13. Chapter XIII: Literary Characteristics Of Democratic Ages
When a traveller goes into a bookseller's shop in the United
States, and examines the American books upon the shelves, the
number of works appears extremely great; whilst that of known
authors appears, on the contrary, to be extremely small. He will
first meet with a number of elementary treatises, destined to
teach the rudiments of human knowledge. Most of these books are
written in Europe; the Americans reprint them, adapting them to
their own country. Next comes an enormous quantity of religious
works, Bibles, sermons, edifying anecdotes, controversial
divinity, and reports of charitable societies; lastly, appears
the long catalogue of political pamphlets. In America, parties
do not write books to combat each others' opinions, but pamphlets
which are circulated for a day with incredible rapidity, and then
expire. In the midst of all these obscure productions of the
human brain are to be found the more remarkable works of that
small number of authors, whose names are, or ought to be, known
to Europeans.
Although America is perhaps in our days the civilized
country in which literature is least attended to, a large number
of persons are nevertheless to be found there who take an
interest in the productions of the mind, and who make them, if
not the study of their lives, at least the charm of their leisure
hours. But England supplies these readers with the larger
portion of the books which they require. Almost all important
English books are republished in the United States. The literary
genius of Great Britain still darts its rays into the recesses of
the forests of the New World. There is hardly a pioneer's hut
which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I
remember that I read the feudal play of Henry V for the first
time in a loghouse.
Not only do the Americans constantly draw upon the treasures
of English literature, but it may be said with truth that they
find the literature of England growing on their own soil. The
larger part of that small number of men in the United States who
are engaged in the composition of literary works are English in
substance, and still more so in form. Thus they transport into
the midst of democracy the ideas and literary fashions which are
current amongst the aristocratic nation they have taken for their
model. They paint with colors borrowed from foreign manners; and
as they hardly ever represent the country they were born in as it
really is, they are seldom popular there. The citizens of the
United States are themselves so convinced that it is not for them
that books are published, that before they can make up their
minds upon the merit of one of their authors, they generally wait
till his fame has been ratified in England, just as in pictures
the author of an original is held to be entitled to judge of the
merit of a copy. The inhabitants of the United States have then
at present, properly speaking, no literature. The only authors
whom I acknowledge as American are the journalists. They indeed
are not great writers, but they speak the language of their
countrymen, and make themselves heard by them. Other authors are
aliens; they are to the Americans what the imitators of the
Greeks and Romans were to us at the revival of learning -an
object of curiosity, not of general sympathy. They amuse the
mind, but they do not act upon the manners of the people.
I have already said that this state of things is very far
from originating in democracy alone, and that the causes of it
must be sought for in several peculiar circumstances independent
of the democratic principle. If the Americans, retaining the same
laws and social condition, had had a different origin, and had
been transported into another country, I do not question that
they would have had a literature. Even as they now are, I am
convinced that they will ultimately have one; but its character
will be different from that which marks the American literary
productions of our time, and that character will be peculiarly
its own. Nor is it impossible to trace this character
beforehand.
I suppose an aristocratic people amongst whom letters are
cultivated; the labors of the mind, as well as the affairs of
state, are conducted by a ruling class in society. The literary
as well as the political career is almost entirely confined to
this class, or to those nearest to it in rank. These premises
suffice to give me a key to all the rest. When a small number of
the same men are engaged at the same time upon the same objects,
they easily concert with one another, and agree upon certain
leading rules which are to govern them each and all. If the
object which attracts the attention of these men is literature,
the productions of the mind will soon be subjected by them to
precise canons, from which it will no longer be allowable to
depart. If these men occupy a hereditary position in the
country, they will be naturally inclined, not only to adopt a
certain number of fixed rules for themselves, but to follow those
which their forefathers laid down for their own guidance; their
code will be at once strict and traditional. As they are not
necessarily engrossed by the cares of daily life -as they have
never been so, any more than their fathers were before them -they have learned to take an interest, for several generations
back, in the labors of the mind. They have learned to understand
literature as an art, to love it in the end for its own sake, and
to feel a scholar-like satisfaction in seeing men conform to its
rules. Nor is this all: the men of whom I speak began and will
end their lives in easy or in affluent circumstances; hence they
have naturally conceived a taste for choice gratifications, and a
love of refined and delicate pleasures. Nay more, a kind of
indolence of mind and heart, which they frequently contract in
the midst of this long and peaceful enjoyment of so much welfare,
leads them to put aside, even from their pleasures, whatever
might be too startling or too acute. They had rather be amused
than intensely excited; they wish to be interested, but not to be
carried away.
Now let us fancy a great number of literary performances
executed by the men, or for the men, whom I have just described,
and we shall readily conceive a style of literature in which
everything will be regular and prearranged. The slightest work
will be carefully touched in its least details; art and labor
will be conspicuous in everything; each kind of writing will have
rules of its own, from which it will not be allowed to swerve,
and which distinguish it from all others. Style will be thought
of almost as much importance as thought; and the form will be no
less considered than the matter: the diction will be polished,
measured, and uniform. The tone of the mind will be always
dignified, seldom very animated; and writers will care more to
perfect what they produce than to multiply their productions. It
will sometimes happen that the members of the literary class,
always living amongst themselves and writing for themselves
alone, will lose sight of the rest of the world, which will
infect them with a false and labored style; they will lay down
minute literary rules for their exclusive use, which will
insensibly lead them to deviate from common-sense, and finally to
transgress the bounds of nature. By dint of striving after a
mode of parlance different from the vulgar, they will arrive at a
sort of aristocratic jargon, which is hardly less remote from
pure language than is the coarse dialect of the people. Such are
the natural perils of literature amongst aristocracies. Every
aristocracy which keeps itself entirely aloof from the people
becomes impotent -a fact which is as true in literature as it is
in politics. [2]
Let us now turn the picture and consider the other side of
it; let us transport ourselves into the midst of a democracy, not
unprepared by ancient traditions and present culture to partake
in the pleasures of the mind. Ranks are there intermingled and
confounded; knowledge and power are both infinitely subdivided,
and, if I may use the expression, scattered on every side. Here
then is a motley multitude, whose intellectual wants are to be
supplied. These new votaries of the pleasures of the mind have
not all received the same education; they do not possess the same
degree of culture as their fathers, nor any resemblance to them -nay, they perpetually differ from themselves, for they live in a
state of incessant change of place, feelings, and fortunes. The
mind of each member of the community is therefore unattached to
that of his fellow-citizens by tradition or by common habits; and
they have never had the power, the inclination, nor the time to
concert together. It is, however, from the bosom of this
heterogeneous and agitated mass that authors spring; and from the
same source their profits and their fame are distributed. I can
without difficulty understand that, under these circumstances, I
must expect to meet in the literature of such a people with but
few of those strict conventional rules which are admitted by
readers and by writers in aristocratic ages. If it should happen
that the men of some one period were agreed upon any such rules,
that would prove nothing for the following period; for amongst
democratic nations each new generation is a new people. Amongst
such nations, then, literature will not easily be subjected to
strict rules, and it is impossible that any such rules should
ever be permanent.
In democracies it is by no means the case that all the men
who cultivate literature have received a literary education; and
most of those who have some tinge of belles-lettres are either
engaged in politics, or in a profession which only allows them to
taste occasionally and by stealth the pleasures of the mind.
These pleasures, therefore, do not constitute the principal charm
of their lives; but they are considered as a transient and
necessary recreation amidst the serious labors of life. Such man
can never acquire a sufficiently intimate knowledge of the art of
literature to appreciate its more delicate beauties; and the
minor shades of expression must escape them. As the time they can
devote to letters is very short, they seek to make the best use
of the whole of it. They prefer books which may be easily
procured, quickly read, and which require no learned researches
to be understood. They ask for beauties, self-proffered and
easily enjoyed; above all, they must have what is unexpected and
new. Accustomed to the struggle, the crosses, and the monotony
of practical life, they require rapid emotions, startling
passages -truths or errors brilliant enough to rouse them up, and
to plunge them at once, as if by violence, into the midst of a
subject.
Why should I say more? or who does not understand what is
about to follow, before I have expressed it? Taken as a whole,
literature in democratic ages can never present, as it does in
the periods of aristocracy, an aspect of order, regularity,
science, and art; its form will, on the contrary, ordinarily be
slighted, sometimes despised. Style will frequently be
fantastic, incorrect, overburdened, and loose -almost always
vehement and bold. Authors will aim at rapidity of execution,
more than at perfection of detail. Small productions will be
more common than bulky books; there will be more wit than
erudition, more imagination than profundity; and literary
performances will bear marks of an untutored and rude vigor of
thought -frequently of great variety and singular fecundity. The
object of authors will be to astonish rather than to please, and
to stir the passions more than to charm the taste. Here and
there, indeed, writers will doubtless occur who will choose a
different track, and who will, if they are gifted with superior
abilities, succeed in finding readers, in spite of their defects
or their better qualities; but these exceptions will be rare, and
even the authors who shall so depart from the received practice
in the main subject of their works, will always relapse into it
in some lesser details.
I have just depicted two extreme conditions: the transition
by which a nation passes from the former to the latter is not
sudden but gradual, and marked with shades of very various
intensity. In the passage which conducts a lettered people from
the one to the other, there is almost always a moment at which
the literary genius of democratic nations has its confluence with
that of aristocracies, and both seek to establish their joint
sway over the human mind. Such epochs are transient, but very
brilliant: they are fertile without exuberance, and animated
without confusion. The French literature of the eighteenth
century may serve as an example.
I should say more than I mean if I were to assert that the
literature of a nation is always subordinate to its social
condition and its political constitution. I am aware that,
independently of these causes, there are several others which
confer certain characteristics on literary productions; but these
appear to me to be the chief. The relations which exist between
the social and political condition of a people and the genius of
its authors are always very numerous: whoever knows the one is
never completely ignorant of the other.
[2]
All this is especially true of the aristocratic
countries which have been long and peacefully subject to a
monarchical government. When liberty prevails in an aristocracy,
the higher ranks are constantly obliged to make use of the lower
classes; and when they use, they approach them. This frequently
introduces something of a democratic spirit into an aristocratic
community. There springs up, moreover, in a privileged body,
governing with energy and an habitually bold policy, a taste for
stir and excitement which must infallibly affect all literary
performances.