The Knickerbocker Gallery/Conversations with Talma
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Washington Irving
Conversations with Talma.
FROM ROUGH NOTES IN A COMMON-PLACE BOOK.
Paris, April 25, 1821.—Made a call with a friend, this morning, to be introduced to Talma, the great French tragedian. He has a suite of apartments in a hotel in the Rue Des Petites Augustines, but is about to build a town residence. He has also a country retreat a few miles from Paris, of which he is extremely fond, and is continually altering and improving it. He had just arrived from the country, and his apartment was rather in confusion, the furniture out of place, and books lying about. In a conspicuous part of the saloon was a colored engraving of John Philip Kemble, for whom he expresses great admiration and regard.
Talma is about five feet seven or eight inches, English, in height, and somewhat robust. There is no very tragic or poetic expression in his countenance; his eyes are of a bluish gray, with, at times, a peculiar cast; his face is rather fleshy, yet flexible; and he has a short thick neck. His manners are open, animated, and natural. He speaks English well, and is prompt, unreserved, and copious in conversation.
He received me in a very cordial manner, and asked if this was my first visit to Paris. I told him I had been here once before, about fourteen years since.
"Ah! that was the time of the Emperor!" cried he, with a sudden gleam of the eye.
"Yes—just after his coronation as King of Italy. "Ah! those were the heroic days of Paris—every day some new victory! The real chivalry of France rallied round the Emperor; the youth, and talent, and bravery of the nation. Now you see the courts of the Tuileries crowded by priests, and an old, worn-out nobility brought back by foreign bayonets."
He consoled himself by observing, that the national character had improved under its reverses. Its checks and humiliations had made the nation more thoughtful. "Look at the young men from the colleges," said he, "how serious they are in their demeanor. They walk together in the public promenades, conversing always on political subjects, but discussing politics philosophically and scientifically. In fact, the nation is becoming as grave as the English."
He thinks, too, that there is likely to be a great change in the French drama. "The public," said he, "feel greater interest in scenes that come home to common life, and in the fortunes of every-day people, than in the distresses of the heroic personages of classic antiquity. Hence, they never come to the Théâtre Français, excepting to see a few great actors, while they crowd to the minor theatres to witness representations of scenes in ordinary life. The revolution," added he, "has caused such vivid and affecting scenes to pass before their eyes, that they can no longer be charmed by fine periods and declamation. They require character, incident, passion, life."
He seems to apprehend another revolution, and that it will be a bloody one. "The nation," said he, "that is to say, the younger part of it, the children of the revolution, have such a hatred of the priests and the noblesse, that they would fly upon them like wolves upon sheep."
On coming away, he accompanied us to the door. In passing through the ante-chamber, I pointed to children's swords and soldiers' caps lying on a table. "Ah!" cried he, with animation, "the amusements of the children now-a-days are all military. They will have nothing to play with but swords, guns, drums, and trumpets."
Such are the few brief notes of my first interview with Talma. Some time afterward I dined in company with him at Beauvillier's restaurant. He was in fine spirits: gay and earnest by turns, and always perfectly natural and unreserved.
He spoke with pleasure of his residence in England. He liked the English. They were a noble people; but he thought the French more amiable and agreeable to live among. "The intelligent and cultivated English," he said, "are disposed to do generous actions, but the common people are not so liberal as the same class among the French: they have bitter national prejudices. If a French prisoner escaped in England, the common people would be against him. In France it was otherwise. "When the fight was going on around Paris," said he, "and Austrian and other prisoners were brought in wounded, and conducted along the Boulevards, the Parisian populace showed great compassion for them, and gave them money, bread, and wine."
Of the liberality of the cultivated class of English he gave an anecdote. Two French prisoners had escaped from confinement, and made their way to a sea-port, intending to get over in a boat to France. All their money, however, was exhausted, and they had not wherewithal to hire a boat. Seeing a banker's name on a door, they went in, stated their case frankly, and asked for pecuniary assistance, promising to repay it faithfully. The banker at once gave them one hundred pounds. They offered a bill, or receipt, but he declined it. "If you are not men of honor," said he "such paper would be of no value; and if you are men of honor, there is no need of it." This circumstance was related to Talma by one of the parties thus obliged.
In the course of conversation, we talked of the theatre. Talma had been a close observer of the British stage, and was alive to many of its merits. He spoke of his efforts to introduce into French acting the familiar style occasionally used by the best English tragedians; and of the difficulties he encountered in the stately declamation and constantly-recurring rhymes of French tragedy. Still he found, he said, every familiar touch of nature Immediately appreciated and applauded by the French audiences, Of Shakspeare he expressed the most exalted opinion, and said he should like to attempt some of his principal characters in English, could he be sure of being able to render the text without a foreign accent. He had represented his character of Hamlet, translated into French, in the Théâtre Français with great success; but he felt how much more powerful it would be if given as Shakspeare had written it. He spoke with admiration of the individuality of Shakspeare's characters, and the varied play of his language, giving such a scope for familiar touches of pathos and tenderness and natural outbreaks of emotion and passion. "All this," he observed, "requires quite a different style of acting from the well-balanced verse, flowing periods, and recurring rhymes of the French drama; and it would, doubtless, require much study and practice to catch the spirit of it; and after all, added he, laughing, "I should probably fail. Each stage has its own peculiarities which belong to the nation, and can not be thoroughly caught, nor perhaps thoroughly appreciated by strangers."
[To the foregoing scanty notes were appended some desultory observations made at the time, and suggested by my conversations with Talma. They were intended to form the basis of some speculalations on the French literature of the day, which were never carried out. They are now given very much in the rough style in which they were jotted down, with some omissions and abbreviations, but no heightenings nor additions.]
The success of a translation of Hamlet in the Théâtre Français appears to me an era in the French drama. It is true, the play has been sadly mutilated and stripped of some of its most characteristic beauties in the attempt to reduce it to the naked stateliness of the pseudo-classic drama; but it retains enough of the wild magnificence of Shakspeare's imagination to give it an individual character on the French stage. Though the ghost of Hamlet's father does not actually tread the boards, yet it is supposed to hover about his son, unseen by other eyes; and the admirable acting of Talma conveys to the audience a more awful and mysterious idea of this portentous visitation than could be produced by any visible spectre. I have seen a lady carried fainting from the boxes, overcome by its effect upon her imagination. In this translation and modification of the original play, Hamlet's mother stabs herself before the audience, a catastrophe hitherto unknown on the grand theatre, and repugnant to the French idea of classic rule.
The popularity of this play is astonishing. On the evenings of its representation the doors of the theatre are besieged at an early hour. Long before the curtain rises, the house is crowded to overflowing: and throughout the performance the audience passes from intervals of breathless attention to bursts of ungovernable applause.
The success of this tragedy may be considered one of the triumphs of what is denominated the romantic school; and another has been furnished by the overwhelming reception of Marie Stuart, a modification of the German tragedy of Schiller. The critics of the old school are sadly alarmed at these foreign innovations, and tremble for the ancient decorum and pompous proprieties of their stage. It is true, both Hamlet and Marie Stuart have been put in the strait waistcoat of Aristotle; yet they are terribly afraid they will do mischief, and set others madding. They exclaim against the apostasy of their countrymen in bowing to foreign idols, and against the degeneracy of their taste, after being accustomed from infancy to the touching beauties and harmonious numbers of Athalie, Polyeucte, and Meropo, in relishing those English and German monstrosities, and that through the medium of translation. All in vain! The nightly receipts at the doors outweigh, with managers, all the invectives of the critics, and Hamlet and Marie Stuart maintain triumphant possession of the boards.
Talma assures me that it begins to be quite the fashion in France to admire Shakspeare; and those who can not read him in English enjoy him diluted in French translations. It may at first create a smile of incredulity that foreigners should pretend to feel and appreciate the merits of an author, so recondite at times as to require commentaries and explanations, even to his own countrymen; yet it is precisely writers like Shakspeare, so full of thought, of character, and passion, that are most likely to be relished, even when but partially understood. Authors whose popularity arises from beauty of diction and harmony of numbers are ruined by translation; a beautiful turn of expression, a happy combination of words and phrases, and all the graces of perfect euphony, are limited to the language in which they are written. Style can not be translated. The most that can be done is to furnish a parallel, and render grace for grace. Who can form an idea of the exquisite beauties of Racine, when translated into a foreign tongue? But Shakspeare triumphs over translation. His scenes are so exuberant in original and striking thoughts, and masterly strokes of nature, that he can afford to be stripped of all the magic of his style. His volumes are like the magician's cave in Aladdin, so full of jewels and precious things, that he who does but penetrate for a moment may bring away enough to enrich himself.
The relish for Shakspeare, however, which, according to Talma, is daily increasing in France, is, I apprehend, but one indication of a general revolution which is taking place in the national taste. The French character, as Talma well observes, has materially changed during the last thirty years. The present generation, (the "children of the revolution," as Talma terms them,) who are just growing into the full exercise of talent, are a different people from the French of the old régime. They have grown up in rougher times, and among more adventurous and romantic habitudes. They are less delicate in tact, but stronger in their feelings, and require more stimulating aliment. The Frenchman of the camp, who has bivouacked on the Danube and the Volga; who has brought back into peaceful life the habits of the soldier; who wears fierce moustaches, swaggers in his gait, and smokes tobacco, is, of course, a different being in his literary tastes from the Frenchman of former times, who was refined, but finical in dress and manners, wore powder, and delighted in perfumes and polished versification.
The whole nation, in fact, has been accustomed for years to the glitter of arms and the parade of soldiery; to tales of battles, sieges, and victories. The feverish drama of the revolution, and the rise and fall of Napoleon, have passed before their eyes like a tale of Arabian enchantment. Though these realities have passed away, the remembrances of them remain, with a craving for the strong emotions which they excited.
This may account in some measure for that taste for the romantic which is growing upon the French nation—a taste vehemently but vainly reprobated by their critics. You see evidence of it in every thing: in their paintings; in the engravings which fill their print-shops; in their songs, their spectacles, and their works of fiction. For several years it has been making its advances without exciting the jealousy of the critics; its advances being apparently confined to the lower regions of literature and the arts. The circulating libraries have been filled with translations of English and German romances, and tales of ghosts and robbers, and the theatres of the Boulevards occupied by representations of melo-dramas. Still the higher regions of literature remained unaffected, and the national theatre retained its classic stateliness and severity. The critics consoled themselves with the idea that the romances were only read by women and children, and the melo-dramas admired by the ignorant and vulgar. But the children have grown up to be men and women; and the tinge given to their imaginations in early life is now to have an effect on the forthcoming literature of the country. As yet, they depend for their romantic aliment upon the literature of other nations, especially the English and Germans; and it is astonishing with what promptness the Scottish novels, notwithstanding their dialects, are translated into French, and how universally and eagerly they are sought after.
In poetry, Lord Byron is the vogue: his verses are translated into a kind of stilted prose, and devoured with ecstasy, they are si sombre! His likeness is in every print-shop. The Parisians envelop him with melancholy and mystery, and believe him to be the hero of his own poems, or something of the vampyre order. A French poem has lately appeared in imitation of him,[1] the author of which has caught, in a great degree, his glowing style, and deep and troubled emotions. The great success of this production insures an inundation of the same kind of poetry from inferior hands. In a little while we shall see the petty poets of France, like those of England, affecting to be moody and melancholy, each wrapping himself in a little mantle of mystery and misanthropy, vaguely accusing himself of heinous crimes, and affecting to despise the world.
That this taste for the romantic will have its way, and give a decided tone to French literature, I am strongly inclined to believe. The human mind delights in variety, and abhors monotony even in excellence. Nations, like individuals, grow sated with artificial refinements, and their pampered palates require a change of diet, even though it be for the worse. I should not be surprised, therefore, to see the French breaking away from rigid rule; from polished verse, easy narrative, the classic drama, and all the ancient delights of elegant literature, and rioting in direful romances, melo-dramatic plays, turgid prose, and glowing rough-written poetry.
Paris, 1821.
- ↑ The Missennienes.