The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1903-05-10
DEGENERATION OF The DRAMA.
NORDAU,S NEW POINT or ATTACK
THE FRENCH STAGE.
His --latest Volume Both Bulky and III.
Digested-Balzac Net . Reaiist-stuti-
ieS N Jealousy and . Few Good
StsrleS--One ON Nsrtiau Himself.

His Latest Volume Both Bulky and ~.
Digest ed-BAizac Net . Realist-stut-
ies n Jealousy and . Few Good
stssiss--One on Nsrtiau Himself
That atom of humanity named Simon
Sidfeld, but known a. Max Nordau. has
Just dropped another volume Of essayr.
witch In the French translation Is called
-vus du Dehors." Like all of the critica
controversial work OF Nordau, this collec.
ton Is very EXTERNAL very much from
the outside. An arrant believer in the
heshpots of life, the pugnacious little
doctor sets up for profound psychologist.
He digs, he delves, into the novels and
poems Of his contemporaries, and then, after
weighing them in the scales OF laboratory,
he publishes the results II il difficult to
place his criticisms--they are neither physi-
ology nor fiction. You read Of poet whose
intellectual scheme suggests novelty: sud-
denly the shape Of his ears II adduced
as evidence OF degeneration. He Is faun;
his poetry is atavistic deals in absurd
images of experiences undergone by can
nibal ancestor. His method il very con-
fustng.
Or . play is discussed with considerable
skin-Nordau IL a clever journalist
and We sail through three or four acts
whom. bang!-the past OF the unfortunate
author b Rugged In to prove that certain
situation is but q memory OF his aunt's
fondness for young fellows In the long
ago. 1t is quite personal criticism. Of the
Sordau kind, but is 1t art, Macmillan?
Those who had the courage to wade
through the bulky volume pompously
lohAll>d snA~opnroftorr found
nous, though ill-digested, mass Of facts.
The writer had III comprehended his
subjects, and to make them 8t his iron bed Of
theory Of universal degeneration the
unfortunate artists. composers, poets.
philosophers and romancers were tortured
and stretched to one implacable length.
II they didn't f1t it, woe betide them-their
hair was pulled up by the roots. II too long,
Surgeon Nordau calmly sawed of their
head or their feet-it didn't matter which.
depending. as it did. on his position at the
operating table.
After the first indignation wore away,
the colossal impudence Of the fake pene-
trated the brains Of the fooled ones. and
since then Nordau has not been taken
seriously. He has wolf at his door. a
ph anton wolf that growls and banks when
ever he puts forth q new book. II is his
Degeneration Now this Ia hardly fair
to a man Of brains, who writes in a lively.
entertaining manner, who often has some
thing to say. We knew that. carried away
by the brilliant. sophistical theories Of
Ceeare Lombroso. his disciple Nordau saw
in every man OF talent criminal. in every
man Of genius a maniac. His Inferno Of
genius had as many circles as Dantes.
II held divisions for the pseudo genius.
the Mattoid. and it boasted sulphurous
CUFFS wherein such excellent men az Ibsen,
Tolstoy. Nietzsche. lola, Richard Wagner.
Daudelaire. Verlaine. Maeterlinck and many
other nineteenth century geniuses. more or
less known. seethed and suffered for daring
TO BE- original. 1t was all too exact, too
logical. The very standards in this case,
anthropometrio measurements 4 Ia Lom-
broso Whose real name is LEVY, II applied
to Beethoven. Michael Angelo. Dante or
Goethe would disclose insanity Of some
sort. Iombroso did diagnose Dantc's case
and found pronounced symptoms of marked
epilepsy, mania OF persecution and a
s,lherer from visions. Milton might be
dragged in, and Homer, on this basis.
However, when all symphonic fail these
new literary man-house doctors fall back
upon epilepsy. dear old epilepsy, disease Of
genius. All the big guns Of art. literature
science. warfare, were epileptoids, from
Cesar to Flaubert. Handel, Napoleon
Ronaparte. Swift. Lenau. Dostoievsky.
Mahomet and many others threw beautiful
parti-colored Ats for the good Of posterity.
Schiller loved the smell Of decaying apples
-somethtng In this. said the shifting Lom-
brosoi And Schopenhauer isn't his pess-
ism synptomatic9 Ha! Let us see. Yes,
he quArrelled with his mother when young,
was darkly disrespectful to Goethe-per-
haps he had . nice Hamlet-like reason
was afraid OF the cholera and detested
bores. Symptoms. dangerous symphonic,
all of them but II he hadn't written
The World as viii and Representation"
Schopsnhauer's habits would have been set
down TO harmless eocentricities. Even
Michael Angelo has no longer a moral leg
10 stand upon. See Lombroso in r. Parle-
sreco's life.
Well, after a slaughter Of the innocente,
magnificent In It's extent and variety, Nor
dau sat down to serious study OF the men
No had attached. Tho result Is insthis new
book. with the addition OF series of studies
On the modern French stage. 1t Ia the latter
that piques our attention.
After proving TO his own satisfaction
that Balzso was not realist. that Guy de
Maupassant was an erotomani &C, that
Anatole France has great talent. Monsieur
Max startles us with favorable opinions
on the work Of Maurice Barrels Now.
Barres had not written 1Les Deracines"
when he 6rst attracted the mslevolent
curiosity OF Nordau, and his novels were
sufficiently original and filed with thought
stuff to merit some consideration. Not
70 for Max. Barrels was furiouay assaulted
in Degeneration a. an anarchist. an
immoralist, and what not. Since then he
seems to have improved somewhat. Then
We are treated to three studies Of jealousy,
superficial in character 10 which are
jumbled the names Of Shakespeare, Anatole
France and Lucien Muhlfeld. Why not
Nordaus also! He has suffered in his
tne frpm the worst kind Of Jealousy
jeAlousy OF other mems sifts Othello,
II need hardly be said. IL in our authors
eyes creature Of the bull type, and bull
at the mating period Of the year. Furious.
be lowers his horns and charges at every
ether male Of his species that approaches
~ sscred Enclosure. But this Is a physio.
ioGfoal detail not a rayoholosical Shsk>~