t
than abundant contents, the firsthand observations which serve as
a living source losing, in the regulated channels to which they are
confined, their force, depth and impetuosity. Real poetry, able to
convey dream and illusion, cannot be brought forth. Lyric poetry proves
abortive, and likewise the epic poem.[3227] Nothing sprouts on these
distant fields, remote and sublime, where speech unites with music and
painting. Never do we hear the involuntary scream of intense torment,
the lonely confession of a distraught soul,[3228] pouring out his heart
to relieve himself. When a creation of characters is imperative, as
in dramatic poetry, the classic mold fashions but one kind, that which
through education, birth, or impersonation, always speak correctly,
in other words, like so many people of high society. No others are
portrayed on the stage or elsewhere, from Corneille and Racine to
Marivaux and Beaumarchais. So strong is the habit that it imposes
itself even on La Fontaine's animals, on the servants of Moliere, on
Montesquieu's Persians, and on the Babylonians, the Indians and the
Micromegas of Voltaire.--It must be stated, furthermore, that
these characters are only partly real. In real persons two kinds of
characteristics may be noted; the first, few in number, which he or
she shares with others of their kind and which any reader readily
may identify; and the other kind, of which there are a great many,
describing only one particular person and these are much more difficult
to discover. Classic art concerns itself only with the former; it
purposely effaces, neglects or subordinates the latter. It does not
build individual persons but generalized characters, a king, a queen,
a young prince, a confidant, a high-priest, a captain of the guards,
seized by some passion, habit or inclination, such as love, ambition,
fidelity or perfidy, a despotic or a yielding temper, some species of
wickedness or of native goodness. As to the circumstances of time and
place, which, amongst others, exercise a most powerful influence in
shaping and diversifying man, it hardly notes them, even setting them
aside. In a tragedy the scene is set everywhere and any time, the
contrary, that the action takes place nowhere in no specific epoch, is
equally valid. It may take place in any palace or in any temple,[3229]
in which, to get rid of all historic or personal impressions, habits
and costumes are introduced conventionally, being neither Frenc