Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1892-01-24
LITERARY ALTERATION.

The reported assertion of DIR. Charcot,
| the great Partisan authority on mental
! diseases, that the. insanity OF De Maui
passant, the French novelist, is typical OF
his class and that call literary men must,
sooner or later, succumb to insanity" is a
| little startling at first. But as We consider
it more maturely in all its bearings, as
poets are presented which commend
themselves to our Judgment our moral
| sense.
1t is evident that on the lines of DR..
Charcot's theory, the manifestations of
mental alteration, generally known as lit
erary productions, are as varied as the
more material classes of insanity, which
range from delusions of imperial power
down to the imaginary impersonatiOn of a
teakettle. In De Maupassant's case, af-
ter working out for some time in the shape
of rather delirious novels, it took the more
active shape of personal destruction. In
some Others it exhausts itself in the very
! mild lunacy of poems and the delusion that
the public wants to read them. So on
through the entire field of literary effort
we see the varied forms from idiocy to
raving, as we are assured on the authority
of the greatest living alienist. DR.. Charcot
thus raises to the level of scientific discov-
cry the assertion of the Cheshire Cat TO
Alice, published in the Adventures in
Wonderland years before DR.. Charcot
endorsed it, that "We are all mad. You're
mad, I'm mad"
Nov the comfort of all this is that it
relieves from the task of trying to ac-
count for, on reasonable ground, the vaga-
ries, idiocies and lunacies that we are
constantly encountering in so-called liter
ature. 1t equally delivers us from the
task of refuting them by argument.
Literature being merely a premonitory
symptom of mental alienation, we need
not wonder that 4 school of writers per-
siSt in wallowing in social sewers and JUS
tify it as devotion to art With this theory
before them we need not wonder that pop
ular American Dovelists while confining
their realism to decorous dullness, insist on
setting up theoretical shrine of foreign
nastiness and worshiping at it. The bulk
Of printed idiocies perpetrated in the
name of political economy and social
science are disposed of in a breath. The
writing of 'ponderous tones to dogmati-
caIly settle the unknowable is fully ex-
planned: and we need puzzle our brains
over such manifestations of the universal
delusion no longer.
Dr. Charcot's dictum suggests another
development not without its attractive
aspects. An insane asylum for authors is
logical sequence. The durable and in
durable cases should he strictly separated
The former must Of course be restrained
from giving away to their errant tenden-
cies, with the beneficial result whether
they are cured or not of relieving the over
production in the making of books. The
incurable cases might as well be INDUCED
in their delusions The cottage system
would be the proper thing to prevent
them from infictfng mutual injuries in
their literary delirium, and that much
mooted authors cooperative publishing
house will be an appropriate annex to the
literary madhouse. Imagination can sup
ply all the necessary details, chief among
which would be strict supervision to see
that none of the rawlings of the Flaubert
and Saltus stamp ever got beyond the
walls of the asylum.
This isa merely superficial sketch, mere
raking of the surface, of the new and all
sufficient theory of literary production.
Its first and most salutary result should be
to warn literary aspirants that they must
cOnfine their vagaries within the limits
of innocuousness, in order to escape a
commission de tundticO inquirerDdo.