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Delsarte System of Oratory by Various

V >> Various >> Delsarte System of Oratory




"Thermometer," I cried, "there is an excellent word, strikingly correct.
But have I not, in pronouncing it, simply and naturally characterized
the role that I am striving to define?

"Thermometer of the sensibility! Is not that the solution of the
enigma? Thermometer; yes, that is it! That is the very expression to
give to my researches, an expression without which nothing could be
explained. That, indeed, answers to everything, and makes the
difficulties against which my reason struggled disappear."

The shoulder is, in fact, precisely the thermometer of passion as well
as of sensibility; it is the measure of their vehemence; it determines
their degree of heat and intensity. However, it does not specify their
nature, and it is certainly in an analogous sense that the instrument
known by the name of thermometer marks the degrees of heat and cold
without specifying the nature of the weather--a specification belonging
to another instrument, the complement of the thermometer--the barometer.
The parallel is absolute, perfect.

Let us examine this point:

The shoulder, in rising, is not called upon to teach us whether the
source of the heat or vehemence which mark it, arise from love or hate.
This specification does not lie within its province; it belongs entirely
to the face, which is to the shoulder what the barometer is to the
thermometer. And it is thus that the shoulder and the face enter into
harmonious relations to complete the passional sense which they have to
determine mutually and by distinct paths.

Now, the shoulder is limited, in its proper domain, to proving, first,
that the emotion expressed by the face _is_ or _is not_ true. Then,
afterward, to marking, with mathematical rigor, the degree of intensity
to which that emotion rises.

After having finished the formulation of this principle I exultingly
exclaimed:

"God be praised! I now possess the semeiotics of the shoulder, and
thereby I hold the criterion of the passional or sensitive powers--a
criterion outside of which no truth can be demonstrated in the sphere of
sentiment or feeling."

Thus, a word suggested by chance became my Archimedean lever. The word,
like a flash of light, flooded my mind with radiance which suddenly
revealed to me the numerous and fertile applications of a principle
hitherto unknown. Yes, I henceforth possessed an aesthetic principle of
the utmost value, the consequences of which, I could readily see, were
as novel as they were profound.




Episode VI.

First Objection to the Thermometric System of the Shoulder.



The innate aesthetic principle of the semeiotics of the shoulder was at
last clearly demonstrated to me, and no more doubt or uncertainty upon
that point seemed to me possible. I might safely formulate the following
rule:

When a man says to you in interjective form: "I love, I suffer, I am
delighted," etc., do not believe him if his shoulder remains in a normal
attitude. Do not believe him, no matter what expression his face may
assume. Do not believe him--he lies; his shoulder denies his words. That
negative form betrays his thoughts; and, if he expresses ardent passion,
you have merely to consult the thermometer which, all unwittingly, he
himself offers to your inspection. See, it marks zero! therefore he
lies; doubt it not, he lies! but his shoulder does not lie. He amiably
puts it at your disposal--read, read at your ease; it bears inscribed in
living letters his deceit and craft. It can never cheat you, and when
the gentleman accosts you with such words as: "Dear friend! how charmed
I am to see you!" say to yourself as you look at his thermometer:
"Traitor, your delight as well as your friendship is below zero! You try
to deceive me, but in vain; henceforth you have no secrets from me,
clumsy forger! You do not see, as with one hand you proffer the false
jewel which you would sell me, that the other at the same instant gives
me the touch-stone which reveals your tricks; your right hand thus
incessantly exposing to me the secrets of your left hand!"

What an admirable thing is this mechanism of the body working in the
service of the soul! With what precision it reveals the least movements
of its master! What magnificent things it lays bare! Voluntarily or
involuntarily, everything leads to truth under the action of the
translucid light which breaks forth in the working of each of our
organs!

And yet, well founded as the preceding theory may be, solid as are the
bases upon which it rests, is it free from any and all objection? May
not some oppose to it, for instance, the impassibility of men and women
of the world, among whom it would be difficult to find the movements of
the shoulder, which such people deem so ungraceful in others as to
deprive them of all desire to imitate them? Now what conclusions are we
to draw from the absence of this movement in those who are known as
aristocrats? Must we tax them all indiscriminately with falsehood?

Here I might, and without hesitation, answer by the affirmation, Yes,
all aristocrats lie! The medium which they constitute and which is
called _the world_ is nothing but a perpetual lie. Civility itself
rests upon a lie. Nay, more, it insists upon deceit as a duty. Heavens,
what would become of the world if truth were a necessity! Quarter of an
hour of sincerity would be intolerable; ... the inhabitants would slay
each other!

In the world people display their feelings, even the most avowable, with
great reserve; this prudence, which paralyzes the very springs of
sensitive life, seems as if it needs must neutralize the role which I
attribute to the shoulder; and yet, in spite of contrary appearances, I
deny that the thermometric action of the shoulder undergoes the least
alteration in the aristocratic world; I deny explicitly that this agent
proves less expressive and, above all, less truthful there than in the
street; and that for the following reasons:

In the first place, we cannot reasonably suppose very ardent passions in
men who are enervated by the perpetual influence of an artificial
society. Now, here the stationary condition of the thermometer is
explained: it proves absolutely nothing against the truth of the
reports; it remains at zero to mark a colorless medium totally destitute
of vitality. The shoulder would violate its law if it were to rise under
such circumstances. It is, therefore, perfectly in character here; it
should be, _a priori_, impassive in a negative society.

But is the shoulder really impassive in that medium which we call
society?

_Yes_, in the eyes of people who are not of it, and who, from that very
fact, cannot understand the value of certain expressions which are
almost imperceptible; _no_, to those who constitute that special world
of relations called superior.

How many things, in fact, the shoulder reveals by those slight changes
unseen by ignorant persons, and expressing particularly the delicate and
exquisite charm of spiritual relations! It is the law of infinitesimal
quantities, of those scarcely perceptible movements or sensations that
characterize the finer relations of people of culture, of eloquence, of
grace, and of refined tastes.

It should be borne in mind, as I have already shown, that the
manifestations of the shoulder in the street by no means accord with
those of people ruled by the fashions of society. There is very little
harmony or relation between the exquisite joints of a refined nature,
the swift and flexible movements of an elegant organism, and the
evolutions clumsily executed by torpid limbs, ankylosed, as it were, by
labor at once hard and constant

This observation logically led me to an important conclusion, namely,
that the value or importance of a standard is deduced expressly from the
nature of the being, or the object to which it is applied. Of what
value, for instance, could a millimeter be when added to the stature of
a man? That same millimeter, however, would acquire a colossal value
when added to the proportions of a flea. It would form a striking
monstrosity.

An imperceptible fraction may, in certain cases, constitute an
enormity. Again, the value of a standard, not the specific or numerical
value which is an invariable basis, but the relative or moral value,
must be deduced from the importance of the medium to which it applies.
For instance: Five hundred men constitute a very good army in the midst
of a peaceful population; and this handful of soldiers exerts, indeed,
more moral power than the multitudes restrained under their government.
A smile coming from the lips of a sovereign leaves in the soul that it
penetrates a far deeper trace than all the demonstrations of a common or
vulgar crowd. The traveler, detained by the winter in the polar regions,
finds that he is warm and takes pleasure in the discovery, though at the
time the thermometer marks 10 degrees below zero.

The atmosphere of a cave that we find warm in winter seems to us,
without being modified in the least, of an icy coldness in summer.

The large quantity of alcohol that laboring people consume would ruin
the health of less strongly constituted persons.

To conclude, then, these examples prove beyond dispute that one can only
appreciate the importance of an act when he takes into account the
nature of its agents, and that without these considerations he will be
obliged to give up immediately all serious estimation of these
manifestations.

Here I touch, it seems to me, a law of harmony, a curious law that I
wish to examine incidentally. I shall, then, occupy myself with the
objections that may, perhaps, be opposed even yet to the thermometric
system of the shoulder




Episode VII.



The foregoing study has, as it seems, established an important fact,
namely, that among the various classes of men which make up society
there is no common standard of measure. It, therefore, appears
impossible, at first sight, to establish a harmonious scale of relations
between so many various circles.

However, if these circles, whatever their differences may be, were
specified and sufficiently known; if I could, for example, judge _a
priori_ of the style and mode of activity adapted to each class of
society; in a word, if it were possible for me to characterize each of
its classes dynamically, should I not succeed in ascertaining a
proportionate gamut or scale among them, and thereby should I not be
enabled securely to apply the principles established above?

Let us say, to begin with, that if each social sphere affects a
determinate character in the intensity of its passional evolutions, it
has, in consequence, its special gamut; then, as many spheres as there
are, so many gamuts must there be. Now, all these gamuts taken together
must form a scale of proportion in virtue of which they may be
characterized. That is obvious. But the difficulty is to prove the mode
or first tonality of these gamuts. How are we to set to work?

I cut short, for the clearness of my demonstrations, the recital of the
events through which I have been obliged to pass before realizing even
my earliest observations. I shall set forth, plainly and simply, the
final result of my studies; and it will be seen, in spite of the many
difficulties that may arise, with what absolute certainty the principles
I have established can be applied.




What I Propose.



I propose a great, a worthy subject for your study. At those oratorical
sessions which are rapidly increasing under the name of conferences,
sessions at which so many distinguished men take the floor, you have
been told in elegant terms, often in eloquent terms, of the sciences, of
their application and of their progress. You have listened to discourses
upon art, its primitive purity, its supposed principles, its decadence,
its renaissance, its multifarious changes; its masterpieces have been
pointed out to you; they have been described to you; you have, in some
degree, been made familiar with their origin. You have heard the story
of the lives of the great artists. They have been shown to you in their
weakness and in their strength. The times and manners amid which they
lived have been painted for you in more or less imaginary colors. I
propose something better than all this.

I offer you a work superior even to those sciences which have been
described to you; superior to all which the genius of a Michael Angelo
or a Raphael could conceive; a work in comparison with which all the
magnificences of science and of art must pale. I propose that you should
contemplate yourselves!

Nothing is so unfamiliar to man as himself. I will, therefore, as I have
promised, show you the marvels which God himself has placed within you,
in the transluminous obscurities of your being.

Now, if there be more science, more genius in the production of a violet
or a worm than is revealed by all the combined powers of science and of
art, how much admiration should we not feel at the sight of all the
splendors which God has spread broadcast in the privileged work wherein
He was pleased to reveal his own image! But a light inaccessible to the
vain demonstrations of your sciences constantly removes this mysterious
image from your gaze. As light eludes the eye which it illumines, if we
would seize and contemplate it, we must have two things: we must have a
special and a supernatural object. There must be light within you, and
it must pierce the depths wherein that image dwells.

Here there is no question of the light which shines to show us the
things of the natural world by which we are surrounded. Nor is it a
question of the intellectual light sometimes visible to scholars. I
speak of that light which is hidden from those very scholars because
their eyes could not bear its lustre, a transluminous light which fills
the soul with beatific visions, and of which it is said that God wraps
it about Him as a mantle.

Now, three worlds, of the nature of which man partakes, are offered for
our contemplation. These three worlds are: The _natural_, the
_intellectual_, and the _supernatural_.

Three sorts of vision have been given man to initiate him into these
three worlds. These different forms of vision are: _Direct, inward_ and
_higher_.

By means of direct vision man is made acquainted with the world of
nature; by inward vision he is shown the world of science; and, lastly,
by higher vision he sees the world of grace. But as there can be no
vision where no light penetrates, it follows that between the three
kinds of vision described and the corresponding worlds there must
intervene three sorts of light, in order to produce the triple vision
necessary for the knowledge of man:

Direct vision--sidereal light--natural world.

Inward vision--the light of tradition--the world of science.

Higher vision--revealed light--supernatural world.

Such are the conditions necessary for the understanding of my
demonstrations.

Having prepared your eye for the vision of these three worlds which
serve as the bases of art, I shall, then, reveal to you their splendors;
happy if, thus, I can help to make you bless the author of so many
marvels, and communicate to you those keen joys which perpetuate in the
soul a fountain of youth which can never be quenched by the infirmities
of the body.




The Beautiful



Beauty is that reason itself which presides at the creation of things.
It is the invincible power which attracts and subjugates us in it. The
Beautiful admits of three characters, which we distinguish under the
titles of _ideal_ beauty, _moral_ beauty, _plastic_ beauty.

Plato defined ideal beauty when he said: "Beauty is the splendor of
truth." St. Augustine said of moral beauty that it is the splendor of
goodness. I define plastic beauty as the plastic manifestation of truth
and goodness.

In so far as it responds to the particular type in accordance with which
it is formed, every creature bears the crown of beauty; because in its
correspondence with its type it manifests, according to its capacity,
the Divine Being who created it.

The Beautiful is an absolute principle; it is the essence of beings, the
life of their functions. Beauty is a consequence, an effect, a form of
the Beautiful. It results from the attractions of the form. The
attraction of the form comes from the nobility of the function. This is
why all functions not being equally noble, all do not admit of beauty.
The characteristic of beauty is to be amiable; consequently a thing is
ugly only in view of the amiable things which we seek in beauty.

Beauty is to the Beautiful what the individual reason is to the Divine
reason of things. Human reason is but one ray of a vast orb called the
reason of things,--Divine reason. Let us say of beauty what we have said
of the individual reason, and we shall understand how the Beautiful is
to be distintinguished from it. Beauty is one ray of the Beautiful.

Beauty is the expression of the object for which the thing is.

It is the stamp of its functions. It is the transparency of the
aptitudes of the agent and the radiance of the faculties which it
governs. It is the order which results from the dynamic disposition of
forms operated in view of the function.

Beauty is based on three conditions: Clearness, integrity and due
proportion.

Beauty exists in the practical knowledge of the tendencies affected by
the form in view of the object for which it is; in view, above all, of
the action which it exerts upon the beings with whom it is in relation.
Thus a thing is not only beautiful from the transparency of its
aptitudes, it is especially so from the beauty of the acts which its use
determines abroad. This is the reason why beauty is to all creatures an
object of appetency, of desire and of love.




Trinity.



There is a mystery full of deep instruction, a mystery whose divine
obscurities surpass all the light whose splendors dazzle us by their
supernatural clarity, and which, as a great saint once said, radiates
splendid beams and floods with the glory of its fires those spirits who
are blind with the blindness of holiness. This mystery, outside of which
all is to man dark and incomprehensible, illuminates everything and
explains it in the sense that it is the cause, the principle and the end
of all things.

This dazzling mystery is the universal criterion of all truth; it is the
science of sciences, which is self-defining and whose name is Trinity.

Here we foresee an objection to which we must first reply. Some will be
surprised that a system declared to be infallible should rest upon a
mystery; they will ask what a mystery can have to do with a purely
didactic question. Patience! You shall see that it cannot be otherwise.
Nothing is more evident than light, yet light is a mystery, the most
obscure of all mysteries. Thus light escapes the eye and it does not see
that by means of which it sees. Now, if light is a mystery, why should
not mystery be a light? Let us see first what the church teaches us in
regard to this mystery.

God is a word which serves as a pretext for every Utopia, for every
illusion and for every human folly. The Trinity is the express
refutation of all these stupidities; it is their remedy, corrective and
preservative. Deprive me of the Trinity and I can no longer understand
aught of God. All becomes dark and obscure to me, and I have no longer a
rational motive for hope.

The Trinity, the hypostatical basis of beings and things, is the
reflection of the Divine Majesty in its work. It is, as it were, a
reflection upon us of its own light. The Trinity is our guide in the
applied sciences of which it is at once the solution and the enigma.

The Trinity is manifest in the smallest divisions of the Divine work,
and is to be regarded as the most fertile means of scientific
investigation; for if it is at once the cause, the principle and the end
of all science, it is its infallible criterion and we must start from it
as an immovable axiom.

Every truth is triangular, and no demonstration responds to its object
save in virtue of a triply triple formula.

_Theory of Processional Relations; or of the Connection between
Principiants and Principiates._

THEOREM.

Each term in the Trinity is characterized processionally by the
arrangement of the relations which unite it to its congeners. We will
represent the nature of these relations by an arrow, the head of which
starts from the principiant, touching with its point the principiate.




Example.



Principiant terms ---------------> Principiate terms

This established, let us see by what sort of relations we are to
distinguish the persons in the Trinity represented by 1, 2 and 3.

1. The Father--a term exclusively principiant, giving the mission and
not receiving it.

2. The Son--a term both principiant and principiate, receiving and
giving the mission.

3. The Holy Ghost--a term exclusively principiate, receiving the mission
and not giving it.

[Illustration]

TYPICAL
ARRANGEMENTS
BASED ON THE KNOWLEDGE
OF THE PROCESSIONAL
RELATIONS INTERUNITING
THE PERSONS IN THE TRINITY.

3
/ \
/ \
/ \
B/ \C
/ TRINITY \
/ \
1/ \2
---------------
A

[Illustration]

_A._ Relation of generation starting from the generator, ending at the
engendered (2), expressing by its horizontality the co-equality of the
principiant with the principiate.

_B._ Relation of spiration starting from the spirator or first
principiant 1, ending at the principiate 3.

_C._ Relation of spiration starting from the spirator or second
principiant 2, ending at the principiate 3, emanated by way of the
common spiration of its double principle 1 and 2.



_Vicious Arrangements._

Reversal of the Processional Relations and Confusion Which Leads to
Reversals.


These first three examples sin from lack of a necessary relationship, in
default of which the extreme terms cannot be designated. Here,
therefore, the intermediate term alone can be estimated.

1 >--------> 2 <--------< 3

Here the Son offers the relational characteristics of the Holy Ghost.

1 <--------< 2 >--------> 3

Here He plays the part of the Father by the arrangement of His
relations.

1 >--------> 3 >--------> 2

Here the Holy Ghost is evidently out of place, for He indicates
relations which belong only to the Word.

(1.) According to these relations, the Holy Ghost plays the part of the
Son, and the Son that of the Holy Ghost.

[Illustration]

3
^ \
/ 1 \
/ v
1------>2

(2.) Here all the relations are reversed so that the Father plays the
part of the Son; the Holy Ghost plays the part of the Father; and,
finally, the Son that of the Holy Ghost.

[Illustration]

3
/ \
/ 2 \
v v
1------>2

(3.) This curious example represents by the identical arrangement of
the terms that it brings together, three Sons; that is to say, the
person of the Son three times over.

[Illustration]

3
^ \
/ 3 \
/ v
1<------2

(4.) Another reversal of the relations, which derives the Holy Ghost
from the Father, the Father from the Son, and the Son from the Holy
Ghost.

[Illustration]

3
/ ^
/ 4 \
v \
1<------2




Passion Of Signs. Signs of Passion.



These two terms at first sight seem very similar. It is not so. They
express two wholly distinct things. Therefore to know the meaning of
words by no means proves one capable of finding words and fitting them
to the meaning.

It is clearly easier to translate a language than to write it, and just
as we must learn to translate before we can compose, so we must become
thoroughly familiar with semeiotics before trying to work at aesthetics;
and, as the science of semeiotics is still wholly incomplete, it is,
therefore, absolutely impossible that that which is called aesthetics
should in the least resemble the science which I have just defined.

I have shown you aesthetics as a science. I have given you its
definition. I have fixed its special part in the sum total of knowledge
which goes to make up art; moreover, I have pointed out what this
science is intended to teach you. I have, by so doing, assumed serious
obligations toward you. I must needs produce under this title something
more than mere fantastic reflections upon works of art, or more or less
attractive stories about their authors and the circumstances in which
they lived. It will not be so amusing, but assuredly it will be more
profitable, and that is all for which I aspire.

Art, then, is an act whose semeiotics characterizes the forms produced
by the action of powers, which action is determined by aesthetics, and
the causes of which are sought out by ontology.

/ Ontology examines the constituent virtues of the being.
|
Art. < AEsthetics examines its powers.
|
\ Semeiotics characterizes its forces.