The Aesthetic of Courage

In the Wake of Stendhal:

The discovery of each one of Pascal Bruckner's essays and novels brings to mind two expressions which do homage to his faculty of invention, the beauty of the titles, and the courage of the text, both combining to create an ideal as in Le Sanglot de l'homme blanc.¹ I had hardly begun this brief study when my slow reading of Stendhal's correspondence furnished me with a key word to, with some legitimacy, introduce the comments which follow.

After the appearance early in 1825 of Racine and Shakespeare II, Stendhal had a letter published in the journal, Le Globe (March 3, 1825), a letter which began in this way: "To be an artist after La Harpe, you must have iron courage [ . . . ] It is the complete lack of courage which pins all of our poor poets to mediocrity. We must write poetry for our own pleasure just as I write you this letter [ . . . ] It's because of our lack of courage that we have no more artists." Eleven months later, he writes once more to the Globe's director, "I believe you have enough courage to allow polite and free discussion." Finally, on December 29, 1839, it is this quality which, not without some effect on the absolute independence of the artist, his friend, Mérimée, reproached him for and, after the publication of Le Rouge et le noir, blamed him for "having stripped and exposed in broad daylight certain sores of the human heart which are too filthy to be revealed [ . . . ] The purpose of art is not to show this side of human nature. Do you remember the portrait of Delia by Swift, and the abominable line that ends it, 'But Delia pisses and Delia Shits'? Certainly, but why say it?" This frivolous and almost cowardly comment was not expected from Mérimée. I can certainly imagine Stendhal and Bruckner retorting in a chorus: Why say it? Because art demands courage and courage—beyond taboos, forbidden subjects and social criticism existing in the super ego—is not separated, for the artist, from an aesthetic. The essence of this aesthetic would be formulated as a refusal of limits, of anything that limits expression, anything that would undermine what one wishes to say or the way it is written. Here I see being created a baroque practice of the beautiful, the ugly, and the excessive. Concerning Pascal Bruckner, since it is necessary to make a choice, I will limit myself to an essay and two novels which attest to the fact that, in his case, courage equals intellectual liberty and an aesthetic value.

A Test of Courage

The events which shook French suburbs during the autumn of 2005 have revived, if need be, the innovative reflections which Pascal Bruckner has been involved in since 1983, in Tears of the White Man, which one hopes he will continue, given the increase in politically correct prattle in the two decades which followed the publication of that book. What a contradictory country France is! She seems to dote on a type of discourse which is especially alienating. Amnesia is the rule on Vichy, Indochina, Algeria, compressing this guilty past in a way which defies reason. Repentance is the way it is to be mended—everything is my fault. The two attitudes together produce a constraining syllogism: the more amnesia obscures, the more ostentatious becomes the repentance. Magical reactions make those affected both fearful and aggressive. Hatred of the self has too quickly been made the exclusive prerogative of the Jew. On this score, Europe and the West do not need to envy the "chosen" people, because self-hatred has become the lot of Christian nations when they compare themselves to the Third World. The result is that the North beats its breast and kneels before the South in the name of an other-worldliness which declares the South perfectly innocent and condemns the North as "devilish and corrupting." The myth of the noble savage, invented by Columbus and theorized by Rousseau, is in effect the obverse of the White Colonizer who...