Stevenson’s markings in Bourget’s Sensations d’Italie

Many thanks to on-site research by Hilary Beattie in the Fales Library in New York

In December 1891, Stevenson wrote to Colvin, ‘I have gone crazy over Bourget’s Sensations d’Italie (L7, 205). In a former post, his marked copy not then being accessible, I tried to guess what aspects could have made Stevenson so enthusiastic. Now Hilary Beattie has kindly visited the Fales Library in New York and listed all Stevenson’s marking in it.

From this listing, I have added annotations in green to the earlier post, indicating which of the passages that I identified were marked by him. So how did I do? Of the sixteen passages, 7 were marked, 9 not marked, but of these nine, four were similar to other marked passages. Of one long passage (2.1 in the previous post) I said, ‘I hereby predict that when the volume in the Fales Library can be consulted again, the pages containing the story of Manfred’s flight (SdI, 179–82) will be approvingly marked in Stevenson’s hand.’ This, I am glad to say, was one of the marked passages.

That a number of passages in the previous post were not marked does not mean they did not appeal: Stevenson may not have had a pencil in his hand as he was reading them, and certainly his annotating mood was not constant: markings are grouped in only a few of the twenty-six chapters: V–VI, XII–XV, and XVII–XIX.

Paul Bourget

Typically Stevenson made a vertical mark in the margin, occasionally doubled, and on one occasion he has underlined a sentence (these more emphatic markings are printed below in italics). Here follows a listing of all the marked passages with summaries and quoted passages, not in page order but grouped thematically as in the previous post. The page.line numbers are from Sensations d’Italie (Paris: Lemerre, 1891) while the quotations are from the English translation (New York: Cassell, 1892). Both of these are available on archive.org.

Given the subject matter, it is unsurprising that a large number of the markings are of passages dealing with aesthetics (among which, Bourget’s striking thesis that the meaning of a work of art changes and is not determined by its author, 129.12–132.4), but there are also interesting markings on questions of literary style, on how early works can appeal directly to modern sensibilities, and on the fate of artists who died in poverty.

1. Affinities with Montaigne

The striking metaphor of the ropemaker walking backwards (129–30) is part of a longer marked passage (129.12–132.4) about the meaning of a work of art not being fixed by the author (see below).

2. Affinities with Stevenson’s style and his thoughts on literary style

36.7–11: Monluc’s Commentaries describe the siege of Siena ‘in a style so bare and dry that the virile energy of the language resembles […] the silhouette of a fortress of the country.’ Books like this reveal the passions of such actions.

155.19–156.7: [Bourget praises lines by Carducci for their simplicity and Latin grandeur] Thanks to the ‘Roman vigor’ of the words, the ‘direct force’ of the image, and the ‘flowing and concise’ sentences, this poetry has ‘the charm of precision which is the distinctive characteristic of the genius of the Romans. It is at once sober and grand. It resembles, in some sort, an inscription cut on stone, and yet it is neither stiff nor conventional.’ This Latin ‘taste’ includes many ‘intellectual virtues’, the supreme virtues, greater than virtues that are more touching.

180.4–182. 20: Bourget’s story (in part using the words of the chronicler Jamsilla) of how the last Hohenstaufen Manfred sought refuge in Lucera ‘among his father’s Saracens’. Jamsilla narrates with ‘a rare mixture of strength and simplicity […] Tacitus only has passages equal to it, short, but which remain in the memory’. The chronicler describes [the house used for an overnight stay] in a few words of sober coloring which make a picture not to be forgotten, as “dimly white in the obscurity of the night.’ Arrived under the walls [Manfred] was obliged to make himself known — an incident so romantic as to seem taken from a romance — by his beautiful fair hair.’

3. Psychological concerns

Stevenson’s interest in the survival of primitive elements in the psyche is shown by his markings of passages in Bourget.

196.18–197.8: Sainte-Beuve was right, the ancient gods have never quite abandoned the earth. The ‘secret permanence of the old Olympians’ can be seen in these churches, where ‘the altar fronts are fragments of sarcophagi still adorned with pagan sculptures’ showing ‘the invincible need of the image, of the myth rendered palpable and concrete, of the mystic sensualism which is also a religion, but an unsatisfying and already impure religion.’

A passage on the cohabitation of the civilized and the savage is also found in 39.20–41.24 (see below).

4. Thoughts on art and aesthetics

37.14–38.17: Revisiting a familiar city you ‘forget entirely the Guide and to go at your pleasure to the rendezvous of beauty’; the works I like to revisit in Siena ‘affect me with that peculiar thrill which is no more to be reasoned about than love. Elsewhere we judge, we criticise; we analyze; here we feel.’

In the following marked passage the words given here in italics correspond to a double marginal line and concern the mixture of the civilized and the savage:

39.20–41.24: In Pintoricchio’s frescoes in the Library of Siena possess ‘what may be called the Shakespearean charm; so strongly impregnated with it are the historical dramas and romantic comedies of the great English poet. It is luxuriance, but refined luxuriance, elegance united to naturalness; something at once very civilized, very subtle, and at the same time a little savage. In them are to be found all the poetry of the Renaissance’ . ‘The painters of this divine school of Umbria had the inestimable gift possessed by Virgil, of uniting grace with pathos, of giving expression to that luxury of tears, that dreamy languor, tinged with melancholy — […] the melancholy of a being who is sad only because he exists, a dreaminess almost like that of the plant, so much does it resemble the tender and helpless resignation of the motionless flowers.’

The first part of the following marked passage seems to show interest in homosexuality at a time, before the Wilde trials, when it was not clearly defined or identified as defining a personality. The second part claims that a sympathetic interpretation tells us of the artist’s inner life, while his external acts give no clue to the ‘world of thoughts’ and ‘hidden motives’.

45.11–46–end: ‘The infamous appellation’ of the painter Sodoma seems unfounded and his disrepute probably derives from ‘an odd taste in dress, excessively shy manners, the pride of genius, and, perhaps, the dangerous habit of calumniating himself’ Perhaps, like Shakespeare he was ‘an impassioned friend’, which led to ‘unworthy accusations’. Did his reputation derive from ‘the somewhat sickly refinement of his art’?
For me ‘a certain sort of talent […] ‘a sympathetic interpretation of feeling’ (not facility of execution, nor ability with effects) ‘has always […] a close resemblance to the moral nature of the individual […] The facts of a man’s life are so little significant of his real nature!’ [underlined] ‘Do others, even, ever thoroughly understand our actions, and if they understand them are they able to unravel their hidden motives? Do we confide to others the world of thoughts that has stirred within us since we have come into existence […]? A sympathetic interpretation tells us of the artist’s moral nature, to his inner life—his external acts give no clue to the ‘world of thoughts’ and ‘hidden motives’ within.

49.1–14: I went to see two paintings in the Academy ‘Perhaps because of ‘a personal taste for a symbolism more vague, less clearly defined’.

The following long passage deals with contrasting styles and religious ideals; then it contrasts artists who depict the unidealized object with no indication of the artist’s feelings and those who bare their own soul. The latter have charm and Bourget prefers them.

116.5–121.end: Signorelli’s fresco-cycle in Orvieto cathedral. Fra Angelico’s ‘loving saviour’ contrasts with Signorelli’s ‘atrocious punishments represented on the spacious wall below. Never have the two aspects of the religious ideal — that of infinite mercy and that of implacable justice — been contrasted as they are on this ceiling and on this wall.’ In Signorelli’s Resurrection of the Dead a group of three recognize each other: ‘a touch of human pity, of merciful tenderness in the cruel painter. It is like the episode of Francesca among the horrors of the Divina Commedia, and by the force of contrast this gleam of pitying tenderness touches us all the more.’ This and his Last Judgement ‘dominate me and hold me enthralled. […] I feel that I am in the presence of two masterpieces of realism; that is to say, that art that leaves nothing to the imagination and which reproduces the object without idealizing it. […] He has copied this spectacle without infusing into it the faintest touch of personal feeling. His soul is not there nor his heart, but only his eye and his hand. […] There is no longer any need to inquire whether the man was sincere or not, what were the relations between his genius and his life, what moral crisis he passed through. The object is there, like something which exists in itself and by itself.’ But ‘this art, whose execution is so skillful, so conscientious, and so concise, is wanting in charm. This word, so vague in its signification, has been hackneyed by use, but it is the only one which expresses the magic of certain other works, shadowy, incomplete, of a style almost weak compared with the works of a Signorelli; of a softness bordering on mannerism, but by which one feels one’s self loved as by a person, and which one loves in the same way. There are two classes of artists who have always shared between them the dominion of the world: those who depict objects, effacing themselves altogether; and those whose works serve chiefly as a pretext to lay bare their own hearts. It is in vain that I admire the former with my whole strength and tell myself that they will never deceive me, while the sincerity of the others is often doubtful and they may always be suspected of posing — my sympathies go with the latter, it is with them I like to be’ [double marginal line]

The following passage was probably marked because of its bold idea that the meaning of a work of art is not determined by its author. This seems to anticipate Borges’ ‘Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote’ (1941), which suggests that the meaning of a work of literature depends on reader-response and the context of the work; and to anticipate Barthes’ idea of ‘the death of the author’(1967) that the author is not the ultimate authority on the text’s meaning.

129.12–132.4: the Umbrian painters touch our hearts so profoundly, but ‘they hardly suspected […] that they would one day be admired by the children of the most positive of ages.’ But did the author of the Imitation ‘suspect that passionate admirers of Adolphe, of Liaisons Dangereuses, and Rouge et Noir would find his pious manual as interesting a companion for their sleepless hours as the other three? [double marginal line]. ‘In every work of art […] there is […] a secret virtuality unsuspected by the creator of the work. Have you ever seen a ropemaker at his work, walking backward without looking where he is going? We are all, great and small, working like him, half consciously, half blindly, and above all we do not know what purpose our work will serve when it is finished. […] [A] book […] is not entirely the same a hundred years after it has been written. The words are unchanged, but do they preserve exactly the same signification? […] What reader of intellectual tastes does not understand that for a man of the seventeenth century Racine’s poetry was not what it has become for us? It will be answered: The work is the same, the change has taken place in yourself. This is a plausible explanation, but it will not bear analysis. It seems, in fact, as if we added something to the work by our manner of interpreting it in accordance with our own spiritual needs. In reality, what we seem to add to it it suggests to us. It had this possibility in it. […] [I]n the case of works which have remained truly living our modern sentiment has the right to make itself heard, however, it may differ from the conscious intention of the authors of those works.’

133.1–5: I remember the surprise mingled with emotion which I experienced on my first visit to […] that palace of Perugia […] to remark that certain refinements of our modern art are almost anticipated in them.’

134.1–end: Literature and all the arts ‘express […] shades of human feeling. […] The all-important question […] is always and everywhere to have soul. It is because the painters of the Umbrian school had so much soul that their works seem to us so new, so fresh, after so many years.’

The following criticizes over-reliance on environmental determinism (such as that of Taine):

156.21–157.7: Deterministic criticism does not give us an adequate explanation of genius, we cannot identify the necessary conditions for a work of art—much depends on ‘the personal factor’.

Yet Stevenson has a wavering view of realism and, like Bourget, also respected Taine:

218.15–18: ‘my beloved master Taine’

5. The fate of the artist

42.23–43.end: Pintoricchio—‘Unhappy genius!’—died in suffering after completing the frescoes.

149.21–151.10: Visit to the home where ‘the great pessimist writer’, Giacomo Leopardi, lived and wrote. The family have made the palace in which he lived a museum consecrated to his memory. In contrast, the house of ‘our beloved Balzac’ has been demolished and ‘a mean little house’ built in its place.

162.12–165.end: The Library of Leopardi’s house contains all his manuscripts—which made me think with bitterness of the dispersion of Balzac’s manuscripts eleven years ago with no effort by state or family to conserve them.’ It was Leopardi’s sister who gathered the manuscripts: ‘There is in every human being who has at any time produced a work of beauty, a something sacred which justifies and commands this posthumous devotion.’ My visit ended with ‘the sweet reflection that Love, whatever may be said, is stronger than Death.’  The poet still seems present in the old palace and you seem to hear his voice singing the verses of his ‘Ricordanze’: “Alas, Nerine, […] for thee never again — will spring return, never will love return again.”’

6. Characters with contrasting or complex personalities

224.6–-13: ‘I saw one of the prisoners [In Brindisi prison], an old man, affectionately petting a kitten lying beside a cat on the edge of the terrace. His black eyes and pallid lips smiled at times good-naturedly. Apparently the animals are accustomed to this old man, for the cat comes of her own accord to rub her head against his hand, on which the veins stand out like cords.’

See also 39.20–41.24 (above): the combination of the civilized and what is a little savage in Pintoricchio’s frescoes.

7. Miscellaneaous markings

147.2–5: ‘and of these tourists, how few know what the hero of divine love [St. Francis] really was who was born and died on this hill.’

152.10–15: The sculpture of the Madonna at Loreto is ‘imprisoned’ in jewels but has a sweet peaceful expression. Did Leopardi, who longed for oblivion, come here from nearby Recanati [and envy, like me, the simple faith of those praying there]?