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Yale Law School

Richard K. Neumann, Jr.

Professor of Law

Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University

Robert H. Sitkoff

John L. Gray Professor of Law

Harvard Law School

David Alan Sklansky

Stanley Morrison Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

Faculty Co-Director, Stanford Criminal Justice Center

 ASPEN COURSEBOOK SERIES

TRIAL

TECHNIQUES

AND TRIALS

TENTH EDITION

THOMAS A. MAUET

Director of Trial Advocacy

and Milton O. Riepe Professor of Law

University of Arizona
Copyright © 2017 Thomas A. Mauet.

Published by Wolters Kluwer in New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Mauet, Thomas A., author.

Title: Trial techniques and trials / Thomas A. Mauet, Director of trial advocacy and Milton O.

Riepe Professor of Law, University of Arizona.

Description: Tenth edition. | New York : Wolters Kluwer, [2017] | Series: Aspen coursebook

series | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016053768 | eISBN: 978-1-4548-8812-3

Subjects: LCSH: Trial practice — United States. | LCGFT: Casebooks.

Classification: LCC KF8915 .M38 2017 | DDC 347.73/75 — dc23

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 SUMMARY OF CONTENTS

Contents
Preface
Website Information
CHAPTER 1

THE TRIAL PROCESS

CHAPTER 2

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF PERSUASION

CHAPTER 3

JURY SELECTION

CHAPTER 4

OPENING STATEMENTS

CHAPTER 5

DIRECT E XAMINATIONS

CHAPTER 6

CROSS-E XAMINATIONS

CHAPTER 7

E XHIBITS AND VISUAL AIDS

CHAPTER 8

E XPERTS

CHAPTER 9

CLOSING ARGUMENTS

CHAPTER 10

E VIDENTIARY OBJECTIONS

vii

viii

CHAPTER 11

TRIAL PREPARATION AND STRATEGY

CHAPTER 12

BENCH TRIALS AND OTHER CONTESTED HEARINGS

Index

viii
 CONTENTS

Preface
Website Information

C H A P T E R 1

THE TRIAL P ROCESS

1.1 Introduction

1.2 Local Practices and Procedures

1.3 Trial Date Assignment

1.4 Jury Selection

1.5 Preliminary Instructions of Law

1.6 Opening Statements

1.7 Plaintiff's Case-in-Chief

1.8 Motions After Plaintiff Rests

1.9 Defendant's Case-in-Chief

1.10 Motions After Defendant Rests

1.11 Plaintiff's Rebuttal and Defendant's Surrebuttal Cases

1.12 Motions at the Close of All Evidence

1.13 Instructions Conference

1.14 Closing Arguments

1.15 Jury Instructions

1.16 Jury Deliberations and Verdict

1.17 Post-Trial Motions and Appeal

1.18 Conclusion

Video of Jury Trial ( Gable v. Cannon )

C H A P T E R 2

THE P SYCHOLOGY OF P ERSUASION

 2.1 Introduction

2.2 Behavioral Science and Jury Research

1. Affective Reasoning

2. Beliefs and Attitudes

ix

3. Decision Making

4. What Influences the Jury

a. Sender credibility

b. Receiver capacities

c. Components of persuasive messages

2.3 What Research Means for Trial Lawyers

1. Prepare from the Jury's Point of View

2. Develop a Theory of the Case

3. Select Themes and Labels

4. Emphasize the People

5. Use Storytelling Techniques

6. Focus on the Key Facts and Issues

7. Understand Your Role as an Advocate

2.4 Conclusion

2.5 Selected Reading List on Psychology of Persuasion

C H A P T E R 3

JURY SELECTION

3.1 Introduction

3.2 The Law

1. Number of Jurors and Alternate Jurors

2. Strike and Panel Systems for Questioning Jurors

3. Juror Questioning Methods

4. Judge, Lawyer, and Hybrid Questioning Methods

5. Scope of Questioning

6. Cause Challenges

7. Peremptory Challenges

8. Batson Limitations on Peremptory Challenges

3.3 The Jury's Perspective

3.4 Create a Comfortable Environment for Self-Disclosure

 1. The Judge

2. The Lawyers

3.5 Learn Juror Attitudes

3.6 Learn Strength of Juror Attitudes

3.7 Identify the Persuaders, Participants, and Nonparticipants

3.8 Identify the Punitive, Authoritarian, and Holdout Jurors

3.9 Questioning Techniques

1. Create a Comfortable Environment for Self-Disclosure

2. Identify Juror Attitudes on Matters Important in Case

3. Learn the Strength of Juror Attitudes

4. Learn If Jurors Are Persuaders, Participants, or Nonparticipants

5. Learn If Jurors Are Punitive, Authoritarian, or Holdouts

xi

3.10 Exercising Cause and Peremptory Challenges

1. Challenges for Cause

a. Strike System

b. Panel System

2. Peremptory Challenges

a. Strike System

b. Panel System

3.11 Example of Voir Dire

3.12 Trial Notebook

3.13 Common Problems

1. Interrogation Environment

2. Too Much Lawyer Talking

3. Useless and Intrusive Questions

4. Too Much General Background, Too Little Life Experiences

5. Too Much “What,” Too Little “Why” and “How”

6. Not Using All Peremptory Challenges to Preserve Error

C H A P T E R 4

OPENING STATEMENTS

4.1 Introduction

4.2 The Law

1. Procedure
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 2. Content

3. Improper Opening Statements

a. Mentioning Inadmissible Evidence

b. Mentioning Unprovable Evidence

c. Arguing

d. Stating Personal Opinions

e. Discussing the Law

f. Mentioning the Opponent's Case

g. Appeals to Sympathy or Prejudice

4.3 The Jury's Perspective

4.4 Content of Effective Opening Statements

1. Impact Beginning

a. Present Short Re-creation of Case

b. Present Your Themes

c. Present Building Tension

2. Storytelling

3. Ending

4. Additional Considerations

a. Focus on Liability, Not Damages

xi

xii

b. Deal Candidly with Weaknesses and Avoid Overstating the Evidence

c. Use Exhibits and Visual Aids

d. Establish a Prima Facie Case

e. Length of Opening Statements

5. The Defense Opening

4.5 Delivery of Effective Opening Statements

4.6 Examples of Opening Statements

Gable v. Cannon (Personal Injury)

Thompson v. Thermorad (Commercial Case)
State v. Rausch (Criminal Case)
4.7 Trial Notebook

4.8 Common Problems

1. Weak First Minute

2. Weak Themes, Not Repeated Enough

3. Weak Labels

4. No People Stories
 5. Weak Delivery

6. Not Dealing with Weaknesses Candidly

7. Forgetting That Jurors Know Nothing About Case

8. Not Using Visual Aids

9. Evidentiary Violations

C H A P T E R 5

DIRECT EXAMINATIONS

5.1 Introduction

5.2 The Law

1. Witness Competency

2. Lawyer's Questions

3. Witness Testimony

5.3 The Jury's Perspective

5.4 Structure of Direct Examinations

1. Chronological

a. Introduction

b. Background

c. Scene

d. Action

Witness's Point of View

Present Tense

Pace

Sensory Language

Witness Demonstration

xii

xii

Selective Repetition

Challenging One's Own Witness

e. Exhibits

f. Aftermath

g. Ending

h. Incorporate Important Weaknesses and Anticipate Cross-Examination

2. Impact

5.5 Language of Direct Examination

1. Lawyer's Questions
 2. Witness's Answers

5.6 Preparing the Witness and Yourself

1. Prepare Yourself

2. Prepare the Witness

5.7 Occurrence Witnesses

1. Example (Plaintiff in Personal Injury Case)

2. Example (Defendant in Personal Injury Case)

3. Example (Eyewitness in Personal Injury Case)

4. Example (Victim in Criminal Case)

5. Example (Defendant in Criminal Case)

6. Example (Police Officer in Criminal Case)

5.8 Transaction Witnesses

1. Example (Plaintiff in Contract Case)

2. Example (Records Witness in Contract Case)

5.9 Character Trait Witnesses

1. Character Traits Relevant to Claims, Charges, and Defenses

a. Character Trait as Essential Element

b. Character Trait as Circumstantial Evidence

2. Character for Truthfulness to Impeach Credibility of Testifying Witnesses

5.10 Adverse Parties, Hostile Witnesses, and Problem Witnesses

1. Adverse Parties

2. Hostile Witnesses

3. Problem Witnesses

5.11 Lay Witness Opinions

5.12 Conversations, Telephone Calls, and Other Communications

1. Conversations

2. Telephone Calls

a. Call Made to or from a Known Person

b. Call Made to an Unknown Person

c. Call Made by an Unknown Person

3. Computer-Based Conversations

xiii

xiv

5.13 Refreshing Memory

5.14 Anticipate Cross-Examination and Judge's and Jurors' Questions

5.15 Stipulations

5.16 Redirect Examination

 5.17 Trial Notebook

5.18 Common Problems

1. Weak Introduction

2. Too Long, Too Detailed

3. No Word Pictures

4. Not Enough Exhibits and Visual Aids

5. Not Enough Focus on Key Disputed Facts

6. Weak Ending

7. Not Anticipating Cross-Examination

8. Not Enough Witness Preparation

C H A P T E R 6

CROSS-EXAMINATIONS

6.1 Introduction

6.2 The Law

1. Cross-Examination

2. Impeachment

a. Impeachment Procedures

b. Impeachment Methods

Bias, Interest, and Motive

Prior Inconsistent Statements

Contradictory Facts

Prior Convictions

Prior Bad Acts

c. Proving Up Unadmitted Important Impeachment

6.3 The Jury's Perspective

6.4 Purpose, Order, and Structure of Cross-Examination

6.5 Language of Cross-Examination

1. Lead

2. Factual

3. Simple

4. Bit by Bit

5. Stop

6.6 Cross-Examination Topics

1. Favorable Facts from Direct

2. Favorable Facts Not Yet Mentioned

3. What Witness Must Admit

xiv
 xv

4. What Witness Should Admit

5. Attacking the Witness's Perception

6. Attacking the Witness's Memory

7. Attacking the Witness's Ability to Communicate

8. Attacking the Witness's Conduct

9. The “No Ammunition” Cross

6.7 Impeachment

1. Bias, Interest, and Motive

2. Prior Inconsistent Statements

a. Oral Statements

b. Written Statements

c. Sworn Transcripts

d. Impeachment by Omission

3. Contradictory Facts

4. Prior Convictions

5. Prior Bad Acts

6. Bad Character for Truthfulness

7. Treatises

8. Impeaching Out-of-Court Declarants

6.8 Planning and Preparing a Cross-Examination

1. What Is My Theory of the Case?

2. What Are My Themes and Labels?

3. What Are My Closing Argument Points About This Witness?

4. What Facts Exist to Support Those Points?

5. In What Order Should I Bring Out Those Facts on Cross?

6. What Tone and Attitude Should I Use on Cross?

7. What Questioning Style Should I Use on Cross?

6.9 Preparing Your Witnesses for Cross-Examination

6.10 Problem Witnesses

6.11 Recross-Examination

6.12 Proving Up Unadmitted Impeachment

1. Bias, Interest, and Motive

2. Prior Inconsistent Statements

a. Oral Statements

b. Written or Signed Statements

c. Transcripts of Sworn Testimony

d. Omissions
 3. Contradictory Facts

4. Prior Convictions

5. Failure to Prove Up When Required

6.13 Trial Notebook

6.14 Common Problems

xv

xvi

1. Weak Beginning

2. Weak Selection of Points

3. Losing Control

4. Ineffective Impeachment Technique

5. No Attitude Projection

6. Weak Ending

C H A P T E R 7

EXHIBITS AND VISUAL AIDS

7.1 Introduction

7.2 The Law

1. Foundation Procedure for Exhibits

Step 1. Have the exhibit marked

Step 2. Show the exhibit to opposing lawyer

Step 3. Ask permission to show exhibit to witness

Step 4. Give exhibit to witness

Step 5. Establish proper foundation for exhibit

Step 6. Offer the exhibit in evidence

Step 7. Have the exhibit marked in evidence

Step 8. Have the witness use or mark the exhibit, if appropriate

Step 9. Ask permission to show or read exhibit to jurors

Step 10. Show or read exhibit to jurors

2. Foundation Requirements for Exhibits

3. Visual Aids

7.3 The Jury's Perspective

7.4 Exhibits Foundations

1. Objects

a. Identifiable through Sense Identification

b. Chain of Custody
 c. Illustrative Objects

2. Demonstrative Evidence

a. Photographs, Movies, Videotapes, Sound Recordings, and X-rays

b. Diagrams, Models, Maps, and Drawings

c. Animations and Simulations

3. Writings/Instruments

a. Legal Instruments

b. Letters and Other Written Communications

Letters Sent to a Person

Letters Received from a Person

4. Business Records

xvi

xvii

5. Public Records

6. Summaries

7. Recorded Recollection

8. Transcripts of Testimony

7.5 Visual Aids

1. Opening Statements

2. Direct Examinations of Experts

3. Cross-Examinations of Lay and Expert Witnesses

4. Closing Arguments

7.6 Making, Using, and Marking Exhibits and Visual Aids

1. Making Exhibits and Visual Aids Before Trial

a. Objects

b. Photographs, Videotapes, Movies

c. Diagrams, Models, Maps

d. Animations, Simulations

e. Documents, Records, Summaries

f. Charts

1. Board

2. Lettering

3. Color

4. Movement

5. Symbols

6. Composition

g. Transcripts and Videotapes

 2. Using Exhibits and Visual Aids During Trial

3. Marking Exhibits and Visual Aids During Trial

7.7 Trial Notebook

7.8 Common Problems

1. No Overall Visual Strategy

2. Exhibits and Visual Aids Fail the “Billboard Test”

3. Too Many Exhibits

4. Not Providing Smooth Judge and Jury Foundations

5. Not Anticipating Objections and Raising Issues Early

All Exhibits in Full Color That Are Contained in Chapter 7

C H A P T E R 8

EXPERTS

8.1 Introduction

8.2 The Law

1. Direct Examination

a. Is the Subject Appropriate for Expert Testimony?

xvii

xviii

b. Is the Expert Properly Qualified?

c. Is the Expert's Testimony Relevant and Reliable?

d. Were Underlying Tests Properly Done?

e. Are the Sources of Facts and Data Relied on Proper?

f. When Must the Sources Be Disclosed?

g. Are the Sources Themselves Admissible?

h. Are the Forms of the Expert's Testimony Proper?

i. Can the Expert Testify About Ultimate Issues?

2. Cross-Examination

8.3 The Jury's Perspective

8.4 Finding and Preparing Experts

1. Good Experts

2. Finding Good Experts

3. Preparing the Expert

8.5 General Structure of Expert Direct Examinations

1. Introduction

a. Nonverbal Beginning
 b. Verbal Beginning

2. Professional Education, Training, and Experience

a. Education and Training

b. Experience

c. Voir Dire, Tendering Witness as Expert, and Stipulations

3. What Expert Did and Why

a. What Expert Did

b. Expert Compensation

4. Expert's Opinions

5. Expert's Bases and Explanations

a. Rule 703

b. Expert as Teacher

c. Treatises

d. Take Issue with Other Expert

e. End Big

6. Other Organization

a. Opinion Quickly

b. Hypothetical Question

8.6 Examples of Direct Examinations

1. Treating Physician in Personal Injury Case

2. Economist in Wrongful Death Case

Additional Direct Examinations of Experts (Pathologist in Criminal Case; Accountant

in Commercial Case; Engineer in Products Case)

8.7 Cross-Examination

1. Preparation

xviii

xix

2. Specific Topics

a. Expert's Qualifications

b. Bias and Interest

c. Data Relied On

d. Assumptions

e. What Expert Did Not Do

f. Prior Inconsistent Statements

g. Treatises

h. Use Opposing Expert to Build Up Your Expert

i. Experts Disagree
 j. Order of Cross-Examination Points

8.8 Examples of Cross-Examinations

1. Cross-Examination of Treating Physician

2. Cross-Examination of Economist

8.9 Redirect and Recross-Examinations

8.10 Trial Notebook

8.11 Common Problems

1. Too Much, Too Long

2. Not Enough Visual Aids

3. Weak Beginning

4. Weak Ending

5. Not Enough Witness Preparation

6. Showing Off

C H A P T E R 9

CLOSING ARGUMENTS

9.1 Introduction

9.2 The Law

1. Procedure

2. Content

3. Improper Closing Arguments

a. Mentioning Unadmitted Evidence

b. Misstating or Mischaracterizing Evidence

c. Improperly Commenting on Missing Evidence

d. Stating Personal Opinions

e. Appealing to Sympathy or Prejudice

f. Improperly Arguing the Law

g. Improperly Arguing Damages

h. Arguing Consequences of Verdict

i. Improperly Arguing on Rebuttal

9.3 The Jury's Perspective

9.4 Jury Instructions and Instructions Conference

xix

xx

1. When to Draft Jury Instructions and Submit Them to the Judge

2. How to Draft Jury Instructions and Verdict Forms

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Other documents randomly have
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expression in nausea and disgust at certain noxious influences; I
might say, their unconscious life suffers from imbecility or idiocy.
Again, we have seen in the preceding chapter that the
impressionability of the nerves and brain in the degenerate subject is
blunted. Hence he only perceives strong impressions, and it is only
these which excite his cerebral centres to that intellectual and motor
activity which produces in them feelings of pleasure. Now,
disagreeable impressions are naturally stronger than agreeable or
indifferent impressions, for if they were not stronger we should not
feel them as painful, and they would not induce the organism to
make efforts to defend itself. To procure, then, the feelings of
pleasure which are linked with the activity of the cerebral centres, to
satisfy the need of functioning which is peculiar to the cerebral
centres as to all the other organs, the degenerate person seeks
impressions which are strong enough to excite to activity his obtuse
and inert centres. But such impressions are precisely those which
the healthy man feels as painful or repugnant. Thus, the aberrations
or perversions of the degenerate find explanation. They have a
longing for strong impressions, because these only can put their
brains into activity, and this desired effect on their centres is only
exercised by impressions that sane beings dread because of their
violence, i.e., painful, repugnant and revolting impressions.
To say that every human being has secretly a certain predilection
for the evil and the abominable is absurd: the only little spark of
truth contained in this foolish assertion is, that even the normal
human being becomes obtuse when fatigued, or exhausted by
illness; i.e., he falls into the state which, in the degenerate, is
chronic. Then he presents naturally the same phenomena as we
have attested in the case of the latter, although in a much lower
degree. He may find pleasure, then, in crime and ugliness, and in
the former rather than in the latter; for crimes are social injuries,
while uglinesses are the visible form of forces unfavourable to the
individual; but social instincts are feebler than the instincts of self-
preservation. Consequently they are sooner put to sleep, and for this
reason the repulsion against crime disappears more quickly than that
against ugliness. In any case, this state is also an aberration in the
normal being, but imputable to fatigue, and in him is not chronic, as
in the degenerate, nor does it amount to the hidden fundamental
character of his being, as the sophists who calumniate him pretend.
An uninterrupted line of development leads from the French
romantic school to the Parnassians, and all the germs of the
aberrations which confront us in full expansion among the latter can
be distinguished in the former. We have seen in the preceding book
how superficial and poor in ideas their poetry is, how they exalt their
imagination above the observation of reality, and what importance
they assign to their world of dreams. Sainte-Beuve, who at first
joined their group, says on this subject, with a complacency which
proves he was not conscious of expressing any blame: ‘The
Romance School ... had a thought, a cult, viz., love of art and
passionate inquisitiveness for a vivid expression, a new turn, a
choice image, a brilliant rhyme: they wished for every one of their
frames a peg of gold. [A remarkably false image, let it be said in
passing. A rich frame may be desired for a picture, but as to the nail
which supports it, regard will be had to its solidity and not to its
preciousness.] Children if you will, but children of the Muses, who
never sacrifice to ordinary grace [grâce vulgaire].’[276]
Let us hold this admission firmly, that the romantic writers were
children; they were so in their inaptitude to comprehend the world
and men, in the seriousness and zeal with which they gave
themselves up to their game of rhymes, in the artlessness with
which they placed themselves above the precepts of morality and
good sense in use among adults. Let us exaggerate this childishness
a little (without allying with it the wild and exuberant imagination of
a Victor Hugo, and his gift of lightning-like rapidity of association,
evoking the most startling antitheses), and we obtain the literary
figure of Théophile Gautier, whom the imbecile Barbey d’Aurevilly
could name in the same breath with Goethe,[277] evidently for the
sole reason that the sound of the great German poet’s name in
French pronunciation has a certain resemblance to that of Gautier,
but of whom one of his admirers, M. J. K. Huysmans, says:[278] ‘Des
Esseintes [the hero of his novel] became gradually indifferent to
Gautier’s work; his admiration for that incomparable painter had
gone on diminishing from day to day, and now he was more
astonished than delighted by his indifferent descriptions. The
impression left by the objects was fixed on his keenly observant eye,
but it was localized there, and had not penetrated further into his
brain and flesh [?]; like a monstrous reflector, he was constantly
limited to reverberate his environment with an impersonal
distinctness.’
When M. Huysmans regards Gautier as an impersonal mirror of
reality, he is the victim of an optical illusion. In verse as in prose,
Gautier is a mechanical worker, who threads one line of glittering
adjectives after another, without designing anything particular. His
descriptions never give a clear outline of the object he wishes to
depict. They recall some crude mosaic of the later Byzantine
decadence, the different stones of which are lapis-lazuli, malachite,
chrysoprase and jasper, and which yield, for this reason, an
impression of barbarous splendour, while scarcely any design is
discernible. In his ego-mania, lacking all sympathy with the external
world, he does not suspect what sorrows and joys its drama
encloses, and just as he feels nothing in the prospect before him, so
neither can he awaken in the reader emotion of any sort by his
listless and affected attempts to render it. The only emotions of
which he is capable, apart from his arrogance and vanity, are those
connected with sex; hence, in his works we merely find alternations
between glacial coldness and lubricity.
If we exaggerate Théophile Gautier’s worship of form and
lasciviousness, and if to his indifference towards the world and men
we associate the aberration which caused it to degenerate into a
predilection for the bad and the loathsome, we have before us the
figure of Baudelaire. We must stop there awhile, for Baudelaire is—
even more than Gautier—the intellectual chief and model of the
Parnassians, and his influence dominates the present generation of
French poets and authors, and a portion also of English poets and
authors, to an omnipotent degree.
 It is not necessary to demonstrate at length that Baudelaire was
a degenerate subject. He died of general paralysis, after he had
wallowed for months in the lowest depths of insanity. But even if no
such horrible end had protected the diagnosis from all attack, there
would be no doubt as to its accuracy, seeing that Baudelaire showed
all the mental stigmata of degeneration during the whole of his life.
He was at once a mystic and an erotomaniac,[279] an eater of
hashish and opium;[280] he felt himself attracted in the characteristic
fashion by other degenerate minds, mad or depraved, and
appreciated, for example, above all authors, the gifted but mentally-
deranged Edgar Poe, and the opium-eater Thomas de Quincey. He
translated Poe’s tales, and devoted to them an enthusiastic
biography and critique, while from the Confessions of an Opium-
Eater, by De Quincey, he compiled an exhaustive selection, to which
he wrote extravagant annotations.
The peculiarities of Baudelaire’s mind are revealed to us in the
collection of his poems, to which he has given a title betraying at
once his self-knowledge and his cynicism: Les Fleurs du Mal—‘The
Flowers of Evil.’ The collection is not complete. There lack some
pieces which only circulate in manuscript, because they are too
infamous to bear the full publicity of a marketable book. I will take
my quotations, however, from the printed verses only, which are
quite sufficient to characterize their author.
Baudelaire hates life and movement. In the piece entitled Les
Hiboux, he shows us his owls sitting in a row, motionless, under the
black yews, and continues:
‘Leur attitude au sage enseigne
Qu’il faut en ce monde qu’il craigne
Le tumulte et le mouvement.

L’homme ivre d’une ombre qui passe

Porte toujours le châtiment
D’avoir voulu changer de place.’

Beauty says of herself, in the piece of that name:

 ‘Je hais le mouvement qui déplace les lignes;
Et jamais je ne pleure et jamais je ne ris.’

He abhors the natural as much as he loves the artificial. Thus he

depicts his ideal world (Rêve Parisien):
‘De ce terrible paysage
Que jamais œil mortel ne vit,
Ce matin encore l’image,
Vague et lointaine, me ravit....

‘J’avais banni de ces spectacles

Le végétal irrégulier....

‘Je savourais dans mon tableau

L’enivrante [!] monotonie
Du métal, du marbre et de l’eau.

‘Babel d’escaliers et d’arcades

C’était un palais infini,
Plein de bassins et de cascades
Tombant dans l’or mat ou bruni;

‘Et des cataractes pesantes,

Comme des rideaux de cristal,
Se suspendaient, éblouissantes,
A des murailles de métal.

‘Non d’arbres, mais de colonnades

Les étangs dormants s’entouraient,
Où de gigantesques naïades,
Comme des femmes, se miraient.

‘Des nappes d’eau s’épanchaient, bleues,

Entre des quais roses et verts,
Pendant des millions de lieues,
Vers les confins de l’univers;

‘C’étaient des pierres inouïes

Et des flots magiques; c’étaient
D’immenses glaces éblouies
Par tout ce qu’elles reflétaient.
 ‘Et tout, même la couleur noire,
Semblait fourbi, clair, irisé....

‘Nul astre d’ailleurs, nuls vestiges

De soleil, même au bas du ciel,
Pour illuminer ces prodiges,
Qui brillaient d’un feu personnel (!)

‘Et sur ces mouvantes merveilles

Planait (terrible nouveauté!
Tout pour l’œil, rien pour les oreilles!)
Un silence d’eternité.’

Such is the world he represents to himself, and which fills him

with enthusiasm: not an ‘irregular’ plant, no sun, no stars, no
movement, no noise, nothing but metal and glass, i.e., something
like a tin landscape from Nuremberg, only larger and of more costly
material, a plaything for the child of an American millionaire
suffering from the wealth-madness of parvenus, with a little electric
lamp in the interior, and a mechanism which slowly turns the glass
cascades, and makes the glass sheet of water slide. Such must
necessarily be the aspect of the ego-maniac’s ideal world. Nature
leaves him cold or repels him, because he neither perceives nor
comprehends her; hence, where the sane man sees the picture of
the external world, the ego-maniac is surrounded by a dark void in
which, at most, uncomprehended nebulous forms are hovering. To
escape the horror of them he projects, as from a magic-lantern,
coloured shadows of the images which fill his consciousness; but
these representations are rigid, inert, uniform and infantile, like the
morbid and weak cerebral centres by which they are elaborated.
The incapacity of the ego-maniac to feel aright external
impressions, and the toil with which his brain works, are also the key
of the frightful tedium of which Baudelaire complains, and of the
profound pessimism with which he contemplates the world and life.
Let us hear him in Le Voyage:
‘Nous avons vu partout...
Le spectacle ennuyeux de l’immortel péché:
 ‘La femme, esclave vile, orgueilleuse et stupide,
Sans rire s’adorant et s’aimant sans dégôut;
L’homme, tyran goulu, paillard, dur et cupide,
Esclave de l’esclave et ruisseau dans l’égout;

‘Le bourreau qui jouit, le martyr qui sanglote;

La fête qu’assaisonne et parfume le sang;...

‘Et les moins sots, hardis amants de la démence,

Fuyant le grand troupeau parqué par le Destin,
Et se réfugiant dans l’opium immense [!].
—Tel est du globe entier l’éternel bulletin...

‘O Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps! levons l’ancre!

Ce pays nous ennuie, O Mort! Appareillons!

‘Nous voulons...
Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer ou Ciel, qu’importe?
Au fond de l’Inconnu pour trouver du nouveau!’

This desperate cry towards the ‘new’ is the natural complaint of a

brain which longs to feel the pleasures of action, and greedily craves
a stimulation which his powerless sensory nerves cannot give him.
Let a sane man imagine the state of mind into which he would fall if
he were imprisoned in a cell where no ray of light, no noise, no
scent from the outer world would reach him. He would then have an
accurate idea of the chronic state of mind in the ego-maniac,
eternally isolated by the imperfection of his nervous system from the
universe, from its joyous sounds, from its changing scenes and from
its captivating movement. Baudelaire cannot but suffer terribly from
ennui, for his mind really learns nothing new and amusing, and is
forced constantly to indulge in the contemplation of his ailing and
whimpering self.
The only pictures which fill the world of his thought are sombre,
wrathful and detestable. He says (Un Mort joyeux):
‘Dans une terre grasse et pleine d’escargots
Je veux creuser moi-même une fosse profonde
Où je puisse à loisir étaler mes vieux os
Et dormir dans l’oubli comme un requin dans l’onde...
 Plutôt que d’implorer une larme du monde
Vivant, j’aimerais mieux inviter les corbeaux
A saigner tous les bouts de ma carcasse immonde.

‘O vers! noir compagnons sans oreille et sans yeux,

Voyez venir à vous un mort libre et joyeux!’

In La Cloche fêlée, he says of himself:

‘... Mon âme est fêlée, et lorsqu’en ses ennuis
Elle veut de ses chants peupler l’air froid des nuits
Il arrive souvent que sa voix affaiblie

Semble le râle épais d’un blessé qu’on oublie

Au bord d’un lac de sang, sous un grand tas de morts.’

Spleen:
‘...on triste cerveau...
C’est.. un immense caveau
Qui contient plus de morts que la fosse commune.
—Je suis un cimetière abhorré de la lune
Où, comme des remords, se traînent de longs vers....’

Horreur sympathique:
‘Cieux déchirés comme des grèves,
En vous se mire mon orgueil!
Vos vastes nuages en deuil.

‘Sont les corbillards de mes rêves,

Et vos lueurs sont le reflet,
De l’Enfer où mon cœur se plaît!’

Le Coucher du Soleil romantique:

‘Une odeur de tombeau dans les ténèbres nage,
Et mon pied peureux froisse, au bord du marécage,
Des crapauds imprévus et de froids limaçons.’

Dance macabre: The poet speaking to a skeleton:

 ‘Aucuns t’appelleront une caricature,
Qui ne comprennent pas, amants ivres de chair,
L’élégance sans nom de l’humaine armature.
Tu réponds, grand squelette, à mon goût le plus cher!...’

Une Charogne:
‘Rappelez-vous l’objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,
Ce beau matin d’été si doux:
Au détour d’un sentier une charogne infâme
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,

‘Les jambes en l’air, comme une femme lubrique

Brûlante et suant les poisons,
Ouvrait d’une façon nonchalante et cynique
Son ventre plein d’exhalaisons....

‘Et le ciel regardait la carcasse superbe [!]

Comme une fleur s’épanouir.
La puanteur était si forte, que sur l’herbe
Vous crûtes vous évanouir....

‘Et pourtant vous serez semblable à cette ordure,

A cette horrible infection,
Étoile de mes yeux, soleil de ma nature,
Vous, mon ange et ma passion!

‘Oui! telle vous serez, ô la reine des grâces,

Après les derniers sacrements,
Quand vous irez, sous l’herbe et les floraisons grasses,
Moisir parmi les ossements....’

That which pleases Baudelaire most are these pictures of death

and corruption which I could quote in still greater numbers if I did
not think that these examples sufficed. However, next to the frightful
and the loathsome it is the morbid, the criminal and the lewd, which
possess the strongest attraction for him.
Le Rêve d’un Curieux:
‘Connais-tu, comme moi, la douleur savoureuse?...’

Spleen:
 ‘Mon chat sur le carreau cherchant une litière
Agite sans repos son corps maigre et galeux....’

Le Vin du Solitaire:
‘Un baiser libertin de la maigre Adeline....’

Le Crépuscule du Soir:
‘Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminel; ...
Et l’homme impatient se change en bête fauve....’

La Destruction:
‘Sans cesse à mes côtés s’agite le Démon....
Je l’avale et le sens qui brûle mon poumon
Et l’emplit d’un désir éternel et coupable....

‘Il me conduit....
Haletant et brisé de fatigue, au milieu
Des plaines de l’Ennui, profondes et désertes,

‘Et jette dans mes yeux....

Des vêtements souillés, des blessures ouvertes,
Et l’appareil sanglant de la Destruction!’

In Une Martyre he describes complacently and in detail a

bedroom in which a young, presumably pretty courtesan has been
murdered; the assassin had cut off her head and carried it away.
The poet is only curious to know one thing:
‘L’homme vindicatif que tu n’as pu, vivante,
Malgré tant d’amour, assouvir,
Combla-t-il sur ta chair inerte et complaisante
L’immensité de son désir?’

Femmes damnées, a piece dedicated to the worst aberration of

degenerate women, terminates with this ecstatic apostrophe to the
heroines of unnatural vice:
‘O vierges, ô démons, ô monstres, ô martyres,
De la réalité grands esprits contempteurs,
 Chercheuses d’infini, dévotes et satyres,
Tantôt pleines de cris, tantôt pleines de pleurs,

Vous que dans votre enfer mon âme a poursuivies,

Pauvres sœurs, je vous aime autant que je vous plains....’

Préface:
‘Si le viol, le poison, le poignard, l’incendie,
N’ont pas encore brodé de leurs plaisants dessins
Le canevas banal de nos piteux destins,
C’est que notre âme, hélas! n’est pas assez hardie....’

But if he is not bold enough to commit crimes himself, he does

not leave a moment’s doubt that he loves them, and much prefers
them to virtue, just as he prefers the ‘end of autumns, winters,
springs steeped in mud,’ to the fine season of the year (Brumes et
Pluies). He is ‘hostile to the universe rather than indifferent’ (Les
sept Vieillards). The sight of pain leaves him cold, and if tears are
shed before him they only evoke in his mind the image of a
landscape with running waters.
Madrigal triste:
‘Que m’importe que tu sois sage?
Sois belle! et sois triste! Les pleurs
Ajoutent un charme au visage,
Comme le fleuve au paysage.’

In the struggle between Abel et Caïn he takes the part of the

latter without hesitation:
‘Race d’Abel, dors, bois et mange;
Dieu te sourit complaisamment.

‘Race de Caïn, dans la fange

Rampe et meurs misérablement.

‘Race d’Abel, ton sacrifice

Flatte le nez du Séraphin.
 ‘Race de Caïn, ton supplice
Aura-t-il jamais une fin?

‘Race d’Abel, vois tes semailles

Et ton bétail venir à bien;

‘Race de Caïn, tes entrailles

Hurlent la faim comme un vieux chien.

‘Race d’Abel, chauffe ton ventre

A ton foyer patriarchal;

‘Race de Caïn, dans ton antre

Tremble de froid, pauvre chacal!

‘Ah! race d’Abel, ta charogne

Engraissera le sol fumant!

‘Race de Caïn, ta besogne

N’est pas faite suffisamment.

‘Race d’Abel, voici ta honte:

Le fer est vaincu par l’épieu! [?]

‘Race de Caïn, au ciel monte

Et sur la terre jette Dieu!’
If he prays it is to the devil (Les Litanies de Satan):
‘Gloire et louange à toi, Satan, dans les hauteurs
Du Ciel, où tu régnas, et dans les profondeurs
De l’Enfer, où, vaincu, tu rêves en silence!
Fais que mon âme un jour, sous l’Arbre de Science,
Près de toi se repose....’

Here there mingles with the aberration that mysticism which is

never wanting in the degenerate. Naturally, the love of evil can only
take the form of devil-worship, or diabolism, if the subject is a
believer, if the supernatural is held to be a real thing. Only he who is
rooted with all his feelings in religious faith will, if he suffers from
moral aberration, seek bliss in the adoration of Satan, in
impassioned blasphemy of God and the Saviour, in the violation of
the symbols of faith, or will wish to incite unnatural voluptuousness
by mortal sin and infernal damnation, though humouring it in the
messe noire, in the presence of a really consecrated priest, and in a
hideous travesty of all the forms of the liturgy.
Besides the devil, Baudelaire adores only one other power, viz.,
voluptuousness. He prays thus to it (La Prière d’un Païen):
‘Ah! ne ralentis pas tes flammes!
Réchauffe mon cœur engourdi,
Volupté, torture des âmes!...
Volupté, sois toujours ma reine!’

To complete the portrait of this mind, let us cite two more of his
peculiarities. He suffers first from images of perpetual anguish, as
his piece testifies (Le Gouffre), which is valuable as a confession:
‘... Tout est abîme,—action, désir, rêve,
Parole! et sur mon poil qui tout droit se relève
Mainte fois de la peur je sens passer le vent.

‘En haut, en bas, partout, la profondeur, la grève, Le silence, l’espace

affreux et captivant...
Sur le fonde de mes nuits, Dieu, de son doigt savant,
Dessine un cauchemar multiforme et sans trêve.

‘J’ai peur du sommeil comme on a peur d’un grand trou,

Tout plein de vague horreur, menant on ne sait où;
Je ne vois qu’infini par toutes les fenêtres,

‘Et mon esprit, toujours du vertige hanté,

Jalouse du néant l’insensibilité.’

Baudelaire describes here accurately enough that obsession of

degenerates which is called ‘fear of abysses’ (cremnophobia).[281]
His second peculiarity is his interest in scents. He is attentive to
them, interprets them; they provoke in him all kinds of sensations
and associations. He expresses himself thus on this subject in
Correspondances:
‘Les parfums, les couleurs, et les sons se répondent.
 ‘Il est des parfums frais comme des chairs d’enfants,
Doux comme les hautbois, verts comme les prairies,
—Et d’autres, corrompus, riches et triomphants,

‘Ayant l’expansion des choses infinies,

Comme l’ambre, le musc, le benjoin et l’encens,
Qui chantent les transports de l’esprit et des sens.’

He loves woman through his sense of smell ... (‘Le parfum de tes
charmes étranges,’ A une Malabaraise), and never fails, in describing
a mistress, to mention her exhalations.
Parfum exotique:
‘Quand les deux yeux fermés, en un soir chaud d’automne,
Je respire l’odeur de ton sein chaleureux,
Je vois se dérouler des rivages heureux
Qu’eblouissent les feux d’un soleil monotone.’

La Chevelure:
‘O toison, moutonnant jusque sur l’encolure!
O boucles! O parfum chargé de nonchaloir!...

‘La langoureuse Asie et la brûlante Afrique,

Tout un monde lointain, absent, presque défunt,
Vit dans tes profondeurs, forêt aromatique!’

Naturally, instead of good odours, he prefers the perfumes which

affect the healthy man as stinks. Putrefaction, decomposition and
pestilence charm his nose.
Le Flacon:
‘Il est de forts parfums pour qui toute matière
Est poreuse. On dirait qu’ils pénètrent le verre...
Parfois on trouve un vieux flacon qui se souvient,
D’où jaillit toute vive une âme qui revient.

‘Voilà le souvenir enivrant qui voltige

Dans l’air troublé; les yeux se ferment; le vertige
Saisit l’âme vaincue et la pousse à deux mains
Vers un gouffre obscurci de miasmes humains;
 ‘Il la terrasse au bord d’un gouffre séculaire,
Où, Lazare odorant déchirant son suaire,
Se meut dans son réveil le cadavre spectral
D’un vieil amour ranci, charmant et sepulcral.

‘Ainsi, quand je serai perdu dans la memoire

Des hommes, dans le coin d’une sinistre armoire
Quand on m’aura jeté, vieux flacon désolé,
Décrépit, poudreux, sale, abject, visqueux, fêlé,

‘Je serai ton cercueil, aimable pestilence!

Le témoin de ta force et de ta virulence,
Cher poison préparé par les anges!...’

We now know all the features which compose Baudelaire’s

character. He has the ‘cult of self’;[282] he abhors nature, movement
and life; he dreams of an ideal of immobility, of eternal silence, of
symmetry and artificiality; he loves disease, ugliness and crime; all
his inclinations, in profound aberration, are opposed to those of sane
beings; what charms his sense of smell is the odour of corruption;
his eye, the sight of carrion, suppurating wounds and the pain of
others; he feels happy in muddy, cloudy, autumn weather; his
senses are excited by unnatural pleasures only. He complains of
frightful tedium and of feelings of anguish; his mind is filled with
sombre ideas, the association of his ideas works exclusively with sad
or loathsome images; the only thing which can distract or interest
him is badness—murder, blood, lewdness and falsehood. He
addresses his prayers to Satan, and aspires to hell.
He has attempted to make his peculiarities pass for a comedy
and a studied pose. In a note placed at the head of the first edition
(1857) of the Fleurs du Mal, he says: ‘Among the following pieces,
the most characteristic ... has been considered, at least by men of
intellect, only for what it really is: the imitation of the arguments of
ignorance and fury. Faithful to his painful programme, the author has
had, like a good comedian, to fashion his mind to all sophisms, as to
all corruptions. This candid declaration will, doubtless, not prevent
honest critics from ranking him among the theologians of the
people,’ etc. Some of his admirers accept this explanation or appear
to accept it. ‘His intense disdain of the vulgar,’ murmurs Paul
Bourget, ‘breaks out in extremes of paradox, in laborious
mystification.... Among many readers, even the keenest, the fear of
being duped by this grand disdainer hinders full admiration.’[283] The
term has become a commonplace of criticism for Baudelaire; he is a
‘mystificateur’; everything for him is only a deception; he himself
neither feels nor believes anything he expresses in his poetry. It is
twaddle, and nothing else. A rhetorician of the Paul Bourget sort,
threshing straw, and curling scraps of paper, may believe that an
inwardly free man is capable of preserving artificially, all his life long,
the attitude of a galley-slave or a madman, well knowing he is only
acting a comedy. The expert knows that the choice of an attitude,
such as Baudelaire’s, is a proof in itself of deep-seated cerebral
disturbance.
Mental therapeutics has declared that persons who simulate
insanity with some perseverance, even with a rational object, as, for
example, in the case of certain criminals on their trial, in order to
escape punishment, are almost without exception really mad,[284]
although not to the degree they try to represent, just as the
inclination to accuse one’s self, or to boast, of imaginary crimes is a
recognised symptom of hysteria. The assertion of Baudelaire himself,
that his Satanism is only a studied rôle, has no sort of value
whatever. As is so frequently the case among the ‘higher
degenerates,’ he feels in his heart that his aberrations are morbid,
immoral and anti-social, and that all decent persons would despise
him or take pity on him, if they were convinced that he was really
what he boasts of being in his poems; he has recourse,
consequently, to the childish excuse that malefactors also often have
on their lips, viz., ‘that it was not meant seriously.’ Perhaps also
Baudelaire’s consciousness experienced a sincere horror of the
perverse instincts of his unconscious life, and he sought to make
himself believe that with his Satanism he was laughing at the
Philistines. But such a tardy palliation does not deceive the
psychologist, and is of no importance for his judgment.
 CHAPTER III.

DECADENTS AND ÆSTHETES.

As on the death of Alexander the Great his generals fell on the

conqueror’s empire, and each one seized a portion of land, so did
the imitators that Baudelaire numbered among his contemporaries
and the generation following—many even without waiting for his
madness and death—take possession of some one of his peculiarities
for literary exploitation. The school of Baudelaire reflects the
character of its master, strangely distorted; it has become in some
sort like a prism, which diffracts this light into its elementary rays.
His delusion of anxiety (anxiomania), and his predilection for
disease, death and putrefaction (necrophilia), have fallen, as we
have seen in the preceding book, to the lot of M. Maurice Rollinat.
M. Catulle Mendès has inherited his sexual aberrations and
lasciviousness, and besides all the newer French pornographists rely
upon them for proving the ‘artistic raison d’être’ of their depravity.
Jean Richepin, in La Chanson des Gueux, has spied in him, and
copied, his glorification of crime, and, further, in Les Blasphèmes,
has swelled Baudelaire’s imprecations and prayers to the devil to the
size of a fat volume, in a most dreary and wearisome manner. His
mysticism suckles the Symbolists, who, after his example, pretend to
perceive mysterious relations between colours and the sensations of
the other senses, with this difference, that they hear colours while
he smelt them; or, if you will, they have an eye in their ear, while he
saw with the nose. In Paul Verlaine we meet again his mixture of
sensuality and pietism. Swinburne has established an English depot
for his Sadism, compounded of lewdness and cruelty, for his
mysticism and for his pleasure in crime, and I greatly fear that
Giosué Carducci himself, otherwise so richly gifted and original, must
have turned his eyes towards the Litanies de Satan, when he wrote
his celebrated Ode à Satan.
The diabolism of Baudelaire has been specially cultivated by
Villiers de l’Isle-Adam and Barbey d’Aurevilly. These two men have,
in addition to the general family likeness of the degenerate, a series
of special features in common. Villiers and Barbey attributed to
themselves, as the deranged frequently do, a fabulous genealogy;
the former aspired to be a descendant of Count de l’Isle-Adam, the
celebrated Marshal and Grand-Master of Malta (who as such could
not be married, be it understood!), and he claimed one day, in a
letter addressed to the Queen of England, the surrender of Malta in
virtue of his right of heritage. Barbey annexed the aristocratic
surname of d’Aurevilly, and during the whole of his life spoke of his
noble race—which had no existence. Both made a theatrical display
of fanatical Catholicism, but revelled at the same time in studied
blasphemies against God.[285] Both delighted in eccentricities of
costume and modes of life, and Barbey had the habit of
graphomaniacs, which we know already, of writing his letters and his
literary works with different coloured inks. Villiers de l’Isle-Adam,
and still more Barbey d’Aurevilly, created a class of poetry to the
worship of the devil, which recalls the craziest depositions of witches
of the Middle Ages when put to the torture. Barbey especially may
be said to have gone, in this respect, to the limits of the imaginable.
His book Le Prêtre marié might be written by a contemporary of
witch-burners; but it is surpassed in its turn by Les Diaboliques, a
collection of crack-brained histories, where men and women wallow
in the most hideous license, continually invoking the devil, extolling
and serving him. All the invention in these ravings Barbey stole with
utter shamelessness from the books of the Marquis de Sade, without
a shade of shame; that which belongs properly to him is the
colouring of Catholic theology he gives to his profligacies. If I only
speak in general terms of the books mentioned here, without
entering into details, without summarizing the contents, or quoting
characteristic passages, it is because my demonstrations do not
require a plunge into this filth, and it is sufficient to point the finger
from afar at the sink of vice which testifies to Baudelaire’s influence
on his contemporaries.
Barbey, the imitator of Baudelaire, has himself found an imitator
in M. Joséphin Péladan, whose first novel, Vice suprême, occupies an
eminent place in the literature of diabolism. M. Péladan, who had not
yet promoted himself to the dignity of a first-class Assyrian king,
paraphrases in his book what he means by ‘vice suprême’: ‘Let us
deny Satan! Sorcery has always sorcerers ... superior minds which
have no need of conjuring-book, their thought being a page written
by hell for hell. Instead of the kid they have killed the good soul
within them, and are going to the Sabbath of the Word.’ [May the
reader not stumble over obscurities! What were Péladan if he were
not mystical?] ‘They assemble to profane and soil the idea. Existing
vice does not satisfy them; they invent, they rival each other in
seeking for, new evil, and if they find it they applaud each other.
Which is worst, the Sabbath-orgies of the body or those of the mind,
of criminal action or of perverted thought? To reason, justify, to
apotheosize evil, to establish its ritual, to show the excellence of it—
is this not worse than to commit it? To adore the demon, or love
evil, the abstract or the concrete term of one and the same fact.
There is blindness in the gratification of instinct, and madness in the
perpetration of misdeeds; but to conceive and theorize exacts a calm
operation of the mind which is the vice suprême.’[286]
Baudelaire has expressed this much more concisely in one single
verse: ‘La conscience dans le Mal’ (‘consciousness in evil’).[287]
The same Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, who has copied his diabolism
from Baudelaire, has appropriated the predilection of the latter for
the artificial, and has raised it to a funny pitch in his novel L’Ève
future. In this half-fantastic half-satirical and wholly mad book, he
imagines, as the next development of humanity, a state in which the
woman of flesh and blood will be abolished, and be replaced by a
machine to which he allows (which is a little contradictory) the shape
of a woman’s body, and which it will be sufficient with the help of a
screw so to dispose, in order to obtain from it at once whatever
happens to be desired: love, caprices, infidelity, devotion, every
perversion and every vice. This is in sooth even more artificial than
Baudelaire’s tin and glass landscape!
A later disciple, M. Joris Karl Huysmans, is more instructive than
all those imitators of Baudelaire who have only developed the one or
the other side of him. He has undertaken the toilsome task of
putting together, from all the isolated traits which are found
dispersed in Baudelaire’s poems and prose writings, a human figure,
and of presenting to us Baudelairism incarnate and living, thinking
and acting. The book in which he shows us his model ‘Decadent’ is
entitled A Rebours (‘Against the Grain’).
The word ‘décadent’ was borrowed by the French critics, in the
fifties, from the history of the declining Roman Empire, to
characterize the style of Théophile Gautier, and notably of
Baudelaire. At the present time the disciples of these two writers,
and of their previous imitators, claim it as a title of honour.
Otherwise than with the expressions ‘pre-Raphaelites’ and
‘Symbolists,’ we possess an exact explanation of the sense which
those who speak of ‘decadence’ and ‘decadents’ attach to these
words.
‘The style of decadence,’ says Théophile Gautier,[288] ‘... is
nothing else than art arrived at that extreme point of maturity
produced by those civilizations which are growing old with their
oblique suns[!]—a style that is ingenious, complicated, learned, full
of shades of meaning and research, always pushing further the limits
of language, borrowing from all the technical vocabularies, taking
colours from all palettes, notes from all keyboards, forcing itself to
express in thought that which is most ineffable, and in form the
vaguest and most fleeting contours; listening, that it may translate
them, to the subtle confidences of the neuropath, to the avowals of
ageing and depraved passion, and to the singular hallucinations of
the fixed idea verging on madness. This style of decadence is the
last effort of the Word (Verbe), called upon to express everything,
and pushed to the utmost extremity. We may remind ourselves, in
connection with it, of the language of the Later Roman Empire,
already mottled with the greenness of decomposition, and, as it
were, gamy (faisandée), and of the complicated refinements of the
Byzantine school, the last form of Greek art fallen into
deliquescence. Such is the inevitable and fatal idiom of peoples and
civilizations where factitious life has replaced the natural life, and
developed in man unknown wants. Besides, it is no easy matter, this
style despised of pedants, for it expresses new ideas with new forms
and words that have not yet been heard. In opposition to the classic
style, it admits of shading, and these shadows teem and swarm with
the larvæ of superstitions, the haggard phantoms of insomnia,
nocturnal terrors, remorse which starts and turns back at the
slightest noise, monstrous dreams stayed only by impotence,
obscure phantasies at which the daylight would stand amazed, and
all that the soul conceals of the dark, the unformed, and the vaguely
horrible, in its deepest and furthest recesses.’
The same ideas that Gautier approximately expresses in this
rigmarole, Baudelaire enumerates in these terms: ‘Does it not seem
to the reader, as it does to me, that the language of the later Latin
decadence—the departing sigh of a robust person already
transformed and prepared for the spiritual life—is singularly
appropriate to express passion as it has been understood and felt by
the modern poetic world? Mysticism is the opposite pole of that
magnet in which Catullus and his followers, brutal and purely
epidermic poets, have only recognised the pole of sensuality. In this
marvellous language, solecism and barbarism appear to me to
convey the forced negligences of a passion which forgets itself and
mocks at rules. Words, received in a new acceptation, display the
charming awkwardness of the Northern barbarian kneeling before
the Roman beauty. Even a play on words, when it enters into these
pedantic stammerings, does it not display the wild and bizarre grace
of infancy?’[289]
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