Stendhal : An Ego and the World (Stefan Zweig)

STEFAN ZWEIG

Casanova, Stendhal,Tolstoy

Adepts In Self-Portraiture

An Ego and the World

"(...) Because he knows himself so well, Stendhal realizes better than anyone else that this superabundant sensibility of nerve and soul is a constituent part of his genius, is his greatest virtue and his greatest danger. "Ce qui ne fait qu'effleurer les autres me blesse jusqu'au sang." For this reason he instinctively, from youth onwards, feels that these "others" are polar opposites to himself, belonging to an alien spiritual family, persons with whom he has no kinship, has no common understanding, no common idiom. Already as an awkward youngster in Grenoble, he was aware of this difference between himself and "the others," when he saw his schoolfellows hallooing in heedless enjoyment; and later, more poignantly, when as a raw subaltern in Italy, he despairingly tried to imitate the enviable swagger with which his brother officers dragged their sabres along the pavement and ogled the Milanese women.

In those days he had blushed at his own inferiority. For years he had endeavoured to quell his own nature, to swank like the rest of them, to impress the crowd. Gradually, laboriously, and painfully, however, he had come to find a peculiar charm in his irremediable differentiation from the herd. His lack of success with the fair sex was due to timidity, to untimely accesses of shyness; slowly he came to analyze the reasons for his mischance: the psychologist awoke within him. He became inquisitive concerning himself, began to discover himself. At first he noticed merely that he was different from the ruck, that he was more delicately poised, more sensitive, more keen-sighted. None of his associates felt things so passionately as he, none thought so clearly, not one of them was so strangely compounded — capable of the finest sensations, and yet unable to achieve anything in the practical sphere. Doubtless he was not unique; there had been other specimens of this "etre supérieur"; how else could he understand Montaigne so well ? What an acerb and fundamentally shrewd man this Montaigne was, to be sure, so scornful of everything that was obvious and crude. He could not feel so perfectly at one with Montaigne, with Mozart, unless the souls of them all were similarly touched to fine uses !

Thus at thirty, Stendhal begins for the first time to realize that he is not a failure among men. Rather does he belong to the rare company of "etres privilégiés," privileged beings who spring up from time to time among the most various nations and races and countries, who are as it were precious jewels shining forth from the ordinary conglomerate. He feels that among them he is at home, whereas among his French contemporaries he feels a stranger, and he therefore throws off his allegiance to France as he would a garment too small for him. He belongs to another, an invisible fatherland, peopled by mortals endowed with more delicate spiritual organs and more responsive nerves, creatures who never rushed together in dull-witted crowds or assembled in business cliques, but who from time to time sent forth a messenger to their age and generation.

For these "happy few" who do not need emphasis as an aid to understanding, whose instinct guides them to penetrate every hole and corner of the heart, for these alone does he write, transcending the limitations of his own century; to them alone does he reveal the secrets of his sensations. What cares he, now that he has at last learned to despise the crowd, if the vociferous multitude, which is only capable of perceiving the fat-and crudely coloured letters of an advertisement, only able to taste overspiced and overcooked viands— what cares he if such persons fail to understand him ? "Que m'importent les autres ?" He puts the words into the mouth of one of his characters, Julien, but the scornful utterance rises from his own heart. He need not be ashamed that, in so coarse and dunderheaded a world, his writings are not a success ! "L'égalité est la grande loi pour plaire"; a man must be on a level with his generation if he is to please the human pack.

Thank God for being "un être extraordinaire," "un être supérieur," the unique, the special case, an individual, a different being, not one in a flock of silly sheep ! All his external humiliations, his failure to rise in his career, his making a fool of himself where women are concerned, his complete lack of success in the field of literature, everything that seems on the surface to be calculated to depress him, becomes for Stendhal, as soon as he has made the discovery of his own distinctness, a source of delight, is looked upon by him as a triumphal token of his superiority. His feeling of inferiority becomes sublimated into resplendent arrogance, that delicately poised arrogance of Stendhal's which is only to be sensed by those who understand, that arrogance which is so magnificently cheerful and debonair.

He deliberately holds aloof from the commonalty, and has but one aim in life, "de travailler son caractere." For him, now, "il n'y a d'intéressant que ce qui est un peu extraordinaire." Very well, then, let us be extraordinary, let us foster this germ of singularity within ourself ! No Dutch tulip-maniac had ever cultivated a new species with greater care and hedged it round with more ingenious precautions than did Stendhal his aloofness. He preserved it in a peculiar essence of his own distilling, an essence he christened "Beylisme"; it was a philosophy which had no other purpose in view than to preserve Henri Beyle unaltered in Henri Beyle.

He shut himself away behind a thorny thicket of queerness and mystification; he guarded with the fanaticism of a miser the treasure chamber of his ego, hardly permitting even his most intimate friends a glimpse through the bars. In order to isolate himself more effectually from his compeers, he deliberately enters into opposition with his generation and lives like his own Julien, "en guerre avec toute la société." As a writer he mocks at style, and proclaims the bourgeois code of laws to be the genuine ars poetica; as a soldier he despises war; as a politician he disdains history; as a Frenchman he gibes at the French. He sets up a barbed-wire fence between himself and his fellow mortals, in order that they may not come near him. Need we wonder that, in the circumstances, he fails to achieve distinction in any career ? He is delighted to find that he fits in nowhere, belongs to no class, or race, or rank, or fatherland; is a two-legged paradox, treading its chosen road upon its own pair of feet, instead of one of a servile flock, following the broad road of success. Better by far to remain behind, to slip aside, to stand alone: free !

With the insight of genius, Stendhal knew how to cultivate freedom, to liberate himself from every coercive influence. When, from time to time, forced by dire necessity, he adopted a profession and donned a uniform, he gave only just so much of his time and energy to his duties as would keep him in his post. No matter the official position he accepted, the profession he practised, the job he undertook — he was a master of tricks and devices to secure unqualified independence. Though his cousin Daru may drape him in a military cloak, he never feels himself to be a soldier; though he may write novels, he never feels he has become a professional man of letters; though he may indue the consular uniform, he is careful to arrange that a substitute shall sit in the consular office and do Henri Beyle's work. But whether he be soldier or civilian, artist or man of science, Stendhal never reveals his true self to his associates, so that none of those who come in contact with him suspect that they are in the company of one of the greatest French writers of the day. With the solitary exception of Balzac, his contemporaries in the world of literature saw nothing more in him than an amusing "causeur," an ex-cavalry officer who occasionally took a ride in their demesnes. Schopenhauer is possibly the only other example of a great thinker living in similar isolation, sundered from his fellows, equally unsuccessful, hedged round by his pride and his unusualness, as was Stendhal, his brother in matters psychological.

Thus a part of Stendhal always eluded those who encountered him, and the preservation of this elusive element was his main business in life. He never denied that his introverted attitude was selfish, was autocratic; on the contrary, he vaunted his preoccupation with himself, christening it "egotism." Yes, "egotism," not on any account to be confounded with its plebeian, horny-handed, bastard brother, egoism. For egoism would fain clutch at everything which belongs to others; it has covetous fingers, and is eaten up with envy. It is jealous, petty, insatiable. Even when it possesses a measure of spiritual power, this is not capable of freeing it from its unimaginative brutality in the world of feeling. Stendhal's egotism, on the contrary, has no desire to filch others' possessions. With an aristocratic and haughty gesture, he leaves the money-grubbers to enjoy their hoarded wealth, the ambitious to preen themselves on their successful careers, the place-hunters to display their orders and ribbons, the men of letters to relish the bubble of fame. A lot of good may these things do them! He looks down on them all with a superior smile, ironical, quite devoid of envy or greed.

Stendhal's egotism is passionately on the defensive; he never poaches on others' preserves; at the same time he will not allow any to trespass in his sanctum. He builds a Chinese wall around his personality in order to exclude all alien influences, all possibility of the infiltration of others' thoughts, opinions, judgments; his privacy is not to be encroached upon by the common herd. His sole ambition is to keep Henri Beyle in a room apart, in a forcing-house where the rare plant of individuality may grow and blossom undisturbed. For Stendhal wishes his opinions, his inclinations, his delights, his ambitions, and his follies, to flourish for his own gratifications, for himself alone; it seems to him quite indifferent and immaterial to what extent a book or an event can be compared with another; he scornfully ignores how a thing may affect his contemporaries, or universal history, or, even, eternity. He describes as beautiful that only which appeals to him personally; he regards as right that only which at the moment he happens to deem suitable; he looks upon those things only as despicable which he himself despises. Nor is he in the least distressed to find himself alone in these opinions; on the contrary, solitude enheartens him, strengthens his self-esteem, "Que m'importent les autres !" Julien's motto will serve his turn equally well in matters of taste.

"But why," breaks in someone in unconscious reproof, "why use such a pompous word as egotism to describe this most readily understood of all readily understood things ? Surely it is the most natural thing in the world to look upon that which we ourselves consider beautiful as beautiful, and to order one's life in accordance with what one deems the best ?" Certainly matters ought to be like that. But who ever succeeds in keeping genuinely independent in feeling and in thought ? Who, having ventured to express an opinion upon a book, a picture, an event, will have the courage to maintain it against the judgment of a whole epoch or a whole world in arms ? We are all of us far more influenced by adverse opinion than we admit. We have to breathe the air of our own day into our lungs; our judgments and outlooks come into contact with countless other judgments and outlooks, acting and reacting upon us, blunting a point here, sharpening one there; the invisible waves of mass suggestion circulate through the ether. Man's natural reflex to all these outside influences is by no means self-assertion, but, rather, adaptation of his personal preferences to the spirit of the time; he capitulates to the feeling of the majority. The whole mighty machine of human society would long ago have come to a standstill if the majority of men had not instinctively, or out of indolence, renounced personal and private opinions. It needs extraordinary energy, and a rebellious, austere, and aspiring courage (how few can boast of the gift!) to be able to withstand this overwhelming spiritual pressure. Rare qualities are needed if a man is to preserve his individuality intact. He must have a profound knowledge of the world, a quick and penetrating mind, a sovereign contempt for the crowd, a bold and amoral unscrupulousness, and, above all, courage, threefold courage, imperturbable courage to uphold his own convictions.

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