Thus,
through aesthetics, it is elevated.
To this literature of art belong the sonnet of Arvers, and "The Soul,"
by Sully-Prudhomme. Musset, in his grace or pathos, is not inferior to
Victor Hugo. There are, even in his faults, certain effective boldnesses
to which the author of "Notre Dame de Paris" cannot aspire. Whence,
then, comes the immense distance between these poets? It lies in the
fact that Victor Hugo, while he is a finished artist, shows himself also
a thinker, philosopher, man of science and erudition. Endowed with a
profound humanitarian feeling, he is preoccupied with the evils of
society, with its rights, its mistakes, its tendencies and with their
amelioration; while the poet of "Jacques Rolla"--a refined
sensualist--devotes his verse to the unbridling of the torments of
imagination in delirium, to the agitations of hearts which have place
only for love.
If comparison be made between novelists and dramatists of diverse
schools, why has not M. Zola, who in so many regards should be
considered a master, attained the heights of eminence upon which are
enrolled the names of Shakespeare, Moliere, Corneille, Schiller, Madame
de Stael, and George Sand? It is because M. Zola, profound analyst and
charming narrator, even more forcibly than Musset breaks the aesthetic
synthesis by the _absence of morality_ in his writings. His fatalism
arrests the flight of that which would be great; he corrupts in the germ
wonderful creative powers! M.
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