The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-02-09
SATIRE AND CYNICIsM.


air ceases to disgust, though not TO dehle and
enfeeble, those who breathe nothing else. II
is as though an epidemic should last so long
and should be so profound and unsparing, as
to sweep away every physician and to leave
no health anywhere. The satirist5 were liter
sry physicians of society. They die for want
of pure air, search for it and grasp for it as
they may in valley or on mountain top. The
dense, mephitic exhalations of civilization
intensely materialistic penetrate everywhere.
To appreciate satire men must be inhu-
enced by veneration for elements of no.
bility in human nature. They must detest
and despise avarice, corruption, venality, the
triumph of the base, the JOY of the hypocrite,
the tricks and the achievements of the per-
fdious, or their ears will be dull and their
hearts cold and callous either to the ridicule
or the denunciation Of such things. In
the absence of these conditions there is no
room either for satire or for poetry, since both
poetry and satire presume the possibility of
the venerable, the magnanimous, and the
heroic in life and character; of something
great and admirable in manhood, and of
something lovely and precious in womanhood,
wholly Independent of the material encourage
incident % personal fortune Hence, the poet
who dares to treat of grand spirits and lofty
exploits, is held in equal disfavor with the
satirist who may venture to hold up to con-
tempt ignoble life and unworthy success, in
spite of the meretricious splendors which may
surround them. "Poetry of the highest
ORDER" aptly remarks an English writer,
ideals with the noblest themes and appeals
to the highest intellects. But the high intel
lects of our day go in for practical work, and
have no time to study poetry. Shakespeare, in
our day, would have to write novels or leading
articles. The stage would have no room for
him. Men who think that 'love is 'spooni-
ness, and the acquisition of wealth the 'be
all and all of life and effort, are not likely to
admire poetry or even to know whatthe word
signifies" OF course, there would be no room
for genius so comprehensive and sympathetic
as that of Shakespeare on a stage where almost
nothing is popular except the baldest and
broadcast buffoonry, burlesque and carica-
ture
But as satire, the healthy product of moral
yigor, withers, a luxuriant growth of cynicism
springs up, and spreads until its baleful
shade is almost everywhere, and it threatens
to hide the heavens utterly from human
sight. And it must be confessed that the
base aspects of humanity which are brought
into sharp relief by the peculiarities of this
money-getting and success-worshiping age
are such as to look dreadfully like confrma-
ton Of all cynical philosophy, and justifca-
ton of all cynical utterance, from the time of
Diogenes to the period of La Rochefoucauld
and Voltaire. Look, for example, at the I'M
blushing immortality which is now ascendant
in American politics; and which-so blunted
has become the moral edge of public
opinions exhibited with an impunity
equal to its indecency. An eminent
functionary or a dominant party seems to
take it for granted that the people at large
regard nothing as shameful but poverty and
failure. The maxim of Talleyrand, "Rien
ne rellSSh CONNIE le success" is about the only
pr noiple which placemen and politicians
cherish with enthusiasm. If they have any
religion, it is concentrated in that. The per-
fdious tricks of a Stanton, and-alas, that
it should have to be said-the more signal
pe1fdy of q Grant, could only have been
inspired by the dogma that success will
sanctify the vilest expedient which may be
employed to obtain it, The congressional
usurpers whom these men serve while serving
their own ends, boldly throw themselves upon
this simple platform-to get power by all
means, and then by all means to keep it.
The disadvantage at which such a combina-
ton place honest and scrupulous men who
may oppose their designs is only too obvious.
They laugh to scorn the resistance of Presi-
dent who refuses to use any but constitl-
tional weapons, even though others, and
effective ones, too, should lie around him as
plentiful as blackberries. And what, indeed,
may Mr.. johnson, armed only with constitu-
tional distractions, do against desperate
partisans, led to the attack by general who
is prepared to translate from war into politics
the theory that the Almighty is always on
the side of the heaviest battalions? The
President, to be sure, demurs to
this species of strategy, and calls
upon public opinion for help. But
public opinion is disorganized. 1t has no
means of vindiCating itself except by revolu-
ton, unless the President should prove an
efficient representative of it Besides, the
bold, bad men who trample upon his preroga-
tives in their progress to despotic power,
assume that the mass of the people are so OBJ
fuse in their moral perceptions and so be-
sotted in langUid cynicism, that the only care
which they have, while contemplating the
struggle, is to know which side is likely to
win, and to be on the winning side. If they
are correct in this assumption, then the case
is, for the present quite hopeless. Then it
may be supposed that political corruption is
no more than special development of gene
raj depravity. Then the men and the women
of a society which has lost faith in everything
but the symbols of material riches and power,
may be expected to oscillate between pas
sionate effort and vicious Incidence, until the
whole social structure shall fall to pieces I'M