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Alphonse Daudet - "La Belle Nivernaise: Histoire d'un vieux bateau et de son equipage"

George Willis Cooke - "George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy"

Various - "Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890"

G.K. Chesterton - "The Appetite of Tyranny"

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Delsarte System of Oratory by Various

V >> Various >> Delsarte System of Oratory




These three expressions figure in the work of Pierre Leroux (_De
l'Humanite_) in the following equivalent terms: _sensation, sentiment,
knowledge._ But Leroux applied to ethics this law of human organism,
whereas Delsarte derived from it the law of aesthetics. When two minds of
this stamp are thus led, each in his own way, to the same source of
analogous principles differently applied, is it not a proof that they
have stated truth? And in this case it is more than presumable that the
two men of whom I speak had never worked together. Delsarte was a
philosopher in spite of himself. With Pierre Leroux art was only an
element contingent upon a system which he elaborated.

Was Delsarte led to his classification of man's nature by the doctrine
of the three persons in the Trinity combined in unity? Was he, by his
observations upon the _human triplicity_, led on to consider their
infinite development in the divine personalities? I know not, nor is it
of importance in considering the system.

Leroux affirmed a relation between the unity of man and the universality
of his pantheism; both relying at the outset upon an idea at once
religious and philosophical. But the research of Leroux was
philosophically inclined, while that of Delsarte was of a character more
especially religious.

Is it necessary to urge that you accept this obviously primitive
classification of the human faculties? Who, that shall have considered a
moment to convince himself, can doubt this truth,--that our sensations,
our sentiments, our understanding, are the principal elements of our
life, and that all that we are able to know of ourselves is made known
to us by them directly, or by the result of their combinations? This
consideration will soon lead us to the rational development of the
theory of Delsarte. For the present, it suffices to receive these
principles as they have been presented to us, and to admit that art
could not go far astray while following a clue leading from a law
invincible, and guiding to a science as positive as that of the
astronomer, derived from the law of attraction, or that of the chemist,
depending upon the law of affinities. Here need be no confusion. The
science is positive. The mystery of the natural law implies a
hypothesis,--even were the proposition negative.

Delsarte insisted upon the influence of a religious sentiment in art, as
a part of the constitutive animating faculties of the human being. In
the light of this proposition his enemies maintain that he teaches this
heresy: that success in aesthetics depends upon a definite faith--even
upon the observance of the _Catholic religion!_ This distinction between
religion and creed, between sentiment and assertion, I have followed
carefully since the beginning of my study. Delsarte was able to so
address his pupils at the beginning of a lecture, as to arouse the
apathetic, and electrify the passionate; but his teaching was far from
dogmatic. I do not say that at times, in his aspirations and dreams,
which he regarded perhaps as intuitions, this religious philosophy did
not make some incursions into the region of mysticism. I have seen at
his home charts named from the circumincession,[7] and classifying
celestial spirits; but these trans-mundane personifications found no
place in his practical lectures. They are not found in the great
synthetical chart which I possess, and which recapitulates the system as
the master arranged it in the strength of his youth and genius, free
from all mystical element.

When, in 1859, I submitted to Delsarte my treatise containing a succinct
statement of his method, he said to me: "You have not followed me so far
as the angels."

I replied: "I have related and recognized as truth all that I have heard
you teach upon the laws of art as deduced from the relations of the
human faculties, because I have observed and verified it among people
and upon myself. But I speak not of things which you have never shown
me, and whose existence you have never _demonstrated_. The angels are of
this number."

Yet he received with no less approval my profane work. And it is the
judgment which he placed upon that essay which authorizes my resuming
the subject, augmented by further developments and evidence.

I should not state with so great confidence this great truth--the
application of a natural law to a succession of discoveries constituting
a science, an incontestable innovation--were I not able to refer to
competent opinions supporting my statement. A few of these opinions I
would here quote from some of the journals I have examined, many of
which thoroughly appreciated Delsarte throughout the long period of his
teaching.

It was said by Adolphe Gueroult (_Presse_, May 15, 1858): "To discover
and produce wonderful effects, is preeminently the characteristic of
great artists, but never, so far as I can learn, has it occurred to any
one, before Delsarte, to attach these strokes of genius to positive
laws." And further: "The eloquent secrets of pantomime, the
imperceptible movements which, in great actors, so forcibly impress us,
coming under the observation of this discoverer, were by him analyzed
and synthetized in accordance with laws whose clearness and simplicity
render them doubly admirable."

I give also some statements from the _Journal des Debats_ (May 10,
1859). Though in the following the word "law" does not appear, it bears
interestingly upon the relations of the ideas and expressions under
consideration. The quotation is:--

"The audience was charmed and instructed. It applauded the new
definitions. It divined the essence of each art, and comprehended that
the various manifestations of art are classified according to the
classifications of the human faculties. It knows why each passion
produces each accent: 'because the accent is the modulation of the
soul,' and why a given emotion produces a given expression of the face,
gesture and attitude of the body."

When we allow that "the classifications of the manifestations of art are
made according to those of the human faculties," do we not also allow
that they are derived from one law?

Thus the _fiat lux_ ("let there be light") is pronounced. Art departs
from chaos, escapes from anarchy; it acts no longer only for the
so-called artist, but also for the actor and singer, whom we are now to
consider. Art has to do with the pose of the body, a graceful carriage,
distinct pronunciation and an unconscious command of dramatic effects.
For a tenor to phrase agreeably, vocalize skilfully, giving us resonant
chest-tones, no longer suffices to gain for him the title of great
singer.

The followers of art should be able, before and above all, to portray
humanity in its essential truth, and according to the original tendency
of each type. Mannerism and affectation should forever be
proscribed--_unless they are imitated as an exercise_--but all the
excellence that chance has produced up to the present time should be
incorporated in the new science.

Moreover, by referring to a law the occasional successes which come to
one, it becomes possible to reproduce them at will.

The essential point is to get back to the truth, to express the passions
and emotions as nature manifests them, and not to repeat mechanically a
series of conventional proceedings which are violations of the natural
law. "Effects should be the echoes of a situation clearly comprehended
and completely felt,"--such was the import of this teaching.

One of the great benefits arising from the discoveries of Delsarte is
the reconciliation of freedom and restraint. If it bind the artist by
determinate rules, it is in order to free him from routine, to recall
him to the general law of being and of his own individuality. It is in
order that he may study himself, in the place of submitting to arbitrary
prescriptions. In such study every marked personality will find itself
in its native element.

As for those who have no _vocation_, and in whom the "ego" distinguishes
itself so little from the multitude that it remains lost in it, it is
best that they should withdraw, since _they are not called_. They have
in view only vanity or speculation, and must always be intruders in the
sacred temple of art.

"My glass is not large, but I drink from my glass," said Alfred de
Musset. Very well! let each one drink from his glass, but observe! it is
not necessary that in the true artist all should be individual and
peculiar. It is necessary only that there should exist a degree of
individuality, something novel, a distinguishing tone and an artistic
physiognomy peculiarly his own. Servile imitations, plagiarism, stupid
adaptations, put to death all art and all poetry. In literature
particularly is such decline most easy.

Hoping that, from what has been said, you have been led more fully to
appreciate the advantage of seeing all of the branches of intellectual
culture led out of the ruts of routine, away from plagiarism and from
disorder and anarchy, one word upon the most distasteful and effectual
blight to which art is subject--_the loss of naturalness_, viz.,
_affectation_. Can anything be more irritating than an affected actor or
singer, caterers to perverted tastes?

In sculpture what is more displeasing than a distorted figure, which
aimed at grace and is become a caricature? Affectation is in the arts
the equivalant of sophistry in logic, of the false in morals, of
hypocrisy in religion. It is not extravagant to assume that affectation,
being a falsity, an active lie, is a torture to the spirit which
perceives it, and a wrong to the honest souls who endure it. It should
be, therefore, for twofold cause, banished without pity from the realm
of aesthetics. Why should the natural, which is the expression of truth,
have so great an attraction if affectation--its enemy and
incumbrance--aroused not our impatience or disdain?

How is it that in children of all classes we find grace, ravishing and
inimitable? It is because in them the accord is perfect between the
look, the smile, the gesture and the impression within, of which they
are the interpreters--the adequate signs, as Delsarte would say--the
perfidious flexibility of words _never interposing_ to alter the
harmony.

True grace in adults is not that which is studied, nor that which is
artistically copied from a badly-chosen type. Grace is born of itself,
the natural fruit of the culture of the mind, of elevated thoughts and
noble sentiments. It is a combination of excellences which come
unconsciously to some privileged beings. To imitate beautiful effects in
nature, to surprise their expressions, after having observed and
established the relation of cause to effect,--this is the end to which
the discovery of Delsarte would lead us.

As it is difficult for each to find ready at his command the elements
for such research, how can we overestimate the great value of
establishing schools in which the instruction of students of the great
art shall be guided in accordance with the established laws of
aesthetics? The time of greatest necessity is the immediate present,
since the voice of the people cries loudly through the press, "Art is
decaying and will surely die!"

"Barriers are also supports," said Madame de Stael; and what more sure
support in the decadence which threatens us, than a positive science
deduced from irrefragable law! I say _irrefragable_ with conviction.
Though human laws be subject to change, the laws of nature are shown to
be immutable, at least so far as the observations of learned men of all
ages have been able to establish them.

To such assertions one objection arises: Why, admitting that the human
organism furnishes exact and complete means of manifesting art in all
the departments of aesthetics, should not others before Delsarte have
discovered that correlation? I have conscientiously considered and
sought light in this direction, and the result of my research furnishes
me only a negation. Although I do not here attempt a complete study of
the philosophy of art, nor a general history of the arts, I have sought
to discover all that could warrant one in presuming the discovery of a
law of aesthetics in antiquity, particularly among the Greeks.

I find that in the writings of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle--who are
the best authorities--art was a dependence upon philosophy; that is to
say, one with it, having no law outside of it. (Whereas, in the work of
Delsarte, aesthetics occupies the first place, and philosophy becomes
accessory.)

I will here enter into some details of the ancient teachings.

Socrates gave to his teachings a practical character founded upon the
knowledge of man. He took for his point of departure man himself, and
established (according to this idea) a morality with the motto of the
temple of Delphi,--"Know thyself." This doctrine related more especially
to ethics than to aesthetics--as later did that of Pierre Leroux--and it
was far from being able to direct artists in their work.

Plato often discoursed upon the True, the Beautiful, the Good. He strove
to disengage them from the concrete that he might derive some general
formulae. To do this he employed the method of "elimination," a form of
dialectics which I recommend to no one, notwithstanding its great value
and the services it may render, after all, to those minds endowed with
patience. What does he conclude in regard to art?

The Socratic and dogmatic dialogues--the _Phaedo_, the _Gorgias_, the
_Symposium, Protagoras, Ion, Phaedrus_--abound in allegories, aphorisms,
and in aspirations toward an ideal, more or less clearly defined, which
end, however, not by any means in a discussion of art, but in such
affirmations as that which closes the first _Hippias:_--"Beautiful
things are difficult."

In the _Symposium_ we have a philosophical discussion interposed between
two orgies. Socrates there maintains his title of sage, but it is surely
not wisdom which presides at the feast. What light upon my subject? Do
we here find any conclusive decision regarding art? No! We have instead
such statements as this: "It is possible for the same man to be both a
tragic and a comic poet." Then are made some reflections upon time in
music. We can as yet discover nothing like a law of aesthetics.

In this company, where are assembled the most cultivated of the Athenian
citizens, they discuss love and jealousy of a kind that the moral
instinct of modern society can with difficulty comprehend. But these
dissertations are of no aid in the solution which I seek.

And yet the spirit of Socrates at times attained to great heights. He
puts into the mouth of a woman of Mantinea the theory which saps the old
doctrine and presents monotheism. It is but one step thence to
Christianity, and it was Apollonius of Tyana, disciple of Pythagoras,
who established a connection between the idealism of the later Greek
philosophy and the spirituality of the new religion taught by Jesus of
Nazareth.

Socrates, after a discussion upon those intermediate deities, whom he
called _daimons_, and among whom he places love, assigns to love an
origin and strange attributes which, to a certain extent, explain the
remarkable workings of this passion at that time. He at once exalts and
seeks to make comprehended the new god--"Beauty eternal, uncreated and
imperishable, a beauty having nothing sensuous, nothing
corporeal,--which exists absolutely and eternally." This is all.

Perhaps this ideal of love, as that of philosophy, may have been
expressed in the foundation of the religious ideal of Delsarte, but this
encounter in the ethereal regions of theology and psychology--where the
human consciousness perceives nothing tangible, and whence it derives
only vague aspirations--implies no knowledge, of anything like a law, a
science or a method, such as our artist-innovator of the nineteenth
century conceived and taught.

Aristotle, disciple of the founder of the Academy of Athens, divided
the sciences into three classes--logic, philosophy and morals. Within
this classification art is closely bound, but this philosopher made no
scientific demonstration of it. His workings are not those of
application and execution. More than his predecessors, it is true, he
considered the human organism and, in this, his conception bears a
certain analogy to the system of Delsarte. Aristotle, as well as Plato,
advised the study of nature, and seeking there the elements of the
Beautiful; but they had specially in view literature and eloquence.
Further than this, their precepts are counsels and have reference to no
definite law. They have not shown the links of connection between the
human faculties and the mechanism which manifests them; they have not
taught man the manner of using his organs to express artistically his
sensations, emotions and thoughts.

The Greeks had every advantage of models and philosophical schools, in
which art was taught. But they had no school of aesthetics. Artists of
genius taught the schools more than they learned of them; and these
artists, so far as I can learn, have left no trace of theoretical works,
but, as before written, genius precedes and exemplifies law. While Plato
and Aristotle placed a beacon light upon the road leading to a law, they
never touched the goal. Delsarte proceeded otherwise. He starts with a
principle clearly defined and everything harmonizes with it.

Have the historians and critics of the Greek philosophy discovered that
which I vainly sought in its initiators,--_a law of aesthetics?_ This is
a question to be answered.

Winkelmann, in his "History of Art," says: "The fine arts, in their rise
and decadence, may be likened unto great rivers which, at the point of
fullest greatness, break up into innumerable tiny streams and are lost
in the sands." Still following this imagery, he compares "Egyptian art
to a fine tree whose growth is stopped by a sting; Etruscan art to a
torrent; Greek art to a limpid stream."

Now, the law of life of trees, streams or torrents, is not identical
with that which governs the unity of a human life.

Like Aristotle, Winkelmann states clearly the principle that man is the
measure of all things, but he does not follow up the consequences; he
reaches no scientific demonstration upon any point. Far from
establishing the existence of a law of aesthetics among the Greeks, he
simply remarks upon the extreme simplicity of their beginnings, and
shows by what gropings they came from Hermes to the most perfect works
of Phidias and Praxiteles.

Mengs states that "the first designs were of forms approaching human
semblance;" and that the sciences and philosophy must of necessity have
preceded the Beautiful in the arts. He thinks that the Greeks
established the proportions of their figures by imitation of beautiful
nature.

From these two commentators we have a history of the progression of the
arts toward the Ideal. Mengs states that the Greeks and the Etruscans
have given rules of proportion and style. But progression, proportion,
style,--all of which proceeding from a fixed standard of beauty may
guide artists--the perception even of the ideal which each one
interprets in his own way--cannot be assimilated to that original law
which carries in itself all the reasons of the concept, that which
contains all conditions and means of a true execution,--_individual even
to the perfection of each type, general and varied as the infinite
shades of nature_.

In response to the allegation of Mengs, that "the sciences and
philosophy must necessarily have preceded the Beautiful in the arts," I
would call attention to the fact that celebrated artists--as Phidias and
Zeuxis for example--had produced their works long before the dialogues
between Socrates, Protagoras, Hippias and others, upon the True, the
Good and the Beautiful. The great painter and the great sculptor could
only have proceeded by the intuition of their genius, knowing nothing of
a law of aesthetics.

In that which remains to us of antiquity, I find nothing which implies
such an application of the human organism to the arts as that whose
discovery, promulgation, exemplification and teaching we owe to
Delsarte.

M. Eugene Veron, writer of our day, and author of remarkable works on
art, far from recognizing among the Greeks a law of aesthetics, writes
of Plato: "He considered ideas as species of divine beings, intermediate
between the Supreme Deity and the world. Theirs is the power of creation
and formation.... Matter unintelligent and self-formed is _nothing_, and
realizes existence only through the operation of the idea which gives it
its form. Aristotle begins by rejecting all this phantasmagory of
eternal and creative ideas. He fills the abyss between matter and
spirit. God, pure thought and being preeminent, brings all into
existence by his power of attraction which gives to all activity and
life."

We wander farther and farther from a law of aesthetics and its means of
application as established by Delsarte.

Of all the writers who have thoroughly examined antique art, Victor
Cousin would seem the one with whom Delsarte had most in common, if this
eminent philosopher were not a contemporary of the master and had not
attended his lectures, his artistic sessions and his concerts. In his
manner of treating art, this is often shown bywords and forms and
flashes of instinctive reminiscence which recall the great school. In
his book, "The True, the Beautiful and the Good" (edition of 1858), the
learned professor writes: "The true method gives us a law to start from
man to arrive at things. All the arts, without exception, address the
soul _through the body_."

He is on the way, but his position embraces neither the starting-point,
which is the law, nor any practical means toward an end. For the rest,
the nearer his propositions approach the law of Delsarte, the easier it
becomes to establish the radical differences which separate them.
Delsarte does not say that "the law is to start from man to arrive at
things," but that "man uses his corporeal organs to manifest himself in
his three constituent modalities,--physical, mental and moral."

It is very certain that works of art, like all concrete forms, can only
be perceived by the senses. Who does not know this? But that which is
most difficult to comprehend, is the just relation of cause to
effect--as to the faculty and its manifestation,--and it is this which
Delsarte discovered and made clear. The one stated the action of art
when perceived; the other, the necessities of the artist in order that
art respond to the law.

I shall have more than once to render justice to Victor Cousin.
Inheritor of the Greek philosophers, he allows dialectics too great
margin. He wanders in his premises and arrives at his conclusions--when
he can. (Here, of course, I speak only of art.) In philosophy, Cousin,
beginning with effects, from induction to induction, often arrives at
causes and states some principles. Delsarte, perhaps, proceeded thus
while seeking to combine his discoveries, but this accomplished, he
placed in the first line, synthesis, whence all emanates, and this focus
of light radiating in all directions, illumines even to its farthest
limit, the vast field of aesthetics. Cousin, after all, claims neither
for the Greeks nor for himself the discovery of a law.

Proudhon, who represented the Protagorean school among us, humoring his
whim, produced a work on art. In this he declares that he has very
little gift in aesthetics, and asserts himself a dialectician, and we
cannot deny his power in logic while he regards things from a proper
stand-point. Very well! Proudhon challenged the Academy "to indicate a
_method_"--with even more reason might he have said _law_ of aesthetics.

Shall we, at last, find among the true critics of French literature any
synthetic basis which may guide us in all branches of art? What do I
find in "The Poetic Art," by Boileau, the great authority of the
Augustan age,--rhetoric, beautiful verses, full of excellent counsel? I
find there wisely arbitrated rules, a sieve through which it would be
well to pass the works of our own times, including the verdicts which
distribute the glory.

But the means of putting into practice these valuable precepts--the
criterion to establish their truth, the touchstone which may distinguish
the pure gold--does not appear! In default of these means of certitude,
each may, according to his instinct or his pride, insist that he has
fulfilled the conditions prescribed by the author of the _Lutrin_, and
judge his rivals by the sole authority of his prejudices.

La Harpe and his followers have distributed praise and blame, and at the
same time said _what_ should be done, but they have given no _how_.

More grievous still are the meanderings of the critics of our public
journals. They wander without compass and without rudder, approving or
condemning according to their friendships and antipathies; save those
_connoisseurs emerites_, whose fine, sure taste and exceptional
erudition are rarely able to supply a law and state a reason for their
judgment.