Is this equivalent to saying that the deductions from the law
of Delsarte tend to condemn in French literature its simple gaiety, its
graceful lightness, and to efface this stamp of the race that our
ancestors have surely imprinted?
In works of the imagination the omission of moral meaning is often more
seeming than real, and every good reader should be able to recognize
this. However, this negligent seeming is far less hurtful than brilliant
wit concealing crudities and modifying boldnesses. Writers of this class
do not lose sight of the fact that, while the French character has its
audacities (contrary to the modifications of aesthetics), our language
possesses a proverbial chastity, which, even in its farthest wanderings,
genius comprehends and respects. Tact and taste suffice to him who
consults them to escape grossness of language. The delicacy of the
allusions leaves their images in a transparent mist; the very elasticity
of the equivocation furnishes a refuge for the thought which it
disquiets.
By art some most delicate subjects, very nearly approaching license,
have been pardoned. We would surely exhibit a tyrannical and morose
humor to condemn to be burned _en place de Greve_, by the hand of the
executioner, the romances of _Manon Lescaut_, and _Daphnis_ and _Chloe_
by Longus, as they have been transmitted to us by Paul Louis Courier.
But when literature, realistic or materialistic (or whatever they please
to call it), freeing itself from moral accompaniment, shows itself
negative or weak in its creations; if it be _simpliste_ to the point of
appealing exclusively to the senses, limiting its means of action to the
development of the egotistic and instinctive side of the human
passions,--its works have no longer right of consideration in aesthetics.
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