(HORACE, Satires, II. i)*
TO MY FRIEND, MONSIEUR NAIGEON
ON A PASSAGE FROM THE
FIRST SATIRE OF HORACE’S SECOND BOOK:
Sunt quibus in Satyra videor nimis acer et ultra
Legem tendere opus.*
FIRST SATIRE
MY friend, have you not observed that reason, the prerogative peculiar to us humans, takes such a range of forms that within it alone we find parallels to every variation of instinct in animals? Consequently, there is no animal, whether benign or harmful, anywhere in the sky, the forest, or the waters of the earth, which you cannot recognize in the biped figure of man. There’s the man wolf, the man tiger, the man fox, the man mole, the man hog, the man sheep—and this last is the commonest. There’s the man eel—grasp him as firmly as you can, he will escape you; the man pike, who devours everything; the man snake, who twists himself into a hundred different shapes; the man bear, whom I find not unpleasing; the man eagle, soaring high in the skies above us; the man crow; the man sparrow-hawk; the man, and the bird, of prey. Nothing is rarer than a man who is wholly a man; there’s not one of us without a trace of his animal counterpart.
Therefore, for every man, there’s a different cry.
There’s nature’s cry, which I hear in what Sara says of the sacrifice of her son: God would never have asked it of his mother.* And when Fontenelle, witness to the advance of unbelief, declared: I’d very much like to be here sixty years from now, to see what comes of this,* Of course he wanted to be here. We do not want to die, and the end always comes a day too soon. In one more day we’d have discovered the squaring of the circle.
Why should this cry of nature, which is peculiar to us, be so rare in the imitative arts? Why is it that the poet who captures it amazes and transports us? Might it be because he thereby reveals to us the secret of our hearts?
There’s the cry of passion, which I hear when Hermione asks Oreste: Who told you so? and when Phèdre, responding to: They’ll never meet again, says: They’ll love one another forever,* I hear it as I depart after an eloquent sermon on almsgiving, in the mutterings of the miser at my side: That makes one wish one were a beggar; or again, when the faithless mistress, surprised by her lover in flagrante delicto, reproaches him: Ah, you no longer love me, for you’d rather believe what you’ve seen than what I tell you; and yet again, in the remark of the dying usurer to the priest who exhorts him to repent: This crucifix, I couldn’t in good conscience lend more than a hundred écus on it, and then only with a note of hand.
There was a time when I loved the theatre, particularly the opera. I was at the Opéra one evening, seated between the Abbé de Canaye, whom you know, and a certain Montbron, author of some pamphlets which are lavish with acid and sparing, very sparing, with talent. I had just listened to a poignant piece whose words and music had filled me with rapture. At that period we had never heard Pergolesi, and we thought Lully sublime. In my ecstasy I seized my neighbour Montbron by the arm and asked: ‘That was beautiful, do you not agree, Monsieur?’ He had a yellowed complexion, black, bushy eyebrows, and hooded, ferocious eyes; he replied: ‘No, I don’t feel that.’ ‘You don’t feel that?’ ‘No, I am insensible to such things.’ I shiver, and move away from the two-legged tiger; I go up to the Abbé de Canaye and ask him: ‘Monsieur l’Abbé, what did you think of that piece they’ve just sung?’ The Abbé answers me in accents of cold disdain: ‘Good enough, I suppose, not bad.’ ‘And you know of something better?’ ‘Far, far better.’ ‘What is it?’ ‘Some lines written about that poor Abbé Pellegrin:
His ragged breeches, string-girt, a virtual net,
Let us behold a bum that’s blacker yet.
Now that’s what I call beautiful!’
How many different bird-songs, how many discordant cries just within the forest we call society! ‘Come, drink this rice water.’ ‘What did it cost?’ ‘A mere nothing.’ ‘But how much?’ ‘Perhaps five or six sous.’ ‘What does it matter whether I die of my malady, or of theft and pillage?’ ‘You who are so fond of talking, how can you listen so long to that man?’ ‘I’m waiting; if he coughs or expectorates, he’s done for.’* ‘Who is that man sitting on your right?’ ‘He’s a man of great ability who is an exceptionally good listener.’ The latter says to the priest who tells him that the Lord is approaching: I recognize him by his mount. That’s how he entered into Jerusalem … The former, less caustic, spares himself, on his deathbed, the annoyance of being preached to by the priest who administered the last rites, by asking him: ‘Monsieur, can I be of no further service to you?’ There we hear the cry that reveals character.
Beware of the man monkey. He has no character, but he has many different cries.
‘Doing this will bring no harm to you, but it will spell disaster for your friend.’ ‘Oh, what do I care, as long as it saves me?’ ‘But your friend …’ ‘Think of my friend as much as you wish, but of me first.’ ‘Do you believe, Monsieur l’Abbé, that it gives Madame Geoffrin great pleasure to receive you in her home?’ ‘Why should that trouble me, as long as I enjoy being there?’ Watch that man when he enters a room; he lets his head drop down onto his chest, he embraces himself, he hugs himself tightly so as to be closer to himself. You’ve just seen the posture and heard the cry of the selfish man, a cry that echoes on all sides. It is one of nature’s cries.
‘It’s true that I entered into this agreement with you, but I’m declaring now that I don’t intend to abide by it.’ ‘You don’t intend to abide by it, Monsieur le Comte! And why is that, may I ask?’ ‘Because I’m more powerful than you …’ The cry of power is yet another of nature’s cries. ‘You’ll think me infamous, but I don’t give a damn …’ That’s the cry of shamelessness.
‘But I do believe these are Toulouse goose livers?’ ‘Superb! Delicious!’ ‘Ah! Why am I not afflicted with an ailment for which these would be the remedy!’ Such is the lament of a glutton who suffers from his digestion.
In masticating them, my lord, you paid them a signal honour,* There goes the cry of the flatterer, of the despicable courtier. But there are many others.
The cries of man assume an infinite variety of forms according to the profession he follows. Frequently, they disguise the natural tone of character.
When Ferrein said: ‘My friend fell sick, I treated him, he died, I dissected him;’ was Ferrein a callous man? I do not know.
‘Doctor, you’re very late.’ ‘True. That poor Mademoiselle de Thé* has passed on.’ ‘She’s dead!’ ‘Yes. My presence was required at the opening of the body; I don’t know when anything has ever given me greater pleasure …’ When the Doctor spoke like that, was he a callous man? I do not know. My friend, you know what enthusiasm for one’s calling is like. The satisfaction of having guessed the hidden cause of Mademoiselle de Thé’s death made the Doctor forget that he was speaking of his dear friend. Once his enthusiasm had evaporated, did the Doctor weep for his friend? If you ask me that, I’ll admit that I don’t believe he did.
Take it away, take it away, it’s badly made. The man who says this about a poor-quality crucifix he’s given to kiss is not ungodly. His words spring from his profession: they’re the words of a dying sculptor.
That amusing Abbé de Canaye, whom I’ve mentioned to you, wrote a very sour, funny satire of the little Dialogues that his friend Rémond de Saint-Mard had composed.* One day the latter, unaware that the Abbé had written the satire, was complaining to a lady—a mutual friend—about this spiteful work. While the thin-skinned Saint-Mard continued his exaggerated moaning over a pinprick, the Abbé, who was standing behind him facing the lady, admitted his authorship and made fun of his friend by sticking out his tongue. Some declared that the Abbé’s behaviour was ungentlemanly, others saw it simply as a mischievous prank. This ethical issue was tried before the court of the erudite Abbé Fénel; the only opinion anyone could ever extract from him was that sticking the tongue out had been a custom of the ancient Gauls … What do you conclude from that? Th
at the Abbé de Canaye was a malicious man? That’s my opinion. That the other Abbé was a fool? No, that I deny. He was a man who’d used up his eyes, and his life, on scholarly research, and who saw nothing in this world of any importance compared with the restitution of a missing passage or the discovery of an ancient custom. It’s the counterpart of the geometer who, tired of the praises with which all Paris rang when Racine gave his Iphigénie, decided to read this highly acclaimed Iphigénie. He picks up the play and retires to a corner; he reads a scene, then a second; at the third he tosses the book away, saying: ‘What does that prove?’ It’s the judgement and the language of a man accustomed from his early youth to write at the bottom of every page: QED.
You make yourself ridiculous, but you’re neither ignorant nor silly, even less are you bad, for seeing nothing beyond your own concerns.
Imagine me tormented by regular attacks of vomiting; I spew forth gallons of a caustic, clear liquid. I’m frightened, and send for Thierry. The Doctor smiles as he examines the fluid that has issued from my mouth and fills an entire bowl … ‘Well, Doctor, what’s wrong with me?’ ‘You’re a most fortunate man; you’ve restored to us the vitreous phlegm of the Ancients, which we’d lost …’ I smile in my turn, and think no better, and no worse, of Doctor Thierry.
There are so many, many cries intrinsic to a man’s occupation, that even someone more patient than you would be utterly exhausted, were I to tell you of all those that come to mind as I write. When a monarch, who personally commands his forces, says to his officers after they abandon an attack in which they would all have perished uselessly: What were you born for, if not to die?. . . he is uttering a cry of his profession.
When some grenadiers beg their general to show mercy to one of their brave comrades who’s been caught plundering, and say: General, give him to us. You would put him to death; we know a more severe punishment for a grenadier: he shall not take part in the first battle you win …, they speak with the eloquence of their profession, a sublime eloquence! Woe betide the man with the heart of bronze who is not swayed by it! Tell me, my friend, would you have had him hanged, that soldier who was so well defended by his comrades? No. Nor would I.
Sire, that canonball! … What’s that cannonball to do with the dispatch I’m dictating? … It’s blasted my mess bowl to bits, but it hadn’t any rice in it. The question was asked by a king,* the response uttered by a soldier, but they were both brave men; neither was a creature of the state.
Were you present when the castrato Caffarelli filled us with a rapture greater than anything that your fervour, Demosthenes, or your melodious cadences, Cicero, or your lofty genius, Corneille, or your tenderness, Racine, ever inspired in us? No, my friend, you were not present. What a lot of time we’ve wasted, what a lot of pleasure we’ve missed through not knowing one another! Caffarelli sang, and we were dazed with admiration. I turned to the famous naturalist Daubenton with whom I was sharing a sofa. ‘Well, Doctor, what do you think of him?’ ‘His legs are frail, his knees rounded, his thighs heavy, his hips broad; possibly a being deprived of the organs that characterize his sex tends to mimic the bodily structure of the opposite sex …’ ‘But that heavenly music! …’ ‘Not a single hair on his chin!’ ‘That exquisite taste, that pathos-filled sense of the sublime, that voice!’ ‘It’s a woman’s voice.’ ‘It’s the most beautiful, balanced, supple, true, soul-stirring voice …’ While the virtuoso was making us weep, d’Aubenton was studying him with a naturalist’s eye.
The man wholly dedicated to his calling, if he has genius, becomes a prodigy; if he has no genius, then unwavering application raises him above the common level of mediocrity. Happy the society in which every man keeps himself occupied with his own calling and with that alone! He whose glance attempts to encompass everything sees nothing, or sees imperfectly; he interrupts constantly, and contradicts the man who is speaking, and who has observed accurately.
I can hear you from here, you’re saying to yourself: God be praised! I’d had quite enough of those cries of nature, of passion, of character, of profession: finally I’ve heard the last of them … You’re wrong, my friend. After citing so many impolite or idiotic remarks, I’m asking your patience for one or two that are different. ‘Chevalier, how old are you?’ ‘Thirty.’ ‘I’m twenty-five; well, you’d love me for sixty years or so, it’s not worth beginning, for so short a time …’ ‘That must be a prude speaking.’ ‘And your response is that of a man with no principles, it’s the reaction of joy, of wit, and of virtue. Each sex has its own language; the man’s has neither the lightness, nor the delicacy, nor the sensitivity of the woman’s. The one seems always to command and to affront, the other to complain and to entreat … And now for the words of the celebrated Muret, and then I’ll move on to other topics.
Muret falls ill while travelling, and is taken to hospital. He’s placed in a bed beside the litter of an unfortunate victim of one of those maladies that mystify practitioners of the healing arts. The doctors and surgeons confer about his condition. One of the consultants suggests an operation that is equally as likely to kill as to cure the patient. Opinions are divided. They are inclining towards letting Nature determine the fate of the sick man, when one of them, bolder than his colleagues, says: Faciamus experimentum in anima vili. That is the cry of the wild animal. But from within the curtains which surround Muret comes the cry of the man, the philosopher, the Christian: Tanquam foret anima vilis, illa pro qua Christus non dedignatus est mori. . .* Muret’s words prevented the operation, and the patient recovered.
To this medley of the cries of nature, of passion, of character, of profession, add the distinctive timbre of the national character, and you will hear the aged Horace say of his son: That he should die,* and the Spartans say of Alexander: Since he wishes to be God, let him be God,* These words do not reveal the character of a single man, but the general character of a nation.
I shall say nothing of the mind and manners of the clergy, nobility, and magistrature. Each has its own style of commanding, entreating, and complaining. This style is traditional. Individual members can be base or grovelling, but the class as a whole preserves its dignity. The remonstrances of our historical assemblies, however, have not always been masterpieces, although Thomas, that most eloquent man of letters, that loftiest, most admirable of souls, would not have signed his name to them; he would not have settled for something inferior, he would have gone beyond.
All this is why, my dear friend, I shall never be in a hurry to enquire about a newcomer to a social group. Such a question is often impolite, and almost always useless. With a little patience, you avoid troubling either the master or the mistress of the house, and you allow yourself the pleasure of guessing.
These precepts did not originate with me, but were given me by a very astute man* who demonstrated their application, in my presence, at Mademoiselle D***’s,* the night before I set off on that immense journey which I undertook in spite of your objections.* During the course of the evening a gentleman arrived whom my friend did not know; this person spoke quietly, carried himself easily, expressed himself elegantly, and behaved with chilly politeness. ‘This man,’ he whispered in my ear, ‘is someone attached to the Court …’ Then he observed that, almost invariably, he kept his right hand upon his chest, fingers together and nails facing out … ‘Aha!’ he added, ‘he’s an exempted officer of the Lifeguards, all that’s missing is his baton.’ Shortly afterwards, the man in question told a little story. ‘There were four of us,’ he said, ‘Madame and Monsieur Such-and-such, Madame de ***, and myself.’ Whereupon my instructor continued: ‘Now I have the full picture. My man’s married, the woman whom he mentioned third is surely his wife, and he’s given me his own name in naming her.’
We left Mademoiselle D***’s house together. It was not yet too late to take a walk; he suggested a stroll round the Tuileries and I agreed. As we walked, he made many subtle, penetrating observations, expressing himself in language that was equally so; but as I’m
a very plain, straightforward man, and the subtlety of his remarks obscured their true meaning for me, I begged him to clarify them with a few examples. Limited minds require examples. He was kind enough to comply, and said:
‘I was dining one day as a guest of the Archbishop of Paris. I know few of the people who frequent the Archbishop, a fact which troubles me little; however, one’s neighbour, the person seated beside one at table, is quite another matter. One has to know with whom one is conversing, and to succeed in this one only has to let him talk, and then piece the evidence together. I had someone on my right to decipher. In the first place, the Archbishop spoke to him only rarely, and then rather curtly; either he’s not devout, I thought, or else he’s a Jansenist ... A passing remark about the Jesuits told me that the latter was the case. A loan was being negotiated for the clergy, and I used the opportunity to question my man about the resources of the church. He gave me a full and detailed account of them, complained that the church was overtaxed, lashed out against the Minister of Finance, and added that he’d had it out in no uncertain terms in 1750 with the Comptroller of Taxes. I then realized that he’d been Agent to the clergy. In the course of the conversation he led me to understand that, had he wished it, he could have become a bishop; I supposed he must be well-born. However, as he boasted, more than once, of an elderly uncle who was a Lieutenant-General, but didn’t breathe a word about his father, I deduced that he was a parvenu who’d made a blunder. He recounted scandalous stories involving a number of bishops, a clear indication that he possessed a malicious tongue. He went on to tell me that, in spite of intense competition, he’s succeeded in getting his brother named as Administrator of ***. You’ll agree that, had I been informed, on taking my seat at the table, that he was a Jansenist, humbly born, arrogant and scheming, that he hated his colleagues and that they hated him, in short that he was the Abbé of ***, I wouldn’t have learnt anything more than what I discovered, and I’d have been deprived of the pleasure of discovery.’
Rameau's Nephew and First Satire (Oxford World's Classics) Page 14