The Cult of Artificiality

The Cult of Artificiality - A. E. Carter Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae, propterea quod a cultu atque humanitate provinciae longissime absunt, minimeque ad eos mercatores saepe commeant atque ea, quae ad eff'eminandos animas pertinent, im· portant.-CAEsAR, Comm., 1,1. Amongst occidental legends, there is one which crops up with peculiar insistency, filling pages in writers as dissimilar as Caesar and Tacitus, Montaigne, Montesquieu and Rousseau.' It is something more than a legend, indeed; it is a platitude and a generalization, one of those generalizations without which Western thought seems unable to function. It even has its hero, tilling his farm or hunting his meat in virgin forests: the Noble Savage, ignorant of wine, precious metals, commerce, the arts, philosophy, and, in fact, everything which is usually called "civilization": a creature entirely primitive, whose virtues result from his very primitivism. The idea is so ingrained and fundamental that it goes back to the very roots of our culture: both Greek and Hebrew theology presuppose a primitive state, Arcadia or Eden, the loss of which explains all human woe: civilized man, though at times so proud of his civilization, has never been able to rid himself of the sneaking fear that it is all somehow unnatural , artificial, and corrupt. Whether because of obscure atavistic forces which call him back to the seas and jungles from which he emerged, or a sheer spirit of contradiction, he dislikes what he builds. Or rather, what he builds makes him uneasy. When Rousseau began to publish, Western Europe, and especially France, was ripe for a rebirth of primitivism, and for a lyric passion for Nature. Romanticism adopted both. Both speedily became almost Romantic conventions, and when Romanticism declined, both declined with it. We can trace the beginnings of that decline from the last years "The research upon which this essay is based was undertaken for a doctoral thesis at the University of London in 1953. New material was added thanks to a Fellowship granted by the Royal Society of Canada. 452 THE CULT OF ARTIFICIALITY 453 of the eighteenth century itself: the Marquis de Sade, that underground source of so many later ideas, struck at the very heart of the matter within a few years of Rousseau's death. Attacks on Rousseau's naturecult occur several times in his books; two are particularly interesting, for they show how the reaction against the natural led to an interest in sexual abnormalities. A character in Justine, AJmani, declares that far from being a benevolent force as a certain "modem philosopher" (Rousseau ) maintains, Nature is really destructive and anti-human, and should be detested on that account. A little further on, a certain Madame d'Esterval says that her dearest ambition is to "outrage Nature" in every way possible; and both she and Almani conclude that the best means to this end is the practice of sexual perversions.' The abnormal thus becomes a proof of man's superiority to natural law, an "artificiality" which, while more lurid than face-paint or dyed hair, is of the same order. This is the main idea behind the cult of artificiality, and most subsequent developments can be traced back to it. Succeeding writers did little more than paint De Sade's monstrous lily, sometimes with direct reference to the Marquis. One of the first of them was Theophile Gautier. The circumstances of Gautier's life played some part in the matter. His career as a critic obliged him to live in the theatres and streets of Paris, sipping absinthe in cafes or watching plays and ballets evolve amidst the trembling unreality of silk and cardboard? Hence he developed a prejudice in favour of the artificial as opposed to the natural. As early as 1883 he formulated the idea in phrases which were to echo throughout the rest of the century. Je n'ai vu la mer que dans les marines de Vernet; je ne connais d'autres montagnes que Montmartre. Je n'ai jamais vu se lever Ie soleil. . .. Je suis un Parisien complet. ... Les arbres des Tuileries et des boulevards sont mes forets; la Seine, mon Ocean. .. . Ie ne trouve pas Ie soleil de beaucoup superieur au gaz. ... Je...