The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-01-17
PAGAN RENAISSANCE.

and pagan philosophy, has been noted by
more than one critic, and indications of the
fact become more and more unequivocal with
| the annual installment of new books COM
mended to the acceptance of the reading
public. As a rule, attended with but few ex-
captions, it may be taken that poets and
notwithstanding those terms to include all
who invent song, tale and romance for popu-
lar Northumberland unconsciously the
distinguishing moral and intellectual traits of
their age. In the dense centers of civiliza-
ton the daily press, after its fashion, per-
forms the same unconscious Office, throwing
off day after day, by the myriad, but in forms
as fragmentary and confused as they are
countless, psychological photographs of the
time. The picture is more rounded aud
compre hensible in current poetry and fiction.
What we mean by the pagan spirit in litera-
ture is the assertion, more or less direct, of
the supreme interest and importance of the
present life, and the denial, more or less ex-
plicit, of the theological creed which incul-
Gates modification of the flesh and the subor-
dination of all desires, joys, labors and
duties comprised in this world to the hope of
perfection of happiness in the next In this
sense, Shelley and Keats were pagan poets,
and Algernon Swinburne and William Morris,
through whose poems run rich, blood-red and
blood-warm traces of Hellenism. are pagan
poets In this sense Charles Dickens and Vic
tor Hugo, though so unlike in their literary
methods, are pagan novelists and to the
same list may be added "Ouida," whose
latest work, Tricotrin," in spite of its artis-
| tic faults, and they are many, and of a cores
! ponding amount of unfavorable criticism, has
been read, we suspect, with more fervor of ap-
probation than any of her previous produc-
tions. Is this due to the deep subsurrus of
| paganism, heard like dim but fateful voices
of Greek chorus, through all the varying
moods and incidents of the story? We will
not positively SO affirm, but We do believe
that the pagan quality referred to helps at
| least to explain the interest of the book.
The hero in this case, Tricotrin, is an i'm
possible composite. He is gypsy in habits,
an artist in tastes poet in fancy, savant In
knowledge; a democrat in politics though an
aristocrat by birth saint in morals though
| intensely human and supremely virile in APP
peties and passions. He is represented as
having ga grand Homeric head, and as liv-
ing and talking as though his organization
contained, in one blended quintessence, DID,
genes and Socrates, Pythagorus and Epicurus,
Anacreon end Theocritus. His humanity
! embraces the whole brute creation in the cir
! Gle of a common brotherhood. His religion,
is he can be said to have any, may be summed
up in Coleridges description of righteous
prayer:
'He prsyeth well who lovsth well
| All things, both great and small
For the dear God who loveth US,
He made, and loveth all"
For the rest, his whole history Is a protest
against the conventions and orthodoxies Of
existing society. Property in absolute right
he regards as robbery. If all would work
moderately for subsistence, plenty and COM
fort would be general, and none would have
to work excessively under the spur and pinch
of poverty. Such is one of his sociological
| maxims. He has no use for the sacerdotal
class except so far as they may devote them
selves to good works with an eye single to the
advancement Of the terrestrial happiness of
their fellow creatures. Government, for the
most part, he considers as a conspiracy, by
which few continue, under many glozing dis
guises and subterfuges, to prey upon the lives
and substance of the many Marriage in
which reciprocal love and mutual devotion do
not confirm the legal bondhe looks upon, if it
be voluntary on the woman's port, as the
most infamous form of prostitution. Yet,
though his ethics and relig zion are SO much
bound up with the material enjoyments and
natural ccmpensations of this world, he him.
self is capable of the exalted spirituality of
loving passionately and purely, and to the
EXTREMIST point of selfsacrifce, beautiful
but unworthy creature from whom he expects,
not the love of mistress, but the ingratitude
of the superlatively selfish adventuress.>
1t is needless to Try to reduce this complex
character to congloity and symmetry. Our
purpose is simply to illustrate the tendency
of the work towards some underlined and
mystical reform which should carry with it
the exaltation of the material and sensuous,
of the thoughts, passions, delights of tempo
raj life in the terrestrial sphere-of the whole
body of nature, in short-to plane of ideal
beauty and felicity The inspiring dream, in
a word, of this pagan renaissance which is
cropping out in modern literature, would seem
to be the creation of an earthly paradise
Running on or under the surface of all the
productions of the school in question, is a
pepsive or passionate suggestion of the brew
| isy of life and of the inestimable preciousness
of its opportunities. There is an ever pres
emit sense of death but only our present to
quicken the desire for beauty, and the long
ing to grasp the utmost possibilities of life on
the hither side of that bourne from which no
mortal traveller has returned to tell of life,
love, labor, achievement beyond We are not
sure that the sentiment in question ought to
be confounded with what is commonly known
as infdelity. Ii it makes much of ter
restrial things. it does so with the aspiration
of translatng the earth itself into
conditions of celestial beatitude. If it is too