is not supreme; he hates
the faddists and the symbolists. His sense of himself is strong but
never offensive. He is respected as a philosopher of the play-house
and the play. His very weaknesses are so much a part of himself
that he would not be "Our Uncle Sarcey" without them; so no one
wishes them away. Past his middle years, he writes with the youth-
fulness of a man of twenty-five, united with the vast experience and
the maturity of a Nestor of the French theatre. His reputation is
international. All the world reads him, and nowhere else in the
world is there to be found a critic quite like him.
HOW A LECTURE IS PREPARED
From Recollections of Middle Life. ' Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
HEN you have taken all your notes, when you have possessed
yourselves of at least the substance of all the ideas of
which the lecture is to be composed,-whether you have
them already arranged in fine order, or in the mass, still con-
fused, seething in your mind; when you have reached the moment
of preparation, when you no longer seek anything but the turn
to give them, the clearest, the most vivid and picturesque man-
ner in which to express them: when you are so far,-— mind, my
friend, never commit the imprudence of seating yourself at your
desk, your notes or your book under your eyes, a pen in your
## p. 12827 (#249) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12827
hand. If you live in the country, you doubtless have a bit of
a garden at your disposal; and in default of an alley of trees
belonging to you, a turn around the town where no one passes.
If you are a Parisian, you have in the neighborhood either the
Luxembourg or the Tuileries, or the Parc Monceau, or in any
case some wide and solitary street where you can dream in the
open air without too much interruption. If you have nothing of
all this, or if the weather be execrable, you have in your house
a room larger than the others: get up and walk. A lecture is
never prepared except while walking. The movement of the
body lashes the blood and aids the movement of the mind.
You have possessed your memory of the themes from the
development of which the lecture must be formed: pick out one
from the pile,— the first at hand, or the one you have most at
heart, which for the moment attracts you most, and act as if you
were before the public; improvise upon it. Yes, force yourself
to improvise. Do not trouble yourself about badly constructed
phrases, nor inappropriate words-go your way. Push on to the
end of the development, and the end once reached, recommence
the same exercise; recommence it three times, four times, ten
times, without tiring. You will have some trouble at first; the
development will be short and meagre: little by little around the
principal theme there will group themselves accessory ideas or
convincing facts, or pat anecdotes that will extend and enrich it.
Do not stop in this work until you notice that in thus taking up
the same theme you fall into the same development; and that
this development, with its turns of language and order of phrases,
fixes itself in your memory.
For, what is the purpose of the exercise that I recommend to
you? To prepare for you a wide and fertile field of terms and
phrases upon the subject that you are to treat. You have the
idea: you must seek the expression. You fear that words and
forms of phrase will fail you. A considerable number must be
accumulated in advance; it is a store of ammunition with which
you provide yourself for the great day. If you commit the im-
prudence of charging your memory with a single development
which must be definitive, you will fall into all the inconveniences
that I have brought to your attention: the effect is that of recit-
ing a lesson, and that is chilling; the memory may fail, you lose
the thread, and are pulled up short; the phrase has no longer
that air of negligence which improvisation alone gives, and which
## p. 12828 (#250) ##########################################
12828
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
charms the crowd. But you have prepared a half-dozen develop-
ments of the same idea without fixing them either in your mem-
ory or upon paper; you come before the audience. The mind
that day, if good fortune wills that you be in train, is more
alert, keener; the necessity of being ready at call communicates
to it a lucidity and ardor of which you would not have believed
yourself capable. It draws from that mass of words and phrases
accumulated beforehand, or rather that mass itself is set in
motion and runs toward it and carries it along; it follows the
flood; it has the appearance of improvising what it recites, and
in fact it is improvising even while reciting.
This is not a new method that I am inventing. The ancients,
alas! have worn the matter threadbare, and one must always go
back to the 'De Oratore' of the late Cicero. You have, I im-
agine, heard it told that Thiers, when he had an important speech
to make in the Chamber, first tried the effect of his arguments.
upon his friends and guests. He received much company, and
every evening he improvised, for a little circle of auditors, some
parts of his future speech. Visitors succeeded one another; and
he recommenced without weariness, and indeed without wearying
them, the same developments. He was firing at a target. After
all, isn't this the same kind of preparation that I have recom-
mended to you? You are not M. Thiers, you have not at hand
a series of listeners, who relieve one another to give you a
chance. I would not advise you to inflict the suffering of these
recommencements and hesitations upon your unfortunate wife.
Improvise for yourself, as if you were speaking before an audi-
ence.
It will doubtless happen more than once, in the course of
these successive improvisations, that you will hit upon a pictur-
esque word, a witty thrust, a happy phrase. Beware of storing
it in your memory, and on your return sticking it on paper like
a butterfly fastened on a blank sheet with a pin. If you bring
it to the lecture you will certainly wish to place it; and instead
of abandoning yourself to improvisation in the development of
your idea, you will be wholly occupied with directing it toward
the ingenious or brilliant sally that you have stored away.
will appear embarrassed and awkward in spite of yourself, and
three quarters of the time you will spoil the effect upon which
you counted. You will have sacrificed the thought to a mot, and
the mot will miss fire.
You
## p. 12829 (#251) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12829
That mot,-heavens! perhaps it will not be lost, though you
have taken pains to forget it. Who knows? Perhaps on some
great day, in the flow of improvisation, it will mount to the sur-
face, and you will see it suddenly spring up in the eddy of a
phrase. Oh, then throw it in boldly: it will be more attractive
from having the air of a "find," a bit of good luck.
The great principle to which we must always return is that
every lecture must be improvised; but have a care! one does
not improvise successfully before the public until one has twenty
times improvised in solitude, as one can only draw from a fount-
ain the water that one has taken care to put into it beforehand.
Many believe that at least the exordium and the peroration
may be learned by heart. It is not my opinion. I have tried.
it. I have never succeeded by that means. The most that I
would admit is, that in speaking before a new public, if one has
first to address to it some of the phrases of courtesy and thanks
demanded by custom, one may fix the expressions; because they
are pure formulas of politeness, and it is better to know them
by heart. It would be ridiculous to stumble in the phrase used
to congratulate a person on his good health or felicitate him upon
his marriage.
But every time that you have true ideas to express,—and they
enter into the exordium and the peroration as well as into the
rest, you must improvise. For the audience is always warned,
by a change of tone or manner, of the moment when the author
passes from recitation to pure improvisation, and it begins to be
distrustful; it constantly wonders if the improvisation may not
simply be an uncertain recitation; it loses confidence and resists.
You see! there is no real success to be had- I cannot too often
repeat it — unless the audience feels itself in some sort plunged,
completely bathed, in the deep and rapid flow of improvisation.
-
Even the peroration—and between ourselves, is there any
need in the lecture of what is called a peroration? The perora-
tion is the bellow of the mediocre actor upon the last verse of the
tirade. Great artists disdain the applause that it arouses. What
do you undertake to do when you speak? You wish to explain
and prove an idea. Well, when your demonstration is finished,
you put a period to it: that is the peroration. The worth of a
lecture is not in the ingenuity of an exordium, in the brilliant
fanfare of a peroration, in the number and splendor of the lus-
trously cut phrases sown through the discourse: it is in the
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
## p. 12830 (#252) ##########################################
12830
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
ensemble of its mass. Be sure that when you have faithfully
explained, developed, and revealed your idea; when you have,
with or without applause, impressed it upon the mind of your
audience, there is no success comparable to that.
Applause! flee from it as from the plague.
An audience
that applauds is an audience that is given leisure from listening.
When it claps its hands, it's a sign that it is no longer bound
to the idea that you express; that it is no longer carried away,
rolled in the torrent of your discourse. It takes time to cry out
at a pretty phrase, to go into ecstasy over a flash of wit;-bad
business for you! for it forgets, while lingering to applaud
this, that which is the foundation of the lecture, the succession
of ideas and reasoning; you will have trouble in recapturing it
again.
I am so persuaded of this truth that I never leave my listen-
ers leisure to breathe. Of course it has happened to me, as to
my fellows, to touch here and there a corner of my discourse
with a more brilliant vivacity than usual, and to be conscious of
it; one is always conscious of that sort of thing. In such a case
I hardly launched the last word of the development before set-
ting out again at full speed for another series of ideas, cutting
short all tendency to applause. The confidence felt in an orator
evaporates in these bravos.
"Le vrai feu d'artifice est d'être magnanime," said M. Bel-
montet once upon a time, in a verse still celebrated.
The only
applause that counts, the only true applause, is the attention of
the audience, letting itself be so won by what you say that it no
longer thinks of the way in which you have said it.
You will doubtless be somewhat alarmed to know that it is
necessary to improvise a dozen times, and often more, each of
the subjects for development of which a lecture is composed.
You think to yourself that that is a tremendous task.
Yes, my
friends, there is nothing so long and so preoccupying as the prep-
aration of a lecture; you must make up your mind to it, if you
expect to follow that career. You will spend much time and
pains on it. Reassure yourselves, however: the work will become.
easier and more rapid as the habit of doing it grows with you.
Among these themes of development, as each lecturer approaches
only the subjects which relate to his studies and are within his
*True brilliancy comes from greatness of spirit. "
## p. 12831 (#253) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12831
range, some will often present themselves anew, and will only
require a summary preparation.
This humus of which I just now spoke to you— this prepared
heap of turns of speech, of exact and picturesque words — will
naturally grow richer; you will have it right at hand, and it will
serve the occasion without fresh effort.
There will come a time when, even with themes that are new
to you, you will no longer need, in order to establish the devel-
opment, ten or twelve successive improvisations. You will be
astonished to find with what facility, all at once, accessory ideas
and convincing facts will spring from the first improvisation, and
arrange themselves about the principal idea to sustain and clear
it. It will always be delicate work, but it will no longer be so
painful or so distressing. In a few hours, spread over two or
three days, you will get through the preparation of a lecture;
on condition, be it understood,—it is a prime condition,-of fully
possessing your subject.
You have improvised -picking them out one after the other
just as they came-each of the themes, so that it only remains
to put them in their place on the day of the final improvisation.
One of the great anxieties of a novice in lecturing is to know
how to pass from one theme to another; what Boileau called the
labor of transition, which used to give us blue terror in college.
Permit me to give you, just here, an axiom which I only suc-
ceeded in formulating after much reflection and many attempts:
In lecturing there is no transition.
When you have finished one development you enter upon
another; as at dinner, when you have eaten the soup you pass
to the entrée, and then to the roast. If there is no connection
between two ideas that succeed one another in your discourse,
what use is there in an imitation of one? When you speak, dis-
trust little strokes of finesse, tricks of style, bits of false ele-
gance: all this is worth nothing and serves no purpose. When
you have finished the explanation and the demonstration of the
idea, say honestly, if you must say something, "We have done
with that theme: let us pass to the next. "
But the best way would be to say nothing at all, and to enter
upon another order of development, with no warning but a short
silence.
If, on the contrary, there is a connection between the two
themes, do not disturb yourself,-you do not need expressly to
## p. 12832 (#254) ##########################################
12832
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
. mark it. It is useless to take the trouble to throw a bridge
between the two ideas: the moment that you, the orator, leap
from one to the other, the audience must leap after you, borne
on by the same impulse. The transition is no more than the
movement of your thought, that the audience necessarily follows
if you keep a firm hand upon it.
Ah, bless me! you, the lecturer, must have always present
to your mind, even through any digression you permit yourself,
your principal idea, and must not let your audience forget it;
you will have no trouble in leading them back when you yourself
return. And if by chance you are so far removed from it that
you do not know what road to take to reach it again, the sim-
plest way is frankly to announce your embarrassment. "It seems
to me that we are straying - where was I? Ah! I wished to
demonstrate to you that" and there is the thread picked up,
without great art, I confess: but I have remarked that the public
likes very well to have you make a confidant of it; speak to it
with open heart; if need be, ask counsel from it. It would not
do to make an artifice, a trick, of this means of exciting inter-
est and sympathy: the public is very sharp; it would easily see
that you played upon its credulity, and would range itself against
you. But if you have truly lost the thread, do not fear to say
frankly, "I do not know where I am put me on the right
track. " If a word escapes you, ask some one to prompt you.
They probably will not do so; but you will have had time to
find it while they search for it, or an excuse for not having
found it any sooner than the others. This excuse would not be
permitted to a man who recites, for it would pass for a failure
in memory; and to be brought up by a defeat of memory is the
worst that can happen in lecturing, as in the theatre and in the
pulpit. Laughter breaks forth invincibly. It never offends in
an orator who improvises; it may even please by a certain air
of sincerity and good-fellowship.
Is there a special tone and style for the lecture, as there is
for academic discussions,- for the pulpit, for the Sorbonne, for
the bar? That is a point to be looked into.
What is a lecture? It is, properly, to hold a conversation with
many hundreds of persons, who listen without interrupting. It
may be said, in general, that the tone of the lecture should be
that of a chat. But there it is, there are as many tones for
chatting as there are people who chat. Each one talks according
-
## p. 12833 (#255) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12833
to his temperament, his cast of mind, his turn of thought; each
talks as he is: and that which is pleasing in a chat is precisely
the discovery in it of the physiognomy of the talker. I can give
you only one piece of advice on this point: try to be, through
art, when once seated in the lecturer's chair, that which you nat-
urally are in your drawing-room, when you talk with five or six
persons and when you engross the conversation. Hear yourself
speak, observe yourself,- these introspections are become very
easy to us, thanks to the habit that we have contracted of analyz-
ing ourselves, and bend all your efforts to producing a lecture,
not according to your neighbor, who perhaps speaks better than
you, but yourself, only yourself, accentuating if possible the ren-
dering of your principal traits. I will condense my counsels in
this formula, which is not so humorous as it seems: It is permit-
ted you, it is even recommended to you, to have a "make-up »
for the lecture; but the "make-up" must be your own.
Your entire personality must shine forth in your discourse.
And that is the especial service rendered by this method of suc-
cessive improvisations that I have just prescribed for you. While
you are thus improvising alone, face to face with yourself, with-
out any witness to inspire you with a desire to pose, you are
free; you unconsciously set your entire being in full swing. The
mold is taken; you spread your personality before the public;
you are no longer a more or less eloquent, more or less affected
orator,—you are a man; you are yourself.
To be one's self: that is the essential thing.
Among the young lecturers discovered in these later times,
there is not one who has more quickly acquired a greater or
more legitimate reputation than M. Brunetière. Nevertheless
there is not one further removed in speaking from the ordinary
tone of familiar conversation. It would seem that the lecture, as
he practices it, would hardly come within the definition we have
given of the species, a conversation with an audience that holds.
its tongue. But what would you have ? That is the way that
Brunetière talks, and he talks as he is. He is a man of doc-
trine, who loves to dogmatize; he feels an invincible need of
demonstrating that which he advances, and to force conviction.
on those who hear him. He manœuvres his battalions of argu-
ments with a precision of logic and an ardor of temperament
that are marvelous. The phrases fall from his authoritative lips
with an amplitude, correctness, and force to which everything
XXII-803
---
___
## p. 12834 (#256) ##########################################
12834
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
bends. He is to be found entire in his lecture: the lecture is
excellent, then, because it is of him; or rather, because it is he.
Old Boileau had already expressed these truths in some verses
that are not among his best known:-
"Chacun pris dans son air est agréable en soi;
Ce n'est que l'air d'autrui qui peut déplaire en moi. ” *
If I should try to talk like Brunetière, I should be execrable:
it is possible, on the other hand, that if Brunetière tried to appro-
priate some of my methods he would not succeed; because, to
tell the truth, my air of good-fellowship, my familiarities of lan-
guage, my jovial anecdotes interspersed with frank laughter, my
unpolished and torrent-like phrases, are not methods, they are all
of a piece with myself; it is all I-a little more I perhaps
than I ordinarily am, but Brunetière is also probably a little more
himself in his lecture than in his chimney-corner at home.
May I be permitted to end these reflections on the art of the
lecturer with some practical advice?
Never dine before the lecture hour. A soup, some biscuits
dipped in Bordeaux, nothing more. If you fear gnawing at the
stomach, add a slice of roast beef, but without bread. Do not
fill the stomach. There is a rage in the provinces for inviting
you to a gala dinner when you have a lecture to give. It's the
worst of all preludes. It is in vain to try to restrain yourself.
You eat and you drink too much; you arrive at the lecture hall
chatting with the dinner company. You have infinite trouble in
recovering yourself.
Dine lightly and alone an hour beforehand; stretch yourself
for half an hour on a sofa, and take a good nap. Then go, en-
tirely alone, to where you are expected, improvising, reimprovis-
ing, pondering upon your exordium, so that when the curtain
rises you are in perfect working order; you are in form. I do
not know how the political orators manage to deliver their long
discourses after gala banquets. It is true that they generally do
not dine. I have seen some who all during the repast abstract-
edly roll balls of bread under their fingers, and only respond
vaguely with insignificant monosyllables to the tiresome talk of
their neighbors.
*"Every one taken in his own manner is pleasing in himself;
It is only another's manner that is displeasing in me. "
## p. 12835 (#257) ##########################################
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
12835
Speak standing: one commands a fuller and stronger voice,
but especially the audience is dominated; you hold it with your
eye. Speak from behind a table, even though (according to the
rules that I have laid down) you have no notes to read, no
quotation to make, book in hand. One is sustained by the table,
and brought around to the conversational tone. If one has
before him the wide space of the platform, in proportion as one
warms up he makes more motions, he surprises himself strid-
ing across the stage; the voice rises, and is soon no longer in
harmony with the level of the things that are to be delivered.
Beware of these balks. Watch the play of your physiognomy and
your gestures, but not too much. I leave mine to the grace of
God; what is natural, even though it be exuberant and trivial, is
worth more than a factitious and studied correctness.
Have I other recommendations to make? No, I truly believe
that I am at the end of my list. All the rest can be put into
one sentence: "Be yourself. " It is understood, is it not, that it
is necessary first to be some one? You now know the processes
which I have used, which I still use.
FURTHER HINTS ON LECTURING
From 'Recollections of Middle Life. Copyright 1893, by Charles Scribner's
Sons
You
ou have to speak, we will suppose, of 'Le Cid' by Corneille.
Do not weary yourself at first by reading all that has been
written on 'Le Cid': steep yourself in the play, think of
it, turn it over and over, go to see it if it is being played: if
neither the reading nor the representation of the drama suggests
to you any impression that is properly yours-good gracious,
my friend! what would you have me say? Don't meddle with
lecturing either on 'Le Cid' or any other theme drawn from
literature. Manifestly you are not born for the trade.
But if you have shuddered and thrilled at a given passage; if
there has been presented to your mind some comparison that has,
so to speak, sprung from the depths of your reading; if you have
yourself formed an opinion upon the whole or upon some scenes
of the work, you must cling to that: it is that which must be
told, it is that which I call having something to say.
-
## p. 12836 (#258) ##########################################
12836
FRANCISQUE SARCEY
Do not trouble yourself to know if others have thought it
before you, and have said it perhaps even better than you will
say it yourself. That is not the question. The idea, however old
it may be, will appear new; and will be so, indeed, because you
will strongly impress upon it the turn of your mind, because you
will tinge it unconsciously with the colors of your imagination.
As you will have made it flash from the reading, as you will
yourself have drawn this truth from its well, your passion will
go out to it, you will naturally put into its expression a good
faith, a sincerity, a transport, the heat of which will be com-
municated to the public.
Not until you have performed this first task, the only neces-
sary one, the only efficacious one, shall I permit you- pay atten-
tion: permit you, not advise you to read what your predecessors
have thought of 'Le Cid,' and written about it. If by chance
you run across some interesting point of view that had escaped
you, and that strikes you, take care, for the love of heaven, not
to transfer it just as it is to your lecture, where it would have
the mischievous effect of second-hand and veneer. No: take up
'Le Cid' anew; re-read it with this idea, suggested by another,
in mind; put that back into the text in order to draw it out
yourself, rethink it, make it something of your own; forget the
turn and the form given it by Sainte-Beuve, from whom it first
came to your notice. If you cannot succeed in taking possession
of it, in melting it so well in the crucible of your mind that it
will be no longer distinguished from the matter in fusion which
is already bubbling there, better discard it, however pleasing,
however ingenious it may be:
Be assured there will be nothing good in your lecture but
what you shall have thought for yourself; and what you shall
have thought for yourself will always have a certain seal of ori-
ginality. You have thought that Chimène sacrifices her love to
her duty, that Rodrigue is a hero boiling over with love and
youth, that Don Diègue is an epic Gascon. Do not embarrass
yourself with scruples, and repeat to yourself in a whisper, “But
every one has said that. ”
-
Every one has said it! So much the better, because there is
some chance that your audience will be enchanted, seeing you
plunged up to your ears in the truth. But every one has not
said it as you will say it; for you will say it as you have
thought it, and you have thought it yourself.
## p. 12837 (#259) ##########################################
12837
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
(1826-1886)
SUCCESS So splendid and so sustained as that which has attended
'Ekkehard' and the Trumpeter of Säkkingen,' has not be-
fore been witnessed in the history of German literature. It
is safe to regard as final an emphatic popular verdict, which has not
only stood unreversed but has annually been reaffirmed in the course
of nearly half a century. The Trumpeter' was published in 1854,
'Ekkehard' in the following year; in 1895 the former reached its two
hundred and sixteenth edition, the latter passed its one hundred and
forty-third. This great and growing demand
is the plébiscite of two generations; and
the decision of this high court of appeal
has gone in favor of Scheffel's claim to a
poet's immortality.
Joseph Victor von Scheffel was born at
Karlsruhe on February 16th, 1826; and there,
sixty years afterward, he died on April 9th.
He was another example of the young
man of many capabilities who fails at first
to find the right one. His father was an
engineer, and the son's talent for drawing
was inherited; the poetic gift came from
his mother, who, besides other works, had
written a drama which was produced at
the court theatre of Karlsruhe. But young Scheffel, through the per-
sistence of his parents, was forced to study law and prepare himself
for the career of a government official. After taking his degree he
held several public positions, and practiced law at Säkkingen.
J. V. VON SCHEFFEL
During the six years which he spent in this uncongenial employ-
ment it was his ardent desire to become a painter. At last in 1852
he abandoned his profession, and went to Rome. Fortunately, how-
ever, his friends and his own failures soon made it clear to him that
he had mistaken the direction of his genius; and the man who three
years later had completed the most popular German poem and the
most popular German novel of the century, retired to Capri in the
depths of despondency because he could not paint.
During the winter at Capri and Sorrento, he sought to comfort
himself in his disappointment by shaping the memories of his Rhine-
## p. 12838 (#260) ##########################################
12838
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
land home into the half playful, half melancholy romance of the
'Trumpeter of Säkkingen. ' The success of this poem was not im-
mediate. Scheffel returned to Germany, determined to produce a
scholarly work on the history of the Middle Ages. The 'Monumenta
Germaniæ Historica' formed a part of his systematic studies; and in
these his imagination was captivated by the Chronicles of St. Gall.
At St. Gall, and at the foot of the Hohentwiel, he spent his
Easter vacation, writing the opening chapters of 'Ekkehard. ' It was
finished at Heidelberg early in 1855. Upon the novel and the poem
together his fame was firmly established. This period of his great-
est productivity was the happiest period of his life. His high spir-
its found expression in the rollicking student songs which appeared
under the title of 'Gaudeamus. ' These songs are now the permanent
possession of the university youth of Germany, to whom they have.
doubly endeared the poet's name. The volume has passed its sixti-
eth edition.
But these happy days fled swiftly. The severe mental strain of
two years of uninterrupted literary creation left Scheffel a nervous
wreck. He planned several more historical works; but in each case
his painstaking preparations broke down his weakened health, and
his task was left unfinished. The death of his sister in 1857 was a
blow from which his spirits never recovered. The gay poet and con-
vivial student became gradually a morose and disappointed man. He
married in 1864 Fräulein von Malzen, the daughter of the Bavarian
ambassador; but his shattered nerves and erratic habits made him
an incompatible companion, and a separation followed two years later.
He wrote many more tales and novels, but none ever attained the
popularity of the first two works. The poet's fiftieth birthday was
celebrated by all Germany; and the Grand Duke of Baden conferred
upon him a patent of hereditary nobility. The last years of his life.
were spent in melancholy retirement on his estate at Radolfszell on
Lake Constance, where he had once been wont to play the generous
but eccentric host. Soon after the attainment of his sixtieth birthday
he died. On the great terrace of Heidelberg Castle stands his statue
in bronze.
It is only by comparison with 'Ekkehard' and the 'Trumpeter'
that Scheffel's other works may be called unsuccessful. Frau Aven-
tiure' (Lady Adventure) reached some twenty editions, and 'Juni-
perus five. Both works are parts of a broadly planned attempt to
portray the features of the olden time when the Nibelungenlied at
last assumed its classic form. The scheme was never carried out,
and the scholarly element in these detracts somewhat from their
directness of appeal; but the graphic touch is not altogether lost. A
lyric play called 'Der Brautwillkomm auf Wartburg' (Welcoming the
Bride on the Wartburg) was likewise a product of these mediæval
## p. 12839 (#261) ##########################################
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
12839
studies, as were also the 'Bergpsalmen (Mountain Psalms). These
psalms appeared in 1870. Ten years later came Waldeinsamkeit '
(Woodland Solitude); which with 'Der Henri von Steier' (Henry of
Styria), and an ancient tale of Hugideo' (1884), completes the list of
the poet's works.
In a century which began with Scott and ends with Sienkiewicz, a
discussion of the historical novel as an allowable form of art would
be academic. In Germany, Hauff's 'Lichtenstein' (1826), modeled
after Scott, was the first distinctively historical novel of import-
ance. Conrad Ferdinand Meyer attained a high mastery of form in
this genre; but it is to Scheffel that we must look for the one clas-
sic example and supreme achievement. In 'Ekkehard' he skillfully
avoids the dangers of partisanship, in the delineation of well-known
characters and in the interpretation of famous events, by seeking
rather to show the thoughts, ambitions, and customs of the age in the
daily life of convent and castle; while the onrush of history is heard
only from afar,—coming for a moment, in the attack of the Huns,
to the very gates of the monastery. The book is an authentic pict-
ure of the tenth century in Suabia. Even had such men and women,
such conditions, such events, never had their actual counterparts, the
work would be still instinct with life; for its vitality is in no wise
dependent upon its historical setting. Scheffel in his own charming
preface asserts that "neither history nor poetry will lose anything by
forming a close alliance. " This depends, it is true, upon the genius
of the man who makes the treaty; but in 'Ekkehard' men will long
continue to enjoy the vivid and faithful presentation of a picturesque
age, in which the elements of poetry and history are exquisitely
blended.
<
The Trumpeter' is a romantic love tale full of playful humor
and graceful trifling, sustained by a true and tender sentiment. Of
course the humble trumpet-blower marries the high-born maiden in
the end. In its rhythmic measures the poem reminds one of Heine's
'Atta Troll'; but it is kindlier and born of a serener mood than that
brilliant piece of bitterness, in which the old Romantic School, expir-
ing, laughed in frivolous self-ridicule. Gentleness, chivalry, and love
are the themes of Scheffel's Rhineland romance; and the satirical
blows of Hiddigeigei are delivered with velvet paws.
Scheffel has himself declared that the ironical flavor of his poetry
was the result of an underlying melancholy. The events of 1848,
although he was an ardent advocate of a united Fatherland, failed
to stir him; and the hopeless, reactionary period that followed made
him a political pessimist. "My soul," he said, "took on a rust in
those days which it will never wear off. " His humor was a con-
scious concealment of an essentially melancholy disposition; and as
## p. 12840 (#262) ##########################################
12840
JOSEPH VICTOR VON SCHEFFEL
the years wore on, he was less and less able to maintain his mental
disguise. He lived in an atmosphere of medievalism, and there is
a natural touch of antiquity in his style which removes the last trace
of pedantry from his historical pictures. His mild mockery and de-
lightful drollery have an old-time flavor that mellows the effect; and
his work is wholesome and refreshing through its pure and healthy
sentiment.
