Chapter V. "Critical Criticism" as a Mystery-Monger, or "Critical Criticism" as Herr Szeliga (by Marx)
"Critical Criticism" in its Szeliga-Vishnu incarnation provides an apotheosis of the Mystères de Paris. Eugène Sue is proclaimed a "Critical Critic". Hearing this, he may exclaim like Molière's Bourgeois gentilhomme:
"Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien: et je vous suis le plus obligé du monde de m'avoir appris cela."(1)
Herr Szeliga prefaces his criticism with an aesthetic prologue. "The aesthetic prologue" gives the following explanation of the general meaning of the "Critical" epic and in particular of the
Mystères de Paris:
"The epic gives rise to the thought that the present in itself is nothing, and not only" (nothing and not only!) "the eternal boundary between past and future, but" (nothing, and not only, but) "but the gap that separates immortality from transience and must continually be filled.... Such is the general meaning of the Mystères de Paris."
The "aesthetic prologue" further asserts that "if the Critic wished he could also be a poet".
The whole of Herr Szeliga's criticism will prove that assertion. It is "poetic fiction" in every respect.
It is also a product of "free art" according to the definition of the latter given in the "aesthetic prologue" — it "invents something quite new, something that absolutely never existed before".
Finally, it is even a Critical epic, for it is "the gap that separates immortality" — Herr Szeliga's Critical Criticism---from "tran-sience"— Eugène Sue's novel — and "must continually be filled".
1) " The Mystery of Degeneracy in Civilisation" and " The Mystery of Rightlessness in the State"
Feuerbach, we know, conceived the Christian ideas of the Incarnation, the Trinity, Immortality, etc., as the mystery of the Incarnation, the mystery of the Trinity, the mystery of Immortality. Herr Szeliga conceives all present world conditions as mysteries. But whereas Feuerbach disclosed real mysteries, Herr Szeliga makes mysteries out of real trivialities. His art is not that of disclosing what is hidden, but of hiding what is disclosed.
Thus he proclaims as mysteries degeneracy (criminals) within civilisation and rightlessness and inequality in the state. This means that socialist literature, which has revealed these mysteries, is still a mystery to Herr Szeliga, or that he wants to convert the best-known findings of that literature into a private mystery of "Critical Criticism".
We therefore need not go more deeply into Herr Szeliga's discourse on these mysteries; we shall merely draw attention to a few of the most brilliant points.
"Before the law and the judge everything is equal, the high and the low, the rich and the poor. This proposition stands at the head of the credo of the state."
Of the state? The credo of most states starts, on the contrary, by making the high and the low, the rich and the poor unequal before the law.
"The gem-cutter Morel in his naive probity most clearly expresses the mystery" (the mystery of the antithesis of poor and rich) "when he says: If only the rich knew! If only the rich knew! The misfortune is that they do not know what poverty is."
Herr Szeliga does not know that Eugène Sue commits an anachronism out of courtesy to the French bourgeoisie when he puts the motto of the burghers of Louis XIV's time "Ah! si le roi le savait!"* in a modified form: "Ah! si le riche le savait!"b into the mouth of the working man Morel who lived at the time of the Charte vérité.[21] In England and France, at least, this naive relation between rich and poor has ceased to exist. There the scientific representatives of wealth, the economists, have spread a very detailed understanding of the physical and moral misery of poverty. They have made up for that by proving that misery must remain because the present state of things must remain. In their solicitude they have even calculated the proportions in which the poor must be reduced in number by deaths for the good of the rich and for their own welfare.
If Eugène Sue depicts the taverns, hide-outs and language of criminals, Herr Szeliga discloses the "mystery" that what the "author" wanted was not to depict that language or those hide-outs, but
"to teach us the mystery of the mainsprings of evil, etc." "It is precisely in the most crowded places ... that criminals feel at home."
What would a natural scientist say if one were to prove to him that the bee's cell does not interest him as a bee's cell, that it has no mystery for one who has not studied it, because the bee "feels at home precisely" in the open air and on the flower? The hide-outs of the criminals and their language reflect the character of the criminal, they are part of his existence, their description is part of his description just as the description of the petite maison is part of the description of the femme galante.
For Parisians in general and even for the Paris police the hide-outs of criminals are such a "mystery" that at this very moment broad light streets are being laid out in the Cité to give the police access to them.
Finally, Eugène Sue himself states that in the descriptions mentioned above he was counting "stir la curiosité craintive"(1) of his readers. M. Eugène Sue has counted on the timid curiosity of his readers in all his novels. It is sufficient to recall Atar Gull, Salamandre, Plick and Plock, etc.
Endnotes
[21] The reference is to the Charte constitutionnelle which was adopted in France after the bourgeois revolution of 1830 and was the basic law of the July monarchy. In its fundamental principles the Charte constitutionnelle reproduced the constitutional charter of 1814, but the preamble of the 1814 charter, which spoke of the constitution being granted ("octroyée")by the king, was omitted and the rights of the upper and lower chambers were extended at the expense of certain royal prerogatives. According to the new constitution the king was considered only as the head of the executive authority and was deprived of the right to abrogate or suspend laws. The expression "Charte vérité" is an ironical allusion to the concluding words of Louis Philippe's proclamation of July 31, 1830: "henceforth the charter shall be the truth."