L'Influence des Littératures antiques sur la Littérature française moderne: État des travaux byHenri PeyreReview by: A. Lytton SellsThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 38, No. 1 (Jan., 1943), pp. 63-64Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3717389 .

Accessed: 28/06/2014 08:06

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

.

Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto The Modern Language Review.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 193.0.146.20 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:06:18 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

The comparison which Miss Johnson makes between the Edinburgh MS. and Loseth's analysis is most valuable. It is a pity that the manuscript stops before the crucial point which would have enabled her to place it without hesitation in Professor Vinaver's manuscript table, but her conjecture seems most probable.

The text of the manuscript itself is set out in a very readable form, and the references to Loseth make it easy to use for all purposes. The few notes deal chiefly with manuscript readings, and the book ends with a list of proper names. It is a pity that limitation of space has not allowed Miss Johnson to give a glossary, for the dialectal forms of many of the words make the text sometimes difficult to understand at first reading. However, the book as it stands is a valuable contribution to Tristan studies; no longer is this im- portant medieval text 'enseveli dans de vieux parchemins et des imprimes fort rares'.

GWENETH HUTCHINGS OXFORD

L'Influence des Litteratures antiques sur la. Litterature franpaise moderne: Atat des travaux. By HENRI PEYRE. (Yale Romanic Studies, xix.) New Haven: Yale University Press; London: H. Milford. 1941. 108 pp. 12s.

Professor Peyre, to whom we owe fine studies of nineteenth-century Hellenism, has now mapped out a coxisiderably larger country, summarizing what has been discovered and indicating general problems and particular fields for ex- ploration; for, as he shows, the difficulty facing the director of research is not to find subjects for his pupils, but rather the contrary. He points out how much our knowledge of the present domain will be enriched when we know more of the history of teaching in France, of the grammars, manuals, 'mor- ceaux choisis', etc., which students read, of the translations of the Classics which were available, and can thus recapture something of the vision of the ancient world which came to successive generations. Not that, in his view, the true spiritual heirs of ancient Rome and Greece have been, in general, the 'good pupils'; the action of the ancient literatures has not promoted modera- tion or a conventional love of the past; and with certain exceptions, 'the worshippers of antiquity are enthusiasts, rebels and often sick men'.

No part of this book is more valuable than the pages devoted to contem- porary literature. Through the successive revolutions effected by Symbolism, Neo-Classicism and Surrealism, the gods and the myths have survived; even the rebels cannot forget the ideal figures of Greek legend. One might add that in the unbalanced and anarchical world of to-day the nostalgia for those happy ages when, as M. Peyre says, 'literary creation was almost a collective work', is deeper and more desperate than ever it was in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Whether education can integrate the spirit of antiquity into a homo- geneous modern civilization may appear doubtful; but M. Peyre is right in outlining the means by which he considers this may be effected. To the average student, he thinks, the heritage of the ancient world is best transmitted indirectly, through translations and through those masterpieces of the moderns who have themselves been steeped in antiquity. And in holding that, on the

The comparison which Miss Johnson makes between the Edinburgh MS. and Loseth's analysis is most valuable. It is a pity that the manuscript stops before the crucial point which would have enabled her to place it without hesitation in Professor Vinaver's manuscript table, but her conjecture seems most probable.

The text of the manuscript itself is set out in a very readable form, and the references to Loseth make it easy to use for all purposes. The few notes deal chiefly with manuscript readings, and the book ends with a list of proper names. It is a pity that limitation of space has not allowed Miss Johnson to give a glossary, for the dialectal forms of many of the words make the text sometimes difficult to understand at first reading. However, the book as it stands is a valuable contribution to Tristan studies; no longer is this im- portant medieval text 'enseveli dans de vieux parchemins et des imprimes fort rares'.

GWENETH HUTCHINGS OXFORD

L'Influence des Litteratures antiques sur la. Litterature franpaise moderne: Atat des travaux. By HENRI PEYRE. (Yale Romanic Studies, xix.) New Haven: Yale University Press; London: H. Milford. 1941. 108 pp. 12s.

Professor Peyre, to whom we owe fine studies of nineteenth-century Hellenism, has now mapped out a coxisiderably larger country, summarizing what has been discovered and indicating general problems and particular fields for ex- ploration; for, as he shows, the difficulty facing the director of research is not to find subjects for his pupils, but rather the contrary. He points out how much our knowledge of the present domain will be enriched when we know more of the history of teaching in France, of the grammars, manuals, 'mor- ceaux choisis', etc., which students read, of the translations of the Classics which were available, and can thus recapture something of the vision of the ancient world which came to successive generations. Not that, in his view, the true spiritual heirs of ancient Rome and Greece have been, in general, the 'good pupils'; the action of the ancient literatures has not promoted modera- tion or a conventional love of the past; and with certain exceptions, 'the worshippers of antiquity are enthusiasts, rebels and often sick men'.

No part of this book is more valuable than the pages devoted to contem- porary literature. Through the successive revolutions effected by Symbolism, Neo-Classicism and Surrealism, the gods and the myths have survived; even the rebels cannot forget the ideal figures of Greek legend. One might add that in the unbalanced and anarchical world of to-day the nostalgia for those happy ages when, as M. Peyre says, 'literary creation was almost a collective work', is deeper and more desperate than ever it was in the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. Whether education can integrate the spirit of antiquity into a homo- geneous modern civilization may appear doubtful; but M. Peyre is right in outlining the means by which he considers this may be effected. To the average student, he thinks, the heritage of the ancient world is best transmitted indirectly, through translations and through those masterpieces of the moderns who have themselves been steeped in antiquity. And in holding that, on the

Reviews Reviews 63 63

This content downloaded from 193.0.146.20 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:06:18 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

contrary, a knowledge of the ancient languages should be part of the teacher's equipment, he does well to recommend a policy opposed to that habit of intense specialization in limited fields which is a marked weakness of our time.

It would be unfair as well as ungracious to suggest that there are lacunae in a work which cannot, and does not pretend to be, more than an outline. The significance of Alfred Jarry (who possessed an extraordinary knowledge of Greek) is, in part, that he illustrates one of M. Peyre's most brilliant generali- zations. A little more space might perhaps have been devoted to the influence of the ancient philosophies on artistic literature; one is thinking, for example, of the action of Neo-Stoicism, through G. du Vair, on the age of Henri IV and Louis XIII; and of the curious fusion of Stoicism and Epicureanism in so distinctively modern a personality as Senancour's. But a monograph of ninety-eight pages of text, being the first work of its kind devoted to a theme so vast, obviously cannot point to everything.

This is, from every point of view, an admirable book: concise, full of in- formation, abounding in shrewd judgements, stimulating. A reviewer can do little more than describe it, and express a gratitude which he believes will be that of all scholars.

A. LYTTON SELLS DURHAM

From Cubism to Surrealism in French Literature. By GEORGES LEMAITRE. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: H. Milford. 1941. 247 pp. 16s. 6d.

This book presents a complete panorama of' modernistic' literature in France, studied in connexion with painting. The majority of the writers and artists in question appear as young men passionately, and often pathologically, sen- sitive to the discordancies of the age in which we live. They have been tempted either to revolt hysterically against all surviving conventions, intellectual and moral, or to look for a complete disintegration of modern society, or to seek access to an 'other' world, a 'higher reality', by means of intuition, automatic writing, the artificial adoption of abnormal mental states, etc.; and they have tended to regard the work of art as entirely independent of all that can be grasped by the senses or by discursive reasoning. After tracing the origins of this characteristic modern movement, more particularly in Impressionism and Symbolism, Mr Lemaitre shows how the breakdown of the old aesthetic was powerfully assisted by the scientific discoveries and philosophical doctrines of the nineteenth century at its close: it corresponds, as he says, to the 'break- down in the old conception of reality'. And in describing the successive phases of vanguard art in France, from Jarry through Cubism, Futurism and Dada to the Surrealism which, revived after 1936, at present holds the field in this domain, he shows what proportion of the directive impulse has come at different times from Spanish, Italian and Jewish elements, from the impact on the younger generation of the first World War, from the physics of Einstein and the psychology of Freud. Only perhaps the Futurism of Gino Severini and his friends exhibits a definitely constructive power in its attempt to systematize, for art as well as for society, the growing mechanization of life

contrary, a knowledge of the ancient languages should be part of the teacher's equipment, he does well to recommend a policy opposed to that habit of intense specialization in limited fields which is a marked weakness of our time.

It would be unfair as well as ungracious to suggest that there are lacunae in a work which cannot, and does not pretend to be, more than an outline. The significance of Alfred Jarry (who possessed an extraordinary knowledge of Greek) is, in part, that he illustrates one of M. Peyre's most brilliant generali- zations. A little more space might perhaps have been devoted to the influence of the ancient philosophies on artistic literature; one is thinking, for example, of the action of Neo-Stoicism, through G. du Vair, on the age of Henri IV and Louis XIII; and of the curious fusion of Stoicism and Epicureanism in so distinctively modern a personality as Senancour's. But a monograph of ninety-eight pages of text, being the first work of its kind devoted to a theme so vast, obviously cannot point to everything.

This is, from every point of view, an admirable book: concise, full of in- formation, abounding in shrewd judgements, stimulating. A reviewer can do little more than describe it, and express a gratitude which he believes will be that of all scholars.

A. LYTTON SELLS DURHAM

From Cubism to Surrealism in French Literature. By GEORGES LEMAITRE. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: H. Milford. 1941. 247 pp. 16s. 6d.

This book presents a complete panorama of' modernistic' literature in France, studied in connexion with painting. The majority of the writers and artists in question appear as young men passionately, and often pathologically, sen- sitive to the discordancies of the age in which we live. They have been tempted either to revolt hysterically against all surviving conventions, intellectual and moral, or to look for a complete disintegration of modern society, or to seek access to an 'other' world, a 'higher reality', by means of intuition, automatic writing, the artificial adoption of abnormal mental states, etc.; and they have tended to regard the work of art as entirely independent of all that can be grasped by the senses or by discursive reasoning. After tracing the origins of this characteristic modern movement, more particularly in Impressionism and Symbolism, Mr Lemaitre shows how the breakdown of the old aesthetic was powerfully assisted by the scientific discoveries and philosophical doctrines of the nineteenth century at its close: it corresponds, as he says, to the 'break- down in the old conception of reality'. And in describing the successive phases of vanguard art in France, from Jarry through Cubism, Futurism and Dada to the Surrealism which, revived after 1936, at present holds the field in this domain, he shows what proportion of the directive impulse has come at different times from Spanish, Italian and Jewish elements, from the impact on the younger generation of the first World War, from the physics of Einstein and the psychology of Freud. Only perhaps the Futurism of Gino Severini and his friends exhibits a definitely constructive power in its attempt to systematize, for art as well as for society, the growing mechanization of life

64 64 Reviews Reviews

This content downloaded from 193.0.146.20 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 08:06:18 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions