3) " The Mystery of Educated Society"
After leading us through the lowest strata of society, for example through the criminals' taverns, Eugène Sue transports us to "haute volée",(1) to a ball in the Quartier Saint-Germain.
This transition Herr Szeliga construes as follows:
"Mystery tries to evade examination by a ... twist: so far it appeared as the absolutely enigmatic, elusive and negative, in contrast to the true, real and positive; now it withdraws into the latter as its invisible content. But by doing so it gives up the unconditional possibility of becoming known."
"Mystery" which has so far appeared in contrast to the "true", the "real", the "positive", that is, to law and education, "now withdraws into the latter", that is, into the realm of education. It is certainly a mystère for Paris, if not of Paris, that "haute volée" is the exclusive realm of education. Herr Szeliga does not pass from the mysteries of the criminal world to those of aristocratic society; instead, "Mystery" becomes the "invisible content" of educated society, its real essence. It is "not a new twist" of Herr Szeliga's designed to enable him to proceed to further examination; "Mystery" itself takes this "new twist" in order to escape examination.
Before really following Eugène Sue where his heart leads him — to an aristocratic ball, Herr Szeliga resorts to the hypocritical twists of speculation which makes a priori constructions.
"One can naturally foresee what a solid shell 'Mystery' will choose to hide in; it seems, in fact, that it is of insuperable impenetrability ... that ... hence it may be expected that in general ... nevertheless a new attempt to pick out the kernel is here indispensable."
Enough. Herr Szeliga has gone so far that the
"metaphysical subject, Mystery, now steps forward, light, self-confident and jaunty".
In order now to change aristocratic society into a "mystery", Herr Szeliga gives us a few considerations on "education". He presumes aristocratic society to have all sorts of qualities that no man would look for in it, in order later to find the "mystery" that it does not possess those qualities. Then he presents this discovery as the "mystery" of educated society. Herr Szeliga wonders, for example, whether "general reason" (does he mean speculative logic?) constitutes the content of its "drawing-room talk", whether "the rhythm and measure of love alone makes" it a "harmonious whole", whether "what we call general education is the form of the general, the eternal, the ideal", i.e., whether what we call education is a metaphysical illusion. It is not difficult for Herr Szeliga to prophesy a priori in answer to his questions:
"It is to be expected, however ... that the answer will be in the negative."
In Eugène Sue's novel, the transition from the low world to the aristocratic world is a normal transition for a novel. The disguises of Rudolph, Prince of Geroldstein, give him entry into the lower strata of society as his title gives him access to the highest circles. On his way to the aristocratic ball he is by no means engrossed in the contrasts of contemporary life; it is the contrasts of his own disguises that he finds piquant. He informs his obedient companions how extraordinarily interesting he finds himself in the various situations.
marchand offrant un verre de cassis à Madame Pipelet, et ce soir ... un des privilégiés par la grâce de dieu, qui régnent sur ce monde." (2)
When Critical Criticism is ushered into the ball-room, it sings:
Sense and reason forsake me near, In the midst of the potentates here! (3)
It pours forth in dithyrambs as follows:
"Here magic brings the brilliance of the sun at night, the verdure of spring and the splendour of summer in winter. We immediately feel in a mood to believe in the miracle of the divine presence in the breast of man, especially when beauty and grace uphold the conviction that we are in the immediate proximity of ideals." (!!!)
Inexperienced, credulous Critical country parsonl Only your Critical ingenuousness can be raised by an elegant Parisian ball-room "to a mood" in which you believe in "the miracle of* the divine presence in the breast of man", and see in Parisian lionesses "immediate ideals" and angels corporeal!
In his unctuous naivety the Critical parson listens to the two "most beautiful among the beautiful", Clémence d'Harville and Countess Sarah MacGregor. One can guess what he wishes to "hear" from them:
"In what way we can be the blessing of beloved children and the 'fullness of happiness of a husband"!... "We hark ... we wonder ... we do not trust our ears."
We secretly feel a malicious pleasure when the listening parson is disappointed. The ladies converse neither about "blessing", nor "fullness", nor "general reason", but about "an infidelity of Madame d'Harville to her husband".
We get the following naive revelation about one of the ladies, Countess MacGregor:
She was "enterprising enough to become mother to a child as the result of a secret marriage".
Unpleasantly affected by the enterprising spirit of the Countess, Herr Szeliga has sharp words for her:
"We find that all the strivings of the Countess are for her personal, selfish advantage."
Indeed, he expects nothing good from the attainment of her purpose — marriage to the Prince of Geroldstein:
"concerning which we can by no means expect that she will avail herself of it for the happiness of the Prince of Geroldstein's subjects."
The puritan ends his admonitory sermon with "profound earnestness":
"Sarah" (the enterprising lady), "incidentally, is hardly an exception in this brilliant circle, although she is one of its summits."
Incidentally, hardly! Although! And is not the "summit" of a circle an exception?
Here is what we learn about the character of two other ideals, the Marquise d'Harville and the Duchess of Lucenay:
They '"lack satisfaction of the heart'. They have not found in marriage the object of love, so they seek it outside marriage. In marriage, love has remained a mystery for them, and the imperative urge of the heart drives them to unravel this mystery. So they give themselves up to secret love. These 'victims' of 'loveless marriage' are 'driven against their will to debase love to something external, to a so-called affair, and take the romantic, the secrecy, for the internal, the vivifying, the essential element of love'".
The merit of this dialectical reasoning is to be assessed all the higher as it is of more general application.
He, for example, who is not allowed to drink at home and yet feels the need to drink looks for the "object" of drinking "outside" the house, and "so" takes to secret drinking. Indeed, he will be driven to consider secrecy an essential ingredient of drinking, although he will not debase drink to a mere "external" indifferent thing, any more than those ladies did with love. For, according to
Herr Szeliga himself, it is not love, but marriage without love, that they debase to what it really is, to something external, to a so-called affair.
Herr Szeliga goes on to ask: "What is the 'mystery' of love?" We have just had the speculative construction that "mystery" is the "essence" of this kind of love. How is it that we now come to be looking for the mystery of the mystery, the essence of the essence?
"Not the shady paths in the thickets," declaims the parson, "not the natural semi-obscurity of moonlight night nor the artificial semi-obscurity of costly curtains and draperies; not the soft and enrapturing notes of the harps and the organs, not the attraction of what is forbidden...."
Curtains and draperies! Soft and enrapturing notes! Even the organl Let the reverend parson stop thinking of church] Who would bring an organ to a love tryst?
"All this" (curtains, draperies and organs) "is only the mysterious." And is not the mysterious the "mystery" of mysterious love? By no means:
"The mysterious in it is what excites, what intoxicates, what enraptures, the power of sensuality."
In the "soft and enrapturing" notes, the parson already had what enraptures. Had he brought turtle soup and champagne to his love tryst instead of curtains and organs, the "exciting and intoxicating" would have been present too.
"It is true we do not like to admit," the reverend gentleman argues, "the power of sensuality; but it has such tremendous power over us only because we cast it out of us and will not recognise it as our own nature, which we should then be in a position to dominate if it tried to assert itself at the expense of reason, of true love and of will-power."
The parson advises us, after the fashion of speculative theology, to recognise sensuality as our own nature, in order afterwards to be able to dominate it, i.e., to retract recognition of it. True, he wishes to dominate it only when it tries to assert itself at the expense of Reason — will-power and love as opposed to sensuality are only the will-power and love of Reason. The unspeculative Christian also recognises sensuality as long as it does not assert itself at the expense of true reason, i.e., of faith, of true love, i.e., of love of God, of true will-power, i.e., of will in Christ.
The parson immediately betrays his real meaning when he continues:
"If then love ceases to be the essential element of marriage and of morality in general, sensuality becomes the mystery of love, of morality, of educated society— sensuality both in its narrow meaning, in which it is a trembling in the nerves and a burning stream in the veins, and in the broader meaning, in which it is elevated to a semblance of spiritual power, to lust for power, ambition, craving for glory.... Countess MacGregor represents" the latter meaning "of sensuality as the mystery of educated society."
The parson hits the nail on the head. To overcome sensuality he must first of all overcome the nerve currents and the quick circulation of the blood.— Herr Szeliga believes in the "narrow" meaning that greater warmth in the body comes from the heat of the blood in the veins; he does not know that warm-blooded animals are so called because the temperature of their blood, apart from slight modifications, always remains at a constant level. — As soon as there is no more nerve current and the blood in the veins is no longer hot, the sinful body, this seat of sensual lust, becomes a corpse and the souls can converse unhindered about "general reason", "true love", and "pure morals". The parson debases sensuality to such an extent that he abolishes the very elements of sensual love which inspire it — the rapid circulation of the blood, which proves that man does not love by insensitive phlegm; the nerve currents which connect the organ that is the main seat of sensuality with the brain. He reduces true sensual love to the mechanical secretio seminis and lisps with a notorious German theologian:
"Not for the sake of sensual love, not for the lust of the flesh, but because the Lord said: Increase and multiply."
Let us now compare the speculative construction with Eugène Sue's novel. It is not sensuality which is presented as the secret of love, but mysteries, adventures, obstacles, fears, dangers, and especially the attraction of what is forbidden.
"Pourquoi," says Eugène Sue, "beaucoup de femmes prennent-elles pourtant des hommes qui ne valent pas leurs maris? Parce que le plus grand charme de l'amour est l'attrait affriandant du fruit défendu ... avancez que, en retranchant de cet amour les craintes, les angoisses, les difficultés, les mystères, les dangers, il ne reste rien ou peu de chose, c'est-à-dire, l'amant ... dans sa simplicité première ... en un mot, ce serait toujours plus ou moins l'aventure de cet homme à qui l'on disait: 'Pourquoi n'épousez-vous donc pas cette veuve, votre maîtresse?'—'Hélas, j'y ai bien pensé'—répondit-il'—'mais alors je ne saurais plus où aller passer mes soirées.""[1]
Whereas Herr Szeliga says explicitly that the mystery of love is not in the attraction of what is forbidden, Eugène Sue says just as explicitly that it is the "greatest charm of love" and the reason for all love adventures extra muros.
"La prohibition et la contrebande sont inséparables en amour comme en marchandise."
Eugène Sue similarly maintains, contrary to his speculative commentator, that
"the propensity to pretence and craft, the liking for mysteries and intrigues, is an essential quality, a natural propensity and an imperative instinct of woman's nature".
The only thing which embarrasses Eugène Sue is that this propensity and this liking are directed against marriage. He would like to give the instincts of woman's nature a more harmless, more useful application.
Herr Szeliga makes Countess MacGregor a representative of the kind of sensuality which "is elevated to a semblance of spiritual
"Why do many women take as lovers men who are of less worth than their husbands? Because the greatest charm of love is the tempting attraction of the forbidden fruit.... Grant that if the fears, anxieties, difficulties, mysteries and dangers are taken away from that love nothing or very little remains, that is to say, the lover ... in his original simplicity ... in a word, it would always be more or less the adventure of the man who was asked, 'Why do you not marry that widow, your mistress?' 'Alas, I have thought a good deal about that,' he answered, 'but then I would not know where to spend my evenings.'"—Ed.
"Prohibition and smuggling are as inseparable in love as in trade." — Ed.
power", but in Eugène Sue she is a person of abstract reason. Her "ambition" and her "pride", far from being forms of sensuality, are born of an abstract reason which is completely independent of sensuality. That is why Eugène Sue explicitly notes that
"the fiery impulses of love could never make her icy breast heave; no surprise of the heart or the senses could upset the pitiless calculations of this crafty, selfish, ambitious woman".
This woman's essential character lies in the egoism of abstract reason that never suffers from the sympathetic senses and on which the blood has no influence. Her soul is therefore described as "dry and hard", her mind as "artfully wicked", her character as "treacherous" and — what is very typical of a person of abstract reason — as "absolute", her dissimulation as "profound".— It is to be noted incidentally that Eugène Sue motivates the career of the Countess just as stupidly as that of most of his characters. An old nurse gives her the idea that she must become a "crowned head". Convinced of this, she undertakes journeys to capture a crown through marriage. Finally she commits the inconsistency of considering a petty German "Serenissimus"(4) as a "crowned head".
After his outpourings against sensuality, our Critical saint deems it necessary to show why Eugène Sue introduces us to haute volée at a ball, a method which is used by nearly all French novelists, whereas the English do so more often at the chase or in a country mansion.
"For this" (i.e., Herr Szeliga's) "conception it cannot be indifferent there" (in Herr Szeliga's construction) "and merely accidental that Eugène Sue introduces us to high society at a ball."
Now the horse has been given a free rein and it trots briskly towards the necessary end through a series of conclusions remind-ing one of the late Wolff.
"Dancing is the most common manifestation of sensuality as a mystery. The immediate contact, the embracing of the two sexes" (?) "necessary to form a couple are allowed in dancing because, in spite of appearances, and the really" (really, Mr. Parson?) "perceptible pleasant sensation, it is not considered as sensual contact and embracing" (but probably as connected with universal reason?).
And then comes a closing sentence which at best staggers rather than dances:
"For if it were in actual fact considered as such it would be impossible to understand why society is so lenient only as regards dancing while it, on the contrary, so severely condemns that which, if exhibited with similar freedom elsewhere, incurs branding and merciless casting out as a most unpardonable offence against morals and modesty."
The reverend parson speaks here neither of the cancan nor of the polka, but of dancing in general, of the category Dancing, which is not performed anywhere except in his Critical cranium. Let him see a dance at the Chaumière in Paris, and his Christian-German soul would be outraged by the boldness, the frankness, the graceful petulance and the music of that most sensual movement. His own "really perceptible pleasant sensation" would make it "perceptible" to him that "in actual fact it would be impossible to understand why the dancers themselves, while on the contrary they" give the spectator the uplifting impression of frank human sensuality—"which, if exhibited in the same way elsewhere" — namely in Germany—"would be severely condemned as an unpardonable offence", etc., etc.— why those dancers, at least so to speak in their own eyes, not only should not and may not, but of necessity canot and must not be frankly sensual human beings!!
The Critic introduces us to the ball for the sake of the essence of dancing. He encounters a great difficulty. True, there is dancing at this ball, but only in imagination. The fact is that Eugène Sue does not say a word describing the dancing. He does not mix among the throng of dancers. He makes use of the ball only as an opportunity for bringing together his characters from the upper aristocracy. In despair, "Criticism" comes to help out and supplement the author, and its own "fancy" easily provides a description of ball incidents, etc. If, as prescribed by Criticism, Eugène Sue was not directly interested in the criminals' hide-outs and language when he described them, the dance, on the other hand, which not he but his "fanciful" Critic describes, necessarily interests him infinitely.
Let us continue.
"Actually, the secret of sociable tone and tact — the secret of that extremely unnatural thing — is the longing to return to nature. That is why the appearance of a person like Cecily in educated society has such an electrifying effect and is crowned with such extraordinary success. She grew up a slave among slaves, without any education, and the only source of life she has to rely upon is her •nature. Suddenly transported to a court and subjected to its constraint and customs, she soon learns to see through the secret of the.latter.... In this sphere, which she can undoubtedly hold in sway because her power, the power of her nature, has an enigmatic magic, Cecily must necessarily stray into losing all sense of measure, whereas formerly, when she was still a slave, the same nature taught her to resist any unworthy demand of the powerful master and to remain true to her love. Cecily is the mystery of educated society disclosed. The scorned senses finally break down the barriers and surge forth completely uncurbed", etc.
Those of Herr Szeliga's readers who have not read Sue's novel will certainly think that Cecily is the lioness of the ball that is described. In the novel she is in a German gaol while the dancing goes on in Paris.
Cecily, as a slave, remains true to the Negro doctor David because she loves him "passionately" and because her owner, Mr. Willis, is "brutal" in courting her. The reason for her change to a dissolute life is a very simple one. Transported into the "European world", she "blushes" at being "married to a Negro". On arriving in Germany she is "at once" seduced by a wicked man and her "Indian blood" comes into its own. This the hypocritical M. Sue, for the sake of douce morale[3] and doux commerce^ is bound to describe as "perversité naturelle" .(5)
The secret of Cecily is that she is a half-breed. The secret of her sensuality is the heat of the tropics. Parny sang praises of the half-breed in his beautiful lines to Eleonore.(6) Over a hundred sea-faring tales tell us how dangerous she is to sailors.
"Cecily était le type incarné de la sensualité brûlante, qui ne s'allume qu'au feu des tropiques.... Tout le monde a entendu parler de ces filles de couleur, pour ainsi dire mortelles aux Européens, de ces vampyrs enchanteurs, qui, enivrant leurs victimes de séductions terribles ... ne lui laissent, selon l'énergique expression du pays, que ses larmes à boire, que son coeur à ronger." (7)
Cecily was far from producing such a magical effect precisely on people aristocratically educated, blasé...
"les femmes de l'espèce de Cecily exercent une action soudaine, une omnipotence magique sur les hommes de sensualité brutale tels que Jacques Ferrand" .(8)
Since when have men like Jacques Ferrand been representative of fine society? But Critical Criticism must speculatively make Cecily a factor in the life-process of Absolute Mystery.
Endnotes
[1] The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Co. is the first joint work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. At the end of August 1844, Engels, on his way back from Manchester to Barmen, stopped over in Paris, where he had his second meeting with Marx, a meeting which marked the beginning of their collaboration as authors. During the ten days which Engels spent in Paris, he and Marx agreed to publish a criticism of the representatives of the Young Hegelian trend. They drew up the plan of a book which they at first called A Critique of Critical Criticism. Against Bruno Bauer and Co., divided the sections between themselves and wrote the Foreword. Engels wrote his sections before leaving Paris. Marx, whose share comprised the bigger part of the book, continued to work on it till the end of November 1844, considerably increasing the size of the book and drawing on his "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts", on which he had been working during the spring and summer of 1844, as well as on his studies of the history of the French Revolution and his notes and summaries. During the printing of the book, Marx, on the advice of the publisher Löwenthal, added to the title the words "The Holy Family". The book was published in February 1845 in Frankfurt am Main by the Literarische Anstalt (J. Rütten) publishers. The table of contents (see contents of this volume, pp. v-xi) showed which sections had been written by Marx and which by Engels. The fact that the book, though of small format, exceeded twenty printed sheets in volume, exempted it from preliminary censorship in accordance with the regulations operating at the time in a number of German states. "The Holy Family" is a sarcastic nickname for the Bauer brothers and their followers who supported the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung published in Charlottenburg from the end of 1843 to October 1844. While attacking the Bauers and other Young Hegelians, Marx and Engels at the same time critically analysed the idealist philosophy of Hegel himself. Marx had shown his disagreement with the Young Hegelians already in the autumn of 1842 when, as an editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, he opposed the publication of superficial and pretentious articles submitted by the outwardly ultra-radical Berlin circle of "The Free" (Edgar Bauer, Max Stirner, Eduard Meyen and others). During the two years which had elapsed since Marx's clash with "The Free", Marx's and Engels' disagreement with the Young Hegelians on questions of theory and politics had deepened still more. This was accounted for not only by the transition of Marx and Engels to materialism and communism, but also by the evolution which had taken place during that time in the ideas of the Bauer brothers and their fellow-thinkers. In the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung Bauer and his group renounced the "radicalism of 1842" and, besides professing subjective idealist views, and counterposing chosen personalities, the bearers of „pure Criticism", to the allegedly sluggish and inert masses, they began spreading the ideas of moderate liberal philanthropy. Marx's draft of the Preface of his "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts" shows that already in the summer of 1844 he saw in the evolution of the Young Hegelians' views a degeneration of that initially progressive trend, a deepening of the features of mysticism and transcendentalism peculiar to Hegel's idealism, the disintegration of the Hegelian school (see present edition, Vol. 3, p. 233). It was to exposure of the Young Hegelians' views in the form which they had acquired in 1844 and to defence of their own new materialistic and communistic outlook that Marx and Engels decided to devote their first joint work. The appearance of The Holy Family evoked a lively response in the German press. It was pointed out that this work was the most profound and the most forceful of all that Marx and Engels had recently written {Mannheimer Abend-Zeitung, March 25, 1845), that it expressed socialist views, since it criticised the "inadequacy of any half-measures directed at eliminating the social ailments of our time" {Kölnische Zeitung, March 21, 1845). Reactionary circles immediately discerned the book's revolutionary trend. As early as December 1844, when the work was still printing, it was denounced in reports by Metternich's agents. The conservative Allgemeine Zeitung, polemising against the assessment of The Holy Family given by the Kölnische Zeitung, wrote with irritation on April 8, 1845, that in this book "every line preaches revolt... against the state, the church, the family, legality, religion and property", that in it "prominence is given to the most radical and the most open communism, and this is all the more dangerous as Mr. Marx cannot be denied either extremely broad knowledge or the ability to make use of the polemical arsenal of Hegel's logic, what is customarily called 'iron logic'". A month and a half later, on May 23, 1845, the Allgemeine Zeitung again censured the Kölnische Zeitung for publishing a favourable opinion of The Holy Family. Bruno Bauer's attempt to refute the criticism publicly (in the article "Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs", published in Wigand's Vierteljahrsschrift, Leipzig, 1845, Bd. Ill) boiled down essentially to asserting that he had not been correctly understood. Marx replied to this "anti-criticism" of Bauer's with an article published in the journal Gesellschaftsspiegel, Elberfeld, January 1846 (see present edition, Vol. 5), which partly coincided in content with the section "Der Heilige Bruno gegen die Autoren der 'Heiligen Familie'" in Chapter 2 ("Der Heilige Bruno") of the first volume of The German Ideology (see present edition, Vol. 5). During the lifetimes of Marx and Engels The Holy Family was not published in English. Only part of subsection d), "Critical Battle Against French Materialism", of Chapter VI, was reproduced by Engels in the Introduction to the 1892 English edition of Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (the German version of this introduction was published in Die Neue Zeit in 1895 under the title "Über den französischen Materialismus des XVIII. Jahrhunderts"). In the English language The Holy Family, or Critique of Critical Criticism, was published for the first time in 1956 by the Foreign Languages Publishing House, now Progress Publishers, Moscow, in the translation by Richard Dixon. The literary features of the work include the broad use of citations from French authors (Eugène Sue, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, and others) in the language of the original, alongside citations translated into German, as well as the use of individual expressions in foreign languages, especially French. This feature is preserved in the present edition, the translations of the citations being given in footnotes. Emphasis in the citations (printed in clear-face italics or bold-face italics in cases of special emphasis) mostly belongs to Marx and Engels, who often translated the citations with abridgments. Title-page
[3] Here and elsewhere Engels quotes Reichardt's reviews of C. Briiggemann's book, Preussens Beruf in der deutschen Staats-Entwickelung, und die nächsten Bedingungen zu seiner Erfüllung, Berlin, 1843 and A. Benda's Katechismus für wahlberechtigte Bürger in Preussen, Berlin, 1843. Both reviews were published in the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung, Heft VI, May 1844.