The Art of
Inventing Characters
By
GEORGES POLTI
Author of
The Thirty-six Dramatic Situations
(Translated by Lucile Ray)
Franklin, Ohio
JAMES KNAPP REEVE
1922
COPYRIGHT, 1922
JAMES KNAPP REEVE
THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS.
1 Feminine Types Yet Uncharacterized.
2 The Literature of Character.
3 What is Permissible?
CHAPTER II THE GREAT PREJUDICE.
1 Does "Character "Exist?
2 The Non-Existent Ego.
3 A Little Commentary on "The Imitation of
Christ."
CHAPTER III Nor CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES.
1 Attitudes.
2 Roles and Occupations ; Professional and Tradi-
tional Types; Character-Types; Characters More
Individualized; Portraits.
3 New Combinations.
CHAPTER IV THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS.
1 The Systems to be Harmonized.
2 The Systems Harmonized and Explained.
3 Of the Four Temperaments.
CHAPTER V THE LAW OF FOUR-CENTURY PERIODS.
(An Application of the Preceding Chapter).
THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
CHAPTER VI THE Six DIRECTIONS OF ENERGY.
1 The Temperaments Combined Two by Two,
Forming Six Types.
2 Historic Tendency to General Groupings of Six.
3 Analogous Groupings of Seven and Three.
CHAPTER VII THE ART OF INVENTION.
1 Pythagoras; Philosophic Romanticism.
2 Various Numerical Groupings.
3 Discovering and Inventing.
CHAPTER VIII EPIC AND TRAGEDY.
1 Homer; The Iliad and Odyssey.
2 Law of Generation by Which Tragedy Springs
from Epic.
3 The Three Systems of Poetry.
CHAPTER IX THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS.
1 A New Explanation of the Origin of Gods.
2 Heroes, Eponyms, Tribes, Federations, Patri-
archs, Peers, Disciples, Apostles, Parts of the
Mass, Articles of the Creed, Stones, Totems,
Idolatries, Heresies, Systems, Schisms and
Nationalities.
3 Geography; History.
CHAPTER X GENERAL CLASSIFICATION OF HUMAN BEINGS.
1 Plan of the Classification.
2 Classification:
VESTA: The Pious.
The Wise.
The Faithful.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
JUNO: The Jealous.
The Vengeful and Just.
The Strict and Severe.
NEPTUNE : The Avaricious and Grasping.
The Despotic.
The Ambitious.
MINERVA: The Daring and Romantic.
Adventurers.
The Eloquent and Boastful.
VENUS: The Seductive and Seducing.
Courtesans.
The Vicious.
APOLLO: The Impassioned.
The Chimerical.
The Intellectual.
MERCURY: The Shrewd.
The Traitorous.
The Knavish.
JUPITER: The Arrogant and Insolent.
The Haughty and Dignified.
The Majestic and Protecting.
CERES: The Generous and Prodigal.
The Gay and Sensual.
The Vulgar and Practical.
VULCAN: The Earnest and Serious.
The Deluded and Discouraged.
The Unselfish and Devoted.
THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
MARS: Murderers and Assassins.
The Violent and Rebellious.
The Bold and Fearless.
DIANA: The Tender and Sentimental.
The Weak.
The Pure.
3 The 369 Unpublished Characters and their
164,980 Varieties.
CHAPTER XI A TREATISE ON THE PROPORTIONS OF THE
HUMAN SOUL.
1 The Complete Soul.
2 From Without Inward; Politics and Psychology;
Theophrastus.
3 St. Bernard, St. Benoit and Seneca.
CHAPTER XII PERSPECTIVE m MATTERS OP PSYCHOLOGY
1 Comparative Perspective.
2 The Characters of Moliere, Shakespeare, Plautus,
Balzac, etc.
3 Vacancies to be Filled.
CONCLUSION.
The Art of Inventing Characters
CHAPTER I
Some Strange Omissions
I FEMININE TYPES YET UNCHARACTERIZED
"Woman," said the great Goethe to Eckermann
one afternoon, resting his cup of Rhine wine on the
table, "Woman is the sole remaining object upon
which we may pour out our ideality. As to men,
there is nothing more to be done. Homer has
taken them all."
Our moderns, nevertheless, are yet far from
taking possession of the new world thus pointed
out on the horizon by our Father of Weimar. The
student of the literature of character, even the most
recent, invariably turns from it disappointed to
find it so poorly balanced that, while surcharged
with varied masculine types, carefully drawn and
distinct, it presents hardly a feminine character
in the least degree original and unforeseen. And
his justifiable disappointment condemns us. Will
neither novels nor plays, neither the writings of
moralists, the greatest of epics, the most piquant
of memoirs even when written by women or by
specialists in feminism will they never cease to
exhibit this shameful poverty?
12 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
In explanation of "it, certainly, several theories
exist. There are always theories with which to
excuse our failures. But a following up of the
present inquiry will, better than idle discussion,
effectually destroy this supposed resemblance of
all women to one another, this classification
according to the merely sexual aspects of their
life; maidens, sweethearts, wives, mothers, etc.
Truly an easy simplification, but one which in
reality denotes, on the part of the author making
use of it, a field of vision limited by a state of
erotic obsession. . . .Take a turn in the air,
my dear sir, and return refreshed to pursue the pres-
ent study! You have been too greatly occupied
by their femininity to be able to see them as com-
plete individuals (and by this I mean from foot TO
HEAD, of which they have, believe me, quite as
much as you) !
Let us imagine for a moment a new Amazonate,
wherein the blue-stockings, monopolizing literature,
in their turn do not deign filled with pride and
selfish desire to consider anything in man except
their sexual ideal. Many a physiognomy in our
eyes marvelous, would in theirs, fixed upon
shapely limbs or graceful elegance, lose all its glory,
and the figures of athletes or of handsome pages
would soon eclipse the profiles, to us so distinct, of
Hamlet, of Ulysses, of Job, of Newton, of Boni-
face VIII or of Junius Brutus.
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 13
A view so imperfect (and of which the symptoms
may perhaps be diagnosed in more than one
feminine romance) would however be justified by
a social state. Thus that of the antique city
explains the small number of its feminine crea-
tions. Antigone was the ideal Daughter, Electra,
the Sister, Alceste and Penelope represent the
Wife, near at hand or far away during absence, war
and labors. In Andromache was incarnated the
Young Mother ; Hecuba and Jocaste represent the
Aged Mother and her griefs; Helen realized the
Inconstant Beauty, Medea the Dangerous Mis-
tress, and Ariadne the Sacrificed. For woman, in
whatever was not relative to man, had no place in
that literature of the agora, civic tragedy, epic
chanted in the public square, history recited to
the four winds, lyricism dedicated to gymnasts,
philosophy of gardens and banquets. But we,
who for a century have so presumptuously claimed
the creation of a literature of the soul, of the indi-
vidual, of the home; we who see women mingling
in all things, sharing all activities, truly we are
inexcusable !
And we are duly punished. Note, in brief, this
principle, which we shall verify more than once
in the course of the book ; poverty of subdivision of
a general type brings about a poverty rigorously
proportionate in the elements which in turn com-
pose each individual type.
14 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Each new character, once drawn in literature,
represents a veritable discovery, in the scientific
sense of the word, in that it brings to light a latent
and heretofore unfamiliar part of our soul, of
which we become conscious in the suddenly
aroused interest; a conquest wrested by our con-
sciousness, aided by this example, from the sub-
conscious wherein it stirs as deeply buried as
within an animal. From the day, then, when in
the above hypothesis we ceased to distinguish
between Hamlet and Job, we should already have
ceased to discern in the former his catholic con-
science, his tendency to dreaming, etc., and, in
the Arab, his patience, the unshakeable firmness of
his faith, and so forth, perceiving in them only
those points which they have in common, their
lack of eroticism, among others. And thus a
corresponding confusion would reign anew among
the inward faculties of each human being of the
time.
Now, absurd and humiliating as such a confu-
sion may appear to us, we tolerate in ourselves
one precisely similar with respect to the very many
women whom we classify merely as "cold" and
"mystic". Need we be surprised, after this, if,
in all women, each one of whom might personify a
special region and clearly illustrate it for us, we
find ourselves inevitably arrested at some time by
the incomprehensible, upon the frontier of a
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 15
strange country inaccessible to our logic, or, if
you will, to our consciousness, which is the author
of its own defeat. And as love alone which is
to say the inconscient can serve us as guide,
however hazardous a one, we do not hesitate to
test it.
A consequence still more serious: to forget, to
refuse to understand this or that type of woman,
because not amorous, is to condemn ourselves to
an ignorance of almost all women, outside their
compliant but servile, fugitive and uncertain
dependence upon ourselves; it is to condemn
ourselves furthermore to an ignorance and mis-
understanding, not only of half of the human race,
but of HALF OF OUR OWN INDIVIDUALITY. For
every man has within him, morally, the femi-
nine character complete, neglected and believed
by him annihilated at the time of puberty, hidden
in a shadow rich in reality with inexplicable reve-
lations, just as, on the other hand, every woman
possesses also the male character. (How else
would it be possible for the father to bequeath to
the daughter, and the mother to the son, a portion,
sometimes so considerable, of their characters,
while nevertheless the masculine and feminine
types do not become less distinct?)
Again, a cause of the silence to which antique
society reduced woman might be found in the
16 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
nature of each man, as it is even yet found in those
(otherwise often beautiful and strong) of the
Moslem, the Buddhist, the polytheist, of the
non-Christian, to use a general term, for the
Hindu, the Persian, the Chinese or Malay cannot
be called uncivilized. Man, then, was a Citizen
or a Subject; he was not a Soul, in the absolute
sense of the word, separate and complete. Even
when such a man loved a woman, he showed, in
consequence of the contrast between the radiation
of his pride and his blindness toward her, a sort of
pederasty, an idolatry of Passion, a monologue
before Flesh. He fell upon and assaulted her; he
never contemplated her fairly face to face.
Whether one regrets or commends the change
everywhere inaugurated by Christianity, the OTHER
BEING, freed from the oppression hereditary since
the "fall," has begun to speak in our hearts, and,
we must admit, more clearly from century to
century. It is this dialogue in us which we hear
in the Sacred Writings, in the greatest of poets
and the profoundest of philosophers. From this
dualism vainly proscribed and which Nature,
one might say, has symbolized in the symmetry
of the two halves of our bodies as divided by a
perpendicular line result the many disconcert-
ing contradictions of our conduct, the perversions
of our will, the antinomies over which Racine
wept, by which Poe was fascinated, from which
17
Hegel reasoned. And the "mauvais menage"
wherein each of us contends with himself, results
from the persistence of our vanity in its ignorance,
or rather its indolence in the interpretation of
one-half of the human race.
Shall we not attempt it?
This will be, however, but a beginning. For,
equilibrium once re-established between the sexes,
we shall be led to re-establish it between the divers
types of our own. We cannot sufficiently wonder
at the lacunae which, from this point of view also,
literature presents, and at the great number of
characters encountered in life, whose portraits
we never meet in books or upon the stage. To
assure himself of this, the reader need but enum-
erate his relatives and friends, for example, defin-
ing them with the precision for which he will here
find the means.
II THE LITERATURE OF CHARACTER
No epoch heretofore has appreciated so highly
as our own the art of character-drawing. The merit
which the Romantic school attributed to the
invention, most illusory after all, of subjects and
"situations," the Realist school has since trans-
ferred to the invention, the "creation," to use
the current word, of characters.
18 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
These, extracted from surrounding life by means
of a mysterious chemistry, then condensed by
skilful syntheses, should illustrate social studies
in brilliant genre-pictures, in the way in which
"Romantic" plots have been credited with embody-
ing those reconstitutions of history recently pro-
moted to the dignity of a "new science."
In emulation, we have come, on our side, to
reserve the title of "creative genius" for the
author of a great number of well-defined characters ;
this is the reason for the special veneration we
profess for Homer, Shakespeare, Moliere, Balzac
and Zola (the latter nevertheless so weak and so
little varied in his drawings of women).
The classic writers, indeed, did not think as
we do. Even the fathers of the drama and of
modern realism refused any pre-eminence of
psychology. "It is for the situations" declares
Diderot positively, "to decide the characters. The
plan of a drama may be drawn, and well drawn,
before the poet knows anything of the character
he will give to his personages." And Beaumar-
chais acknowledged, for his part, that the choice
of characters was, in his plays, determined by the
necessities of the plot. These revolutionaries thus
confirm, in their modesty and sincerity, the enor-
mous experience condensed in the Aristotelian
"Poetics." "Action is the object of tragedy. . .
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 19
Without action there can be no tragedy. There
may be one without morals. . . To develop a
moral is not to create a tragedy," etc.
Besides, the founders of realism gave them-
selves no illusions as to the small number of
characters. The same Diderot, after Voltaire,
could discover albeit with a somewhat super-
ficial look only a dozen more or less, he assures
us. (For in those happy days of "elegant"
literature, one did not pass for a chimerical soul,
an occultist, if one ventured to introduce into the
prevailing mental confusion the luminous preci-
sion of arithmetic.)
The classic authors? They ingenuously de-
manded from legend and tradition not only the
stories, but the heroes ready-made. They bor-
rowed them and bequeathed them to one another
with the generosity of indifference, the merit
consisting far more, in their eyes, in a presenta-
tion, a perspective which brought in evidence
some aspect until then imperfectly seen, and
above all, in another and better harmony of com-
position shown throughout the entire work, even
to its humblest details. They well knew, these
great originals, that one does not create new
characters, only situations, plots, or symbols.
If I have been able to reduce to about thirty-six
-the figure given by Gozzi, Goethe and Schiller
20
the number of Dramatic Situations, it should
be still easier to show exactly the limited number
of creatures who compose our swarming humanity.
However, such a simplification is much less the
object of the present inquiry since it would
increase the actual poverty than is the remedy-
ing of that poverty by drawing from precisely this
simplification a method for multiplying elements
in infinite combinations. I shall give but the
method ; it will convince only those minds desirous
of applying it. But I shall furnish successively
tangible and living results in a multitude of figures
exactly 12,915 which are admittedly unpub-
lished and newly characterized.
Let them hasten and group themselves, to
satisfy first of all that desire for "new characters"
which torments thee, O contemporary reader!
How symptomatic it is, this desire!
Perhaps it tends to found a form of literature
which shall be chiefly devoted to the representa-
tion of character. For it must be recognized,
despite what we hear repeated and re-echoed,
such a form has never yet existed.
The theatre? By virtue of its visual destina-
tion and its gestures, it is obviously better suited
to the representation of action than of character
or even morals. Comedy itself, although its less
ominous gestures have a less hypnotizing effect,
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 21
has flourished, and widely, before this learned
character-drawing was thought of, and its merriest
form, and consequently the most personal, has
continued to live, and prospers more than ever, in
opposition to the comedy of character once con-
ceived by Menander. The latter has never consti-
tuted more than a special branch, precisely
that whose incessantly but vainly renewed springs
(romantic substitutions, the call of the blood,
theses, etc.) grate the more at each turn of the
action, and characters superpose themselves in
unpleasant fashion, as a superb but misplaced
display, upon the supple steel of comic plot, which
remains the indispensable, the essential.
The novel? Besides its formless aspect, since
it no longer follows the outlines of the epic, fiction
has always, by virtue of its redundancy of wordy
detail, better presented morals than characters.
To these the epic, the novel of more vigorous
ages, assuredly offers a place which, albeit second-
ary, is yet broader. The epic, in short, approxi-
mates the story which offers, in a conventional and
abstract light, its "portraits" from which we
need only remove the proper names and dates to
make of them but general sketches, worthy of
being signed by La Bruydre.
He thought to continue Theophrastus. But,
instead of a Menander, he produced but a Des-
22 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
touches. Not that he has, in reality, augmented
the catalog of his predecessor ; far from it ! He has,
notably, enriched to excess all that concerns
worldly vanity, which passion alone fills more than
four-fifths of his book, so surprisingly meager
otherwise, as to violence (one example), lust
(almost nothing), ingenuity, etc. The list of his
characters represents but the merest fraction of
our psychological world-map.
To complete it we must resume the plan, much
more comprehensive, simpler and more profound,
of the great Theophrastus. He commenced, it is
said, at the age of ninety-nine years, his admirable
book, the result not only of a philosophic system
(derived from Aristotle) but of a century of per-
sonal observation. From it, indeed, we may see
spring, fully armed, the New Comedy.
The plays of Menander are unfortunately
almost entirely destroyed, and, despite the frag-
ments recently recovered, the secrets of creation
which their ensemble would have imparted to us,
by comparison with the book of Theophrastus,
can be obtained only in a slight degree by following
the figurines of La Bruyere in the Comedy of
Character of the eighteenth century, trivially
argumentative, narrow and automatic. It may
likewise be interesting to infer what the Homme
de Cour promised by Moliere as his CHEF D'OEUVRE
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 23
would have been, in contemplating his famous
"portraits" of the Misanthrope.
Moreover, the maker of "portraits" precedes, in
literary history, but secondary comedy, the comedy
of character, and, coming always after tragedy,
already overflowing with varied and powerful
characters, he does not sufficiently explain to us
the genesis of these. And before them we find the
true Moralists. The Gnomics and Pythagoras
usher in the Greek theater. A Montaigne and a
Thomas Aquinas by the Council of Trent influence
Shakespeare, and Rochefoucauld, Charron, Nicole,
Pascal, find themselves again upon the stage, comic
or tragic, of the seventeenth century in its second
half, like the imperious Ignatius Loyola in Corneille.
How does this transfer take place?
We see it operate in the bosom of a family, and
perhaps simply of a man, with Seneca or the
Senecas. The better yet to follow it, let us take
Plutarch; a moralist, does he not detail to us, bit
by bit, in sage reflections, even in anecdotes, each
of the characters which he has during his life
studied or imagined (which is the same thing)?
See him arrange before us, with his famous parallel
biographies, Caesar-Alexander or the Ambitious,
Cicero-Demosthenes or the Liberal Orator,
Demetrius-Antony or the Voluptuous Com-
mander, Aristides-Cato or the Earnest Thinker,
24 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
etc. And, as for portraits, all history subse-
quently will proceed from him; a Janssen, a Taine,
a Mommsen clearly work in the same way.
This machine, built wheel by wheel, sentence by
sentence, by the Moralist, and elevated by the
Historian, the Dramatic Author, laying his analy-
sis back in its box, has but to set in motion. The
man anatomically studied, then defined, drawn
and reconstructed, he has but to make move before
our eyes, and behold! a new character upon the
stage. Shakespeare and Corneille have not done
otherwise.
Ill Is IT PERMISSIBLE?
They are wrong, it appears! Menander was
wrong to elaborate Theophrastus, and Schiller in
being guided by Kant. And Kant and La Bru-
yere, Mommsen and Plutarch and Theophrastus
sinned in endeavoring to draw portrait types;
Emerson, consequently, was equally in error. For
the science of character can have no existence. It
should have none our modern pedants having
so decreed. "There is no science of the individ-
ual," they declare.
Nothing can be more pathetic, surely, than the
survival in them, so naively expressed, of mediae-
val realism. According to all evidence, these
folk still believe that there is something else than
the individual. They believe, evidently, that the
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 25
abstract Horse exists independently of this or that
horse on earth, and the ideal Hat beyond all hats,
taken one by one.
Let the reader be reassured. We shall enter
upon no argument with these descendants of the
Scholastics. For us it suffices that the "Agnes" of
Moliere is distinguished clearly enough from
Catherine de Medici, for example, that we believe
ourselves right in studying separately their respec-
tive features. And since they are no more to be
confused than are a sprig of parsley and a sprig of
hemlock, we have the right to regard them as two
physiognomies of a difference which may well be
utilized with a view to a classification or arrange-
ment most fecund, and which touches us more
closely than any other.
To speak plainly, moreover, no classification,
even scientific, has reality. It is ingenious, cer-
tainly, to have chosen the flower by which to
classify botanic species, or the bony structure
(instead, this time, of the sex) to distribute those
of the animal species who have bones (which have
permitted even the least intelligent of them to
approximate man, to his great surprise) this is
highly ingenious but unassailable. A classifica-
tion is but a lingo, a catalog analogous to that
which, according to the pretty legend, Adam made
of the countless varieties of fauna and flora in the
' 26 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Garden of Eden. But Babel has since prevailed,
and to its confusion our methods periodically
return. Cuvier, although he has not yet con-
stituted the definitive table of zoology, has none
the less drawn from his a method more fecund
than many of our contemporaries are able to
draw from systems stricter yet equally transitory.
It must be admitted, nevertheless, that the
connoisseur of human souls may, without being
taxed with indolence, shrink from the classifi-
cations offered concurrently by the various phi-
losophers who have attempted the problem.
Shall he adopt the ternary method of Ribot, or
shall he fall back, with Fouillee, u;pon the ancient
Temperaments, labelled with these new names:
Sensitive, of prompt reaction (the Sanguine) ;
Sensitive, of intense reaction (the Nervous), etc.
which render less humiliating to him, in the
universal progress in which we live, this little
return to the past? Shall he pretend, with
Paulhan, to separate clearly unsound minds from
others, the sheep on one side, the goats on the
other? Shall he, still stricter, exclude, with Ribot,
from all classification the "amorphous" and the
"unstable" (the PAPILLONNE of Fourier still dis-
quieting the minds of our philosophers) ? Shall he
rather listen to Azan, Le Bon, Perez, Seeland,
Payot?
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 27
He will feel himself, with their treatises in hand,
all the more perplexed before Life and its image,
Literature, in that these masters, soaring in
alcanian spheres, do not in any case deign to cite,
in their volumes, more than half a hundred
examples. Moreover, these names are always the
same; Napoleon alone invariably appears a good
fifteen times (despite the contempt for ideologists
of this conqueror, so little complex of soul). Can
one imagine a course of botany at the end of
which the poor student has not heard named more
than fifty plants, no more unfamiliar than the
cabbage, the rose, the chestnut? He will be little
the wiser for having, in compensation, heard
abundantly the primary banalities of twenty
other sciences! Let us recognize that the scien-
tists have done well to themselves classify the
myriad beings with whom their respective realms
are occupied, without awaiting the work of the
philosophers, and respectfully but firmly to shut
the door in their faces.
Even as these investigators of visible and pon-
derable nature have rid themselves of the fanciful
so-called Physicists of former times, so today must
our scientists of the human heart reject the would-
be philosopher-psychologists. By ' 'scientists of
the human heart" I regret to add that I do not
mean the physiologists, whose studies of the
nervous system are very interesting, but stop,
28 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
unfortunately, at a point of view at least as external
to our true subject, and consequently as superficial
as were, to the future thermo-dynamics, the
naive exclamations of the RlG-VEDA.
There is no question here of those eternal
"faculties of man" in general those imaginary
entities nor of laboratory studies whose incer-
titude with respect to practice exceeds that of
meteorology but simply of the Human Heart,
which is to say, of precisely that which is most
individual in humble man. Anatomists and
alcanians will not deign to consider, of course, a
thing so small, so trivial, so wretchedly literary.
Happily for us, a thousand geniuses have not
shared the disdain of these excessive generalizers,
and they have devoted themselves to exploring
this poor thing, thereby losing, it is true, some-
times their happiness, and, according to the cus-
tom of inventors, even their lives.
Also, by "scientists of the heart" these must be
understood: dramatists, historians, novelists (real-
ist or not), moralists, confessors, lyrists, perspica-
cious biographers, old epic poets, theologians,
casuists, story-tellers. Their innumerable and
often minute analyses make of a library, even a
limited one, a treasure most extraordinary, this
verse of Verlaine or of Sappho, that dialog of Job
or of Philoctetes offering more facets, skilfully cut,
SOME STRANGE OMISSIONS 29
of the human soul, than have ever been observed
in any laboratory. It is only necessary to organ-
ize this formidable science, the only one in
which all civilizations have labored, and for
this purpose, in the first place, to gather all these
together and set them in order.
The Great Prejudice
CHAPTER II
"What means then, less deceptive than those
proposed by the philosophers and psychologists,
do you bring us, rash author, for classifying,
separating, defining, labelling human characters?"
None. And this for the reason that such a
means cannot exist. For
I THERE ARE No CHARACTERS
Listen to the admission which escapes from
the author of "Characters" himself:
"Men have no character, or, if they have, it
consists in having none which is constant, which
does not belie itself, and in which they are always
recognizable They have opposing
passions and contradictory failings; it is easier
for them to unite extremes than to have a con-
duct one part of which springs naturally from
another."
What! All "unstable" to use the philosophic
jargon of the day, and to be rejected, as a natural
consequence, by the most celebrated contemporary
classifications !
"But," it is explained, "La Bruyere let this
cry escape but in a moment of discouragement;
THE GREAT PREJUDICE 31
does not his undertaking itself bear witness that
such was not his opinion?"
It bears eloquent witness, on the contrary, to
the sincerity and also the truth of this passage-
Amusingly and exclusively ''characteristic," his
figurines are not humanly complete. Compare,
if you doubt it, the too logical Onuphre with
Tartuffe, who contradicts himself so well! The
silhouettes of our moralist move too automati-
cally; we do not see their breasts heave with the
respiration of universal life. We cannot turn
one of them around without perceiving artifice.
The drawing of a character is made, necessarily,
from a fixed point, and the conception of it remains
relative. Sylla, to us a monster, shines in the
German histories, and Robespierre, before whom
our greybeards palpitate with admiration, appears
to the disciples of Taine but a vain and heartless
pawn. But let us take, from La Bruyere himself,
one of his portraits at random :
Irene repairs at great expense to Epidaurus,
sees Aesculapius in his temple and consults him
on her ills. First she complains that she is tired
and spent with fatigue, and the god declares that
this comes from the length of the journey she
has made ; she says that in the evening she has no
appetite, the oracle orders that she dine lightly;
she adds that she is subject to insomnia, and he
32 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
advises her not to remain in bed except during
the night; she asks him why she feels dull, and
what is the remedy, the oracle replies that she
should rise before noon and should occasionally
walk; she tells him wine disagrees with her, he
tells her to drink water; that she has indigestion,
he advises her to diet; "my sight is failing,"
says Irene, "use glasses" says Aesculapius;
"I myself am failing" she continues, "I am neither
so strong nor so healthy as I was," - "that"
says the god, "is because you are growing older."
"But how can this languor be cured?" "The
shortest way, Irene, is to die, as your mother and
grandmother have done." "Son of Apollo," cries
Irene, "what counsel are you giving me? Is this
all of that science which men proclaim, and which
makes you revered the world over? What are
you telling me which is rare or mysterious? Did
I not already know all these remedies you are
recommending?" "Why, then, did you not use
them," replies the god, "without coming so far
to see me, and shortening your days by the fatigue
of a long journey?"
Most malicious, but most exact as a portrait,
and most particular, is it not? Are not all the
character's little weaknesses presented completely
as complacently? It is Madame de Montespan
who is the subject.
THE GREAT PREJUDICE 33
At this name there come to mind other "char-
acters" which might as legitimately be drawn
from her; the extravagantly ambitious, the
intemperate of speech, so ready with insult, the
devotee of black masses, etc.
No, the character does not exist any more than
an exact portrait exists in painting. So many
painters, so many colors, so many expressions, so
many lines, even in each feature of the model!
While as to photography, it is as has been
scientifically demonstrated to those aberrants who
do not see it with their own eyes the worst of
lies.
And if "there are no characters" it follows
naturally that
II THE SELF DOES Nor EXIST
The self is but a formidable suggestion. The
child is taught this false idea in exactly the same
way in which a dog is taught to answer to a name,
or, what comes to the same thing, to a certain
whistle or blow of the whip, even to the point
of responding to it by the most dangerous and
painful feats. This blow of the whip impera-
tive and categorical or its acoustic imitation,
the whistle or call to a slave, has later been modi-
fied for each of us in a particular fashion, and one
34 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
so much the more personally menacing, in the
Name, that corner-stone, if I may now change
the image, of the "I." The Name, first of the
orders which the poor human being receives, will
be the source of all the others, and the Name will
dominate our whole existence.
At bottom, we so well feel the artificial origin
of the "self" that we admit a most strange hypo-
thesis, namely that this "self," supposedly the
essential, does not exist, so to speak, before the
cabalistic age of seven years. Until then, parents
and strangers agree in considering the "con-
science," the "personality" of the child so feeble,
so vague that his acts remain almost altogether
"innocent." This "conscience," soon to be so
responsible before the law, and even if not in
theory, at least in the practice of daily life, quite
as much so before the so-called determinist
philosophy, this "conscience," this "self," this
"individual" does not undertake his complete
and this time overwhelming responsibility until
the age, not less cabalistic, of three times seven
years, an age at which he is invited by society,
more imperiously from century to century, to
the operations of military murder, of voting and
of legal reproduction.
Nevertheless, if the "self" is a "conscious per-
sonality," and rests on the "memory," it will be
THE GREAT PREJUDICE 35
necessary to admit, for each one of us, at least
several "selves," successive and totally inde-
pendent of one another. Already the "self" of
the twelfth year has forgotten that of the second
year, and how few things has the adult retained
in memory, compared to the immense forgetful-
ness of the self, emotional and reasoning, almost
entirely effaced, of the twelfth year? A few epi-
sodes, external and distorted, are all that remain
to us.
If the memory alone connects, in our intimate
consciousness, these "selves" so little like to one
another, it is by how slender a thread! Many
such threads break in silence daily; the greater
part of those which subsist remain throughout
the course of life buried in shadows in our vast
Unconscious; a few, a very few, will, if we live
long enough, come again to light perhaps a single
time, only to disappear again forever.
What were you doing at this hour, on this day
of the month, in the year 1895? Or two months
later in the following year, at three o'clock in
the afternoon?
Externally, on the contrary, a strict "responsi-
bility" chains one to another, like so many galley-
slaves, all those successive "selves," in such a
manner that each of them exhausts itself carry-
ing the weight of acts the greater part of which
36 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
are completely effaced from the memory, and
others of which appear but as the phantoms of
inexplicable legends.
So, through idolatry of Nature and her terrible
enchainments, do we superstitiously hold the
unity of the Self that chimera preferable to
all charitable justice, to our happiness and even
to hope!
And now, it appears, not only this unity (sprung,
I believe, from the brain of some unlucky arith-
metician), but even the "I" has no existence!
So many individuals mingle in the multiple
personality, so many strangers are entering and
departing by all the ceaselessly swinging doors,
that it can no longer constitute a "social entity"
nor a durable "moral creature."
There are Selves which, the greater part of the
time, let us acknowledge, hold all the scene with
their uninterrupted march, dictating, disposing,
acting on the way, and disappearing in the crowd
without, which continues to launch toward that
within its monotonous signals. Strange, it is
none the less this incoherent march, these pres-
sures of crowds unknown to one another and
without tradition, which the philosopher pro-
claims an irreducible unity, in order to brandish
37
it in his exalted imagination with such pride that
he opposes it, quite alone, to the non-self sche-
matized on the other hand. After which, our
philosopher goes to bed, and as for his "self,"
does he even know whether or not he takes it
with him, or in what place it hides among the
chaos of his dreams?
"There are two men in me!" In vain we recall
this dreadful plaint which for three thousand
years has come from humanity. In vain we
show that only the existence of these "two men"
is necessary to cause the fall of the systems, to
shake tribunals amid their parody; in vain we
detect the most energetic and single-minded
individual accomplishing acts in direct contra-
diction of the unique Self acknowledged by him;
he will stoop to lying, to playing the hypocrite,
in order to maintain his idol upon its altar. And
the most sincere and the most cynical of us do
the same. In despite of truth, of justice, of
charity, this dogma of the single Self imposes
itself upon us. To it the freest among us sacri-
fices docilely his sincerity; worse yet, to this
fundamental and diabolic talsehood we sacrifice
obstinately the genius which each of us, with his
complete humanity, possesses.
38 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
For this falsehood of the single Self, of the
Character, the Identity, with its bondage and
responsibility, alone assures the social state. And
so much the worse for you if your "self" alter-
nates inexhaustibly between passion and judg-
ment, making impossible for you the self-examina-
tion so much recommended! So much the worse
if, precisely because one of your "selves" has
said "white," the other should declare "black!"
So much the worse if you do not know why at
certain moments you hate the woman you love
best, and that from the bottom of your heart
your single heart! So much the worse if you
deny every faith you hold, if you profane every
virtue you possess! Of what importance to us
are these puzzling trifles, of which your soul
perishes? Falsify with us; we must, above all,
in piling up the Systems and their complementary
hypocrisies, maintain boldly the unity of the Self.
But you do not find, you say, the same "self"
at home and upon the rostrum, with your friend
or your wife, before your janitor or with the
mistress with whom you divest yourself of your
"unity" so respectable and burdensome, in the
presence of your superiors, or in solitude, or
amid honors. ... If you are discovered
contradicting yourself, you will declare that this
time you were shamming, belying yourself, but
previously
THE GREAT PREJUDICE 39
Ah, if the human ego were one and unique,
between whom then and whom, pray, would the
struggles of conscience take place? What gro-
tesque picture do you show me of a tribunal
wherein the judge is alone and bounces from
bench to bar, from side to side of the court?
Would not one who, entering, observed such a
spectacle, conclude with reason that the judge
was a lunatic? You, nevertheless, are no lunatic;
it must be, then, that your Self is not one, but
several.
The Self, full of illusions and of pride, which
was so enterprising, was it not sincere? What a
contrast to its successor, who, with courage
broken, comes to bear witness sadly against it!
Should you not henceforth abide by the expe-
riences and declarations of this latter? But no,
you cannot, on pain of perishing quickly with it;
you can no more do so than you can begin life
over. . . Each mistress who has loved you
loved but one of your "selves," which differed
from the others to such a degree as not to recog-
nize any of those who had previously loved you,
and the deep motive which puts a weapon in the
hand of the jealous is her failure to find in the
body of the deceiver the being she has loved;
she desires to avenge his destruction upon the
usurper! What do I say? Perhaps upon the
same day, at an hour's interval, the wife and the
40 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
mistress embrace in you two men, sometimes
two really sincere, forgetful of one another, or
perhaps even averting their eyes in the embarrass-
ment (admit it, unlucky one!) of not compre-
hending one another. Where then is your unique
ego, where is your true character? Say no more;
invent no further falsehoods !
Ill A LITTLE COMMENTARY ON
"THE IMITATION OF CHRIST"
Thus the "character," which some go so far
as to call the "self," is, in the dissolution thereof,
revealed as that which both the one and the other
are, AN APPEARANCE.
This negative value of the "I" or individual
character illuminates with a strong light the
Christian doctrine, less and less understood, of
humility ("But when thou art bidden, go and sit
down in the LOWEST room." Luke XIV, 10)
and of the obedience which logically results from
it. ("It is a great matter to live in obedience,
to be under a superior, and not to be at our own
disposing . . go whither thou wilt, thou shalt
find no rest but in humble subjection." IMITA-
TION OF CHRIST, I, 9).
"The highest and most profitable learning is
the true knowledge and consideration of our-
THE GREAT PREJUDICE 41
selves. It is great wisdom and perfection to
esteem nothing of ourselves." (I, 2). To humble
oneself, in short, to obey, to deny and abase
oneself, this is to destroy and overwhelm that
negation, that mutilation which is the Self or
so-called character, and let spring in its place
the suppressed organs of the complete human
being, the true image of God, as GENESIS says,
and consequently of Jesus Christ. And the
pious author cries to God, before that lacuna,
that nonentity which is literally the self: "Thou
accomplishest all things, Thou fillest all things,
only the sinner Thou leavest empty!" (Ill, 3);
then, turning toward us: "Of thyself thou always
tendest to nothing." (Ill, 4). Do we under-
stand, now, why "where heavenly grace enter in,
and true charity, there will be no place for self-
love." (111,9)?
"But," it will be asked, "why put ones own Self,
low as it may be, still lower than the other human
selves which humble it?" They do not humble
it nor make it suffer, for by themselves they
can do nothing. Humiliations, torments, it is
from God alone that we receive all these things,
Whose instruments they are; from His hand, of
which they are the members. "The truly patient
man minds not by whom he is exercised, whether
by his superiors, by one of his equals, or by an
inferior; whether by a good and holy man or by
42 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
one that is perverse and unworthy. But indif-
ferently from every creature, how much soever
or how often soever anything adverse befalls
him, he takes it all thankfully as from the hand
of God, and esteems it a GREAT GAIN." (Ill, 19.)
And he will confess "I cannot say that any crea-
ture hath ever done me wrong." (Ill, 41.) The
other "selves," the other characters, like our
own, being in fact but appearances.
# * # # *
The "character" is but the impression upon
others (who reflect it back to us and convince us
of it) produced by one or several of our actions,
undertakings, intentions divined or assumed,
apologies, theories, etc., manifested once for
all or repeated in various analogous forms.
In reality, then, we find nothing solid, at the
bottom of this conception, but the idea of action.
And the present study might have taken as epi-
graph that affirmation which was thought pre-
mature in THE THIRTY-SIX DRAMATIC SITUA-
TIONS: "Characters ARE what they DO."
Now, if action, taken abstractly, may be defined
by us as the shock of two forces, the conflict of
two beings, it consists to consider it by halves,
that is to say each of these two beings in an
impulse, in an act, in a simple movement. This,
in turn, is but the passage from one attitude to
another. . . All is thus reduced, in the end.
not to Characters in themselves, but to Attitudes,
Not Characters, But Attitudes
CHAPTER III
I ATTITUDES
Only attitudes, and this explains how the
same (that is, what we take for the same) charac-
ter, regarded from one point of view will excite
our admiration, and from another, our amuse-
ment. A single man can exhibit all attitudes,
which is to say, all characters, and consequently,
whether simultaneously or alternately, those
which are utterly contradictory.
But the habit of this or that attitude becomes
so well established, and transmitted by heredity,
education or example, that it becomes, as it were,
ankylosed within the organism, which ends by
exhibiting so restricted a number of these atti-
tudes that it seems unable to break away from
them, and thenceforward they produce that decep-
tive illusion which is called a Character.
Thus each of us, having potentially all the men-
tal attitudes, has the whole human soul, always
and everywhere the same in itself, since com-
plete, since formed in the image of the Infinite,
as the Biblical legend has so profoundly expressed
it.* Also, according to Plato, Aristotle and Chris-
tianity, it is God whom we love in each human
*Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image."
44 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
being; that is to say, that human being in his
completeness. "Love thy neighbor as thyself,"
says the Gospel, and nothing can be more natural,
since in his completeness he is like yourself and
you are identical with him. "Love" here signi-
fies "see" or "recognize," recognize the image,
faithful and complete, of God. Those who
"having eyes yet see not," have in their eyes a
"beam," that of the cross, to which, exalting
themselves as judges, they despite St. Paul,
despite the Gospel condemn their neighbor,
which is to say God, which is to say themselves
transcendentally.
No, the lover does not create for himself illu-
sions as to the beloved, evidences of his own pas-
sion. On the contrary, it is he alone who shows
himself lucid, and his admiring words reveal to
his beloved many sides of her nature of which
she herself was unaware. .
Also, this link which every moralist instinc-
tively seeks, and which connects all the Person-
ages of fiction and history, all the "characters"
in a sort of logical succession in which we may
see them spring one from another, this link,
this indefinable all-essential which shall be called
HUMANUM, Bossuet thought he discovered in
LOVE, root of all passions, and La Rochefoucauld,
turning toward the solitude in which he had
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 45
isolated the human heart, in SELF-LOVE; our
moderns see it incontestably in SEXUAL LOVE,
the primitive act of our life, wherein lie the prob-
lems of heredity and of races, which interest
them so deeply.
The old mediaeval theology said, in a broader
sense, DIVINE LOVE, or the HOLY SPIRIT, and it
identified under this term the reciprocal love of
the two other Divine Persons, the love of all
Three for man and that of man for Them, and
for his neighbor through love of Them, the
animating principle of creation, inspirer of minds
and giver of wisdom and knowledge, even that of
the human Word and its modifications, the
languages; grace in all senses of the word.
For the common herd, and for many writers,
a Character is constituted, even firmly estab-
lished, as soon as three or four characteristic
aspects are shown, connected with one another
by the thread of a logical idea relating them in
cause and effect. Tragedy and Comedy, on the
contrary, exist but to demonstrate how sad and
ridiculous a thing it is, subjectively or objectively,
to BE but one poor character, but one ankylosed
attitude !
Now, in their totality, these attitudes, through
which every man worthy of the name can or
46 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
originally could pass; through which passes, at
least in imagination, the genius of the "poet of a
thousand souls," these diverse attitudes, which
it is his mission to show us, each in turn, in his
works, in order to break our enslaving "anky-
losis," these attitudes may be counted, as well
as those of the body. Have we not, moreover,
already reduced to the number of 36 their conflicts?
Since they may be counted, they may be
classified.
No one has succeeded, no one should suc-
ceed in counting and conveniently distributing
"characters" in the insulated sense in which the
word is commonly used. It is but right that
such semblances, mistaken for individual beings,
should vanish from the hands which would restrain
and put them in cages. But the "attitudes"
which are not persons, but ephemeral roles,
nothing prevents our enumerating them. From
the beginning, the people of the drama have
been brought on and off in spite of themselves,
so to speak, to be labelled and ticketed, very
imperfectly, I admit, because of their excessively
conventionalized life, a life having one side only,
for the personage of drama is concerned only with
that side which he turns toward the audience, the
others, like those of the moon, remaining invisible!
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 47
The OCCUPATIONS of the stage have been
counted. And this term evokes curiously that
of those "Professional Types" which began in
the Middle Comedy of the Greeks, with its Fish-
vendor, its Courtesan, its brutal Soldier, its
Parasite, its Cook, the drama of observation,
before, in the New Comedy of Menander, the
study of more individualized characters was
approached.
It is to Professional Types, moreover, that the
herd clings. To the question, "What is Mr. So-
and-So?" three people out of four will reply,
"He is an attorney," or "He is a shoe-maker."
Apparently they would reply, if asked about St.
Matthew, "He was a clerk," or of Jean- Jacques
Rousseau, "He was a servant." From what does
this come, if not from the fact that such a classi-
fication, so easy, corresponds to a primary psycho-
logical tendency, albeit a vulgar one? Clearly
it is easier to recognize a justice in his official robe
than a just person seated among the accused; a
Jesuit in his professional garb than a Tartufe also
ever-faithful to Success, and today perhaps chant-
ing the songs of the "International!"
From the day when there were united for the
first time, in a new form of art (which we call
the comedy of manners), several examples of the
same trade or profession, it became very neces-
48 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
sary to discern in them several roles in the same
rank; for example, given a ministerial bureau,
there will almost inevitably be found therein the
ill-tempered, the jocose and waggish, the beast-
of -burden, etc., all a little colored by whichever
of these characters remains attached to their
chief. These are like moral liveries, which the
PERSONNEL distribute among themselves, at first
with some fumbling, but with which each of them
identifies himself little by little, according to the
instinctive demand and pressure of the environ-
ment.
The same phenomenon is repeated in the
habitues of a salon, of a public place, of the edi-
torial rooms of a journal, among the workmen
of a farm or shop, the sailors on a vessel, the
members of an association, commission, academy,
or any group. In this entertaining distribution
of roles one can perceive the birth of Traditional
Characters. In turn, the complete series of these
Traditional Characters in their professional or
social MILIEU (as the Clerks of Balzac), could be
compared to the series, equally complete, of
another MILIEU, and again of others; thus was
gathered the collection which the author called
the COM&DIE HUMAINE.
The fact of having been able to transport, true
to himself, from one of these MILIEUX (a bureau)
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 49
to another (a boulevard), then a third (a bank or
newspaper or the world of women) his Bixiou,
for example, proves that he has given him, in a
broader sense than we realize, a Human Character.
Nevertheless it is but a role become a man, this
Bixiou; one might almost say it is the mere face
of an actor, such as Daudet's Delobelle. Remark-
ing this ankylosis in a single attitude, that of
sarcasm, what reader has not said to himself that
there should be something else in Bixiou than the
side Balzac has shown us?
And that "something else" certainly existed in
the back of the author's mind. The exaggeration
of the type has here a hyperbolic aspect, and
necessarily so. Balzac overdraws it at this point
only through condescension toward us, and in
order to give us that impression of "character"
which we expect and understand. Only by means
of such deceptive representations do we perceive
it, and so the other sides of the character are
deliberately thrust back into the shadow.
They are, I say, thrust back, but not sup-
pressed. For, with a great writer, or, what
comes to the same thing, in a great legend, the
production not of the masses, but of anonymous
genius, these "other sides" are never lost; it
is they which permit the author, when he wishes,
to present with verisimilitude his personage in an
50 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
attitude absolutely opposed to the first one.
Whereas, in such a VOLTE-FACE, the writer who
is a mere arranger of puppets never fails to con-
tradict or mutilate his first conception, to the
bewilderment of his public.
Furthermore, it is, I say, precisely back of the
most pronounced '"character" that we find that
delicate play of light and shade which gives it
life and verisimilitude. Unlike the uniformity of
the Corneillean heroes, unlike the crude contrasts
of the Hugoesque figures with their too-simple
dualism, some naif detail of a poem or a hagiog-
raphy renders comprehensible and akin to us a
humanity nevertheless so superhuman. What a
child-like heart is revealed by the tears of the
hard Achilles, or by the jokes of the audacious
spouse of the Lady Poverty!
II ROLES AND OCCUPATIONS; PROFES-
SIONAL AND TRADITIONAL TYPES;
CHARACTER-TYPES; CHARACTERS MORE
INDIVIDUALIZED, AND PORTRAITS.
Let us recapitulate the seven aspects through
which passes, by means of contrasts, the genera-
tion of "Characters" in literature.
(1) Roles. These are hardly more than the
persons of the verb in grammar, united to the
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 51
active or passive voice, as: the Pretagonist, the
Antagonist, the disputed Object (a woman loved
by two rivals, a child in a divorce, a prince between
two courtesans, a judge solicited by both parties),
the PERSONNAGE-LIEN or Connecting Character,
who is only the preceding passed from the passive
to the active voice (the common friend of two
combatants, the mother of brothers at enmity),
then the Instigator or Instigators (confidant,
confessor, counsellor, mentor, lago), and the
Instrument or Instruments (messenger, angel,
executioner, hired assassin, mob), and finally the
Chorus (the odious thesis-characters of Ibsen
and Dumas FILS, the SERMONNEUR of the Miracles,
part of the RAISONNEURS, neighbors, witnessess),
plus the DEUS-EX-MACHINA (prologue-characters,
the narrator, the letter lost and found, the useful
coincidence, etc.).
(2) Occupations. An empirical attempt of
the comedians to group themselves, and of which
they have taken the more account as they are
obliged to seek therein, in default of masks or
make-up sufficiently exaggerated, the "physical
means" necessary to the material representation
of the real elements of character. This division
is to the preceding almost what the contingent
physiognomy is to the moral life. Here, never-
theless, presented only with a little more of order
than has been shown heretofore, are the ordinary
52 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
titles, whose artificial spirit I have scrupulously
respected:
Young Princesses (Iphigenia, Zaira) and
Ingenues (Agnes). JBUNES PREMIERS, Lovers
(the Marquis de Presles, the Delaunays, Don
John of Austria). JEUNES PREMIERES, Feminine
Lovers (Philiberte, Dona Sol). These border
upon Premier Roles (Thisbe, Marion Delorme,
Countess Almaviva, Celimne, Almaviva, Don
Juan, Alceste, Buridan) and upon Great Prin-
cesses (Hermione, Camille). PREMIERS ROLES
(Ruy-Blas, Mary Tudor, Lucretia Borgia, Mar-
guerite de Bourgogne). Premier Character Roles
(Don Ruy Gomez, Don Quexada). RA1SON-
NEURS (Philante). Noble Fathers (the Gerontes
of "Le Menteur" and "Le Joueur," Boursault's
Aesop, Verdelet in "Le Gendre de M. Poirier").
Dotards and Dolts (Geronte in "Le Legataire,"
Argante in "Les Fourberies"). Financiers
(Turcaret, M. de Sottenville, M. Guillaume in
"Patelin"). Tertiary Roles (traitors and tyrants,
Don Salluste, Saltabadil, the deceived husbands
and villains of modern drama, Begearss). Premier
Comic Roles (Figaro, Giboyer, I'lntime, Gros-
Rene, Sganarelle in "Le Festin de Pierre," Scapin
in "Les Fourberies"), and Secondary Comic Roles
(all the valets and jesters except that of the
"Legataire," which is a premier; Jodelet in "Les
Precieuses," the Marquis in "Le Joueur," Covielle,
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 53
Mascarille in "Depit," Dandin in "Les Plaideurs,"
M. Loyal, Thomas Diaforus). Soubrettes, etc.
As we see, a well-turned figure, hollow features
or a round paunch are sufficient to cause passage
from one of these categories into another. I
refrain from here taking account of distinctions
altogether local and peculiar.
(3) Professional Types in which social rank,
so dear to the vulgar, emerges from the preceding
classification : The Valet and the Marquis (our
"snob") from the Premier and Secondary Comedy
Roles; the Pedant and the Tutor from the
"Dotards," the Tyrant from the Tertiary Roles,
the Courtesan from the Premier Roles, etc.
Now let us add to these certain specializations
particularly well carried out: the Molieresque
Doctor, the Cook of Greek drama (that ancestor
of the innkeepers and cooks of Dumas, of "La
Reine Pedauque" and of "Cyrano"), the Athenian
Fish-vendor, the boastful Soldier, the Parasite,
the antique Slave (forerunner of the Valet), the
Spanish Go-between, the Gendarme (escaped from
the puppet-theatre), our Usurer, our Functionary,
etc.
(4) But such of these Professional Types as
appeared in the "Occupations" of comedy there
contend, obscurely mingled, with the Traditional
Types admired in former days, and who, under
64 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
the new names fastened like masks upon their
faded visages, yet fill, without the public's observ-
ing it, about three-fourths of the drama (and, I
would say, of modern literature). Here is Lelio,
or the Lover, a slightly sad JEUNE PREMIER.
Here, more naif, is Pierrot, shall we call him
Gringoire for a change? Let us hasten on to
Jocrisse, the Foolish Servant, past Palisse, Cadet-
Roussel, Calino and the primitive Harlequin (for
the present shrewd Harlequin rejoins, by way of
Mascarille and the valets, one of the two types of
Slave which in the plays of Aristophanes form
an antithesis to the credulous and the dupe).
Polichinelle, fighter and brawler^ reappears, a
little more obscene, in Karagheuz, and more
filthy in Ubu. The sly Columbine returns to
the professional type of soubrette, but beside
her, Isabelle, from whom come the folk of the
JEUNES PREMIERES, is but too much a "tradi-
tional!"
(5) Character-Types ! Here, in brief, is every-
thing the public demands. It will, for a long
time to come, prefer these to more exact studies.
Dickens, Daudet, and, most of the time, Zola,
have but built upon some vicious habit or some
gross and conspicuous trait of the traditional
puppet; Nana, we might say, is the eternal Cour-
tesan, Saccard is the Financier, according to the
invariable formula from Lesage to Mirbeau.
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 55
Renee springs especially from the department of
Occupations, a radiation from the Feminine Lovers,
and she alone tempted momentarily from the
enormous work of the Rougon-Macquart Family
our great national actress, so admirably identified
with her "occupation" that she is always cited in
connection with it. She has realized, we say
it without irony, the perfection of her art.
It is forbidden to the actor to raise himself higher,
and he exercises thereby a regrettable influence
not only upon the stage, where the evil remains
well restrained, but unhappily upon literature,
even the most serious, thence upon history also,
and through it upon the tendency of an age fallen
into the stupidity of taking .the player for an
artist, the hypocrite for a poet "bleeding with
sincerity," and the banal "occupation" for a new
and liberating conception of life.
It is, moreover, merely in a spirit of concession
that I have accorded this Paragraph 5 to Charac-
ter-Types, since, in the final analysis, they all
come from the two preceding (Professional Types
and Traditional Types).
(6) The Stage is closed to Characters More
Individualized. Tartufe and the better heroes
of Shakespeare had access to it only because their
authors happened upon it before them.
I say, observe, "more individualized," and not
simply "individual." We may partially discover
66 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
the reason above, apropos of Balzac. In the case
of characters of whom he has tried to tell, if not
everything, at least too much at one time, he
has made them indistinct, and they mingle in a
confusion wherein we wander among a vague
crowd of human beings.
(7) The Portrait in reality, be it drawn
from nature by a Balzac, be it by a historian
exceptionally conscientiqu^, in losing its gen-
erality loses also, contradictory as it may appear,
something of its clearness. It proves to be less
truthful, as Aristotle has already remarked, than
the poetical representation of men and events.
Unless, of course, it follows the usual process; in
that case it will embrace in a complete view the
career of an illustrious man, or at least consider
a very large part of it,- in order to exhibit him
camped in a certain immobile and striking posture
of soul; M. Masson has done thus with his Bona-
partes. The Imperfect of the Indicative is here
a great resource. The Portrait corresponds in
this manner to one of the Traditional Types, and
ranges itself in one of the ever-ready pigeon-
holes under the eternal labels: The Chivalrous,
The Debonnaire, The Haughty, The Tyrant,
The Sage, The Lion (today the Superman). The
historic epithets attached to the names of so many
princes, and SO LITTLE VARIED, are a curious
evidence of this tendency.
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 57
III NEW COMBINATIONS
If each one of the seven, or rather of the six
classes which we have just extracted one from
another, encroaches upon its neighbors, it will
nevertheless be observed that this does not
result in confusion. There is not even combina-
tion among them, there is only juxtaposition,
only mosaic, owing to the unskilfulness of their
authors.
Each of these classes will offer, according to
the angle from which the writer considers its
contents:
1st: Comic Characters.
2nd: Tragic Characters.
3rd : Serious Characters, a sort of hybrid
utilized at will by tragedy and comedy, by satire
and by historical romance and poetry.
4th : Among Comic Characters a particularly
interesting series, Parody Characters. These were
originally tragic characters, who have been trans-
ferred from right to left, so to speak, such as
Don Quixote and his numerous but too-feeble
posterity. Ariosto and his French and Italian
predecessors, the Greek SATYRIQUE drama and
our modern burlesque have left much to be done.
5th : Symmetrically opposite, amid the Tragic
Characters, will be the Paradoxical Characters, in
68 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
former days farcical, but now presented in a
pathetic light. The infirmities of Richard III
or of Quasimodo give us as yet only physical
examples, but Dickens and Daudet are full of
caricatures which, if not tragic, are at least pitiful.
We might still distinguish, 6th, Characters
heretofore odious, presented sympathetically:
The thief Jean Valjean, the daughters of Roman-
ticism and Naturalism, heirs of Mary Magdalene;
the hypocrite in "Le Cure de Village" and in
many English novels.
Then, 7th (recommended to anarchists, inno-
vators and professional "free souls"), Characters
heretofore sympathetic, presented under a repug-
nant or despicable aspect; we have had many of
them within recent years, but others remain;
working men, children, etc.
On the comic side we shall have, 8th, to paint
ridiculously the characters ordinarily spared, as
the betrothed young girl, the man of theses.
And, 9th, to present seriously and sympathet-
ically Characters heretofore grotesque. It has
been done for the deceived husband and the
jealous lover; there is nothing to prevent doing
it for the usurer, the undertaker, and many others.
These changes of place will be found fecund in
all the Literature of Character, and not alone,
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 59
as might be supposed, in drama and romance.
A Michelet, for example, has not seldom done
thus, in his design of lightening the unconscious
remorses of our nation. There is nothing more
malleable in this respect than history, so long as
it has not grown and hardened into a myth (more
truthful because the expression of the collective
consciousness); a Clytemnestra obviously does
not so readily lend herself to this treatment as
a Madame Syveton.
Real or imaginary, lofty or trivial, vague or
clearly drawn, often diverse in their portraits,
sometimes contradictory of aspect, I have evoked
these human Figures from out the centuries and
from all parts of the globe. For we must rid
ourselves, as I have realized, before it is too late,
of our false ideas concerning superior and inferior
races, and welcome contact with all humanity.
The dominance, recent enough and, I am con-
vinced, unprecedented for intrigue and destruc-
tiveness, of Occidental and notably Protestant or
free-thinking peoples, corresponds to an equal
and moreover logical impotence in original and
durable creation. Many a reduced or subju-
gated race, such as the Italian or the Hindu,
represents well enough what a poet of genius
becomes, or an ill-dressed hero, introduced into
the parlor of rich and vulgar money-worshippers,
mocking and scornful; they will bewilder him
60 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
with their figures, complacently watch him
envelope himself in silence and ennui; will despoil
him, if he still possesses anything, under the pre-
text of enriching him, and chuckle afterward
over having so easily vanquished him. There
is nothing to prevent the situation being some
day reversed, and that perhaps sooner than we
expect ; the premonitions of it are already appear-
ing throughout the world; strange surprises are
in store, and very probably, in such an event, the
new order of things will annihilate, until but a
memory remains of it, this ugly and stupid age
of PARVENUS, which will meet the fate of so many
other vainglorious barbarisms, likewise proud of
their industries, their arms and their wealth.
From the great pile-built cities of China, from
the immemorial records of Peru and Egypt,
from Central Africa, rich in traditions too long
disdained, from the humblest "primitives," from
the chronicles of Iran, from fiery Malaysia, from
paradoxical Japan and from reviving Arabia;
from the snow huts of Lapland, the streets of
Stamboul, the paths of Ceylon and the plateaux
of Thibet; from the 72 books of the two Testa-
ments, from the Greek and Latin literatures,
modern as well as ancient, from Norse and Finnish
songs and from all the mythologies; finally from
the remotest corners of occidental civilization,
and all the writings which it has set down in
NOT CHARACTERS, BUT ATTITUDES 61
modern languages, even to the most recent, and
scattered over the world, O sisters, O brothers,
from all regions of earth, from the future as well
as the past, in your motley and ever-changing
costumes or your lamentable and touching nudity,
from all the ranks from which you have turned
at my appeal, from all the ages of life when you
have sent out a cry which has reached me, I have
gathered you, in unforeseen groups where our
sad modern menagerie, in its hopeless decay,
reaches out its hands to the most radiant Goddess
of the Dawn, where the prattling infant, the
greybeard and the light-o'-love become of a
sudden identical !
I am aware that an interminable procession of
more and more banal replicas will follow after.
But the unison of their monotonous voices will
not drive away those detached and heretofore
unknown figures, hastening from out the mass,
and astonished to find themselves suddenly in
the light. Sometimes, too, my calculations hav-
ing apparently permitted me to silhouette a
certain type between two related ones, I have
nevertheless summoned it in vain; nothing appears,
from literature or zodiacs, in that lacuna of
human personality!
We shall march, O reader, with a sure step
toward silent and lonely regions. And there,
62 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
beneath the brush of a virgin land, we shall dis-
cover, slumbering, the Unpublished Being. She
will awake when we take her by the hand. And
this heroine of the Poet to come, this Eve of
future endless maternities, we shall bring back
through the ranks of astonished Lovelaces, to
the still empty pedestal where her Figure, all
unblemished, shall shine among the too-conven-
tional attitudes of her companions.
Thus shall we bring forward ten, a hundred, a
thousand and more, exactly 369, 12,915,
154,980, augmenting the unprecedented chorus
disposed at the feet of Her who shall summarize
them all in her perfection, nevertheless so human.
The Four Temperaments
CHAPTER IV
I THE SYSTEMS TO BE HARMONIZED
Let us remember, in the beginning, that the
object of the present study is not to reduce the
attitude-types, the pretended "characters," to a
small number of elements, a task but too easy !
On the contrary, it is a question of multiplying
them, and at the same time, as I have already
explained, of examining the analysis of each one of
them ; of each one of us.
Every one of these types, I have said, is in
reality but one face, one ATTITUDE of the human
Soul, and that soul remains whole and identical in
all men; there is not one of them who could not,
originally, present all these attitudes, pass from
one to another of them, exhibit all their gestures.
But heredity, education, example and social cus-
tom with its false duties have ankylosed in us a
much reduced number of these attitudes.
It is at this point that Kant saw but four pos-
sibilities for all humanity ; four, not one more,
not one less; four, not even combinable among
themselves to engender another! There are but
four, he affirms in his absolutism, and they can no
more mingle "than the four forms of the syllogism."
64 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
To these four irreconcilable aspects of humanity he
gives the ancient name of "temperaments," but
evidently without retaining its etymological sense
(TEMPERAMENTUM, equilibrium).
It must be recognized that the philosophers and
classifiers, more or less consciously, always return
to this antique medical theory. The majority
admit, like their founders, that the four tem-
peraments mingle, two by two or three by three,
in variable proportions, like the famous "humours"
from which they were drawn. Assuredly, it is a
strange spectacle to see thus surviving in psychol-
ogy the consequences of a classification so long
obsolete in physiology! And it is most amusing
to see certain writers taking as great pains to
justify all this in the name of Science (with
Fouillee) as others (such as Paulhan and Ribot)
take to avoid it, seeking to abandon and leave
behind them the "unstable," the ill-balanced, the
"amorphous" etc., which is to say, the major
part of mankind. It is curious too that the former
should find themselves to be the idealists, and that
the positivism of the latter should seek support in
the classic distribution of mental faculties: will,
emotion, intelligence.
Observe that their "Obstinate" types recall
strangely the ancient Bilious (which included the
Ambitious, the Dominating, etc.) and their "Emo-
THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS 65
tionals" the Nervous. Their "Inconsistents" com-
prising chiefly, I am afraid, the adversaries of
their vaunted Systems, it only remains to pick
from among their stragglers the "Amorphous" and
the "Unstable" to discover in them our tradi-
tional Lymphatic and Sanguine!
As to M. Fouillee, who does not pretend to
break so violently with the past, he defines the
Sanguine as "Sensitive, of prompt reaction" and
the Nervous as "Sensitive, of intense reaction;"
the Bilious or Choleric as "Active, of prompt and
intense reaction" and the unfortunate Lymphatic
or Phlegmatic as "Active, of slow and not intense
reaction"; definitions more scientific than exact,
to tell the truth, but so much the more appro-
priate for the contemporary reader.
II THE SYSTEMS HARMONIZED AND EXPLAINED
It is several years since the author of the pres-
ent work, in a little book entitled "The Theory of
Temperaments," divided as follows the Four
Temperaments .
Two of these Temperaments he found to pos-
sess a sensitive or "subjective" character, in their
evident propensity to let emotionalism prevail
over the detached and reasoning Self, even to the
extent of absorbing all and assuming full control.
These two were the Nervous and the Sanguine.
Their common verb, indicating what there is of
66 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
jealousy, selfishness and egotism in such natures,
is to Possess, to Have, or to Enjoy.
To these were opposed, under the title "Objec-
tive" (that is to say, temperaments more disposed
to externalize, to MANIFEST themselves) the Lym-
phatic (or Phlegmatic) and the Bilious: (of this
latter, be it said in passing, determination is
much more characteristic than irritability,
although the latter, because it is a RESULT of
determination before an obstacle, has given to the
Bilious Temperament the misleading name of
"Choleric," thus creating an annoying confusion
with the Sanguine and the Nervous, which are
quite as much inclined to choler). While as to the
term "Objective", it appeared from the first, and
appears now, to the author, more appropriate by
far than that of "Active," applied by M. Fouillee
at the same time to the Bilious and to the
Lymphatic!
It was observed in "The Theory of Tempera-
ments" that the Nervous and the Bilious, the one
by its imagination and the other by its strength of
will, represented the "Intellectual." Have they
not a common tendency to abstraction, to ideal-
ization? Likewise, the Sanguine and the Lym-
phatic, with their tendency to materialism, to
realism, represent the "Physical," both being
devoted to practical life and comfort, the one with
greater ardor, the other with greater constancy.
THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS 67
The antithesis between the Active and Passive
offered the last binary combination which can be
made between these four Temperaments, and
consequently united on the one hand the Bilious
(that is, the Obstinate) with the restless Sanguine,
while on the other the Nervous and the Lymphatic
are drawn together by their faculty of feeling, of
suffering.
The diagram on next page will give a clear
idea of the perfect concord between the diverse
classes which we have, after a fashion, just reduced
to a common denominator.
This analysis has a double advantage :
1st: It defines with precision, for the first time,
the Four Temperaments in their psychological
significance, gives them a constitutive formula and
measures exactly the distance which separates
them one from another. The Bilious is thus
defined, simply by its position in the diagram, as
an Intellectual-active-objective; the Lymphatic
as a Physical-passive-objective, etc.
2nd: It ramifies into six chief branches as
genealogy of new types derived from the first Four.
And these six new types, less generous, begin to
press more closely upon the human reality. Fur-
ther, it had, as we have just seen, the advantage of
putting into accord, several years ago, two con-
flicting systems which are to this day opposed.
68 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
*
THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS 69
Does it not reconcile, in a common reality, the
four-division system extolled by M. Fouillee with
the three-divisional method of other philosophers,
and introduce a binary system as well? True, it
did not in the beginning attach much importance
to justifying itself from a medical point of view;
its origin was more poetic than scientific, and it
does not hesitate before those questions which the
Poets, at all times and among all peoples, have
better studied than the Physicians. It prefers,
with its Masters, to take flight from medical ter-
ritory, wherein the first malady will transform
the physiological temperament and nevertheless
modify only secondary parts of the character,
toward the open sky of the great natural Analogies.
Ill OF THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS
We recall the manner in which these Masters
have compared, in lines at once profound and
beautiful, the autumn of life and the twilight of
the day and the year, to the sadness of the Ner-
vous type amid the historic decadences; the winter
to the aged Lymphatic approaching life's night-
time ; the spring, in its morning, to some Neitz-
schean adolescent, choleric and barbaric, and
noon or midsummer to the Sanguine in the enjoy-
ment of life, careless and forgetful, in his ephem-
eral strength, of the weakness of the past and the
future.
70
The Nervous type suggests to our minds Asia,
lyrical and mystical, subtle, fond of silks, of tea
and coffee, of hasheesh and opium, creator of
paradises, religious and artificial.
His transparent skin, delicate and smooth to
the touch, suggests ivory. We note the large
eyes, the high forehead, the head broad at the
back, the contracted and trembling motions of
his handwriting, hesitant, narrow, angular, full of
flourishes; the hearing developed more than the
other senses (which are often defective). We
hear his voice low and vibrant, serious; his incer-
titude of motion extending also to his language,
which is interspersed with hesitant "ahs." We
array him, this man of the eastern plains, in
melancholy greens, in blacks or silken stuffs of
strange design. Neuroses and hallucinations do
not surprise us in this being whose cerebral con-
stitution is feminine, nor do the mental zigzags so
illogical in appearance, the forgetfulness of the
principal parts of his discourse, the confusion, the
perpetual recommencement. The character, imag-
inative above all, has those flashes of intuition
which Goethe attributed to that one of his four prin-
ciples which he called the DEMONIAC. Aristocratic,
sensitive, we do not tire of his confidences, of his
incurably LYRIC nature, of his tendency at first to
deny and spurn that which later enraptures him,
nor of his mysticism, so in accord with the elliptic
THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS 71
turn of his mind, suggestive and stimulating. In
short, we admire in him the echo of that which is
most human in the animal nature.
With the Bilious type we turn, on the contrary,
towards the Occident, ambitious, hardy and con-
quering, more brutal but keenly logical, forceful
in language, imperious; the veritable muscle of
humanity. We remark the aquiline nose, the
deep-set eyes, commanding and far-sighted, the
salient Napoleonic chin, the ruggedness of visage
which reminds us of roughly sculptured stone. In
the broad forehead we see the spirit of domination,
of headstrong argument. The gestures are precise
and definite, the handwriting clear and firm, with
short well-made strokes; the speech brief and
sententious, hammered out syllable by syllable,
yet sometimes with a pontifical and majestic
quality. We notice how firmly- woven fabrics in
the pronounced and classic colors (reds and bright
blues) cling and hang upon this muscular figure
with its powerful biceps.
Such a temperament, idealistic but dogmatic
and authoritative, aspires above all to establish
and assert itself. Its weakness lies in its mania
for deducing all things from a single principle, with
a logic more or less exact, but relentless even
before the absurdity of the results.
We may observe a rapport between the fickle-
ness so characteristic of the Sanguine Tempera-
72 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
ment and that of the Negro race. We find in this
type, in southern lands, a jesting disposition, a
tendency to hasty and exaggerated affirmations,
vivacity, sociability, a love of strong and varie-
gated colors, of gaudy gold-trimmed uniforms and
plumes, of tinsel decorations, of theatricals and
dramatic scenes; a democratic and turbulent
spirit, practical instincts, a habit of sophistry and
pretense (both to himself and others), easy morals,
scepticism, a pr oneness to impulsive folly, a
character by turns audacious and cowardly. The
flesh tints are warm, the skin pliant to the touch,
almost oily, the movements vigorous and agile,
whence the handwriting of round open letters,
often illegible, however, because of its rapidity.
The noisy speech is well adapted to sudden flares
of anger, to quarrels, jests and arguments. His
sense of smell is keen, his taste is for highly spiced
food. We clothe him in conspicuous and amusing
costumes. For the rest, we may heartily praise
his initiative, his gaiety, his energy, his practical
habits, his adaptability to all circumstances.
The Lymphatic, lastly, we discover near the
Poles (or at least near that one toward which
humanity withdrew before the great sea which
anciently advanced upon it from the south). It
is under the snowy skies of the north that we find
dispassionate, patient souls, deep thoughts (some-
times vague and misty on contact with others),
THE POUR TEMPERAMENTS 73
didactics, the scientific spirit, the memory well
developed but encumbered with documentary
facts; utilitarianism, slow speech, heavy gestures,
interminable sentences, and a disposition to long
and sometimes dreamy discourses. The hand-
writing is negligently traced, without firmness, the
letters rather broad than high ; the style is descrip-
tive. The weak point of such a type is its dullness.
Regularity of life, realism in philosophy, a utilitar-
ian indifference in politics, an inclination to endless
study, a strongly developed sense of taste, a liking
for soft clothing and soft colors such as rose and
grey-blue, pallid flesh, cold and soft to the touch,
these characterize this northern or mountain type,
which may be compared to the fish or the reptile
in the animal world or to the humid sea- wrack in
the vegetable world.
Our analysis even forms a sort of Crystallog-
raphy of Human Traits, which furnishes the
artist with elements analogous to those just
evolved for the student of human souls. Thus
will be understood the four following schemes or
caricatures. (Page 74.)
As we see, the profile is divided into four regions :
occiput, sinciput, nose, jaw. I have apportioned,
theoretically, the upper half of each of these parts
to the signs of the Bilious and the Lymphatic (B
and L), and the lower half to the lines of the
Nervous and the Sanguine (N and S). These
74 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
JfU~J
r
r~^- r~^
' ' z t '
VkrJ
THE POUR TEMPERAMENTS 75
lines consist, for the Bilious and Nervous, in
CONVEXITIES; for the Lymphatic and the Sanguine
in CONCAVITIES. It will be remarked, not without
surprise, that this plan, so simple, gives also the
four characteristic physiognomies of the four
traditional Temperaments.
We have now but to continue over the entire
body. The anatomists and draughtsmen have
long pointed out certain correspondences of form,
not absolute, but frequent, between the three
elements of the TRIADS into which the whole
human body is divided and then subdivided.
Thus, first the Head, the Thorax and the Abdomen
respectively supporting, 1st: the two crooked bones
which by their joining in front form the lower
jaw; 2nd: the arms, and 3rd: the legs. Each of
these pairs of members divides itself again into
THREE: the thigh, the leg and the foot; the arm,
the forearm and the hand; the perpendicular part
of the lower jaw, the horizontal part and the part
in which the teeth are set. The teeth correspond
also to the phalanges of the fingers and the toes.
We know that each finger in turn has THREE phal-
anges, etc.
Now, we usually find a correspondence of con-
formation, in an individual, between the parts of
his various members (knees and elbows, wrists
and ankles, etc.) and between the extremities or
76 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
the central regions of his diverse parts: it is this
which gives so special an aspect, for example, to
the hand of a hunchback. We may then sketch
also, from head to feet, four human beings in
whom the two concavities and the two convexities,
upper and lower (by which we have already
characterized in occiput, sinciput, nose and
jaw our Lymphatic, Sanguine, Bilious and Ner-
vous) will continue to show themselves in the
outlines of the shoulder-blades, the chest, the
pelvis and the abdomen ; then of the two posterior
and the two anterior halves of the thighs ; the arms,
forearms, legs; even of each phalange; in a word,
in every one of the parts into which we have just
divided the human silhouette.
Finally, each of these parts, as we have seen,
is divided into four regions: lower posterior, upper
posterior; lower anterior, upper anterior. These
respectively appertain, in a greater or less degree,
to the signs of the Lymphatic, the Nervous, the
Bilious and the Sanguine.
Let it be said once more, it is not a question of
exact and inevitable concordance, but of establish-
ing FOUR FUNDAMENTAL TYPES, which will extend
the human Proportions, theoretically and ideally,
and will be a point of departure for the variations
which may be executed within the limits of these
proportions. Still less is it a question of an
infallible process for the divination of character
THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS 77
by facial traits, since, we repeat, the "character"
is but a habit or group of habits fixed upon a
human being, and not the being himself, who in
spite of it remains complete, and capable of taking,
with greater or less pliancy, other habits and other
attitudes. The physiognomy is but the envelope
or cover, so to speak, formed by habit (especially
hereditary), and less quickly modified than the
habit itself, although infinitely more so than we
think, and than the too uniform life of our civili-
zation lets appear.
The Law of Four-Century Periods
CHAPTER V
(AN APPLICATION OF THE PRECEDING CHAPTER)
How many analogies does the Theory of Tem-
peraments permit us to weave! It draws threads
not only from all points of space and from all
manifestations of mind, but likewise from time
and history.
Having remarked, for example, that the order of
evolution of the Four Temperaments, by their
analogy with the Seasons, the Ages of Life, etc.,
presents regularly the Bilious or Obstinate fol-
lowed by the happy Sanguine, this by the Nervous
and it in turn by the Lymphatic, to recommence
with the Bilious, and so on, which is equivalent to
saying in face of every activity: Growth, Complete-
ness, Decline and Repose, is it not plain that
the 17th, 13th, 9th, 5th and 1st centuries of our
era (those of Louis XIV, of Saint Louis, of Charle-
magne, of Clovis and of Augustus, which our
histories call the "Grands Siecles"), like the 4th,
8th, 12th and 16th of the pre-Christian era (those
of Alexander, of Romulus, of Agamemnon, of
Sesostris), return every 400 years, like a full moon,
or a historic Summer?
THE LAW OF FOUR-CENTURY PERIODS 70
Besides the nine great Figures just named,
they bring, like bolts of thunder, the most tre-
mendous downfalls and destructions with which
the world has resounded : the fall of Jericho, the
fall of Troy, the fall of Nineveh, that of the Per-
sian Empire, that of Jerusalem, that of Rome,
that of the Carlo vingian Empire, that of the
Hohenstaufens, that of the Catholic Empire. And
at the same time are precipitated the most irre-
sistible invasions and streams of migration: the
Jews into the Promised Land, the Heraclides
across Greece, the black Ethiopians into Egypt,
the blonde Gauls to Rome, the brown Romans to
the limit of their conquests, the great Invasions,
in return, to the very heart of that Empire; those
of the Northmen across its reconstitution, of the
Mongols into Europe in the 13th century, and the
expansion of France over Europe and the world
(17th century). And finally, in one of these
Summers of History there rises the figure of
Christ.
The dark centuries of Winter (10th, 6th, 2nd
B.C.; 3rd, 7th, llth, 15th and 19th A.D.) offer, by
contrast, grave and often sorrowful and bitter,
figures : the Buddha (whether of the 10th or the
6th century), then Confucius (with Zoroaster, it
is said, and Pythagoras) ; the aged Cato ; four
hundred years later the great heresiarch Mani,
whose despairing philosophy dared equalize God
80 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
and the Devil; in the 7th century the fatalist
Mahomet, in the llth Ghibellinism, happily over-
come by Gregory VII at Canossa; John Huss,
and finally Hegel and Schopenhauer. Ages of
transition and of grievous yet fecund error!
Napoleon (whose prefiguration seems to have been
the Gaulish Sigovese, conquering the German
tribes 24 centuries earlier), Mahomet II, William
the Conqueror and the founder of the Sassanids;
Ardashir and Marius and Cyrus the adventurer
and Erechtheus form the tokens of it, behind
these heroes of the advance-guard: the Revolu-
tionaries, Jeanne d'Arc, the Cid and the Guelphs;
the Gracchi, Harmodius and Aristogition, the
first Brutus. Livingstone followed by Stanley
and Christopher Columbus followed by the Con-
quistadores correspond to the first Crusaders and
to the Arab Conquest, as Verlaine to Villon.
It is as if the travail of germination pierces, for
the ages to come, the cold black earth of the
Louis-Philippes and the Louis XI's, the Roths-
childs and the Jacques Coeurs, the Croesuses and
the Eclectics. This is also a series of Germanizing
centuries; every one of them wears, as an armor,
the Germanic grandeur, from the formidable
organization of the Prankish and Sueve Leagues
(3rd century) and the preponderance of the Mayors
of Austrasia (7th), to the Franconian House (llth)
and that of the Habsbourgs (15th) and the tri-
umphant rise of the Hohenzollerns (19th).
THE LAW OF FOUR-CENTURY PERIODS 81
Each one of them, as a night or winter, extin-
guished and swept away the century immediately
preceding, this latter belonging to the series of
Autumn or Evening.
In the Autumn or Sunset periods to which we
now come, we find always elegance enraptured
with itself, a varied and fragile splendor, luxury
and profusion; always the vintage-time of a
declining civilization. Even the kings are so
learned that they pose as sages! Joseph II and
Catherine of Russia, and thou, Charles V, father
of the mortal schism of the West, wherein perished
our supremacy in Europe; and you, the Basileus
philosopher^ of 10th century Byzantium; even
thou, Chilperic, the grammarian of the 6th century,
succeeding Marcus Aurelius and the Antonines
(2nd century), who follow 400 years after the
Ptolemies of Alexandria; and thou, Solon (7th
century B.C.) and finally, at the summit, thou,
Solomon, author or not of the Book of Wisdom!
With the sneering scepticism which Voltaire,
across four times four centuries, received as a her-
itage from Lucian, reigns also the most absurd
credulity; Cagliostro, Rosenkranz and the Free-
masons of the 14th century, occultism of the time
of Gerbert, the frenzied Gnostics, and that dis-
quieting pythoness of Endor whose words
resounded in the troubled mind of Saul, the
82 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
foolish king, prefiguration, four centuries in
advance, of Nebuchadnezzar, and by 24 centuries
of our Charles VI ! grins, convulsions, the
appearance of the animal grimace beneath the
human mask. And with this series of centuries is
connected the birth of idolatry which tradition
makes contemporaneous with Ninus. Thought
would perish, if the learned, everywhere modestly
limited to the tangible, did not extract some
elements of survival; Thales and the sages,
Archimedes and Euclid, Ptolemy the geographer,
the lawyers of Justinian, the Arabian scholars and
the inventors of the 14th century have done so.
In contrast, let us unroll the series of Spring.
If Jesus chose one of the Summer-cycles for His
glory ; if Idolatry rose in the decline of the Autumn
cycles; if some yet mysterious menace darkens
those of Winter, it was one of the cycles of Spring
that saw the creation of this beautiful world,
according to the Bible; in the 41st century before
Christ (the date most frequently adopted, notably
by Bossuet, Daunou, Dreyss, etc.).
Four times 400 years nearer to us, in the 25th
century, Creation was reborn, purified by that
fantastic baptism, the Deluge. The Flood of
Deucalion is still 400 years nearer (21st century) ;
it corresponds to the epoch of the Jewish people's
origin in Abraham.
THE LAW OF FOUR-CENTURY PERIODS 83
But hark while rises, from the slopes of Sinai, the
divine poetry of Moses! (17th century B.C.), and,
following like an echo below from the sea, that of
Orpheus (13th century). Who are the greatest of
creators, if not Homer (9th century), the Tragics
of the 5th century, Virgil (1st century B.C.); in
sacred literature, the sublime Fathers of the 4th
century (St. John Chrysostom, Jerome, Augus-
tine, Ambrose, Basil, Athanasius, Gregory Nazi-
anzen, founder, it is said, of the Christian
theatre), and in non-Christian literature, the Eddas
(8th century) ; then the French and German epics
of the 12th century, and, finally, Shakespeare.
Our 20th century belongs to this glorious family.
Let us not forget that each of the giants whom I
have just evoked marches amid the luxuriant
flowering of all the arts; the Renaissance dawns
over almost all Europe, despite Protestant ana-
thema, as, 800 years earlier, reviving Byzantine
art triumphed over the Iconoclasts; the ogival
architecture of the 12th century (Notre Dame de
Paris) rivals that of the Parthenon after four times
400 years ; but who could enumerate the poets
and artists of these privileged ages? Even war is
ennobled, and seems made for dreams and visions :
the expedition of the Argonauts, the Medic
Wars, the glory of Greece, the struggles for
equality in Rome, the conflicts with the Arian
belittlers of the great Mystery, the combat with
84 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
the Saxons, and that of Roland at Roncesvalles,
preluding, four centuries in advance, the Crusades
of the 12th century against Islam; lastly the
religious wars in resistance to the sectarianism of
that new Arius, Luther. But special disciplines
have each time responded to new heresies :
Loyola, St. Bernard, St. Benoit, St. Augustine and
the Nicene Creed, the Incarnation, Socrates, the
just Herakles, the Decalogue (17th century B.C.,)
appear at intervals of four centuries and confirm
the ancient call of Abraham (21st century) and the
splendid forecast of the Bow of Promise (25th
century).
Do we not see, even in the midst of our surprised
indifference, religious passion reviving, and decor-
ative art everywhere throwing over the ugliness of
the past century its network of beauty? solemn
portents, and perhaps the last. Four times four
make sixteen; the first 16 centuries, which com-
prised the world's youth, expired with the sobs of
Buddha, that personification of disillusion; the
intoxicating fruits of maturity ripened, on the
thrice sacred shores of the Mediterranean, between
Homer and Mahomet. Is it old age, is it decline,
which began under the pale skies of the north, with
the Eddas and the ancestors of the Carlo vingians,
to terminate with the 23rd century? may it be
that humanity has but four more centuries to
live? Strangely, already the commentators of the
THEfLAW OF FOUR-CENTURY PERIODS 85
Apocalypse profess to discover therein that the
Last Judgment will follow not long after the year
2000, and from elsewhere the prophecies of St.
Malachy announce but ten more Popes to lead the
Church to the fulfillment of her task.
The Six Directions of Action
CHAPTER VI
I THE TEMPERAMENTS COMBINED
TWO BY TWO, FORMING SIX TYPES
We may see, by this single example, the fecun-
dity of our analogies. It is most natural to
extend them. It is most natural to extend the
Four Temperaments into the Six Types (three
pairs or two trios, according to need) which our
Theory has extracted from them, as we have
seen above.
But first let us define with precision these Six
Types:
The Objective, a combination of the Bilious
and the Lymphatic, has as its dominating desire
that of Being more, of Manifesting itself in works ;
ELOQUENCE, ADVENTURE, PRIDE and LABOR are
derived from this desire. (We shall see, in Chap-
ter X, why these words are emphasized.) The
features of this Type are broad, calm and har-
monious, the demeanor grave and straightforward,
the bodily posture upright even to the point of
leaning backward. The body, of medium height,
white of flesh and cold, lacks the thrill of life even
when the blood is rich; the muscles, often over-
developed, add to its heaviness. The hand-
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF ACTION 87
writing is small, regular and a trifle cramped.
The mind is broad and tolerant, through absence
of passion; the ideas travel in immense circles
without a clearly apparent object. The style is
oratorical, explanatory, given to enlarging, by
successive developments, points at first trivial.
The natural tendency of opinion is conservative,
plutocratic, even BOURGEOIS, hierarchic, friendly
to law and order, to harmony, to respectability,
with happiness or serenity as the aim. A defect
of this type is slowness of mental processes. In
philosophy, these are the pantheists; in science,
the physicians; in art, the sculptors. The women
of this type love like men; the children prefer
their mother to their father.
The Subjective, or better yet, the Possessive,
since the dominant instinct is to Have, to Pos-
sess, is a combination of the Nervous and the
Sanguine. Whether grasping or prodigal, these
are monopolists, and thereby sentimentalists
also; jealous and frequently despotic, they live
in a state of passion and are often unjust in con-
sequence. Thought, with them, springs from
within outward. Their unquiet hearts are the
source of their faults or their vices. They are
chthonians, Titans, always in eruptions or in
tempests. In science, they will be chemists; in
art, painters or musicians; in politics, judges or
dictators. Theirs are expressive faces, yet with
88 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
inequalities caused by this or that ugly feature;
skin like alabaster, flashing eyes whose gaze
easily hypnotizes. Their gestures are enthusias-
tic, imperious, excited; steps short and unequal;
handwriting full of variations and flourishes.
The speech is animated, the style spirited, full of
antitheses and rhetorical figures. The children
of this type prefer their father to their mother.
Later, especially if the Sanguine be predominant,
this tendency renders disturbing their admiration
for virile beauty.
The Active, a mingling of the Sanguine and
Bilious, closely approaches the preceding, but its
formula is Action. People of this type do not
limit themselves to passionate censure or con-
demnation, like the Subjectives; they revolt,
they strike; neither do they travel in circles like
the Objectives; their energy has a more active
effect. Their thought is, above all, practical and
shrewd. Bold, clever, sometimes unscrupulous,
often patronizing and protecting, dangerous as
adversaries, they have the art of leading the
crowd, which is always militarist as soon as its
fears are overcome, and which finds in this type
something of its own grossness, its own brutality.
Well developed virile figures, bearded faces, tanned
complexions; gestures forceful and concentrated,
restless bodily attitudes as though always on the
point of action, coarse language and vigorous
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF ACTION 89
methods in all things are characteristic of them.
They lie with facility, risk life readily, have a
tendency to take the shortest cut to the object in
view; they are experimenters, ever ready to try
something new, with the audacity of scepticism
and with a total irreverence for the past, which
they neither understand nor appreciate. Their
handwriting is rapid; they have a lively narrative
style and furnish many popular story-writers.
They have an egotism which is readily condoned,
and an ability to extricate themselves from
almost any difficulty. They love the natural
sciences.
The Passive, or rather Sensitive, since their
great role is to Feel, unite in themselves the
Nervous and the Lymphatic. They pass from
art to faith, from fidelity to sensuality, since,
sensitive and emotional, they vibrate to every
contact. Their flesh is fine and delicate, even
morbidly so; the outlines of the figure are rounded.
Gestures as well as words are often involuntary;
the postures indolent, the manner well-poised.
The handwriting remains always immature. The
style is harmonious, flowery, descriptive. This
nature is essentially musical, and frequently
becomes religious. Impressions from without
overcome impulses from within. In politics, they
are devotedly legitimist, faithful to the throne as
to the altar, influenced by ancient traditions of
90 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
loyalty and royalty, of "divine right," of aris-
tocracy, of "the good old times." They have a
profound seriousness in matters of sentiment,
which expresses itself in delicate old-fashioned
language. Will-power is deficient, artifice and
hypocrisy frequent. Sometimes there is coquetry,
sometimes worse; but the family virtues are
usual in this type.
The Intellectual (Bilious- Nervous) are abstract
thinkers; their role is to Idealize. The possessive
instinct in them translates itself into avarice or
ambition; emotionalism into prudence, virtue,
theology; activity into subtility. Theoretical,
mathematical, systematic, their mentality has
both a literal and an imaginative tendency.
Their language is full of strange expressions,
acquired and used almost unconsciously. Their
style, concise, elliptic, intense, vivid, reveals their
originality, which we discover also in their
BIZARRE handwriting, jerky and angular, in their
odd personal mannerisms, in their long and
somewhat heavy steps, with an excessive bend-
ing at the knees. Their opinions are essentially
individualistic, anarchistic, destructive, pessimis-
tic; a strong sense of the rights of personality
causes them to hold all things admissible which
lead toward the ideal state in which individuals
and ideas shall not be dominated by mass stu-
pidity. They are usually thin of flesh, with
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF ACTION 91
rounded shoulders and chest; the nose is nerve
RETROUSSE, for all the bodily lines curve from
above downward.
Lastly, the Physical, whose constant aim is
to Realize, to Materialize, and in whom the
Sanguine and the Lymphatic mingle, show, on
the contrary, heavy flesh, sometimes plump and
dimpled, sometimes bloated and ugly. The facial
and bodily lines tend to turn upward. They
are always thickset; their movements, neverthe-
less, are easy, and neither in step nor posture
are they hampered or clumsy. Prosaic dullness
is the defect of their minds, whose grossness is
sometimes expressed in violent or voluptuous
tastes. The letters of the handwriting are short,
rounded, heavy. Their opinions, social in ten-
dency, rest upon some doctrine of solidarity, of
cooperation, of mass effort, and have little regard
for initiative and for that inequality which is so
fecund. They are socialistic levellers. A mind
of this type often ends in materialism; its science
will be that of industry, its life one of adaptation,
its art merely a photographic realism.
II HISTORIC TENDENCY TO GENERAL
GROUPINGS OF Six
Now these six moral and physical types, so
distinct, are nothing else than the extension of
our energy in one of the six directions into which
92 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
the three dimensions of space divide themselves:
height (upward, downward), breadth (to right,
to left), depth (before and behind). Already the
organs of our bodies are adapted to these six
directions: our legs carry us forward and back-
ward, our arms extend to right and left, while, in
an eternal antithesis, our heads look upward
and the weight of our bodies draws us downward.
Now the SOUL cannot escape these conditions,
whether we regard spiritual energy as simply a
subtilization of physical energy, or whether we
see in the latter but a symbol of the soul. If
the soul dwell upon vulgar things, it ABASES
itself, as we say; it UPLIFTS itself toward God in
its expansion and detachment from earthly things ;
it inclines toward the RIGHT, so to speak, in
actions clearly governed by the will, and to the
LEFT in those governed by emotional impulse; to
"possess," is not this to be held BACK, and to
"manifest" to go FORWARD?
To manifest and to possess, to act and to feel,
to idealize and to materialize, is not this the
whole of life?
We see the Orator, "rising," deliver his EXOR-
DIUM. "Before" him, "before" us, he places his
PROPOSITION. His NARRATION, following, carries
us "back" with him into the tyrannical past.
He brandishes, as a sword in his "right" hand,
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OP ACTION 03
his CONFIRMATION, and, to the "left," wards off
sinister attacks with the buckler of his REFUTA-
TION. Then his discourse "descends" and ends
with the PERORATION. Such, according to Rhe-
toric, are the six parts of an oration; the six
directions of its force.
Poetry also, if we believe Aristotle, contains
six corresponding parts. And the Politics of
Plato enumerates six types of government :
the objective and majestic MONARCHY, the
abstract and lofty ARISTOCRACY, the military and
active TlMOCRACY, the materialistic OLIGARCHY
of the plutocrats, the sentimental DEMOCRACY
of the masses, and the jealous TYRANNY. They
succeed one another inevitably in the same order,
and the philosopher seeks not merely an image,
but THE CAUSE, in the six types of human char-
acter, which is to say, for us, in their six
"attitudes" respecting the passions
There were too (was it for this reason?) six
Classes in Rome, as there were six cases in its
declensions, one reflects with a smile. And Physics,
which in nature envisages only force, only energy,
is it not also divided into six parts? Does not
Crystallography reduce all its polyhedrons to six
groups of forms?
And, if we would amuse ourselves longer with
these butterfly-flights which are called Analogies
94 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
(and which likewise begin in childish poetic
caprice, to end perhaps as a science), we may
still cite the six "days" or periods of Creation,
which, fifty-two times a year, the Christian,
Jewish and Moslem week repeats and celebrates
in its six days.*
The seventh period was consecrated to rest.
But Sunday, according to Genesis, saw the birth
of light and darkness; Monday, the fluids, air
and water; Tuesday, the principal minerals and
vegetables; Wednesday, the astronomical organ-
ization of our sun and stars; Thursday, the fish
and birds of our earth; Friday, the terrestrial
animals and humanity.
The six gods early established over these six
days correspond to the six types which we have
just drawn from the four temperaments com-
bined two by two. The Sun-god is our Sensitive,
the Moon our jealous Possessive; Mars is our
Active, virile and brutal; the ingenious Mercury
is our Intellectual, the majestic Jupiter our
Objective and the sensual Venus our Physical.
These six types have had an incomparable
fortune; not only have they served all the Middle
Ages and the Renaissance, but we find them,
"The Mass is also divided into six principal parts. Each one sym-
bolizes one of the moments of the Passion, center and resume of the
world's history.
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF ACTION 96
clearly specified, in Shakespeare, who makes
constant allusion to them* and evidently constructs
from them a method for his classification of men.
We find them again in Schiller, who seems for
a time to have preferred them to the four primi-
tive temperaments dear to his master Kant.**
Ill ANALOGOUS GROUPINGS OF
SEVEN AND THREE
As for the seventh type, that of Saturn, it
has been little used except by dullards who have
corrupted the system. It rests, in effect, on the
superstitious idea of Evil Fortune. Its charac-
ters are alternately those of the six others,
obscured by this conception, which, as we shall
see further on, is one of the subdivisions of Apollo,
stripped of personal passion. If vicious, it cor-
responds to the type of Venus, and if cold, to
Diana; dry and abstract, to the intellectual
Mercury; hard and destructive, to Mars.
It seems to have been invented merely for the
sake of reaching the cabalistic number of 7. All
the personages, human or divine, of this seventh
class, may be reduced to the number of half a
dozen, by the fact that they all contain a compo-
site and central type. This keeps, from the
depths at which we see it, the too bright or too
*See, for example, the portrait which Hamlet draws of his father.
**Wallenstein, etc.
96 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
sombre color of its origin. Of the seven princes of
the Devs, six are thus subordinated to the sinister
Ahriman, whose emanations they represent, and
the seven Amschasfands, for their part, signify
simply the six Gahanbars (each placed over a
season or double-month of the year), plus the
Universal Ormuz.
For, although we prefer to divide the year into
four seasons, in which we have seen above sug-
gestive analogies with the temperaments, races,
ages, centuries, parts of the day and of the world
which it lights, we should not forget that it
is not NECESSARILY thus divided. And it has
not always been thus divided, as we have just
observed in the case of the Persian year, and as
we may observe in the case of the liturgic year,
also divided into six parts, but unequal ones:
Advent, Christmas season, Septuagesima, Lent,
Paschal season and the season after Pentecost.
The Greeks, too, showed perhaps a finer sense
of life than ours when thsy recognized but three
seasons : Ear, Op6ra and Chim6n, or the
Green, the Fruitful and the Sad. They identi-
fied these with the Beotian Thallo, Carpo and
Auxo, symbolizing Flower, Fruit and Growth;
with the Cretan Irene, Eunomia and Dirce
(Harmony, Power, Justice), more abstract, but
having the same profound significance; they
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF ACTION 97
compared them to the three Graces, the gentle
Aglaia, the joyous Euphrosyne and Thalia of
the feasts; to the three Gorgons, to the three
Sirens and to the three Eumenides, whose roles
in destiny we know. It is this habit of mind
which explains how Aristotle, by analogy, draws
in his ''Poetics" but three ages of man: Youth,
Maturity and Age, although, accustomed to
our four seasons, we moderns tend always to
insert a fourth.
Observe that the three seasons of the Greeks
readily divide themselves into the six of the
Persians: Season of Buds and Season of Foliage;
Season of Harvest and Season of Vintage; Season
of Darkness and Season of Snow.
Although some of these divisions may appear
variable, because they blend into one another
like the colors of the spectrum, we cannot there-
fore pronounce them artificial and unreal. Such
an ingratitude to Analogies, so constantly fecund
in the human mind, would be both precipitate
and imprudent.
The Art of Invention
CHAPTER VII
I PYTHAGORAS; PHILOSOPHIC ROMANTICISM
Numbers, wherein we moderns see nothing but
figures, are not so dead and inert as we have
decreed. A strange sentence, indeed, which we
have not passed on anything else in this vast
universe, wherein we pique ourselves on finding,
singing and celebrating only "Life!"
Number also is a part of Life. It is Rhythm.
Perhaps it shows itself even more essentially
living than most of our sensations, and, far from
being a mere convention established by prehistoric
arithmeticians, has as its origin in ourselves the
very beat of our hearts.
This exclusion of Number presents an incom-
prehensible anomaly. All our sciences, Astron-
omy, Physics, Mechanics, Chemistry, are based
on Mathematics, whose importance increases from
day to day; Philosophy alone, although open to all
these sciences which everywhere encompass it,
remains inhospitably closed to the master of them
all. Upon Number alone and its nature does
Philosophy refuse to meditate. It is perhaps
needless to seek further for the cause of that
decadence into which it is irresistibly slipping, and
THE ART OF INVENTION 99
of its visible impotence before moral and meta-
physical questions, which it persists in treating
according to the worn-out processes of a banal
lifeless scholasticism, in the paltry style of an old
professor of rhetoric attempting to produce
literature.
And this because, since the time of Pythagoras,
we have completely lost our perception of the
simple, warm, natural life of Numbers. That
great thinker, earliest of the philosophers, has
been ridiculously deformed by legend. We should
not forget, nevertheless, that from his school came
Aeschylus, creator of Tragedy, Epicharmus,
founder of Comedy, and a hundred other poets,
mathematicians, artists, legislators, naturalists,
all creators, who in reality constituted the Hellenic
grandeur, the origin of our civilization. A
Socrates, a Plato, an Aristotle represent, in fact,
but the second outpouring of Greek thought.
Again, we should recall the unanimous testimony
of the ancients. This same Pythagoras whom we
see, on the solemn eve of the Medic Wars, inspiring
the minds of their heroes and of the geniuses of the
Age of Pericles, is believed to have revived the
tradition of teachings attributed, more or less
authentically, to that Orpheus whom we find, near
the epoch of Troy, in the dawn of that other great
epoch of Greece, which gave us Homer and Hesiod.
100 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Is it surprising to discover that in this Orpheo-
Pythagoric teaching, although today disdained,
there lies a treasure of human thought?
Unhappily, Orphism and Pythagorism have
only come down to us disfigured in the most
ridiculous fashion, first by the Alexandrine char-
latans and later by those of the Renaissance,
that is to say, by the decay of the two great
original eras of Europe, the Greek and the Med-
iaeval. This does not at all signify, however, that
at the end of the first the authentic documents of
Pythagorism had disappeared. On the contrary,
we find the powerful influence of the doctrine,
its spirit of ANALOGY, and particularly of numer-
ical analogy, in almost all the best thought of
the Middle Ages (notably in theological writings),
thought thereby far removed from our own, but
thereby akin to that of Greece and Asia.
It is possible that the last Pythagoric works may
have finally disappeared, with so many others, at
the time of the Hundred Years War and the
Turkish invasion of Europe. Let us not forget
that, ignorant as we still are of mediaeval litera-
ture, we can necessarily form but a very incomplete
idea of its sources. Only the survival of these old
Hellenic writings can explain that extraordinary
MELANGE of marvellously suggestive passages,
otherwise inaccountable, and of base absurdities
THE ART OF INVENTION 101
which forms the "hermetic" books of the 15th and
16th centuries. It was said, indeed, even during
the lifetime of Cornelius Agrippa, that intrigu-
ing boaster whose OCCULT PHILOSOPHY contains,
besides its superstitious imbecilities, the curious
relationships of his Analogical Tables, that this
noisy wizard had merely plagiarized unintelli-
gently a manuscript of the Arabian Picatrix, which
was at that time to be found in the library of the
Kings of Spain. It is needless to recall how many
Greek works have come to us by way of the Arabs,
or how many have been lost which they
possessed.
The philosophy of the ancients comes to us
today with its most vigorous half amputated, so to
speak. By a singular tradition, the philosophic
teaching of modern peoples disguises this formid-
able mutilation. It invites us to glide over so
disturbing a subject. Nevertheless, if ever that
prodigious lacuna should be filled by the reappear-
ance of the Pythagoric writings so esteemed by all
the Greek thinkers (for neither Aristotle nor Plato,
nor any of their rivals of the old school, manifested
any of our disdain for them) a veritable revolution,
comparable to that of romanticism in literature,
will be produced in our philosophy, so erudite,
subtile, purist like the last classics, difficult,
minute and particular, but curtailed, narrow and
"scholastic" in the etymological sense of the word!
102 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Great is the distance from these mere academic
games to those antique doctrines each of which
founded a civilization! The Greek sage appears
intimately and naturally mingled with the tumul-
tuous life of the people, which he expressed and
transformed, almost in the fashion of the founders
of our religious orders. Whereas, coldly with-
drawn from the public to the fireside and the
library, our philosophy of professors and of themes,
by its evident impotence, yields place to the gross
empiricism of the modern leaders of men and of
those writers and artists who inspire them.
Between the imitation of defunct ages and the
ugliness of formless personality the last three
centuries have oscillated, with no bold new har-
monies to meet the storms of the future.
To the Greek so admirably endowed, and
also, it must be remembered, not yet desiccated
and hardened by an artificial and inelastic learn-
ing, mathematical formulae sang like chords.
The smallest new discovery of this kind, instead of
being limited to scientific and mechanical applica-
tions, penetrated him throughout, thrilled his
nerves and muscles and communicated its vibra-
tion to all his thoughts, by its analogies, inexact,
no doubt, as they always are, and as he knew, but
so much the more fecund. When the Infinite
opens itself to our souls, the classification of their
responding impulses which is least artificial is that
THE ART OF INVENTION 103
which assumes a mathematical character, since it
is Mathematics alone which challenges the Infinite
to all possible combinations.
Do we begin to perceive what I seek to
suggest rather than to demonstrate the pro-
fundity of the Pythagorean conception?
It is certain that no treason could be more fatal
to it, and in fact none has been, than the
inept numerical superstitions of Alexandrine and
of modern hermeticism. For to limit certain
numbers to some narrow meaning, to reduce to
some exclusive property their enormous fecundity,
is to go precisely contrary to the great Thinker to
whom these vile charlatans pretend to be attached,
but whose deadly parasites they are.
Even M. Chaignet, in his conscientious work on
Pythagoras, has done little but strive with the
superstitions which these gentry have heaped
about this great name, and whose crying contra-
dictions dishearten this excellent scholar, even
while he seems to perceive behind them, though
he lacks the power to seize it amid their conflicts
something lofty, rational, philosophic; in a word,
truly Greek.
In short, the monument yet remains to be
raised by our own strength. I believe that the
surest method will be the humblest: to gather
patiently, in a sort of dictionary, the numerical
104 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
analogies, extending them progressively to all
things with which we are acquainted, at least as
far as possible; then to seek in some way to mul-
tiply them by means of the known laws of arithmet-
ical combinations; to note with care, on the other
hand, the point at which each one of these anal-
ogies ceases to be exact, and to try to trace thus
a sort of provisory limit which will give them a
contour, a physiognomy less arbitrary and espe-
cially less limited than that inflicted by superstition
upon the numbers 13, 7, etc.
Ill VARIOUS NUMERICAL GROUPINGS
Strange work this, to be sure, the aspect of
which will perhaps be excused in view of the end to
be attained, so far distant, and of the utter lack of
methods for its attainment from which our age
suffers. Christopher Columbus had to do without
charts for his first voyage, although his forerunners
had probably perished for that reason.
So, for example, in this expedition toward the
antipodes of known common sense, we can observe,
with regard to Odd and Even Numbers, the habit-
ual and instinctive preference of scientific classifi-
cations for the latter. It seems, in fact, that the
Odd Numbers, and especially the Prime Numbers,
draw us slily toward the artificial. On the con-
trary, the Even Numbers, thanks to their common
THE ART OF INVENTION 105
root 2, show themselves favorable to subdivisions,
and likewise to a liberty of research which is more
hospitable to ulterior discoveries.
Let us take another example, this time from
nature. A group of friends most commonly
comprises three, plus an additional one who
serves as a lien with other groups, thus leading the
first three to collective action. This curious law
has been perceived and brought to light by the
authors (of mentalities so different) of THE THREE
MUSKETEERS, of WITH FIRE AND SWORD, and of
L'CEUVRE.
Now this sentimental law manifests at the base
of the family. A child forms, like the fourth
friend, a lien between two groups, here two
families, the one represented by a man and his two
parents, the other by a woman and hers.
And in each group of friends (3 -f- 1) we may
observe the roles, firm and paternal of one, indul-
gent and maternal of another, adventurous of a
third, and of the fourth a role of transition to the
second group of 3. These friends sometimes
exchange their roles, perhaps even assume each
one of them in turn. It is in this sense that it will
be necessary to seek here the "limit" of which I
have spoken.
We shall have, on the other hand, to count the
number of friendly groups, connected as I have
106 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
just indicated, which is necessary and sufficient to
constitute a society, a salon, etc. The ancients
held that guests should not be fewer in number
than the Graces (3 or 4), nor more than the Muses.
Must we understand by this that a third complete
group will lead to inharmonious divisions, with a
majority and a minority?
Let us pass, from these first examples of a
psychology singular because unfamiliar, but never-
theless founded on experience, to the deeper work
of Numerical Analogies, which we may arrange in
tables, in a sort of atlas or dictionary.
The table of Dualities is one of the most instruc-
tive. Let us enumerate first, without comment or
order, some of the most renowned: Day and Night,
Black and White, God and Satan, Ormuz and
Ahriman, Jesus and Judas, Cain and Abel, Good
and Bad, the Laugh and the Tear, Great and
Small, Man and Woman, Telescope and Micro-
scope, Aryans and Semites, Idealists and Sen-
sualists, Masters and Slaves, Metaphysics and
Positive Science, Faith and Doubt, Affirmation
and Negation, Authority and Liberty, Dorians and
lonians, Being and Non-being, Stoics and Epi-
cureans, Mine and Thine, Rights and Duties,
Church and State, More and Less, etc.
It is hardly possible to superpose two of these
Dualities but that there springs into view a
THE ART OF INVENTION 107
sort of subtraction working in our minds some
one of the great errors which, in consequence of an
unconscious identification of these dualities, have
distracted and still distract unfortunate humanity.
Whence does this come but from the fact that it
lacks sufficient flexibility of mind for these ana-
logical subtractions?
The "barbarism" against which the little towns
of Greece struggled when awakened by Pytha-
gorism, resided in nothing else than this rigidity.
Even among us, if a professional agitator toss two
of these dualities to the crowd, unskilled in the
poetic game of comparison, it will instantly see
therein identity, and therewith enrich the two
camps which, in its simple eyes, must tear asunder
and divide the world.
I have intended here to give an example grossly
visible. But it will not be difficult to surprise
more than one so-called "intellectual," more than
one philosopher, in flagrant offenses of the same
sort in respect of certain dualities. What, then
when we pass from dualities to triads, to tetrads,
and so on?
To this day, no science or system exists for
training us to associate methodically all ideas
most remote, as well as to dissociate, not less
methodically, all ideas apparently most indissolu-
ble. Our philosophy has well recognized the
108 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
capital importance of association, and, more
recently, of dissociation of ideas (a Nietzschean
reversal of values) ; nevertheless it has not thought
to seek a process which enables us to accomplish
this work from top to bottom.
Numerical Analogies furnish this precious proc-
ess, at least for everything which is concerned
with the notion of Number AND ITS DERIVATIVES:
the notions of extent, of quantity, of duration, of
intensity, of force, etc. And we know that, from
day to day, in all our sciences, a great number of
ideas come back to this, even some which at first
we thought altogether refractory.
Long ago, in a sublime presentiment, Pythagoras
alone systematically led the Greek thinkers along
this path. We know today that he labored to
reduce all things to numerical relationship,
although we have unfortunately lost the greater
part of these relationships, and those which remain
to us have been ridiculously interpreted, at the
same time that the theory of the Master was
travestied by the Alexandrine charlatans, to the
point of rendering incomprehensible and unbe-
lievable the influence it exercised upon the most
vigorous effort which has ever yet been put forth
by human thought!
The poets alone have preserved, by pure
instinct, a vague sense of these things. We find
THE ART OF INVENTION 109
to turn again to these gross and visible dualities
the antithesis everywhere in the creative activity
of a Hugo, for example.
We saw, when constituting our Four Tempera-
ments, how 2 dualities (Mind and Body, Activity
and Passivity) could, instead of being reduced,
according to vulgar custom, to a false identity, be
multiplied one by the other. After which, com-
bining 2 by 2 in their turn the 4 elements thus
obtained, \ve drew from them a third duality, since
4 elements, 2 by 2, furnish 6 combinations: this
third duality was Objectivity-Subjectivity.
Let us now amuse ourselves by gathering triads,
tetrads, pentads, hexads, heptads. They can
combine among themselves in a fashion equally
fecund; not, be it repeated, by identifications, (the
unconscious and habitual process of the vulgar),
but by means of superpositions, followed perhaps
by a subtraction (this is the case of all critical
comparisons), perhaps by a multiplication (we
have just seen an example in the generation of the
Four Temperaments), perhaps by still other
operations.
Let us first enumerate the most celebrated triads :
The 3 primary colors (red, yellow and blue)
whose combinations engender the 3 others (orange,
green and purple). The 3 persons of the verb,
whose augmentation (plural) also doubles the
110 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
number. The 3 forms of poetry which correspond
to them (I = lyric, THOU = dramatic, HE = epic).
The 3 primitive conceptions of Time, Space and
Number, carrying each one the idea of a movement,
which necessarily begins by dividing them. The
3 theological virtues, which double the 3 intellec-
tual virtues too little popularized, in truth
intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. The 3 classes
of science (natural, physical and mathematical),
not less prompt to divide themselves each into two
groups. The ancient TRIVIUM (grammar, rhetoric,
logic). The 3 parts of rhetoric (invention, dis-
position, execution). The 3 parts of speech. The
3 forms of the triangle. The 3 musical modes.
The elements of the orchestra (wood, brass and
strings). The cousinly trinity, the Good, the
True and the Beautiful. The 3 Greek Tragics.
The no less representative 3 Masters of Italian
painting. The 3 orders of classic architecture.
The 3 Divine Persons. The parts of penitence
(confession, contrition, expiation). The divisions
of the body (head, thorax, trunk) ; of each member ;
of each finger. The appetites, according to Plato.
Etc., etc.
We may likewise form a list of groups of Four,
in addition to those which I have cited in the chap-
ter on the Temperaments:
The 4 elements. The 4 rules of arithmetic.
The 4 cardinal virtues. The 4 branches of the
THE ART OF INVENTION 111
Cross. The 4 sacred animals. The 4 great
Prophets. The 4 Evangelists. The 4 principal
Fathers of the Church. The 4 parts of the New
Testament (Gospels, Acts, Epistles and Apoca-
lypse). The 4 branches of philosophy (realism,
idealism, scepticism, mysticism), whose coinci-
dence with the ages of man, of a race, and seem-
ingly of humanity, Goethe has indicated in his
incomparable PENSEES. The 4 principles of des-
tiny, according to the same Goethe (Daim6n, Eros,
Tuche, Elpis). The 4 forms of animal locomotion
(walking, flying, swimming, creeping). The 4
divine raptures, according to the Greeks (that of
the Muses, that of Dionysos, that of the prophetic
Apollo, that of Aphrodite). The materials of the
sacraments (wine, oil, water, bread). The princi-
pal winds (Auster, Zephyr, Eurus, Boreas). The
point, the line, the plane and the depth in geom-
etry. The colors of eyes (black, blue, brown and
green) and of hair (black, blonde, chestnut and
red).
For the Five: The senses. The arts (music,
architecture, sculpture, painting and poetry).
The 5 wise and the 5 foolish virgins. The fingers.
The universals. The joyful mysteries of the
Rosary (Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Puri-
fication, Finding the Child in the Temple), the
sorrowful mysteries (Gethsemane, Scourging,
Crown of Thorns, Bearing the Cross, Crucifixion)
112 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
and the glorious (Resurrection, Ascension, Descent
of the Holy Ghost, Assumption, Coronation of
Mary). The acts of a play (not only our own, but
the Chinese). The Chinese count also: 5 great
social relationships (between parents and children,
governors and governed, between spouses, between
friends, between old people and young people), 5
sorts of habiliment, 5 orders of great dignitaries.
For Six: The parts of the body, as indicated
above. The days of Creation. The double-
months of the Persians, and the other examples
given in the preceding chapter. The kinds of
misfortune, according to Chinese philosophy. The
series of double-trinities indicated above by the
number 3.
For Seven: The notes of the scale. The
planets. The Wonders of the World. The capi-
tal sins. The parts of the Lord's Prayer. The
heads of the Hydra. The branches of the cande-
labra. Every pleiad, astronomic or poetic. The
orifices of the face. The sacraments. The sages
of Greece. The ecclesiastical orders. The 7
series of visions of the Apocalypse, and, in the
first four, the 7 churches, the 7 seals, the 7 trump-
ets, the 7 vials, as well as the 7 heads of the Beast.
The gifts of the Holy Ghost. The 7 deacons
instituted by the Apostles. The 7 words of Christ
on the Cross.
THE ART OF INVENTION 113
III DISCOVERING AND INVENTING
For the triads, we shall arrange 3 vertical
columns, between which we shall divide, on a
horizontal line, the 3 terms of each triad, first in
one order:
ABC
A' B' C'
A" B" C", etc.
then in a second:
ABC
A' C' B'
A" B" C", etc.
then a third:
ABC
B' C' A'
A' B" C'
then in a fourth, a fifth, a sixth. We may compare
each one of these orders, for there are six pos-
sible for each triad, with each of those of every
other triad (the triads A B C, A B C and others).
And we may note accordingly the ANALOGIES, the
CONTRASTS and the DIFFERENCES perceived in the
course of these comparisons. We may do the same
for the tetrads (each is susceptible of 24 orders) by
means of 4 columns; for the pentads, the hexads,
etc., by means of 5 and of 6 columns, etc.
114 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
The ANALOGIES observed in the course of these
comparisons, member by member, between the
diverse dyads, triads, tetrads, etc., will be of
several species: Consequence, Connection, Echo,
etc. The CONTRASTS also: Duel, Love, Exclusion*
Complementarism, etc. The DIFFERENCES will be
measured by means of the "Analogical Sub-
traction."
Of this Analogical Subtraction I have already
spoken. It consists, as before explained, in first
superposing two couples, two trinities, two tetrads,
etc. After which, we note the difference or resem-
blance between their first members, between the
second, and so on. Then we must note whether
this difference or resemblance between the first
members is equal, superior or inferior (and wherein)
to that observed between the second members,
then to that between the third and fourth mem-
bers, etc., superposed in this operation. Finally*
make similar comparisons between the second
members and the third, the second and the fourth,
etc. These various deviations, once noted, will
continue to exactly define the relationship con-
necting the two dualities, trinities, etc., which we
wish to compare.
It is easily understood that we shall thus be led
to the discovery of the element which will sym-
metrize the two dualities, trinities, etc. The
THE ART OF INVENTION 115
"Analogical Subtraction" thus puts us in posses-
sion of an Art of Discovering, an Art of Inventing.
It is of course necessary to guard, here also,
against yielding, in an impatient desire of further
discovery, to the spirit of system, to hasty sym-
metrizing. We shall, however, run little risk of it
by advancing slowly, with a perpetual conscious-
ness of our method, whereas our moderns, who
fear to systematize voluntarily, are constantly
misled in their groping course by false symmetries.
Even if the element discovered by our Analog-
ical Subtraction, instead of producing instantly
before our eyes the symmetry sought, brings a
new dissymmetry, this should rejoice us, for
instead of closing our inquiry it will inaugurate one
more extended and more fertile in the unknown.
I have spoken only of Analogical Subtraction
between two dyads, triads, tetrads, etc. But it
can be made between each dyad and all the other
dyads, between each triad and all the others, and
so on. It can be made even between a dyad and
a triad, a tetrad or a pentad, etc. This operation
will offer great varieties. In short, one number is
in diverse arithmetical or geometrical relations
with another. Thus, the three elements of a triad
being disposed in SPACE, and, for example, in a
triangle, the elements of the tetrad which we wish
to compare with it can be disposed, first, in a
116 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
triangle formed of three from among them, the
fourth remaining at the center; then in a second
triangle, a third, etc., in which these four elements
will change place turn about, the fourth relating
itself in a greater or less degree to the three others,
and the triangle changing its proportions. Then
we can dispose this triad and this tetrad in TIME,
that is to say, their respective elements in various
orders of succession. In this succession in TIME or
according to a unilinear disposition, the same
triad, tetrad, etc., can reappear from place to
place; or perhaps it will be a pair or a trinity of
triads, tetrads, etc., which will reappear. This
will create a sort of refrain or rhythm.
This rhythm will be subject, like all rhythms,
whether of music, poetry or form, to the principles,
evolved by decorative artists, of Alternation
(binary, ternary, etc.), of Intersection, of Sym-
metry, of Contrast, of Gradation, ascending and
descending, of Radiation and of Consonance
(rhyme, repetition, leit-motiv).
We can also always dispose as to ACTION the
terms of two or several dyads, triads, etc., to be
compared among themselves, or of a dyad to be
compared with a triad, a tetrad, a pentad and so
on. For example, we will take for subject and for
verb the two superposed members of two triads, or
of this triad and that tetrad; or for subject, verb
and predicate the three superposed members of
THE ART OP INVENTION 117
three triads, or of two triads and a tetrad. In the
second column, on the contrary, we will reverse
this grammatical relationship. In the third, we
will adopt that of the first column, or that of the
second, or both successively, unless we adopt a
new one. The results once gathered, we may
change the "grammatical" arrangement of each
column into all the combinations not employed the
first time ; from this, new results.
Then, instead of "grammatical" relationships,
we may arrange those of logic (causality, etc.).
Now, by the examples which I have just given,
we already begin to perceive that there is in
reality a whole science here opening up before us,
and of which we may establish, with a little
patience, not allowing ourselves to be disheartened
by the initial difficulties, the tables of loga-
rithms.*
"The reader will perhaps ask, by way of proofs in favor of this method,
what discoveries I have made by it. I offer the present work in its
entirety as the result and the proof of my method, as the assembling
of the examples gives evidence of its efficacy. In no other way was I
able to bring into unity the classifications, often contradictory, of
characters, temperaments, world- types, etc., or to reduce to a single
law of generation all the polytheisms of Chapter IX. The Law of
Four-Century Periods, the proof here following of the existence of a
single Homer, the minute analyses of characters created by poetry or
legend, and the secrets of literary technique which I have sown by
handfuls through the rest of this book are, we may be assured, simply
the "remainders" of my Analogical Subtractions, simply the "unknown '
outlined by means of the "Equations" whose principal rules I have
just indicated, simply the rhythms obtained by patient comparisons
of the same elements transported from Time to Space, and from
Space to Movement or Number.
118 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
They will form a part, if I am not mistaken, of
the Pythagorean studies, persistent in tracking
down vague ideas (those idols of the moderns), to
master them, and wrest from them a thousand
precious secrets of the Unconscious. And thus I
would explain the preoccupation common to all the
great men who came from that school unique in the
world, to all the contemporaries of that cen-
tury which was the most wonderful of Greece and
of all history, that of Numerical Relationships.
We find it again, this obsessing preoccupation,
at the base of their music ; we find it in the estab-
lishment of the Canon in sculpture; we find it in
their architecture, so minutely precise and delicate ;
again in the definitive design of their lyric rhythms
and in the strict rules of their tragedy; we redis-
cover it in that fixed idea of Proportion which
they carried everywhere, into art, into astronomy,
into politics, into morals. It has for us a character
literally SACRED and inspiring.
Pythagqras, although he did not create it,
revived it forcefully at a time when Greek ethnic
individuality was menaced, a time from which
dates also the revival of favor for the great national
Homeric poetry.
In short, we find it here, this spirit of Proportion,
in such clearness that it has enabled me to estab-
lish, despite the grave nonsense with which
German and Philistine philology has so long stupe-
fied the world, the existence of a unique Homer,
which I shall demonstrate.
Epic and Tragedy
CHAPTER VIII
I HOMER: THE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY
Better proof of Homer's existence could hardly
be desired than the perfect and mathematical
symmetry between the two works which he has
left, and the strict internal symmetry of each of
them, indication of as tyrannical a plan as
ever a poet imposed upon himself, and with
which no two authors were ever known to bind
each other. This being demonstrated, it appears
to me idle to go on refuting the many attempted
refutations of the existence of Homer, refuta-
tions which contradict one another to an extent
truly comical.
Wolf, father of the Zollian school, held that the
supposed primitive poems never existed; that the
works were constituted slowly by the patching
together of many pieces of different origins and
different epochs. His intellectual descendants,
Hermann, Fauriel, Kayser, etc., held that original
poems did exist, but in slight and meager form,
and that they were little by little lengthened by
additions. Guigniaut, in turn, attempted to show
that they were simply achieved by the Homerides,
after a plan bequeathed them by their ancestor!
120 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
Croiset, on the contrary, held that the principal
parts of the poems were the author's, but that the
plan was of a more recent epoch, as well as
the additions and connecting parts necessary to
this thesis. Koechly and Kirchoff share this
opinion. But all three differ as to which are
the original parts and which the additions.
All these hypotheses rest, of course, upon other
hypotheses: imbecility of Greek critics, barbarism
of the period after the taking of Troy, non-exis-
tence of the latter (which however has since been
discovered), etc.
The ILIAD and the ODYSSEY contain each 24
books. The author has divided each into two
parts inversely symmetrical; we call them the
LESSER ILIAD (which goes from an indecisive
situation under the walls of the city to the shore
upon which the Greeks find themselves thrown
back), and the GREATER ILIAD (which goes from
this extreme point of their weakness to the final
fall of Troy); the GREATER ODYSSEY (in which
Ulysses wanders, far from Ithaca) and the LESSER
ODYSSEY (in which he returns). Each of these
halves comprises exactly 12 books. If this clear
distribution of the epic material be the work of
grammarians, then we must regret that we can
discover nothing as ingenious in the anti-Homeric
writings of ours.
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 121
Each half -poem may now be divided into equal
groups:
ILIAD
LESSER ILIAD (Books I-XII). The first of
the two groups (I-VI) confines itself, very logi-
cally, to the EPHEMERAL ADVANTAGES OF THE
GREEKS. The second (VII-XII) to THEIR INFER-
IORITY MORE AND MORE DISASTROUS; in the second
shines Hector (who appeared only episodically
in the first, which ends with the famous farewell
to Andromache); since in his strength lies the
weakness of the Achaians, it follows, in effect,
that by his presence is personified the distress to
which the anger of Achilles has abandoned them.
And here Hector watches and fights without rest
on the field of combat.
GREATER ILIAD (Books XIII-XXIV). This,
in the first part, consists of the DESPERATE STRIFE
ON THE SHORE. Near the beginning of the second
part, on the contrary, Achilles solemnly renounces
his rancor, the cause of the three periods just
ended, and this last quarter of the poem con-
sequently narrates only HIS EXPLOITS (XIX-
XXIV) which are thus pendant to those of the
Trojan heroes. Likewise are Books XIII-XVIII
(DESPERATE STRIFE) pendant to I-VI (EPHEMERAL
ADVANTAGES). Thus the four parts of this tragic
symphony, far from exhibiting the confusion
which nineteenth-century criticism has stupidly
122 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
ascribed to them, are framed with faultless
symmetry.
Let us range the six books of each part in four
parallel columns, according to the manner in
which they thus correspond:
LESSER ILIAD GREATER ILIAD
I VII XIII XIX
II VIII XIV XX
III IX XV XXI
IV X XVI XXII
V XI XVII XXIII
VI XII XVIII XXIV
The first books of these columns (I, VII, XIII,
XIX), recounting CONFLICTS IN WHICH FOUR
HEROES, ALMOST EQUAL, ARE MATCHED TWO BY
TWO, are filled with alarming discords, whose
wailing reminds us of those which open the
"Funeral March" of the musical Homer.
Book I : The impiety of Agamemnon ; the
pestilence. Then the injustice of the king of
kings; the discord between the chiefs, and the
departure of Achilles.
Book VII : The two next most redoubtable
adversaries engage in combat, Hector and Ajax;
which will triumph? Night puts an end to the
unsolved question. Sepulture of the dead, whose
funeral pyres illumine the darkness. The terrible
presages of the Gods
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 123
Book XIII: Ajax and Hector dispute anew;
they passionately insult one another. This time
the struggle takes place among the ships. Ido-
meneus strikes in vain.
Book XIX: Achilles returns and renounces
his resentment; Agamemnon relinquishes Briseis;
all the rude caprices of the first book are at an
end. Achilles weeps bitterly over Patroclus.
Shall we now take the second book of each of
these half dozens? They will tell us, four times,
of the solemn INTERVENTION OF THE GODS in the
conflict: a thrilling pause follows the short foot-
falls of the opening, that their menace may be
the better apprehended.
Here (Book II) is the deceptive dream sent by
Zeus, which is followed by preparations and by
the assembling of the troops. The Goddesses,
in Book VIII, are with difficulty kept within
bounds by their master and king; the prayers of
Hera have obtained a momentary success for the
Greeks, but the Goddesses attempted disobedience
quickly brings about their repulse. In Book
XIV Hera naturally takes her revenge: she has
lulled Zeus to sleep, and the anti-Zeus, Poseidon,
springs to the aid of the Greeks. In Book XX
all the Gods descend to the combat!
The third books of these four groups show
invariably the ACTION BROUGHT ON IN A NEW
124 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
WAY, BUT ALWAYS IN VAIN. The duel of Meme-
laus and Paris, which might settle the quarrel of
the two peoples, does not take place, Paris being
miraculously carried away (Book III). The
embassy to Achilles, another attempt at the
decisive, also fails (IX). The Greeks, favored
by the slumber of Zeus, lose all their advantages
on his awakening; they are even driven back to
their ships; already that of Protesilaus takes
fire (XV). Achilles in person meets a conqueror
in the river-god Xanthus; he, however, is stopped
by the Gods, who find, in their turn, among their
own race, adversaries impossible to overthrow
(XXI). All solutions here appear impossible.
The fourth book of each series (IV, X, XVI,
XXII) is that of GREAT CATASTROPHES: breaking
off of the truce; Pandaros treacherously wound-
ing Menelaus (IV); the deaths of Dolon and
especially of Rhesus assassinated in his tent,
repay one treachery with another (X). And
if to underline once more these antitheses
Patroclus is killed in Book XVI, Hector, succumb-
ing in the corresponding book (XXII) pays, accord-
ing to the same law of composition, for his death.
The fifth books, on the contrary, are devoted
to the glory of the heroes: the EXPLOITS OF DlO-
MEDES give title to Book V, as the EXPLOITS OF
AGAMEMNON to Book XI and those of MENELAUS
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 125
to XVII. What plainer signs of symmetry could
be desired? If Book XXIII is that of the FUN-
ERAL GAMES IN HONOR OF PATROCLUS, does not
this mighty apotheosis offer an even more striking
MISE EN SCENE than his exploits?
Finally, the sixth book of each series terminates
the threnody, at first mournful, then religious,
then violent and sterile as the billows, then
lamenting an illustrious warrior, then singing the
praise of another, with a final sigh of elegies
and tears. Ready to rejoin the fatal Paris,
Hector clasps his Andromache at the Scaean gate
(Book VI); exhausted, the Greeks yield their
wall condemned by the Gods (XII); Thetis, in
tears, has the arms forged in which her son will
perish (XVIII). Priam brings back the body
of his son amid the wailing of the Trojans (XXIV) .
ODYSSEY
Such long connected threads, such broad sur-
faces could not be carried from a work of war
through a pleasanter and more varied narrative.
The means of changing and varying which occurred
to the author were found in a different division
of the same number of books; the framework
remaining identical (24 = 2X12), he changed the
internal distribution. The division of each half
of the poem was in this case ternary. It thus
furnished the poetic creator a SINGLE creator,
126 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
as I think we begin to see an aspect exactly
COMPLEMENTARY to the first, which, as we have
just seen, rested on a binary division. Homer
here gained, at a stroke, smaller surfaces (groups
of four books instead of six) to be more delicately
sculptured, and at the same time an ENSEMBLE
less bare and simple.
GREAT ODYSSEY LESSER ODYSSEY
I V IX XIII XVII XXI
II VI X XIV XVIII XXII
III VII XI XV XIX XXIII
IV VIII XII XVI XX XXIV
GREATER ODYSSEY (Books I-XII) : The first
of the three groups (I-IV) shows ITHACA WITHOUT
ULYSSES; the second (V-VIII) ULYSSES, UNKNOWN,
AMONG THE PHEACIANS; the third (IX-XII) the
NARRATIVES OF ULYSSES (HIS DISTANT ADVEN-
TURES).
LESSER ODYSSEY (Books XIII-XXIV) : Here
first is ULYSSES IN ITHACA (XIII-XVI); then
ULYSSES, UNKNOWN, IN HIS OWN PALACE (XVII-
XX); lastly, the EXPLOITS BY WHICH HE RECON-
QUERS HIS THRONE (XXI-XXIV).
These two triads are perfectly balanced.
ITHACA WITHOUT ULYSSES and ULYSSES IN
ITHACA; ULYSSES, UNKNOWN, IN THE STRANGERS'
PALACE and ULYSSES, UNKNOWN, IN HIS OWN
PALACE; DISTANT ADVENTURES and ADVENTURES
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 127
IN HIS OWN COUNTRY, like the two dyads of
the Iliad: EPHEMERAL ADVANTAGES OF THE
GREEKS and their DESPERATE STRUGGLE ON THE
SHORE; VICTORIES OF HECTOR and TRIUMPH OF
ACHILLES. Here, then, is the same esthetic,
based on Number, which Pythagoras is later to
define as "Analogy."
Here, likewise, the first books of the groups
present analogous situations: A HERO IN GREAT
WEAKNESS WHO NEVERTHELESS ACQUITS HIMSELF
WITH COURAGE: Telemachus alone among the
suitors (I) ; Ulysses clinging to a wreck in the
tempest (V); again when he and his escape from
Polyphemus (IX); again, alone, when he awakes
abandoned in Ithaca and does not recognize it
(XIII); when he enters, a scorned beggar, his
pillaged palace (XVII); when this beggar puts
his hand to the great bow which the suitors can-
not bend (XXI).
And the second book of each series offers, in
recompense, A MAN SUFFERING REVERSES, BUT
AIDED BY A KIND INTERVENTION. After the gather-
ing of the suitors, the assembling of the people;
and, if they refuse Telemachus the vessel he ask ,
the w.ise Mentor promises him one (II). To
Ulysses, destitute and naked, Nausicaa gives
garments (VI). Against Circe, Hermes forearms
him (X). In his distress he meets with the
fidelity of the humble Eumaeus (XIV). Penelope,
128 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
by her attitude, consoles him for the insults and
attack of the beggar Iros, without knowing him
(XVIII). Before the suitors, Athene, first in
the form of a darting swallow, then with her
shield, encourages and protects him (XXII).
If the first and second books of each series
balance one another, the third and fourth are not
less symmetrical: the latter accentuates, at every
stroke, the idea of the former. Here is Telemachus
at Pylos (III), then at Sparta (IV). Here is
Ulysses entering the palace of the Pheacians
(VII), then feted by them (VIII). Here are the
Dead evoked (XI), and the Monsters appear
(XII). Here is the return of Telemachus (XV),
then the discovery of his father, object of his
search, in Ithaca (XVI). Here is the project of
testing the suitors by means of the bow (XIX),
then the prudent organizing of the massacre
(XX). Here, finally, is Ulysses master of his
home (XXIII) and of his kindgom (XXIV).
A like method observed in the two works
shows that they come from the same hand,
if it were not sufficiently proved by both being
apologies for vengeance, and by both tending to
point the same moral; the one negatively, by
blaming the INEVITABLE DISCORD OF PLURALI-
TIES; the other positively, exalting THE CONSTANCY
AND THE VICTORY OF THE INDIVIDUAL TYPE; the
one chanting an emotion, the other a man!
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 129
In each of these poems the truly extraordinary
symmetry between the parts which compose it
demonstrates that the hypotheses of interpola-
tions and of lacunae of any importance must be
rejected. I defy any one to cite a single work,
as strictly planned and calculated in all details
as are these, which COULD have been executed
by several artists of different epochs, or even by
two collaborators, however closely united.
Whence, then, can have sprung the strange and
profoundly anti-artistic conception of a plurality
of authors for these compositions marked by so
leonine a hand? The answer is simple: from
the admirable independence which each member
of these masterpieces retains. Far from losing
its own individuality in the mass of narrative, a
single canto a 24th part of a poem, a 48th
part of the double work can be considered
separately and alone, and can satisfy. A single
Homer conceived his epic in this wise, and so
executed it. And herein lies the secret of its
eternal youth.
II --LAW OF GENERATION BY WHICH
TRAGEDY SPRINGS FROM EPIC
The second of these poems contains, in advance,
the technique of Tragedy.
Take away the third part of the ODYSSEY
(IX-XII: the Narratives of Ulysses) and we
130 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
have before us the five visible portions of tragedy,
which engendered our traditional five acts,
a division which we find even among the Chinese.
As for the Narratives of Ulysses, they form the
invisible side, which is in all tragedy invisible
for the very simple reason that it serves as a base ;
the base upon which a cube rests is not apparent
to the eye. It is to this part, formed of events
anterior to the beginning of the action, that the
exposition of every first act makes allusion.
From it emanates the mystery which permeates
the work. From it springs the agnition in which,
finally, it becomes visible at the moment of the
catastrophe.
Thus, in the four dramas which in succession
form the ILIAD, the second canto of each is the
mystery and the explanation, which must be
veiled and diffused in a scenic adaptation.
All well-constructed epics rest upon multiples
of 6: the ILIAD has 24 cantos, the ODYSSEY 24,
TELEMAQUB 24, LES MARTYRS 24, the ^ENEID 12,
the THEBAID 12, PARADISE LOST 12, REYNARD
THE Fox 12, ARAUCANA 36, LE LUTRIN 6. Of
what weight, in view of this, is the HENRIADE?
Neither the LUSIAD (10 cantos) nor DER MESSIAS
(20 cantos) have the qualities of the works just
cited. If the PHARSALIA has but 10 cantos and
the ARGONAUTICA but 8, it is because these two
poems are incomplete. I find no valid exception
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 131
but JERUSALEM DELIVERED (20 cantos), and we
can hardly refrain from criticizing its narrowness
of horizon, when we consider the oceanic immen-
sity of the Crusades.*
The Bible contains 72 books. And all the
Idyls come back to 12 invariable themes.
Ill THE THREE SYSTEMS OF POETRY
There are three great systems of poetry:
Parallelism,
Quantitative poetry of long and short syllables,
Our poetry of accent.
These may be subdivided: the metrical poetry
of the ancients, the tonic poetry of the Germans,
Spanish assonance, rhyme, etc. They may be
combined: thus liturgic poetry has synthesized
all the systems.
Parallelism (Chinese, Semitic) remains close
to logic and rhetoric. Thence comes its privilege
of "translatability" into all idioms. Parallelism
is to poetry, in a manner, what ideography is to
writing. It opposes whether by SYMMETRICAL
comparison, by ANTITHESIS or by a more vague
and subtile analogy which is called SYNTHETIC
two propositions.
*I have not cited the Asiatic poems, nor those of our Middle Ages,
which are not cut up into detached cantos.
132 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Examples :
1st, of SYMMETRIC parallelism :
"The kings of Tarshish and of the isles shall
bring presents :
The kings of Sheba and of Seba shall offer
gifts."
(Psalm LXXII)
2nd, of ANTITHETIC parallelism:
"Faithful are the wounds of a friend:
Deceitful are the kisses of an enemy."
(Prov. XXVII)
3rd, of SYNTHETIC parallelism:
"The law of the Lord is perfect,
Converting the soul :
The testimony of the Lord is sure,
Making wise the simple:
The statutes of the Lord are right,
Rejoicing the heart."
(Psalm XIX)
Now grammar teaches us that a proposition is
reduced, in the last analysis, to three elements:
subject, verb and predicate. This then makes,
in a Parallel, 6 elements (2 subjects, 2 verbs,
2 predicates) arranged face to face in two trinities.
The verb, central element of each trinity,
expresses the idea of RAPPORT, like the hori-
zontal bar in each of the two terms of an algebraic
equation :
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 133
1st term: 2nd term:
For his anger A C His kindness
endures = endures
for the twinkling B D for a lifetime,
of an eye :
Parallelism, we hasten to add, has like its
survival among us, our proverbs recourse to
assonance or rhyme in order to accentuate still
further the connecting of two ideas hitherto
separated or insufficiently compared.
What is assonance and what is rhyme, upon
which our versifications are based?
"Quel negre fou
Nous a forge ce bijou d'un sou" . . . ?
(Verlaine: ART POETIQUE.)
They are cousins and kindred of the pun.
And what is the pun but a play on words?
It is a language laughing at its own infirmities.
We can imagine an ideal language in which,
on the contrary, the words resemble each other
exactly in the proportion in which the ideas they
express resemble each other. May such a mar-
vellous language have once existed, in accordance
with the ideal of a primitive human superiority,
and must ambiguity, double-meaning and puns
be traced to Babel? According to this amusing
hypothesis, assonance, alliteration and rhyme
134 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
would historically precede, instead of following
parallelism in reactionary fashion, and a Verhaeren,
bringing us back to the latter, would be closing a
vast cycle.
In any case, whether we make use of the
QUATRAIN of short lines constructed on two
rhymes, complementary, since, in the classics,
one is masculine and the other feminine,
"Un vieux chne etait la: sa tige
"Eut orn6 le seuil d'un palais.
"'Le cur de Meudon?' lui dis-je;
"L'arbre me dit: 'C'est Rabelais.' "
(Hugo: CHANSON DBS RUES ET DES BOIS.)
or whether, from reminiscence of the ancients,
but in verse more labored and artificial than
theirs, we concentrate on the DISTICH of four
hemistichs,
"Le crepuscule vint et je tournai la tete,
"Mon ivresse 6tait morte avec la tache
faite."
(H. de Regnier: JEUX RUSTIQUES ET DIVINS.)
we come back, after all, like the parallelists, to
symmetric dualities.
Our versifiers have long noted in each of these
dualities an average of 6 points of sonority, or
tonic accents, distributed in two groups of 3,
EPIC AND TRAGEDY 135
between the two halves of the verse. Four of
these accents, in the following example, are
stronger, because they coincide with the final
syllables, while the two others proceed simply
from the individual rhythm of the verse; from the
sense of the phrase.
12 3 456
Oui, je viens dans son temple adorer 1'Eternel ;
123 4 56
Je viens selon 1'usage antique et solennel, etc.
Now, if these dualities the distich and the
quatrain are the rudiment of our stanzas, the
parallelist also outlines his in a quatrain. So,
either in parallelism or in our own versification,
we invariably arrive at the following scheme:
(A / B=C / D) = (E / F=G / H)
Sub., verb, pred. Sub., verb, pred. Sub., verb, pred. Sub., verb, pred.
of the of the of the of the
1st proposition 2nd proposition 1st proposition 2nd proposition
of the of the
1st parallel 2nd parallel
1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd
points of accent points of accent points of accent points of accent
of 1st hemistich of 2nd hemistich of 1st hemistich of 2nd hemistich
in the in the
1st distich 2nd distich
or or
1st line 2nd line 3rd line 4th line
of quatrain. of quatrain.
"But," it may be objected, "y ur groups of
3 accents represent, in reality, each 3 pairs and
not 3 unities. In each one, beside the point of
accent on which you fix our attention, beside
the THESIS of the Greeks, there is the weaker part,
or ARSIS. This, with us, is next the long syllables
136 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
in the spondee, or the BREVES in the dactyl and
the anapest. In German verse, beside the tonic
syllables are other syllables. Again, in some
French poetry, beside the syllables most accented,
and others of equal strength, are the syllables
sacrificed by our method of scanning. And, in
uneven rhythms, in which best survives among
us the Aryan prosody, is it not the pause in
expectation of one of these syllables (this time
not merely diminished but suppressed) which
gives that unforeseen effect, musical and pathetic,
that sense of being "in the air" so beloved by
our Verlaine? In reality we arrive, as the ancients
did before us, at a total of a dozen demi-metres,
alternative aspirations and respirations, by turns
strong and weak."
Yes.
And so it is analogically that each of the
Homeric poems is divided into twelve double-
cantos, the ^NEID into twelve cantos, our own
poetry into twelve fixed forms: six with refrain
(RONDEAUX, simple and double, CLOSE, BALLADE,
CHANT ROYAL and TRIOLET) and six with com-
binations of rhymes (LAI, VIRELAI, SONNET,
PANTOUM, VILLANELLE and SEXTINE), as the
year is divided into twelve months! since it is, in
short, twelve lines or ARETES which bound the
Cube formed, as I have shown, by the six faces
from which our energy moves across the three
dimensions of space.
The Twelve Gods of All Nations
CHAPTER IX
I A NEW EXPLANATION OF THE
ORIGIN OF GODS
These twelve ARfiTES have a significant aspect
worthy the attention of the analogist (I dare not
say of the philosopher, since this term today
passes as the exclusive property of solemn persons
who will shrug their shoulders on hearing me
invoke Him who nevertheless invented their
fine name of "philosophers"). In the eyes of
the poet, then, the greatest votary of analogy,
although by pure instinct, in the eyes of the
dreamer, does not each of these ARfiTES mark
the limit of the violent expansion of one of the
six efforts of which we are capable? Now this
limit is imposed precisely by the expansion of
one of the four adjoining efforts, to the first
obstacle which causes it to deviate and brings it
back obliquely to us. In reciprocally cutting
each other off they form an ARfiTE; they become
to one another the "thou shalt not," the impre-
scriptable law.
There were, in the supreme Greco-Latin Olym-
pus, but 12 great gods: Vesta, Juno, Neptune,
Minerva, Venus, Apollo, Mercury, Jupiter, Ceres,
138 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Vulcan, Mars and Diana, to enumerate them in
the order consecrated by their worship. And it
was not only thus in the classic pantheon, but in
India, where the 12 great gods bear the corre-
sponding names of Maia, Indrani, Vishnu, Sara-
couati, Lakchmi, Indra, Boudha, Brahma, Gon-
dopi, Ganeja, Siva and Bhavani, and preside
respectively OVER THE SAME MONTHS OF THE
YEAR; in Egypt, where they bear the names of
Athor, Neith, Remfo, Bouto, Surot, Pi-re, Piromi,
Pi-Zeous, T'Armouth, Fre, Ertosi, and Poubasti;
in the Scandinavian Valhalla, where the Aesir
are called Vora, Frigga, Niorder, Snorra, Freya,
Balder, Loke, Thor, Freir, Heimdall, Oulloir and
Gefiona; among the Japanese, who count 12 gods
and demi-gods; among the ancient Persians, who
divided the sombre and the bright months
between the six Amschasfands and the six Devs,
opposed face to face; in far-away Peru, in ancient
Etruria, even in Tahiti, where today they still
invoke Papiri, Ovnounou, Paroromoua, Paromori,
Mouria, Heacha, Taoa, Hourororera, Houriama
Teaire, Tetai, Ouehao, Ouea; and in the various
Polynesian isles, in a word, among all poly-
theistic peoples.
Why?
Must we here see, with Dupuis, who enumer-
ates the 12 Etruscan cantons, the 12 strategi, the
12 lictors, the 12 Arval Brethren, the 12 altars of
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 139
Janus, the 12 columns of the temple of Heliopolis,
the 12 palaces of the Labyrinth, the 12 gates of
the Dodocapylon, those of the New Jerusalem
in the APOCALYPSE, the 12 angels who guard
them, the 12 foundations of the wall, according
to St. John (Ap. XXI); the 12 branches of the
candlestick, the 12 stones in the breastplate of
the Jewish high priest (and, we might add, in the
MIEN or head-dress of the Emperors of China);
the 12 fountains of the desert, the 12 sacred
cushions, the 12 stars of the dream of Joseph, the
12 TCHEOU or provinces of the Chinese Empire,
etc., must we herein see, as he did, an eternal
and monotonous commemoration of the signs of
the zodiac? Ingenuous fancy of an astronomer!
Humanity does not pass through life with its
eyes glued to the nocturnal firmament, counting
and annotating the constellations. And, when
such an allegory has been mingled with the
"signs" consecrated to these constellations, the
Divine Figures have remained deprived of per-
sonality, whereas, in the imagination of races,
nothing i$ more vivid than these Twelve Gods who
everywhere loom sublime, smiling and awesome.
Astarte, the Hindu Lakchmi, Venus of our
Latin Occident, Aphrodite, Slavic Lada, Persian
Enyo, Mexican Ichcouina, Celtic Roth, Finnish
Sakamieli, Salammbo of Babylon, Scandinavian
Siona, Saxon Magada, again Freia, Arabian
140 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Alzoarah, is it not, everywhere, the same ideal
allurement which burns in our own hearts, and
to which, even today, we make ceaseless allusion?
Does not the sword of war everywhere sparkle
in the hand of him whose name only changes:
Mongol Daitching, Gaulish Hesus, Russian Lede,
Ares, Mars, Saxon Pepenouth, Quirinus, Poly-
nesian Rimarou, Ertosi the protector of Sesostris,
Assyrian Nergal, Phoenician Baal-Thurz, Ares-
kovi of the Hurons, Vitzlibochtli of Mexico,
Hindu Skanda, Alemane of the Rhine, three-
headed Japanese Nequirou-Denichi-Maristin?
Do not the thunders sound, in all climes,
from the judicial throne of the same majestic
Jupiter, Zeus, Indra, Celtic Taran, Arab Moch-
tara, Lamppic Oragalls, Esthonian Perkoun, Bur-
man, Sigeann, Egyptian Pi-Zeous, Slavonic
Peroun, Wotan, Ethiopian Assabine, Cartha-
ginian Baal-Samen?
And do we not find everywhere creeping in,
artful and identical, Mercury, Hermes, Nebo,
Piromi from the Nile, Quetzalcoatl from Mexico,
Ogma of the Gauls, Eghouere the Parsee Dev,
Etruscan Xudan, Germanic Jedod? From all
lands resounds the hammer of the Irish Danan,
who is Vulcan, who is Hephaestos, who is Sidek,
who is Mimir, who is Ilmarenen in Finland,
Luno in Norway, who is Siorlamh, who is Diamich,
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 141
who is Vicouakarma. Just as everywhere flour,
ishes Ceres, Rhea-Demeter, Fauna, Gondopi-
Kouong-in pou-tsa in China, T'Armouth in Egypt,
Schaka, Ops, full-breasted Copia, Dame Nature
of our modern sentimentalists!
In the heavens, Grann the Alsatian Apollo,
Braga the Scandinavian, Abelios the Cretan, the
lyric Phoibos, Mahanna of the Tahitians succeed,
the same under a myriad names, to the identical
Diana, Artemis, Pooh, pale beneath her black
locks, or Selene, weaving her threads of silver
over the nocturnal sea, the sea, from whose
sinister depths rises the rebellious and greedy
Poseidon, Ahriman, Satan, Jemma, Despot of the
Japanese hells, Tuiston, the Gallo-German Pluto,
Gouleho of the Friendly Islands, Houe-Koub of
the Araucanians, Toia scorching his terrified
adorers in Florida, the Hindu Kansa, Czernobog
the dark god of the Varegues, Kronos, Scariafing
of Formosa, the destroyer Akerouniamen of the
ancient Umbrians, Gwaiotta of the Gouanches
in Teneriffe, the Siamese Tevetat, envious rival of
his brother the Buddha; Agnian, seated upon
Brazilian tombs, Derevech of the Parsees, Maboia
and Bouii in whom Caribs and Toungouses like-
wise have recognized the Devil; Sova in Guinea,
Larthisca of the Moluccas, the vermiform Angat
of Madagascar, Koupai the Peruvian, Atre the
Angle-Saxon, Asuman, Nikken of the Danish
142 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
isles, Usous in struggles with the hardy Phoeni-
cian vessels, Perdoit of the Prussian coast, Magus-
can of the Carthaginians, Tsoui-Kouan foaming
against Chinese prows, lebicon who defies the
Japanese, Orre-orre before whom the Tahitian
trembles in his log canoe, Mitg of Kamschatka,
Teuaratai who separates the Polynesian isles.
And at the hearth presides the pious Vesta,
Anouke, Dehemeh, Metis, Voltumna standing
amid the Etruscan councils, Conso in the Roman
senate, Egeria the eternal guardian fairy, to
whom stands in eternal antithesis the jealous
Hera, Juno, Nemesis, the solar Malina of Green-
land.
We have considered above these Twelve Figures
concentrated in six or seven types. One very
striking point in these half-dozen visages is their
PLETHORIC character. None of us can have failed
to remark that there is a superabundance, an
excess of expression in the gods as the Renaissance
has painted them. In this respect the Jupiter
of Rubens, of Cornelius Agrippa or of Marlowe
goes far beyond that of Phidias or of Homer;
he has too much of flesh and blood, of muscle,
of self-consciousness. The same may be said of
the too sturdy Venus of the moderns, who has
come to be confused with the orgiac Demeter.
Mars becomes Herculean, and the others fare
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 143
likewise. Each of them, in fact, has within him
the equivalent of a second god. And each of
them, as we have observed, shows but the wild
and unrestrained flight of our energy in one of
the six directions which space opens to it.
When our Twelve Figures definitely outlined
themselves; when, driven by the spirit of analogy
so powerful of old, they were imposed upon all
things, successively established over all, over
the provinces of the fatherland and over the
countries of the earth; over the social classes and
the successive generations of the past; over the
virtues and the laws; over public powers and the
organs of our bodies ; over our natural actions and
our ceremonies ; over familiar and sacred objects,
what more natural than that those men who
sought also in the heavens for these types should
likewise perceive them at the twelve almost
equidistant points which divide the year?
They placed the phlegmatics, such as Vesta,
the vindictive Juno and the greedy Neptune in
the months of winter; the youthful and smiling
Venus, Minerva and Apollo in the months of
spring; Mercury, Jupiter and Ceres in the summer
affected by the sanguines, and, for their grim
sincerity, Vulcan, Mars and Diana in the sombre
autumn. Here, then, in my opinion, is all we
need retain of the theory of Dupuis.
144 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
To this astronomical localization, nevertheless,
I find it legitimate to subordinate certain of the
dozens grouped by him as examples, but cer-
tain ones only, and on condition, I repeat, that
the astronomic localization be itself subordinated
to the conception of a psychology infinitely more
human and more profound. The origin of this
conception is not exterior to man; it proceeds
from our mental constitution itself, and is but
ITS IMPRESSION IN BELIEF.
In a word, there never have been, in religion,
more than twelve great Gods clearly defined, for
the very simple reason that no more could be
created.
For the rest, we may remark: If, in face of
the astronomic system of Dupuis, other mytholo-
gists have been easily able to range the ETYMO-
LOGICAL system, in which every myth results
from an EQUIVOQUE, a homonymy, a metaphor
interpreted literally, an imperfection in the lan-
guage, or finally from a sort of pun or play on
words, if they have been able to win over
to that theory the majority of old partisans of
the former, they have nevertheless not destroyed
it. For it still remains for them to explain in a
satisfactory manner the numerical coincidences
so surprising and so numerous.. . . More-
over, their new thesis, a trifle ignoble, it must
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 146
be admitted, was quite as quickly found weari-
some and unsatisfying, and we have seen, in
default of better solutions, many weak and at
the same time curious minds led astray in the
morass of occultism, while intellects more robust^
but repelled by the etymological doctrine, con-
tent themselves regretfully with the vague so-
called PSYCHOLOGICAL doctrine. This affirms that
myths are a natural creation of the human mind,
and that the human mind ought naturally to
create them, but without attempting to demon-
strate either how or why!
To those awakened minds which have never
been satisfied with the somewhat feminine
"because . . ."of this theory, the present
analysis has furnished already an explanation of
the analogies, twelve by twelve, so patiently
ranged by Dupuis, and has not feared to further
enrich them. It can furnish, in addition, the
explanation of the etymological resemblances:
they are not less interesting, although less numer-
ous, it must be admitted, and especially less
striking. It is not impossible to reduce the
morphology of languages to a limited number of
generative laws. These laws bear especially upon
the essential and primitive words, notably on
those which are connected with the fundamental
idea of BEING: we know the unique importance
of this verb among all others, in all languages.
146 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Now the idea of Being PAR EXCELLENCE is easily
identified with that of "Supreme" or "Divine"
Beings.
We have just seen that, according to the ety-
mological system, the mythic particularities which
were attached to these various divine types
resulted precisely in homonymies or involuntary
"puns," in a lexical CONFUSION. Believers will
be pleased to remark that this does not contradict
the sacred legend. Without doubt, the ety-
mologic system will readily date this confusion
from the very origin of the human being. But
it must be recognized that scientifically it is not
permissible to go back to so remote an epoch.
And we may recall that legend ascribes to the
same historic moment the beginning of polythe-
isms and the difference of languages, which would
thus have determined, and not followed, the
dispersion of men, thenceforward incapable of
understanding one another.
I am here advancing, I need hardly say, only a
hypothesis, barely sketched, but amusing. May
I be permitted another remark? To accept the
etymological system, according to which mythol-
ogy is but a foolish "malady of language," is to
accept the implicit conclusion that since the
earliest ages (since the beginning, say the believers ;
in any case, for a longer time than any other
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 147
race) the one Chosen People has, despite the
idioms so diverse and so pagan which it has
successively adopted, maintained itself unscathed
by this linguistic malady, and consequently by
the mental malady which it engenders.
Since this people created, or, according to its
own humble avowal, providentially received and
simply conserved this triumphal idea of the
Unity of Being, how reconcile the assertions of
the modern critic? Is language, then, not the
cause nor mythology the effect? Or is this con-
ception of the One Being more ancient among
this people than is admitted? And is this primi-
tive language of the Hebrews superior to others,
since it alone remained free from the great
"malady" which contaminated them all until
the idea of Being was forced into a delirious
flowering?
Of this flowering, nevertheless so supremely
beautiful, let us study the morphology in the light
of our idea, which finally puts into accord the
three mythologic systems.
II HEROES, EPONYMS, TRIBES, FEDERA-
TIONS, PATRIARCHS, PEERS, DISCIPLES,
APOSTLES, PARTS OF THE MASS, ARTICLES
OF THE CREED, STONES, TOTEMS, IDOLA-
TRIES, HERESIES, SYSTEMS, SCHISMS AND
NATIONALITIES.
148 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Man, as observed at the beginning of this book,
is above all else DOUBLE. And this is very natural,
if we reflect that he is the product of two beings.
He is, then, above all, a contradiction, a dialogue,
a duel. His pretended individuality, the absolute
Self of the philosophers, remains as chimerical, as
inconsistent as the mathematical point ; it has no
more real existence than the point; it appears
simply when two lines, two hereditary impulses,
coincide. These lines at least present a conti-
nuity, a durable will. Now, in pursuing the same
geometric comparison, is not a line found at the
meeting of two surfaces, is it not an ARETE?
Thus symbolically the human figure presents
itself before us. ...
The twelve Divine Figures reveal themselves
as the very incarnations of the TWELVE CON-
TRADICTIONS produced bwtween the six directions
of energy. Thus they correspond to man: the
twelve human-types, the twelve eternal ancestors.
He may meet them, recognize them, evoke them
on all his paths. Not in the heavens alone, but
in the past he finds them, at first in the legendary
period of eponyms, then in authentic history,
whose heroes, simplified in memory, he has obsti-
nately identified with one of these twelve types.
Here, then, is the explanation of the fourth and
last mythologic system, EUHEMERISM.
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 149
Yes, the heroes of humanity pass, after death,
to the state of divinities. But the divine roles
which are attributed to them were ready in
advance; the roles existed before the actors, for
these were not the authors; they did naught but
enter and shape themselves, as they could well
do, to a mould already constructed. The type of
Jupiter existed before the most ancient of mortal
Jupiters, and from each of them has been accepted
only what was appropriate to the type, only what
in each was Jupiterian.
Thus may be explained the multiplicity of
heroes blended in a single legend, with neverthe-
less an admirable unity of poetic tone (Hercules,
Buddha, etc.). Do we not, moreover, assist in
this work? are not words and sayings thus
transferred from one celebrated man to another?
We may verify this by Voltaire, for example,
who inherited, for the most part, from English
authors his biting sallies of wit, to which have
been added others, imagined since his death.
Napoleon, despite his square jaw and his ple-
beianism, must needs be a Caesar of triangular
and aquiline visage; Caesar in turn an Alexander,
Alexander a Sesostris, a Rama.
A gocl, an individual-type, is then an ARETE, a
dialogue, one of those primitive combinations such
as we encounter at our first step in descending to
150 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
the interior of the human soul. And this prob-
ably explains why, of the 12 inevitable gods,
there are so often 6 masculine and 6 feminine,
as if through need to express, by means of the
one, the victory of the paternal (or vital) prin-
ciple, and by means of the other, that of mater-
nal principle in our individual-type.
By the milogynism of the pre-Manichaean
pessimists, duality was expressed by GOOD and
BAD demons, amschasfands and devs of Iranian
origin, rather than by sexual antitheses. The
Japanese SUPERPOSED six gods and six demigods.
In the pure intellectuality of the Judaic-Christian
religion, sex is effaced, and between the twelve
personages there is no more than the tie of broth-
erhood, natural or spiritual: the twelve tribes
of Israel descend from twelve patriarchs, sons
of Jacob, and the Christ expressly says to his
apostles: "Ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones,
judging the twelve tribes of Israel." (Matt.
XIX, 28).*
So we should not be surprised to find this obsess-
ing number 12 at the base of most social groupings ;
it is a natural result, psychological and inevitable,
*The idea of the COUPLE here subsists, nevertheless: "And he re-
called unto him the twelve, and began to send them forth by two and
two; and gave them power over unclean spirits." (Mark VI, 7).
Together went the brothers Andrew and Peter, the two sons of Zebedee
(John and James), Jude and James the less (cousins of Christ), their
brother Simon with Judas, the wise Philip and Bartholomew, and
lastly Thomas and Matthew.
THE TWELVE GODS OP ALL NATIONS 151
and has nothing to do with this or that astro-
nomical conception, mystic and artificial. It is
not only the 12 Jewish tribes and the 12 Etruscan,
the 12 tribes of the Platonic Republic, the 12
confederated towns of Ionia, those of JEolia,
those of the Achaian League, or the 12 burghs of
Athens which may be cited, but, if we will, in the
two most vigorous republican efforts of modern
times, the 13 cantons which first formed and
for many centuries constituted Switzerland, or
the 13 original United States: the number 13
being to the number 12, psychologically, what
7 is to 6, its centralization around a dominating
unity.
Likewise it is sometimes 12 equal comrades,
and sometimes these accompanied by their chief
(comparable to Joseph, Jesus, etc.) whom we
find in all the orders of chivalry, from the famous
Peers of Charlemagne (Roland, Oliver, Turpin,
Estoult, Haton, Gerin, Gorier, Samson, Girart,
Anseis, Berangier, Hue, according to the generally
accepted list) to the order of the DAME DE L'ECU
VERT founded by Bouciquat (he and his brother
Geoffrey, Charles d'Albret, chief of the order,
Gaucourt, Bonnebaut, Torsay, B6tas, Colleville,
Chateaumorant, d'Aubissecourt, Castelbayac,
Chambrillac, LignieYes) in conformity with the
plan given by Philippe de Mezidres for his ideal
Chivalry of the Passion, in which, about the
152 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
"Prince," were grouped the Constable, the
Chancellor, the Marshal, the Admiral, the Treas-
urer, the Procurator, the Provisor, the Advocate,
the Moderator, the Justiciar and the two Consuls.
Confucius had 12 disciples.
If the Jews enumerated 4 Great Prophets
(Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Isaiah and Daniel), they
added to them the 12 Lesser Prophets Hosea,
Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum,
Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Mal-
achi, just as the Christians connect the Acts
of the Apostles with the writings of the 4 Evangel-
ists. The 4 sacred figures (the Angel, the Lion,
the Calf and the Eagle) which accompany these
last, accompanied the 4 Great Prophets. They
accompany in turn the 4 Fathers of the Greek
Church (Athanasius, Basil, Gregory Nazianzen
and John Chrysostom) and those of the Roman
(Jerome, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Ambrose)
connected with the 12 great classic Doctors (the
same, plus Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Fran-
cis de Sales, Alphonse de Liguori, Hilaire, Anselm
of Canterbury, Bernard and Peter Damien).
We may recall the care with which Jevohah
disposes the 12 tribes in 4 groups, according to
the 4 cardinal points. "On the east
the camp of Judah . . . next unto him
the tribe of Issachar then the tribe
THE TWELVE GODS OP ALL NATIONS 153
of Zebulon ... on the south the camp of
Reuben. . . and by him the tribe of Simeon
. then the tribe of Gad ... on
the west the camp of Ephraim . . . and by
him the tribe of Manasseh . . . then the
tribe of Benjamin . . . the camp of Dan
on the north . . . and by him the tribe of
Asher . . . then the tribe of Naphtali .
they shall go hindmost with their standards."
(Numbers II, 3-31.) And in fact we see always
the tribes defile in the same order. Need we
recall here the 12 parts composing the Mass,
which celebrates the Passion, itself the resume
and center of history? These are: the INTRODUC-
TION between the preparation of the faithful
and the Confession, the Introit or ENTRANCE OF
THE CHOIR with the litany and the "gloria," the
EPISTLE flanked by the collect and the psal-
modies, the GOSPEL of the day with the homily,
the CREDO, the OFFERTORY, the secret prayer and
the PREFACE, the canon and the solemn ELEVA-
TION, the PATER, the FRACTION and the "agnus,"
the COMMUNION, lastly the graces, the BENE-
DICTION and the gospel of St. John. I have
already noted the senary subdivision of the Mass.
I have indicated also how each of the 6 days or
periods of Genesis is divided into two antithetic
creations. And it is interesting to observe that
geology reckons, in the history of our globe, 12
upheavals before the appearance of man.
164 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
Now the same poetic tradition which, in the
representations of the Apostles, places on the
forehead of each one of the 12 precious stones
(attributed also to the 12 Patriarchs), and
figuring likewise in the Jewish high priest's breast-
plate and in the foundations of the columns of
the New Jerusalem in the Apocalypse) the
same tradition which gives to Andrew the sapphire
(of Naphtali), to Peter the jasper (of Gad), to
James the chalcedony (the carbuncle of Dan), to
James the Less the yellow topaz (of Simeon), to
Matthew the green peridot (of Ephraim), to Jude
the chrysoprase (of Issachar), to gentle John the
emerald (of Judah), to zealous Simon the hya-
cinth (or ligure of Asher), to Matthias the purple
amethyst (of Zebulon), to Thomas the aquama-
rine or beryl (of Benjamin), to Bartholomew the
carnelian (of Reuben), and to Philip the orange
sardonyx (of Manasseh) wrote also at their
feet the 12 articles of the CREED which has trans-
formed human thought and has served as its
basis for twenty centuries.
"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker
of heaven and earth," said the prince of the
Apostles. "And in Jesus Christ his only Son our
Lord," continued Andrew. "Who was conceived
by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary,"
affirmed James. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead and buried," testified John.
THE TWELVE GODS OP ALL NATIONS 165
"Descended into hell," recalled Philip. "The
third day he rose from the dead," declared the
majestic Bartholomew. "He ascended into heaven
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father
Almighty," proclaimed Matthew. "From whence
he shall come to judge the quick and the dead,"
prophesied Thomas. "I believe in the Holy
Ghost," resumed the pious James the Less, cousin
and counterpart of Christ. "The Holy Catholic
Church, the Communion of Saints," confessed
Jude. "The forgiveness of sins," added Simon.
"The resurrection of the body and life everlasting,"
concluded Matthias.
Thus tradition* has it that they announced in
unforgettable terms the dogmas of the CREED,
before dispersing, three toward each cardinal
point, as we have already remarked: westward,
John (Ephesus and the Greek world), Peter
(Rome), and James (Spain); southward, James
the Less (Jerusalem), Simon (Egypt) and Matthew
(the vast Ethiopia of the black races); eastward,
Jude (Persia), Bartholomew (India) and Thomas
(Major India and the Extreme Orient); north-
ward, Philip (Cappadocia, Asia Minor), Matthias
(Colchis, the Caucasus) and Andrew (Scythia and
the barbarian lands of the north). A generation
later their work is almost everywhere historically
visible, and the world is shaken by it.
*Still living in the XV century; see, among other works, "LB
TRIOMPHANT MISTERE DES ACTES DES APOSTRES," by Simon Gresban.
166 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Now, since the Apostles Creed in its 12 articles
summarizes the Faith, every heresy must consist
of an attack upon at least one of these articles,
and the heresies may thus be distributed upon
the same duodenary plan. Furthermore, the
idolatries, according to sacred teaching, were but
primitive heresies, indurated. "Twelve gates give
access to Heaven, for the people of various reli-
gions," said the Brahmins. The bad habits, the
attitudes of mind which the idolatries fixed, the
mental vices on which they lived, degenerated
sometimes into fetichism, or into the animalism
whose totems, like the god-types, are everywhere
found to be almost the same (wolf, lion, dog,
bull, etc.) be it on many altars, the Egyptian
among others (whence the Golden Calf perhaps
emigrated with the Exodus), be it even, an uncon-
scious reminiscence, in the blazon of heraldry or
among the gracious allegories of the fabulists, to
be one day summed up so well in the dozen types
of REYNARD: Noble the lion, Reynard the fox,
Bruin the bear, Isegrim the wolf, Tybert the
cat, Grimbert the badger, Morhou the dog, Kyward
the hare, Baldwin the ass, Chantecler the cock,
the Monkey and Beaucent the boar.
Not only may we thus lay out a world-map of
the heresies, idolatries and aberrations of the
Faith, but has not the great Varro, according to
St. Augustine in THE CITY OF GOD, classed the
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 157
philosophies (those indispensable crowns of the
antique idolatries as of the modern heresies), in
observing their most characteristic effort, the
conception of the Sovereign Good, in 12 principal
ideas, from which come, as he demonstrated, the
288 possible systems, and to which yet turn, it
must be admitted, all our actual theories. The
Intoxication of Life, Contemplative Repose,
or the two reconciled in Epicurean voluptuous-
ness, or all three finally augmented by the
Primordial Blessings of Nature (health of body
and mind) are alternately the objects of inquiry,
either direct or by means of virtue, or simply for
the sake of the research itself.
To one contemplating history from a detached
point of view, the nationalities are revealed as
simple links of that more general and durable
chain, a religion. This is clearly visible in Greece.
It is not less visible throughout Europe. And
Schism appears as the first effort, the first fissure
of that separatism provoked by the weight of
despotism, by the tyrannic ambition of a new
power. Its ideal, if it preserves one, in religion,
must be totally different, and tends consequently
toward one of the types which we have enumerated :
every nationalism (Judaism, Anglicanism, Galli-
canism), ends in a rudiment of idolatry, in some
sort of distortion of the great complete which
is to say divine human Type. And it is
158 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
interesting to grasp here the incompatibility of
Church and Tyranny or, according to our
phrase, Church and State. It is, moreover, much
less the heresy or schism which captures the
interest of the really profound historian than the
manifestation of the dogma which they prepare,
which they necessitate: the FILIOQUB provoked
by the quibbles of the Byzantine schism, this is
the "fiat lux" of the Occident; the Council of
Trent, this is the Catholic Shakespeare.
Ill GEOGRAPHY, HISTORY
But, whether already separated or not, each
State remains none the less a member of a group
of a dozen equals. In connection with the
Church (our "Vesta"), can we not observe that
from the moment when we let Poland disappear,
our France, its equilibrium changed at a blow,
saw her hegemony pass to England, whose role
was at the same time inherited by the United
States: of this dozen of civilized nations, Germany
increased her strength by all the power vainly
wrested by us from the house of Austria; Russia,
the Scandinavian world and the Low Countries
counterbalanced each other; Spain descended a
little lower, Italy rose as much higher. And
perhaps it is because Turkey is being effaced that
Japan, an element likewise foreign, now rises
upon our horizon.
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 159
Most of these States are composed of two
elements primitively hostile, comparable to the
two planes whose intersection forms the lines
of an ARfiTE. For it is one of the gross errors of
our time to identify RACE and NATION. A nation,
a state, seems, on the contrary, to have no other
mission than to unite and bind opposed races,
with a view to some human combination as yet
unknown; to attempt to limit a nation to one
race would be as foolish as to limit one family to
incestuous unions.
Anglo-Saxons and Celts on the island of Great
Britain, northern French and Albigenses, Germans
of north and south, Austrians and Hungarians,
and for a long period Swedes and Norwegians,
their new divorce perhaps the precursor of other
separations in Europe, illustrate my assertion.
Moreover, each one among these couples formed
not a unity but a dozen, when it existed indepen-
dently. We can still find in the real France
(the North) the types, so distinct in features,
language and arts, curiously grouped by antitheses,
of the Breton and the Norman, the Fleming and
the Champenois, the native of the Ile-de-France
and the heavy Beauceron, the artistic Limousin
and the Auvergnat, the nonchalant Touranian
and the Poitevin, the Lorrain and the Burgundian.
In that one of the two dozens which, in any
country, shows itself morally superior to the
160 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
other, we can discover a national subdivision
into two half-dozens: Scotland and Ireland,
Asiatic Greece and Morea, Gascony and the
Rhone valley, etc. Let us go further: tradition,
yet living, divides each one of these 12 regions
among 12 little peoples in turn. And one could
go on thus into every country, into every one of
its natural provinces. Imperial Italy, it is true,
was divided into ten provinces only, but because
its administration failed to join to it the two
halves, so characteristic, of Cisalpine Gaul. These
12 divisions survive in the ethnic physiognomies,
so clearly cut, of the modern Italians. There
were 12 kingdoms in Spain: Old Castile, New
Castile, Leon, Galicia, Navarre, Aragon, Murcia,
Jaen, Cordova, Seville, Granada and Valencia.
Germany comprises two dozen states, Sweden
24 LANS, etc.
From another point of view: is not the govern-
ment of a country formed of a dozen ministers?
Worship (Vesta), Finance (Juno), Marine, (Nep-
tune), diplomatic Foreign Affairs (Minerva), the
Interior with hygiene, police and . . . charity
(Venus), Public Instruction with the fine arts
(Apollo), Commerce and Mails (Mercury), Justice
(Jupiter), Agriculture (Ceres), Public Works
(Vulcan), War (Mars) and the Colonies with
their wild and virgin lands (Diana). And, very
recently, Labor, which has mysteriously replaced
the first.
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 161
Each of the 4 great Races which cover the
globe, the choleric and ambitious White, the
sanguine and careless Black the phlegmatic Yel-
low and the melancholy Red or Brown so widely
scattered, throws out three important branches.
We have seen how the EUROPEAN branch of
the White Race ramifies into one dozen great
peoples, of whom the smaller peoples are the
detached branches. We may see the same in
the case of the SEMITES, and of the NON-SEMITES
remaining in Asia (Hindus, Persians, etc.), whom,
in my opinion, we are too much inclined to connect
with the European, for they are equal to it in
numbers, and differ from it in mind, physiognomy
and arts not less than the Arab.
Finally, geographically, if we divide the world
longitudinally into three slices, beginning from
about 25 West, we obtain the three actual worlds:
the OCCIDENTAL, between the EXTREME ORIENTAL
(from 90 East to 150 West) and the American
(from 150 West to 25 West). Or, if you prefer
to cut the world into four slices, very well, you
will have: for the first (25 W. to 65 E.) our HIS-
TORIC WORLD; then eastward (to 155) the Orient,
Hindu, Japanese, Chinese, Malayan; therefrom
to 115 W., the mysterious Pacific whose isles
appear here and there like the last remaining
columns of a destroyed temple; and finally,
America.
162 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Over these four quarters of the earth are reign-
ing each moment the four parts of the day, in
such a way that, if we wish, we may subdivide
it into 24 parts, like the face of a clock. Each
twelfth of this longitudinal clock each couple
of hours means a civilization. To gratify Japan,
we call her the Empire of the Rising Sun, whose
light announces a vernal day; while the day
breaks, calm morning has dawned over Korea,
the laborious day has commenced for New Zealand ;
when it is but half past nine in smiling Tahiti
the first quarter of the day is already ending in
the Far West. Two o'clock, three o'clock, moment
of the siesta, sound over the ancient colonies,
those which threw off the yoke of England in the
18th century and the lighter yoke of Spain in the
19th. It is four o'clock in pensive Brazil and
six on the Atlantic. Our western Europe is
contemplating the sunset, eight o'clock already !
Twilight is enveloping Germany and the Angelus
is sounding in Rome. Night is closing over
Greece, over Egypt and Judea; it is ten and
eleven o'clock in Arabia and Chaldea. Midnight
sounds in the land of Ahriman and Tamerlane!
The rest of the night possesses, the first two hours
India and Thibet, and the hours before dawn
Annam and China.
Need we remind ourselves that to each of
these couples of hours the spirit of analogy attached
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 163
a sign of the zodiac, with the god placed over it
by the ancient Greeks, Hindus, etc.?
Thus, space and time being united, let us now
recall those Centuries whose evolution we com-
pared, four by four, to that of the seasons.
Each of these centuries producing three genera-
tions, a generation relates itself, in the mind of
the dreamer, to a Month, as, on the above
longitudinal clock, to a Two-hour Period and to
the civilizations which we have just seen marked
out by them, or to a pair of Homeric cantos,
etc. It relates itself likewise to one of the 12
great Gods. And the verifications of this, in
our own annals, is curious.
We know that our great national dynasty of
the Capetians connected itself with Charlemagne,
glory of the preceding, by his cousin-german
Nebelong, grandfather of Robert-le-Fort. Twelve
generations later is attained its own supreme
glory in Saint Louis; another twelve generations,
and it produced the splendid Louis XIV. It is
pleasing to find, in connection with each of these
great men, the same importance accorded to the
mother, whether Bertha Broad-foot, Blanche of
Castile or Anne of Austria. Pepin de Landen
and Saint Arnulf were the two pillars of that
dynasty. The scrupulous piety which caused
both to be beatified characterized, 36 generations
164 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
later (3 x 12) the comte de Chambord, and, in
the interval, it bent the knees, for a moment
rebellious, of Philippe I, and surged beneath the
shining armor of St. Jeanne d'Arc. It is, in
short, the generation of Vesta.
Louis XI and Louis XIV belong, in two dif-
ferent branches, to a like generation: they have
(from Juno) the spirit of chicanery which, 12
generations earlier, showed itself so plainly in
their not less popular ancestor Louis-le-Gros.
Ambition to the point of imprudence is shown
in three branches of the family, also in a like
generation, by Charles VIII, Francis I and Antoine
de Bourbon, repeating thus the moral physiognomy
of Louis-le-Jeune and Pepin d'Heristal.
Likewise a Henri IV, eloquent and ingenious
(Minerva), repeats at 12 generations' distance f
almost trait for trait, the Ulyssean type of Philippe-
August e.
After this, one will hardly be surprised to meet,
in the generations consecrated to the orgiac Ceres,
the scandals of the TOUR DE NESLE and those of
the PARC AUX CERFS, nor to see the weakness
(Diana) of this family drag it down with the
foolish Charles VI, and, 12 generations later, with
Louis XVII, with the Due de Berry and Ferdinand
d' Orleans. Was it for want of a Duguesclin
(Mars), we ask, that Louis XVI, at least as
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 165
worthy the name of "Sage" as his corresponding
duodenaire Charles V, found himself overwhelmed
by a militarist generation? a generation which,
deluded by a duodecimal remembrance, thought
it found in Marie-Antoinette of Austria another
Isabel of Bavaria, and in the Comte d'Artois a
Charles d'Orleans, and whose first achievement
as soon as it came into power, was the inaugura-
tion of twenty-five years of senseless wars. Thus
was the way opened for Napoleon, who lacked
the control of a suzerain and moderate advisor,
whose wisdom might have avoided for us the
final Waterloo. Another possibility: if the honest
but weak Henri V was unable to reclaim his throne,
or Napoleon III to maintain himself upon his,
was it through lack of a rhythm remaining suffi-
ciently vibrant in the exhausted race of the
former, or of a rhythm sufficiently well estab-
lished in the upstart race of the latter, and because
the qualities of the two could not be united in a
single man capable of responding to the imperious
appeal of the new dogmas proclaimed by Pius IX?
What history needs, as vertebral column, is a
duly organized science of Comparative Heredity.
Of this science we possess the documents, marvel-
ously in order, in the genealogies of the great
families. We have only to note the laws.
Now a law does not exist in itself. A law simply
166 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
establishes the more or less frequent return of
an analogous association between phenomena,
and of these phenomena it terms the more ancient
the CAUSE and the more recent the EFFECT.*
The return which permits it to verify once more
this association, this succession, what is it but
Rhythm? Thus it is the mission of the scholar
to ascertain rhythms.
All life is movement; all movement is observed
from the point of view of a relative immobility,
of a repetition, of an identity rediscovered here
and there in the moving stream. From these
rhythms to be studied in history, I have selected
the most obvious, as well as the most dis-
quieting.
What is this strange duodenary rhythm, the
only common dividend of 2, 3 and 4, which we
have felt vibrating, beat by beat,
through heredity,
through the history of a people,
through that of humanity entire,
in the roles which the various races of the world
have seized upon simultaneously or have be-
queathed to one another,
in the flight of the hours which sound over their
sleep or their activity,
in the dance of the seasons and the months,
in that of the years of our lives,
*See, on this subject, the fine works of M. Lotus Weber in the
REVUE PHILOSOPHIQUE.
THE TWELVE GODS OF ALL NATIONS 167
in that of generations and centuries,
in the division of public powers,
in the equilibrium of Europe,
in that of the world,
in that of each nation,
of each of its cities,
in the philosophic systems of various peoples,
in the heresies which rend religious faith ,
in the articles of its Creed,
in the ceremonies of worship,
in song,
in the poetic metres of all literatures,
in the composition of the greatest poems,
in the conflicts of the drama and in legendary
cycles,
in the idolatries,
in the series of gods, into which are absorbed,
and among which are ranged, one after another,
prophets, apostles, eponyms, animals of the fables,
and heroes of fairy tales, even the popular
heroes acclaimed by our contemporaries?
And still I have not detailed the 12 terrains
which geologists discover between the central and
unknown regions of Earth and the simple "allu-
vions" of its epidermis, nor the dozen upheavals
which have moulded it ! Nor the 12 solid elements
found in a free state in nature (antimony, sulphur,
arsenic, platinum, copper, gold, mercury, bis-
muth, tellure, carbon, iron, silver). Nor the
168 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
3x4 embranchments which Delafosse, Linne and
Cuvier count in nature, nor the 2 x 12 classes which
Cuvier enumerates for the animal kingdom, nor
the general tendency of all these "orders" toward
multiples of the same number 12.
What is it, this strange, obsessing rhythm?
It is the rhythm of Life. Hear it beating in
your own heart, in your arteries, in your nerves
What we have done for the Temperaments and
the Seasons, in drawing the innumerable analogies
which they suggest, what we have done for the
six directions in which our energies, born of the
explosive binary combinations of temperaments,
can dart over the three dimensions of space, what
we have begun for the twelve ARfiTES or god-types
recognized in all religions and all social groupings,
we have but to study more and more deeply, in
descending, step by step, into the mysteries of
the human heart, by means of patient comparison
of the secondary types which will be successively
engendered before us, carefully distinguishing them
one from another in their most intimate details.
The task is infinite, and I do not pretend to
have completed it, but at least we shall lay hold
upon realities not heretofore grasped, thanks to
the classification now to be opened, the first
attempted classification, I believe, of the unnum-
bered Characters which, whether real or imaginary,
obsess the divers peoples of the earth.
General Classification of
Human Beings
CHAPTER X
I PLAN OF THE CLASSIFICATION
Each of our 12 Types will necessarily be divided
into two, according to the TWO SEXES which affect
it.
How many are the masculine roles for which
we find no feminine equivalent in literature,
or even in history, equally blind and partial, it
would seem, by contagion! The simple obser-
vation of this fact alone suffices to cause to spring
up in each of these lacunae a feminine type here-
tofore unperceived. To this useful evocation,
announced in the early pages of this book, the
present chapter will be primarily devoted.
But the binary subclassification of our human
Museum will soon become quaternary, as soon
as we shall observe it in the light of the two great
aspects of life, the TRAGIC and COMIC. And even
from the colorless mass of intermediaries ("serious
characters," a species of hermaphrodite adapted
to double usage) how many phantoms may be
brought under one or another of these lights to
be animated! We have already seen the devel-
170 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
opment of this method in Chapter III (NEW
COMBINATIONS), and have seen thus produced
by the combination of Comic and Tragic charac-
ters, the secondary series of characters Parodic,
Paradoxical, Odious presented sympathetically,
Sympathetic rendered repugnant, Grotesque
treated seriously, Serious treated with deri-
sion, etc.
Finally, we shall see, at the end of the following
chapter, how this quadruple hypostasis, inevit-
able for each of our 12 divine Types (male and
female, tragic and comic) will be multiplied by
the various ages of life and the various social
ranks, in which, turn by turn, it may be studied.
What penury we find, in our letters, of Old
People differentiated one from another! How
little varied are the Bachelors, or the Chil-
dren! In contrast to the Intellectual (brahmin,
artist, scholar, etc.), to the Warrior and to the
Man of Money (bourgeois, merchant, etc.), how
little shaded are the people of the masses! Even
our "naturalistic" writers still confound the souls
of a cabinet-maker of the Faubourg St. Antoine,
of a mason, of a day-laborer, that modern pariah
without hope, and of that pretentious aristocrat
the house-painter!
We shall content ourselves, in this classifica-
tion neglecting for the moment the questions
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 171
of Rank and Age as secondary nuances with
submitting the tetrad which inevitably results
from the two sexes and the two principal aspects,
comic and tragic, to a simple TERNARY SUBDIVI-
SION of each Divine Type.
We may, in short, inscribe under Vesta (whose
line forms, it will be remembered, the frontier
between idealization and emotion) natures PIOUS
and FAITHFUL, placing between them the SAGES
in the broadest sense of the word. Under Juno
(ARETE, as we have seen, between activity and
possessivity) we place natures JEALOUS and
SEVERE; between them the VINDICTIVE. Under
Neptune (possessivity and idealization or abstrac-
tion) will be ranged the AVARICIOUS and AMBI-
TIOUS, flanking the DESPOTIC. Under Minerva
(idealization and self -manifestation) natures ELO-
QUENT and DARING, and between these two groups
the ADVENTURERS. Under Venus (emotionalism
and materialism) we will inscribe the SEDUCTIVE
and the VICIOUS, on either side the PROSTITUTES.
Under Apollo (emotion and self-manifestation)
natures PASSIONATE and ARTISTIC, between them
that which our century, fathoming an antique
presentiment, has called the FATED or ILL-
STARRED. Under Mercury (who marks the limit
of abstract idealization and energetic activity)
will be disposed the SHREWD and the UNSCRUPU-
LOUS, beside the TRAITOROUS and PERFIDIOUS.
172 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Under Jupiter (self-manifestation and activity)
natures ARROGANT and PROTECTING; between these
groups the LOFTY and MAJESTIC. Under Ceres
(materialism and possessivity) the PRODIGAL and
the PRACTICAL, between them inserting the SEN-
SUAL. Under Vulcan (manifestation and mater-
ialism) the LABORIOUS and also the DUPED or
DELUDED, between whom the SELF-SACRIFICING
will take their place. Under Mars (energetic
activity and materialism) natures VIOLENT to a
murderous degree, and the most AUDACIOUS,
surrounding the REBELLIOUS. Finally, under
Diana (emotion and possessivity) the SENTI-
MENTAL and the CHASTE, succeeding to the WEAK
or TIMID.
The terms of the classification are necessarily
imperfect and too elastic, and less important than
the groups themselves, under whose heads I have
used them only in default of better; each of these
36 groups exhibits nevertheless a remarkable
coherence, and it is this alone which concerns us-
This coherence will extend to each one of the
sub-groups. These will present themselves in
variable numbers, thus providing lacunae more
and more numerous, which we shall observe and
measure in descending into the individual realities
here explored. But their number, although vari-
able, tends always, in curious fashion, toward
the Dozen.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 173
II CLASSIFICATION
VESTA
I THE Pious
1. The Constant. Examples: besides the Vir-
gin, the purest of the Saints, the Mexican Koat-
likoe, the Hindu Aghdi and Andjani, Liane
(in Richter's TITAN); Louis IX, Joachim in THE
POWER OF DARKNESS. This category does not
admit of parody, a case perhaps unique. A
nuance of serene resignation, that of Job or of
Celestin V, is wanting in the feminine examples
(apart, of course, from the Virgin).
2. Religious Scholars, Theologians: TCHANG
THE ANCHORET, Aeneas, St. Thomas Aquinas.
In the feminine: Peta, Anouke the Egyptian,
Beatrice (PARADISE), Clementine de Rothschild,
St. Gertrude. In this last there appears, in
softened and milder form, the venerable physiog-
nomy of Friar Laurence (ROMEO AND JULIET),
Friar Bonaventure (in Ford's 'TIS PITY . .)>
Mordecai (ESTHER), Noah under his various
names, Hebrew, Chinese, Hindu, Aztec, Chaldean,
etc.
3. Mystics: Madame Swetchine, Marie Ala-
coque, Bernadette, SALAMMB6, Angelique (Zola,
LE RfivE), HANNELE MATERNE; Don Sebastian
174 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
(Calderon, FOR SECRET OUTRAGE . .), Ruben
(in Picard's JERICHO). Nekhludoff (in Tolstoi's
RESURRECTION) connects this type with modern
humanitarianism.
4. The Superstitious (the comic aspect of 2 and
3). Examples: masculine, none; feminine, pos-
sibly the vague Madame de Noares (BOUVARD
AND PECUCHET). Menander had painted Phidias
as THE SUPERSTITIOUS, in using the 14 funda-
mental traits indicated by THEOPHRASTUS.
5. Bigots. Examples are few. What fine
parodies of 6 and 7 could here be made!
6. The Ardently Devout. Examples: BAR-
LAAM (St. John Chrysostom), POLYEUCTE, THE
CONSTANT PRINCE (Calderon), SAINT LUDWINE
(Huysmans), THEODORE (Corneille).
7. Fanatics: TORQUEMADA, Pastor Kroll
(Ibsen, ROSMERSHOLM), Jin THE FANATIC of the
Chinese theatre; the Protestant Madame Moise
Piedefer and the Catholic Angelique de Granville
(Balzac, THE MUSE OF THE DEPARTMENT, A
DOUBLE FAMILY), MADAME GERVAISAIS (the Gon-
courts).
8. Hypocrites are not connected with this
group except as its opposites; they are to it what
Braggarts are to the Brave. After Plutarch, La
Bruydre carefully indicated the identity of the
hypocrite, the unbeliever and the libertine ; Molidre
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 175
also, in his DON JUAN as in his TARTUFE.
Examples: Thwackum in Fielding's TOM JONES,
the modern and philanthropic De Climal (Man.
vaux, LA VIE DE MARIANNE) . Feminine examples
are less marked: Papelardie in the ROMAN DE
LA ROSE, or the Marta of the genial Tirso de
Molina.
9. The feminine sex alone, however, has given
consistent Prudes to literature: Arsino6 in
Moliere, GLYCfiRE (La Bruyere, CHARACTERS),
and, more sympathetic, LA FAUSSE AGNES and
Angelique in THE PARISIENNE (Destouches) .
10. Hypocrite by Necessity, Madame Graslin
(Balzac, C6UNTRY PARSON) is connected with
11. Tragic Hypocrites: Cromwell, Elizabeth
of England. There are few good modern studies.
II --THE WISE
I trust the Hellenists will here pardon me: the
Wise appear to me to belong to Vesta, even
though captured, in adventurous Greece, by
Athene, whom we have seen grow equally at the
expense of Ares, Artemis, Hermes and Apollo.
Let us first inspect the cortege of
1. The Impious: THE LIBERTINE (Lessing);
Barbarina (Gozzi, THE GREEN BIRD).
2. Sarcastic Philosophers : Voltaire, Mephisto,
Schopenhauer; feminine examples are lacking.
176 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
3. They are likewise lacking for the Sceptics:
Dr. Relling (Ibsen, THE WILD DUCK).
4. Jovial Sages: Rabelais, Guido Cavalcanti
(Boccacio, DECAMERON VI, 4), Luc (Gorki, THE
LOWER DEPTHS) . Olympe (Dancourt , THE PARIS-
IENNE) is weak by comparison.
5. JEsopic Sages: JEsop in the two comedies
of Boursault, the Socrates of the BANQUETS,
Melchisedec (Decameron I, 3), that prototype
of NATHAN THE WISE, the ingenious and loqua-
cious M. Bergeret; the young Chinese woman,
PEACH-BLOSSOM, and, in Plutarch, the wife of
the covetous Pythes.
6. Adventurous Sages: ZANONI (Bulwer-
Lytton), the Marquis de Posa (DON CARLOS),
Anarcharsis, Abaris the Hyperborean, ARCHYTAS
DE METAPONTE (Mazel) and his Theano; Par-
thenia (Halm, INGOMAR THE BARBARIAN).
7. Soothsayers and Good Counsellors: the
Argonaut Idmon, Helenus, Protes, Poltis the
Thracian king; Egeria, Cassandra, the Sybils,
Bertha and Gertrude in WILLIAM TELL.
8. Healers: Borvo the god of Gaulish origin
and his wife Damona, Aesculapius, the physicians
of the modern novel and the MIRES of the Middle
Ages, as much masculine as feminine; not a
single case of the latter sex has been well drawn
in literature.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 177
9. Venerable Sages: Prospero (THE TEM-
PEST), Nestor, Naimes (CHANSON DE ROLAND),
Sahadeva; feminine, Marguerite de Parma
(EGMONT).
10. Sad or Stern Sages: Cato (PHARSALIA),
Hegesias, the Buddha; Anne (d'Annunzio, THE
DEAD CITY).
11. Feeble Sages: Lambert (Claudel, LA
VlLLE), Titurel (PARSIFAL); no feminine examples.
12. Sages of Comic Aspect: Primrose in THE
VICAR OF WAKEFIELD.
13. Simple Sages: Vincent (Mowinsky, THE
BLOWS OF FATE), the FIELD MOUSE (La Fontaine).
t
14. Sages of Deep Understanding: Christine
de Pisane, Blanche of Castile, Isabella (Lope,
DISCOVERY OF THE NEW WORLD), Juliana
D'Acosta; Sully.
15. Intellectual Sages: Dr. Nangel (Ibsen,
THE LADY FROM THE SEA), Liu-thong-pin in THE
TRANSMIGRATION OF YO-CHEOU.
16. Prudent Sages: Northumberland in KING
HENRY IV, the wandering ascetic in SAKUNTALA;
no feminine examples unless it be in comedy, the
Elise, Eliante and Henriette of Moliere.
17. Home-lovers: Domicius the god of the
home, the Lares and Penates, Deverrona. No
particularized literary studies.
178 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS ,
III THE FAITHFUL
1. Spouses: Penelope (ODYSSEY), Sita
(RAMAYANA), Tchaou-nyang (THE Pl-PA-KI),
Kadidjah, Madame Stockmann (AN ENEMY OF
THE PEOPLE), Savitri (MAHABHARATA), Mar-
guerite de Provence, etc. Masculine examples
are rare: Xedor the Japanese saint, and the
husband in LA DORMEUSE (A. de. Lorde).
2. In Comedy: Angela (Gozzi, THE STAG
KING), Elvire (TARTUFE); no masculine examples-
3. Spouses Faithful from Duty alone, without
Love. Examples: masculine, none; feminine:
Monime (BAJAZET).
4. Faithful even to Sacrifice: Madame Hulot
(COUSIN BETTE), Madame Claes (QUEST OF THE
ABSOLUTE), Silvia (d'Annunzio, GlOCONDA),
Madame Royre (Bernstein, JOUJOU). No mas-
culine examples.
5. Constant Fiancees: Solveig (PEER GYNT),
Elizabeth (TANNHAUSER), Julie (NOUVELLE
HELOISE). One masculine example, which comes
from the Far East: the student Kouo-hoa in
THE PLEDGED SLIPPER.
6. Sacrificed Mistresses: GERTRUDE (Bouch-
inet), LA RICKE DU PASTEUR (Erik Schlaikjers).
See others under Diana. The masculine type
hardly exists.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 179
7. Obstinately Faithful Widowhood: ANDRO-
MAQUE, Cornelia (PHARSALIA), Madri (MAHAB-
HARATA), Arganthonis (Parthenius, EROTICS), Jac-
ques Brigaut (Balzac, PIERRETTE).
8. Misunderstood Fidelity: SAKUNTALA, Gen-
evieve de Brabant, (Tieck, Jean Conan), Griselda
(Boccacio, Silvestre), BERTHE AU GRAND PIE
(Adenes le Roi); masculine examples, different
enough: COLONEL CHABERT (Balzac), JACQUES
DAMOUR (Zola).
9. Fathers and Mothers: Dacaratha (RAMAY-
ANA), Timour (Gozzi, TURANDOT), OLD GORIOT
(Balzac), A#se (PEER GYNT), Sabine (Hervieu,
THE TRAIL OF THE TORCH). In comic aspect:
Pantalon (Gozzi, THE STAG KING), Sostrate
(Terence, HAUTONTIMORUMENOS).
10. Comic Brothers: no notable cases. Comic
Sisters: BRIGITTE (Meilhac and Halevy), Serious:
Bartholomew Columbus (Lope, DISCOVERY OF THE
NEW WORLD), Valentine (FAUST); they are much
inferior to the Sisters: ELECTRA, Anna (Marlowe,
DUX)).
11. Daughters and Sons: ANTIGONE, Cor-
delia (LEAR), TELEMAQUE, TCHAO-LI, Pourouvaca,
Lausus (AENEID). No interesting examples in
the comic genre.
12. Other Relatives: LA GRAND' MERE
(Hugo), the aunts Zephirine de Guenic and
180 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Countess d'Esgrignon in Balzac's BEATRIX ; sister-
in-law, his Duchess de Soria (MEMOIRS OF TWO
YOUNG WIVES); nieces, his Pierrette Cambremer
(A SEA-SHORE DRAMA) ; daughter-in-law, the sur-
prising Li in SlE-JIN-KOUEI; UNCLE VANIA
(Chekhov) and the Abb6 Lefvre, uncle of LOUIS
LAMBERT.
13. Adoptive Parents: MANOUNE (Marni),
Josabeth (ATHALIE), BENOITE (AND BENOIT,
Haraucourt) ; Ananda, St. Joseph. For Fosterers
see Vulcan.
14. Disciples: The Apostles, the Holy
Women.
15. Friends: No good feminine types in the
comic but LlDOIRE (Courteline) ; the academician
Ho-tchi-tchan (THE GAGE OF LOVE). In the
tragic: the Princess de Lamballe, Isabelle (Zelinski,
BARBARA RADZIWILL) and Mile Gay (Duranty,
FRANCOISE DE QUESNAY) do not equal either
Pylade or Schmucke (COUSIN PONS) or Paz
(THE FALSE MISTRESS) or Horatio (HAMLET).
JUNO
I THE JEALOUS
1. Wives and Husbands: Dejanira (THE
TRACHINIANS etc.), MJ&ROPE, OTHELLO, MITH-
RIDATE, ANGELO. Comic: the husband confessor
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 181
in Boccacio and various "Sganarelles" who will
be found under Vulcan; Alcmene (AMPHITRYON).
2. Lovers: Comic feminine example : the Mar-
quise (Baron, LE COQUET TROMPE); tragic: Her-
mione, MARIE TUDOR. Tragic masculine example :
Montes de Montejanos (COUSIN BETTE); comic:
Robin (LE JEU DU BERGER ET DE LA BERGERE),
Albert (LES FOLIES AMOUREUSES), FLORENTIN
(La Fontaine).
3. Jealous Adulterers: there are few but tragic
and feminine cases: Roxane (BAJAZET), Vasilissa
(Gorki, THE LOWER DEPTHS), Addle (Descaves
and Donnay', LA CLAIRIERE).
4. The Scorned and Revengefully Jealous:
Countess Orsina (Lessing, EMILIA GALOTTl),
MADAME DE LA POMMERAYE (Diderot); Fulbert
the butcher of Abelard. No comic examples.
5. Jealousy without the Desire of Possessing:
Diana de Belflor (Lope, THE GARDENER'S DOG).
No equivalent masculine case.
6. Love through Jealousy: Morin (Candillot,
CONJUGAL DUTY). Few distinct feminine ex-
amples.
7. Retrospective Jealousy: Michel (Wilhelm
Feldmann, THE SHADOW); the too theoretical
Svava Bjornson, A GAUNTLET).
8. Jealousy of a Pure Affection (for a child):
182 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
George Braux (Fleg, THE MESSAGE) ; no feminine
examples. There is no symmetric masculine for
Heldne d'Aiglemont drowning her little brother
from jealousy (A WOMAN OF THIRTY).
9. Jealousy of Friends: no examples.
10. Jealousy of a Mother's New Loves: the
little Grandjean (Zola, UNE PAGE D'AMOUR).
11. Of a Father's: no examples.
II THE VENGEFUL AND JUST
1. The Passionately Revengeful: ROUSSALKA
(Pushkin), Olympias the terrible mother of Alex-
ander the Great ; Jean-sans-peur, MONTE CRISTO.
No comic examples.
2. Righteous Avengers of their Cause: Gideon.
No comic examples.
3. The Irascible: Madame Guillemot (Bour-
sault, LE MERCURE GALANT); THRASILLE (La
Bruyere). There are no romantic and almost
no tragic examples.
4. Avengers of their Honor: Vera Gelo,
Mathilde (Frank Verax, Sanglante probldme) ; Don
Diego in THE ClD. No comic examples.
5. Avengers of the Honor of Relatives: Tri-
boulet (LE ROI S' AMUSE), Odard (EMILIA GALOTTl) ;
few good feminine examples.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 183
6. Avengers of Kindred: Hamon (Beaumont
and Fletcher, ROLLO); Emilie (ClNNA), the ROSA-
MONDES of Rucellai and of Alfieri; Constance
(KING JOHN), Althee.
7. Avenger of a Mistress: Tuzani (Calderon,
LOVE AFTER DEATH): of a wife: Macduff; of a
husband or lover: LA TOSCA (Sardou).
8. Avenger of Friends : SON POTEAU (Metenier) .
No symmetric example in the other sex.
9. Avenger of Compatriots: Xenocrite ridding
Cumes of the tyrant Aristodeme the Delicate,
Charlotte. Corday, Judith; see the following group,
also masculine examples under Tyrannicides in
Mars.
10. Judges or Enforcers of Justice: Nemesis
and her counterparts in various paganisms;
Aeschylus (Alfieri, TlMOLEON), the elder Brutus.
A parody, which is lacking in the preceding case,
is here sketched in Ibsen's Gregers Wefle (THE
WILD DUCK).
Ill THE STRICT AND SEVERE
1. Unmerciful Scolds: Grietje (Mitchell and
Leborne, THE ABSENT) insufficiently counter-
balances the physician Coitier (Delavigne, LOUIS
XI) or Brother Archangias (Zola, LA FAUTE DE
L'ABBE MOURET). These are parodied in
184 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
2. Grumblers and Faultfinders: Madame
Pernelle (Tartufe), Madame Grognac (Regnard,
LE DISTRAIT); Clistorel, that Coitier of comedy
(Regnard, LE LEGATAIRE), Geronte in LE JOUEUR,
THE PHILOSOPHER MARRIED (Destouches), Anti-
phon, (Plautus, STICHUS), Simon, Demea, Demi-
phon, and Menedemus in the works of Terence,
a specialist in this type.
3. THE MISANTHROPE of Molidre, purely
comic, derives from this class. There are no
feminine examples for this, nor for the more
serious case of Jacques (As YOU LIKE IT).
4. Misogynists: We have lost Menander's,
who was called Demyle. Lessing's MISOGYNIST
is Wumshoeter, La Fontaine's is Anselme (THE
ENCHANTED CUP). The corresponding feminine
man-hater is lacking and both masculine and
feminine are lacking in the tragic!
5. Puritans: Pastor Holm (Engel, ON THE
WATERS) ; Miss Stevens in Balzac.
6. Scathing Critics: TlMON OF ATHENS, the
Prophets, Juvenal, Leon Bloy; no feminine ex-
amples. Cato and Jean- Jacques lead to
7. Malcontents: Prince Andrei (Tolstoi, WAR
AND PEACE), parodied in
8. The Morose and Churlish: Leroy (Janvier,
LES APPELEURS).
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 185
9. The Harsh and Resolute: Stockmann
(ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE), Burrhus (BRITANNICUS) ,
Michael Angelo; comic: William Thornwill in
THE VICAR OF WAKEFIELD. Neither 6, 7 nor 8
has good feminine examples, nor has
10. The Sarcastic: Mauly in THE PLAIN
DEALER (Wycherly). Thersite la Brige, in Court-
eline, leads to
11. The Litigious: Lanternois and Chiqui-
noux in PANTAGRUEL, Protais (Mickiewicz, THAD-
DEUS SOPLITZA); the Countess de Pimbeche (LES
PLAIDEURS, Chicane (LUTRIN).
12. Vixens and Scolds : Xantippe; LaBruyeYe's
DISAGREEABLE MAN, his BUSYBODY and his
CRABBED MAN. In the tragic : Eleanor of Acqui-
taine, Amate and Juno in the ILIAD. Here mas-
culine examples are lacking.
13. The Uneven-tempered: La Bruyere's
EUTICHRATE has as yet no worthy feminine. Nor
has the following:
14. The Headstrong: L'OPINIONATRE (Brueys),
nor
15. THE SINGULAR MAN (Balzac).
NEPTUNE
I THE GREEDY AND AVARICIOUS
1. The Selfish: Dr. Halpersohn (Balzac),
Madame Kriwdine (Mowinsky, THE BLOWS OF
186 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
FATE). More dramatic: Klechtch (Gorki, THE
LOWER DEPTHS), Madame Ambroise (Decameron
VIII, 1).
2. The Covetous: Louise of Savoy, MANETTE
SALOMON (Goncourt) ; Remonencq (COUSIN PONS).
Comic: the Fish- vendors of the Greek drama,
Rabelais' Dindenault.
3. Speculators, Stock-jobbers, etc.: TURCARET,
MERCADET, Isidor Lechat (Mirbeau, LES
AFFAIRES . . . ), Saccard (Zola, LA CURE,
L' ARGENT, etc. There are no feminine examples,
at least in literature. Nor are there for the
4. Unscrupulous Rascals: Kovacs (Zola, THE
LAND), Prince Basil (Tolstoi, WAR AND PEACE).
5. The Criminally Covetous: Tarpeia, Taille-
fer in Balzac, Buteau (Zola, THE LAND), Dick
Hatteraick (Scott, GUY MANNERING). No comic
examples.
6. Cajolers of Parents or Rich Masters:
Madame Massin-Bevrault (URSULE MlROUET),
Francoise (A DOUBLE FAMILY), Voltore and
Corvino (Ben Jonson, VOLPONE).
7. Go-betweens and Procurers: the Lenons
of the Greco-Latin stage, Kaled (Chamfort, THE
SLAVE-DEALER), Bordenave (Zola, NANA),
MADAME CARDINAL (Halevy), MACETTE (Regnier).
8. Keepers of Gaming Houses: Feminine ex-
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 187
amples are wanting in literature. Masculine:
the Croupier in THE EARTHEN CHARIOT (Sudraka),
Lie-chi-ki-ouen (THE STORY OF THE RIVER BANKS).
9. Keepers of Opium Dens: One feminine
example in THE MYSTERY OP EDWIN DROOD
(Dickens).
10. Saloon-keepers : No thorough study as yet.
11. Usurers: Madame la Ressource (Regnard,
LE JOUEUR), poorly counterbalances GOBSECK
and his twelve rivals of THE HUMAN COMEDY,
Shylock, Barrabas THE JEW OF MALTA (Marlowe).
12. Misers: Harpagon follows old precedents ;
Euclion (Plautus, AULULARIA), Isaac of York
Tragic: Koujin the Chinese MISER, GRANDET.
Feminine examples, either tragic or comic, are
mediocre.
13. Luxurious Misers: the Baroness in LE
CHEVALIER A LA MODE.
II THE DESPOTIC
1. Domestic Despots: GRANDET, whom we
have just noted in his principal aspect under
Misers; the president Walter (Schiller, CABAL
AND LOVE), Commander Siesi (Butti, THE TEM-
PEST), Sorel (Stendhal, LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR);
Madame Josserand (POT-BOUILLE), Mistress Otter
(Ben Jonson, EPICOENE).
188 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
2. Imperious Despots: TURANDOT (Gozzi),
SAINT-CENDRE (Maindron).
3. Tyrannical Subordinates: Gessler (WIL-
LIAM TELL), Galerius (THE MARTYRS), Wolsey
(Calderon, THE SCHISM OF ENGLAND), Haman
(ESTHER). Comic: LE COMMISSAIRE and LE
GENDARME of Courteline; no feminine examples.
4. Tyrannical and Lustful Subordinates: the
Commissaire (Mirbeau, LE PORTEFEUILLE), LE
BON JUGE (Brisson). Tragic: Appius Claudius
of the innumerable VIRGINIAS, Giannetino Doria
(Schiller, FlESCO). No feminine examples in lit.
erature.
5. Despotic and Fanatical Subordinates:
Angelique Arnauld; Saul (the future St. Paul).
6. Fanatical and Intolerant Tyrants: Cather-
ine de Medicis (Marlowe, THE MASSACRE AT
PARIS), Pentheus (Euripides, BACCHAE), Philip II
in score of plays.
7. Tyrants: Catherine de Medicis after Bal-
zac, who paints her #s shrewd and unbelieving,
ATHALIE, Cleopatra (RODOGUNE); Bone in BAR-
BARA RADZIWILL, CAMBYSES (Preston), Atar
(Beaumarchais, TARARE), Grimoald (Corneille,
PERTHARITE), Al-Hassan (LALLA ROOKH), Diocle-
tian (Rotrou, SAINT-GENEST), Creon in the
Tragics, ATTILA (Herbert, Corneille, Werner,
Bornier), TAMERLANE (Marlowe), Napoleon.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 189
8. Pitiless Parents: Acrisius, Orchame, Echete,
etc. No good feminine examples.
9. Evil Geniuses: monsters: Satan, Ahriman
and other synonyms, Adamastor (LUSIADE), Poly-
phemus (ODYSSEY), Polemos (Aristophanes, THE
PEACE), the CYCLOPS (Euripides), the Old Man
of the Dovre (PEER GYNT); ogres: Morgane
(THE LOVE OF THE THREE ORANGES), L'lNTRUSE,
Death in the DANSES MACABRES.
10. Base Despots: Menelaus after Euripides,
Phocas (Corneille, HERACLIUS). Comic: Rabe-
lais' Grippeminaud. Feminine examples are
lacking. %
11. Voluptuous Tyrants; SEMIRAMIS (Cre-
billon), Catherine II, Christina of Sweden; Nero,
Tiberius, Henry VIII. See also the Vicious under
Venus.
Ill THE AMBITIOUS
1. Ordinary Ambition : Few women: Madame
Rogron (Balzac, PIERRETTE); masculine: Rastig-
nac, THEONAS (La Bruyere), EUGENE ROUGON
(Zola). No comic examples.
2. The Ambitious Troubled in Mind, or
Already Guilty: Comic: Jules Hniot (Fdvre,
LES BEAUX MARIAGES), Morin (Janvier, PRES-
TIGE). Tragic: Mouzon (Brieux, THE RED
190 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
ROBE), Henri Mauperin (the Goncourts), LlU-
THONG-PIN. No feminine examples either comic
or tragic.
3. Presumptuous Ambition: a comic example
may be found in Perrault's SOUHAITS RIDICULES;
tragic: Maurice Leon in LE LlVRE DU PETIT
GENDELETTRE. Feminine examples might be
found among our modern poetesses and artists.
4. Forceful Ambition: Solness THE MASTER
BUILDER (Ibsen), BORIS GODOUNOPF (Pushkin),
CAESAR (Plutarch, Mommsen).
5. Hard Ambition: Caesar in Lucan's PHAR-
SALIA, Jean de Giscale, Napoleon (P. Adam, LA
FORCE); Mesdames Thuillier and Camusotet de
Lenoncourt in Balzac are very inferior.
6. Unbecoming Ambition: the Byzantine
Placidia; Caesar after Suetonius, Shakespeare's
HENRY IV.
7. Infatuated by Ambition: LA MONTESPAN
(Rolland); Julien Sorel (LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR),
Ruggero Flamma (d'Annunzio, LA GLORIA).
8. Murderers through Ambition: MACBETH,
KING JOHN, Knut the Great, the uncle of HAMLET;
Agrippina, Lady Macbeth, Tullia the parricide.
9. Vague Comic Ambitions: JEROME PATU-
ROT, a general parody of this class.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 191
MINERVA
I THE DARING AND ROMANTIC
1. Daring by Circumstance: Imogene (CYM-
BELINE), Helena (ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL),
our Henri IV.
2. Greatly Daring Men: Hannibal, SERTOR-
IUS (Corneille), David, Cyrus, Ulysses, Waina-
moinen in the KALEVALA; no feminine equivalents.
3. Conspirators: Mile de Cinq-Cygne (Balzac,
A DARK AFFAIR), Procida (Delavigne, SICILIAN
VESPERS). Comic: Lysistrata and Praxagora
(Aristophanes, ASSEMBLY OF WOMEN), Gavard
(Zola, VENTflE DE PARIS), the pharmacist Don
Franco (Verga, I MALAVOGLIA).
4. Daring Conquerors: Charles VIII, the
young Cyrus of the ANABASIS, Brutus, legendary
founder of England (THE BRUT) and other great
colonizers, Dardanus, etc.
5. Knightly Adventurers: LOHENGRIN, Per-
seus, St. George, AMADIS, ANTAR the Arab,
EVIRADNUS (Hugo), HUON (Wieland). A parody:
DON QUIXOTE. Feminine: the Valkyrie, THE
AMAZONS (Mazel), Jeanne d'Arc.
6. The Chevaleresque : tragic: ALEXANDRE-
LE-GRAND (Racine) , the hideous and good Tchang-
KOUE (THE VICTORY OVER DEMONS), La Fayette.
Comic: Pickwick (Dickens) and Mattheus (Erck-
192 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
mann-Chatrian) belong rather to the Utopian
type of Apollo.
7. Explorers: Christopher Columbus, Living-
stone, Marco Polo, the Conquist adores, the heroes
of Jules Verne; Lady Hester Stanhope, Madame
Dieulafoy, etc., are inferior. In the comic there
are only masculine examples: GULLIVER, PETER
WILKINS.
8. Travellers: comic: CAPTAIN PAMPHILE
(Dumas), Evelpide (Aristophanes, THE BIRDS);
tragic: ROBINSON CRUSOE, JAMBULE, Nauplius
(Sophocles, THE NAVIGATIONS), Sindbad, WIL-
HELM MEISTER.
9. The Curious and Imprudent: Psyche, Eve,
Pandora, Elsa (LOHENGRIN), Bluebeard's wife
and, in the comic, Schirina (Gozzi, TURANDOT)
and L'lNDISCRETE (Destouches). Masculine,
tragic: Actaeon; comic: LE CURIEUX IMPERTI-
NENT (Destouches).
10. The Romantic: Jehan de Paris, Prince
Rodolphe (Sue, THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS),
Valentin (Sandeau, LA CHASSE 'AU ROMAN);
feminine, tragic: Ellida THE LADY FROM THE
SEA (Ibsen), Bettina von Arnim; no good comic
examples.
11. Daring in Love: MADEMOISELLE DE
MAUPIN (Gautier), CAPTAIN THERESE (Bisson
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 193
and Planquette), LA CAVALIERE (Jacques Riche-
pin), Jessica in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE.
There are no strictly corresponding masculine
types; they oscillate between 11 and
12. The Daring by Nature: D'Artagnan and
other heroes of cloak and sword; Hilda in THE
MASTER BUILDER.
II ADVENTURERS
1. Adventurers Painted by their Enemies:
the Conquistadores, Routiers, etc.
2. Adventurers by Nature: GIL BLAS, DON
PABLO DE SEGOVIA.
3. Corsairs, etc.: JEAN-BART (Haraucourt) ,
CAPTAIN PAUL (Dumas), Duryodhana (MAHAB-
HARATA), Roger de Flor, the CONDOTTIERI.
4. False Pretenders: Demetrius (Schiller,
Pushkin), the heroes of THE IMPERIAL DRAGON
(Judith Gautier), the false Smerdis, Naundorff.
No feminine examples.
5. Criminal Adventurers: Buridan (LA TOUR
DE NESLE), Cartouche, MOLL FLANDERS, (Defoe);
comic: Don Caesar de Bazan (RUY BLAS).
6. Mysterious Strangers: THE FLYING DUTCH-
MAN, the Stranger in THE LADY FROM THE SEA
(Ibsen), the Byronic heroes, THE BLUE BIRD.
No feminine examples.
194 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
7. Intellectual Adventurers: Benvenuto Cel-
lini, Beaumarchais, Villon, the Trouvdres. No
feminine examples.
8. Plotters: Therese Humbert, LA FEMME
D'INTRIGUES (Dancourt), the Countess in DER
GROSSKOPHTA (Goethe); VOLPONE, ROBERT MA-
CAIRE, ZYGMUNT PODFILIPSKI (Wissenhoff).
9. Occultists: THE ALCHEMIST (Ben Jonson),
DER GROSSKOPHTA (Goethe), Chaff ery (Wells,
LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM), Dousterwivel (Scott,
THE ANTIQUARY) ; Mile Lenormand, Madame Fon-
taine (THE HUMAN COMEDY).
10. Tragic Sorcerers: the heroes of LE LAC
NOIR (Bordeaux); LA SORCIERE and other repug-
nant criminals.
11. Liars: LE MENTEUR (Corneille), MON-
SIEUR DE CRAC (Harleville). No good tragic
masculine examples; no good comic feminine
examples. A sad feminine example is LA MEN-
TEUSE (Daudet).
Ill THE ELOQUENT
1. Imaginative Story-tellers: Ulysses (ODYS-
SEY), the Hindu Vampire of the 25 TALES OF THE
VAMPIRE; Scheherezade. Tragic: the Author
. of the Parables.
2. The Loquacious: Oriane and Elise (Bour-
sault, MERCURE GALANT); the Marquis in THE
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 195
COUNTRY HOUSE (Dancourt), Dinacion (Plautus,
STICHUS).
3. Fluent and Ready Talkers: MADAME
ANGOT, MADAME SANS-GENE (Sardou); Molidre's
Dorine and Martine. No symmetric masculine
examples.
4. The Garrulous: Milpertius (Flers and
Caillavet, LE SIRE DE VERGY). No notable fem-
inine examples.
5. The Witty: Mercutio, Benedict; Rosalind,
Beatrice.
6. Jesters and Banterers: Regnard's Marine
and Lisette (LA SERENADE, LE DISTRAIT), Baron's
Marton tmd Marion (THE JEALOUS, THE
COQUETTE and THE SHAM PRUDE) ; the Satirics.
7. Mystificators and Mockers: Panurge
(PANTAGRUEL), Cabrion (MYSTERIES OF PARIS),
Truewit (Ben Jonson, (EPICOENE). Few women.
8. Brazen Boasters: Cleon (Aristophanes,
THE KNIGHTS), NUMA ROUMESTAN (Daudet),
RABAGAS (Sardou). No good feminine examples.
9. The Eloquent: John Chrysostom, a greater
than Demosthenes and Pericles. Feminine reduc-
tions: Portia (MERCHANT OF VENICE), Sophia
(Beaumont and Fletcher, THE LITTLE FRENCH
LAWYER).
10. Adventurers Luring and Misleading by
196 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
their Language : Bassanio, Lemminkainen (KALE-
VALA) ; few women.
VENUS
>
I THE SEDUCTIVE AND SEDUCING
1. Seductive and Persuasive Talkers: Lei-
cester (Schiller, MARY STUART).
2. Seduction and Base Conduct : IRIS (Pinero) ;
Paris (ILIAD), Egisthus in the Tragics, Mahomet
(Lope, CONQUEST OP GRANADA), Leon (MADAME
BOVARY). Comic: Agathon (Aristophanes, THE
FEASTS OF CERES AND PROSERPINE); no similar
satire in the feminine.
3. Ingenuous Impurity: Cherubin (MARRIAGE
OF FIGARO), TOM JONES (Fielding), LE PETIT AMI
(Leautaud); Nicette (LA CHERCHEUSE D'ESPRIT,
Favart).
4. Lofty Allurement: Aspasia, the future St.
Aglae of THE MARTYRS, Beatrice, Laura; St. John
the Evangelist.
5. The Pretentious: MADAME GlBOU and
various "snobs."
6. Tender Coquetry: Anne the wigmaker
(LUTRIN), Criseis (Regnard, DEMOCRITE). No
masculine examples.
7. Coquettes in Love: Titania (MIDSUMMER
NIGHT'S DREAM), Pyrrha (DEUCALION AND
PYRRHA, St. Foix), the Countess (Marivaux,
197
SURPRISES OF LOVE); masculine: Aubert (Adam
de la Halle, LE JEU DU BERGER ET DE LA BERGERE),
RoySre (Bernstein, JOUJOU), CLAVIGO (Goethe).
8. Coquettes par excellence: LA VIE DE
MARIANNE (Marivaux); the symmetric masculine
would necessarily be ridiculous.
9. Fickle Triflers: The traditional Marquis
of repertoire has no tragic side. Comic feminine
examples: Madame de Plouah (Donnay, LA
BASCULE); tragic: Ida de Barancy (Daudet,
JACK), Marie-Louise (Pouvillon, LE ROI DE ROME)
and Rostand (L'AlGLON).
10. The Immodest and Provocative: Rosette
(Gautier, MLLE DE MAUPINJ, many heroines of
Boccacio. A symmetric masculine is Butti's Aldo
(THE PATH OF PLEASURE).
11. Great Seducers: Don Juan (Tirso de
Molina and two score authors of various lands),
Lavedan's MARQUIS DE PRIOLA; Celimdne, Laura
(Lope de Vega, The Mill), Cleopatra, the Queen
of Sheba (Flaubert, Salomon).
12. Fops and Coxcombs: Armado (Shakes-
peare, LOVE'S LABOR LOST), Kalb (Schiller, CABAL
AND LOVE), Dorante (Regnard, AlTENDEZ-MOI
SOUS L'ORME). Who can say that no feminine
cases are to be found?
13. Fatal Seductions: Helen (ILIAD), Mohini-
Maia (BHAGAVAD-GITA) , Delilah, CARMEN, LA
198 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
GlOCONDA (d'Annunzio). A single masculine
example, which, on the contrary, is comic: the
admirable SATYROS of Goethe.
14. Machiavellian Seducers: Lovelace, THE
LIBERTINE, Lou-tchai-long; VlTTORIA COROMBONA
(Webster), the Princess d'Eboli (Schiller, DON
CARLOS), Adelaide (Goethe, GOETZ).
II COURTESANS
1. Cold and Selfish: Sidonie, FROMONT JUNIOR
AND RlSLER SENIOR (Daudet), MADAME LUPAR
(Lemonnier), Ellen (Tolstoi, WAR AND PEACE).
2. Dangerous and Perfidious: Madame Mar-
neffe (COUSIN BETTE), Euphrasie (THE MAGIC
SKIN); masculine: Jupillon (GERMINIE LACER-
TEAUX).
3. Hypocritical Parasitic Men: ANDRfi TOUR-
ETTE (Muhlfield), BEL AMI (Maupassant).
4. Profligate Girls : Dol Common (Ben Jonson,
THE ALCHEMIST), Anitra (PEER GYNT), Toudou
of the Turkish theatre; tragic: SALOME (Oscar
Wilde), Kundry (PARSIFAL), Circe (ODYSSEY),
Armide (JERUSALEM DELIVERED).
5. Powerful Courtesans: MADAME DU BARRY
(Belasco), Comnena (d'Annunzio, LA GLORIA),
NANA. Comic: THE GIRL FROM MAXIM'S
(Feydeau); masculine: the academician Alain
Valran (Berton, LA MARCHE A L'ETOILE) ; tragic:
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 199
Fabriani (MARIE TUDOR), Gaveston (Marlowe,
EDWARD II). A higher type: Madame de
Pompadour.
6. Courtesans of Antiquity: the Bacchae, etc.,
or, in the Orient, the Princesses of Love (Judith
Gautier) are related to
7. Humble, Tender or Innocent Girls: Mas-
lova (Tolstoi, RESURRECTION), Sonia (Dostoievsky,
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT), Petite-Secousse (Barres,
THE GARDEN OF BERENICE).
8. Amorous Courtesans: Esther van Gobseck
(HUMAN COMEDY), Goncourt's ELIZA, the cour-
tesan in THE EARTHEN CHARIOT (Sudraka).
9. Affectionate Girls: Riquette (Meilhac and
Halevy, MY COUSIN), THE LITTLE DUCHESS
(Temens), NELLY ROZIER (Bilhaud and Henne-
quin).
Ill THE Vicious
1. The Inhumanly Vicious: Pasiphae, Stellius,
Aristonyme of Ephesus (Plutarch, PARALLELS OF
HISTORY, an apocryphal work).
2. The Infatuated: ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA
(Shakespeare), the hero of VOLUPTE (Sainte-
Beuve), Frantz in GOETZ VON BERLICHINGEN.
3. Gross Libertines: Catherine II, George
Sand, Serenissime, ABBE PROUT (Ranson), the
Turkish Karaghuez, Priapus, etc.
200 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
4. Mature Sensualists: Lycemon (Longus,
DAPHNIS AND CHLOE), THE DUENNA (Sheridan),
Lady Bellaston (Fielding, TOM JONES), Marceline
(MARRIAGE OF FIGARO), Hulot (COUSIN BETTE),
Muff at (NANA).
5. The Disgraced and Degraded: Chevalier
des Grieux (MANON LESCAUT), ROLLA, TANN-
HAUSER.
6. Cruel Debauchees: Nero, Gilles de Retz,
Marquis de Sade, etc.; LUCRECE BORGIA (Hugo).
7. The Insatiable: Messalina, ISABEL OF
BAVARIA (Dumas), THEODORA.
8. Perfidious Debauchees: Nicele, Potiphar's
wife (Lope, LABORS OF JACOB), Anne (Maeter-
linck, PRINCESS MALEINE), PHAEDRA; Streck-
mann (Hauptmann, ROSE BERNDT).
9. Impious Debauchees: Madame de Chante-
louve (Huysmans, LA-BAS); masculine examples,
such as the wicked Monks of the fables, are all
comic.
10. Pedantic Debauchees: Dr. Pangloss
(CANDIDE), ARISTOTE and VlRGILE in the two
mediaeval Lays.
11. The Abnormal: VAUTRIN (Balzac), Jupi-
ter (Marlowe, DlDO), EDWARD II (Marlowe);
comic: THE CYCLOPS (Euripides); feminine:
Paquita Valdes (Balzac), MLLE DE MAUPIN, etc.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 201
12. Morphomaniacs and Opium-eaters:
Marthe (Luguet and Lauras, LA PlQURE), LELIE
(Willy).
13. Masochists and other Bizarre Cases:
NINI L'ASSOMMEUR (Maurice Bernhardt), Albert
(MLLE DE MAUPIN).
APOLLO
I THE IMPASSIONED
1 . Hysterical Temperaments : Adelaide Fouque
(Zola, Fortune of THE ROUGONS), GERMINIE
LACERTEUX (Goncourt) ; LE POSSEDE (Lemonnier).
2. The Incestuous: MYRRHA (Alfieri); Giov-
anni (Ford, 'TIS PITY . . . ), Cenci (Shelley)
Antiochus (Shakespeare, PERICLES).
3. Adulterers: THERESE RAQUIN (Zola),
Clytemnestra (Aeschylus, AGAMEMNON).
4. Impassioned Prof aners of Religion : Marthe
Rougon (Zola, CONQUETE DE PLASSANS), Hen-
riette (Ancey, CES MESSIEURS), Luther, etc.
5. Generous Sacrifices of Love: Fersen (Lenoir
and Lavedan, VARENNES), Lord Grenville (A
WOMAN OF THIRTY), THE SORCERESS (Sardou),
MADAME DE SOMMERVILLE (Sandeau).
6. Brisk Gallants: Henri IV. No symmetric
feminine.
202 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
7. Noble Hearts: TARARE (Beaumarchais),
(Severus (POLYEUCTE), Nearchus (Ford, THE
BROKEN HEART), Tancred (JERUSALEM DELIV-
ERED), Max (Schiller, WALLENSTEIN) ; Minna von
Barnhelm (Lessing). In comedy: Annette (Mow-
insky, BLOWS OF FATE), Ferdinand (Shakespeare,
THE TEMPEST) Tchao-ju-tcheou (THE PEAR-
BLOSSOM, and the majority of the classic "JEUNES
PREMIERS," a trifle vague, to be sure.
8. Sinners Redeemed by Love: MARION
DELORME, CAMILLE, Lady Milford (Schiller, CABAL
AND LOVE). No exact masculine equivalents.
9. Unfortunate in their Loves: Isis (Flau-
bert, TEMPTATION OP ST. ANTHONY), Heloise;
Hialmar (PRINCESS MALEINE), APOLLO which
is remarkable in all his amours.
10. Proscribed Lovers: RHADAMISTE (Crebil-
lon), Almachilde (Alfieri, ROSAMONDE), HERNANI;
none feminine.
11. Forsaken or Forlorn Lovers: GRAZIELLA,
DIDO, Balzac's ARIANE, Viola (Shakespeare,
TWELFTH NIGHT); Antiochus (BERENICE).
12. Lovers of Married Women, not less Unfor-
tunate: WERTHER, ANTONY, TRISTAN, PELLEAS.
No good feminine equivalents.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 203
II THE CHIMERICAL AND ILL-FATED
1. Vowed to Unhappiness for the Sake of
Love: Camille (HORACE), PRINCESS MALEINE
(Maeterlinck, DUCHESS D'AMALFl) ; Lope, Webster,
Bandello and others.
2. Shamed by their Children: Priam (ILIAD),
HECUBA (Euripides).
3. Victims: Cassandra (Aeschylus, AGAMEM-
NON), KING LEAR, the old Moor in Schiller's
ROBBERS, CEDIPUS AT COLONUS, the little Prince
of Wales in Shakespeare's RICHARD III, TlN-
TAGILES (Maeterlinck), Arthur (KING JOHN); see
others among the Weak under Diana.
4. The Sorrowful : THE MERCHANT OF VENICE,
Louis XIII, Madame du Deffant.
5. Victims of Courts: Lesurques (COURRIER
DE LYON), etc.
6. The Morbidly Scrupulous: HEAUTONTI-
MORUMENOS (Terence). Feminine cases, tragic
cases and modern cases are lacking.
7. Vanquished by Weakness: ARMANCE
(Stendhal), Leonard (LUSIADS). No feminine
examples.
8. Tormented by an Obligatory Crime: ORES-
TES, IDOMENEUS, JEPHTE.
9. Consequences of an Involuntary Sin:
Jocasta' (CEDIPUS THE KING), Manuel (Schiller,
THE BRIDE OF MESSINA).
204 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
10. Remorse: MANFRED, Amfortas (PARSI-
FAL) ; no feminine example.
11. Vanquished by Misery or Social Injustice:
Gervaise (L'ASSOMMOIR), La Bruydre's ORONTE;
the Morels in THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS, PHIL-
OCTETES.
12. Pessimists: Buddha, ST. JOSAPHAT, TlMON
OF ATHENS (Shakespeare), Athos (THREE MUSKE-
TEERS), Schopenhauer. No good feminine ex-
amples.
13. The Unlucky: Comic: CRAINQUEBILLE
(Anatole France) , and the hero of LE PORTEFEUILLE
(Mirbeau). Tragic: JACK (Daudet), RUY BLAS;
Fantine in LES MlSERABLES.
14. Stricken by Madness: HERCULES FURENS,
ATHAMAS, PENTHEUS, AJAX, Charles VI; Ophelia,
Gretchen, ALICE (Bulwer-Lytton).
15. The Eccentric and Insane: the characters
of Hoffman; few feminine cases.
16. Chimerical Lovers: MODESTE MlGNON,
MADAME BOVARY, Mile de la Motte (Stendhal,
LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR), the Troubadours of LA
PRINCESSE LOINTAINE (Rostand). Comic: LES
ROMANESQUES (Rostand), the Count in THADDEUS
SOPLITZA, Andrason (Goethe, DER TRIUMPH DER
EMPFINDSAMKEIT).
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 206
17. Superstitious but not Religious: Matthew
Nikititch in RESURRECTION. There are no good
literary studies.
18. Utopians: Olga Kroutchinine (Bariatin-
sky, THE SAND BANKS), Catherine Theot, the
Gnostics, Comtean Positivists, Fourrierists, Esper-
antists, etc.; Sir Politic Would-be (Ben Jonson).
19. Sincere Occultists: Julie (St. Foix, THE
SYLPH), FRUITS of CULTURE (Tolstoi), all comic.
20. Cnimerical Philosophers: Socrates (Aris-
tophanes, THE CLOUDS), Louis LAMBERT. No
women.
21. Collectors and Statisticians: COUSIN PONS,
SYLVESTRE BONNARD (France); no good feminine
examples.
Ill THE INTELLECTUAL
1. Savants: Oldbuck THE ANTIQUARY (Scott) ;
Madame Dacier. Pedants: Madame du Chate-
let; MARGITES, Zoile and his follower Wolff,
Lessing's YOUNG SCHOLAR, Begriffenfeld (PEER
GYNT), Rondibilis (PANTAGRUEL) .
2. Sham Savants: Clarice (Gozzi, LOVES of
THE THREE ORANGES), Square (TOM JONES).
See also, under Neptune, Emperor Claude, Chil-
peric, etc.
206
3. Pretentious Patrons of the Arts: Laurent
(Lavedan, THE MEDICIS); feminine examples are
lacking.
4. Enthusiastic Dilettantes: Maecenas, Prince
Touan (STORY OF THE RIVER BANKS), Louis II
of Bavaria. In literature, no feminine examples;
in history: Elizabeth, Christina, our Countess of
Beam.
5. Theorists of Art: Paolo Gambara and
Garangeot (HUMAN COMEDY) might also be
classed with either 3 or 4. No feminine examples.
6. Pedantic Scribblers: THE BLUE-STOCKINGS
(Byron); THE SYMBOLIST (Kozlowski), the Scholar
Limousin (PANTAGRUEL), d'Argenson (JACK).
7. Professional Pedants: our CORDONS BLEUS;
the Cooks of Greco-Latin comedy, the Utopian
pedicure Publicola Masson (HUMAN COMEDY),
Daudet's Delobelle.
8. Sham Intellectuals: LES PRfcCIEUSES RIDI-
CULES, FEMMES SAVANTES; Oronte in THE
MISANTHROPE.
9. Intellectual Natures: the young Pascal,
the Breton Jean Conan; Madame Leprince (LES
EMPLOYES); comic: PECUCHET.
10. Fatal Intellectuality: REMBRANDT (Dumur
and Josz), Poe, La Bruyere's ANTISTHENE and
THfeOBALDE, TASSO (Goethe).
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 207
11. Heroes of an Idea: CORINNE (Stael),
Marie Bashkirtseff, Flaubert, Palissy.
MERCURY
I THE SHREWD
1. Physical Adroitness: Arachne; no literary
examples in the feminine. Hamouman (RAMAY-
ANA), Puck (MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM), Passe-
partout (Verne, AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY
DAYS).
2. Valets or Slaves: Grotesque: JODELET, the
Shakespearean Clowns, the Graciosos ; no feminine
examples. Sly: Scapin, Face (Ben Jonson, THE
ALCHEMIST) ; our soubrettes.
3. Mental adroitness: Rebecca (Lope, Story
of Jacob and Esau); Saccard (Zola, LA CUREE),
SHERLOCK HOLMES, Rastignac and Desroches
(THE HUMAN COMEDY).
4. The Subtle: Claude Vignon (HUMAN
COMEDY), Renan, Sainte-Beuve ; no very good
feminine examples in literature.
5. Wise Diplomats: Acomat (BAJAZET) ;
Madame de Lausac (Balzac, LA PAIX DU MENAGE),
Anne de ^eaujeu.
6. Keen Diplomats: Antonio (Goethe, TASSO).
7. Odious Diplomats: Felix (POLYEUCTE),
Metternich (Rostand, L'AlGLON), d'Albe (Schiller,
DON CARLOS), Talleyrand.
208 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
8. The Witty and Adaptable: Beaumarchais ;
LYSISTRATA.
9. Flattering Demagogues: Cleon (THE
KNIGHTS).
10. Courtiers: Commines (Delavigne, LOUIS
XI), THfiODOTE (La Bruydre), Agaz in the Persian
romance of AGAZ AND MAHMOUD, THE FLATTERER
(J. B. Rousseau). Not a feminine example.
1 1 . Too Crafty Counsellors : PHAEDRA ; Carlos
(Goethe, ClAVIGO).
12. The Cunning: Madame Bordin (BOUVARD
AND PECUCHET) ; the elder Fourchon (Balzac, THE
PEASANTS), the Host in THE MERRY WIVES OF
WINDSOR.
13. The Insinuating: Anna Mikhailovna
(Tolstoi, WAR AND PEACE) ; the Lupeaulx nephews
(THE HUMAN COMEDY).
14. Deceivers and Cheats: Philip (DECAMERON
VII, 5), the REYNARD of ^Esop and La Fontaine,
the Jackal of the PANCATANTRA.
15. The Artful: Melitta (Wildmann, DAUGH-
TERS OF LYSANDER), the Buddhist nun in AGNI-
MITRA AND MALAVIKA (Kalidasa) ; Chilon (Quo
Vadis?), Bdelycleon (Aristophanes, THE WASPS),
the vagabond Diccon in GAMMER GURTON'S
NEEDLE.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 209
16. The Unscrupulous: Monticelse (Webster,
VlTTORIA COROMBONA), LOUIS XI (Mercier,
Delavigne, Paul Fort), Frederick the Great,
Tamerlane; in the feminine, but one aspect of
Catherine de Medicis.
II THE TRAITOROUS
1. Informers: . . . .
2. Spies (more honorable, on the whole):
Corentin, Bibi-Lupin, etc. (HUMAN COMEDY);
Mile Michonneau (from Balzac also).
3. Spies of War: Sinon, etc.
4. Traitors through Cupidity: Pylis of Troy;
Tarpeia, Eriphyle, Delilah. No good literary
studies in the masculine.
5. Treachery of Mean Natures: Pierrotin
(the little valet of Dassoucy); no good feminine
examples.
6. Traitors from Jealousy or Scorned Love:
Rosalie de Watteville (Balzac, ALBERT SAVARUS),
Eriphile (Iphigenie); Don Salluste (RUY BLAS),
Laffemas (MARION DELORME), Pharnaces
(MlTHRIDATE).
7. Revengeful Treachery: Guanhumara (BUR-
GRAVES), Ithamore (Marlowe, THE JEW OF
MALTA), lago (OTHELLO).
8. "Third Roles" in general: Feminine, tragic:
Matrena (THE POWER OF DARKNESS); comic:
210 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
SmeraJdine (Gozzi, THE GREEN BIRD), Tartagliona
(Gozzi, LOVES OF THE THREE ORANGES). Mascu-
line, tragic: Begearss (Beaumarchais, THE GUILTY
MOTHER), Catual (Camoens, THE LUSIADS),
Philippe-le-Bel, lachimo (CYMBELINE), Ganelon
(CHANSON DE ROLAND), Narcisse (BRITANNICUS) ,
Valin (RAMAYANA) ... I may be excused
for not lingering over the nuances of this repug-
nant collection.
9. Traitors to Love: the Wife of Bisclavaret
(Marie de France), Delilah already cited; LE
VAINQUEUR (Brahm).
10. Ingrates: THE INGRATE (Destouches), the
minister Rassati-Rouchen (Bokhari, THE CROWN
OF KINGS); see others under Ceres.
11. Betrayers of Friends or Brothers: Salieri
(MOZART AND SALIERI, Pushkin), Judas, Franz
Moor (Schiller, THE ROBBERS), Piccolomini
WALLENSTEIN), Polymnestor (HECUBA); no good
feminine examples.
12. The Envious: Tcheladin (Wenzyk,
GLINSKI), Mortensgaard (Ibsen, ROSMERSHOLM) ;
comic: L'ENVIEUX (Destouches). No good
feminine examples.
Ill THE KNAVISH
1. Evil Speakers and Backbiters: Madame
Popinot (THE HUMAN COMEDY), De Chandour,
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 211
also from Balzac, Thersites (Homer and Shakes-
peare), Palinure (Plautus, THE WEEVIL).
2. Calumniators: Basile (Beaumarchais), Don
Mendo (Alarcon, WALLS HAVE EARS), our official
historians, etc. Almost no feminine examples.
3. Degraded by Cupidity: Li-chi (THE ENEMY
CREDITOR), Cibot (COUSIN PONS); Truffaldin
(Gozzi, TURANDOT).
4. The Base and Mean: Jenkinson (VICAR OF
WAKEFIELD).
5. The Sinister: Europe (HUMAN COMEDY),
Tristan (Delavigne, LOUIS XI).
6. Knaves: MOLL FLANDERS; Gabrillon
(Dancourt, FEMME D' INTRIGUES), Agavos after
Homer; tragic: Jacqueline Collin (HUMAN
COMEDY).
7. Daring Rogues (see also Minerva): Tchin-
khi (THE ACCOMPLISHED WIFE), Don Gabriel de
Herrera (Tirso, THE PEASANT OF VALLECAS).
JUPITER
I THE ARROGANT AND INSOLENT
1. Parvenus: the SANNIONS (La Bruyere),
LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME, Trimalcion (SATYRI-
CON), Crevel and Phileas Beauvisage in THE
HUMAN COMEDY; Zanthia (Massinger, THE SLAVE).
212 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
The feminine parvenue has been insufficiently
studied.
2. Pedants (the parvenus of the intellectual
life): our sham scientists, our "philosophers" of
the 18th century, which produced neither a
Descartes nor a Malebranche.
3. The Impious: FAUST (Lenau), LUCIFERO
(Butti) Campaneus (Aeschylus, SEVEN AGAINST
THEBES), Pentheus (Euripides, BACCHAE). No
feminine examples.
4. Vanity of Connections: Deborah (VlCAR
OF WAKEFIELD), Madame Muller (Shiller, CABAL
AND LOVE).
5. Naive Insolence: ERGASTI (La Bruyere),
THE CHURL (Plautus).
6. Insolent Beggars: Irus (ODYSSEY).
7. The Haughty and Harsh : Herodiade, Vashti,
(ESTHER), Madame de Montespan (Nota, DUCHESS
DE LA VALLIRE), Honoria (Massinger, THE POR-
TRAIT), Edward III (Belloy, THE BURGHERS OF
CALAIS), Diocletian (Massinger, THE VIRGIN
MARTYR) ,Viriate (SERTORIUS).
8. The Proud: Niobe, Dryden's Indamora,
Almeria and Lyndaraxa (AURENG-ZEB, THE
EMPEROR OF INDIA, THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA),
Diana de Belflor (Lope, THE GARDENER'S DOG),
the Empress-mother in Werner's ATTILA, Paulo
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 213
(Tirso, DAMNED FOR LACK OP FAITH), Bertrand
de Rousillon (Boccacio, DECAMERON II, 8) Shakes-
peare, ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL), GLINSKI
(Wenzyk).
9. The Vain: Smeraldine (Gozzi, THE STAG
KING), Lisette de Caquerino (DECAMERON IV, 2).
10. Exaggerated Pretensions: CESAR BlROT-
TEAU, Fungoso (Ben Jonson, EVERY MAN HIS
HUMOUR), THE FROG WHO WOULD IMITATE THE
Ox. No feminine examples.
11. Vain Imitators: THE JAY IN PEACOCK'S
PLUMAGE. Too few examples.
12. The Self-important: Mistress Western
(TOM JONES), JOSEPH PRUDHOMME (Monnier),
Worms-Clavelin (Anatole France), De Renal
(Stendhal, LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR), MONSIEUR
CARDINAL (Halevy), De Faverges (BOUVARD AND
PECUCHET).
II. THE HAUGHTY AND DIGNIFIED
1. Haughty by Nature: Duchess de Verneuil
(Balzac, MODESTE MlGNON) ; CORIOLANUS
(Plutarch, Shakespeare).
2. The Haughty and Ambitious: JULIUS
CAESAR (Shakespeare) ; SURENA (Corneille),
Honorie (Corneille, ATTILA), Zenobia.
3. Sorrowful Pride: Calantha (Ford, THE
214 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
BROKEN HEART), Cleora (Massinger, THE SLAVE),
Marie Antoinette before the tribunal.
4. Lofty Dignity: Cornelia, mother of the
Gracchi; LE PHILOSOPHE SANS LE SAVOIR.
5. Sham Distinction: Raoula (Nau, FORCE
ENNEMl). See the Pretentious under Venus.
6. Old Beaux of Fine Manners: Vigneraie
(Regnier, LES VACANCES D'UN JEUNE HOMME
SAGE). See Venus.
7. See others of the Proud under Mars.
Ill THE MAJESTIC AND PROTECTING
1. Royal Protectors: Ahasuerus (ESTHER),
Saladin (DECAMERON I, 3), Theseus of the Greek
Tragics and his son Demiphon (Euripides, HERA-
CLIDES), Pelasgos (Aeschylus, THE SUPPLIANTS),
Arthur (LAI DE LANVAL). No great feminine
examples.
2. Severe Majesty: WALLENSTEIN (Schiller),
Don Pedro (Calderon, THREE PUNISHMENTS IN
ONE).
3. Scorned and Buffeted Majesty: Noble
(REYNARD).
4. Majestic by Nature: the supreme Gods of
all the religions, and their maritime counterparts,
Neptune (^ENEID), ^Eolus (ODYSSEY), Noah or
the king-patriarch of the Chaldeans, Assyrians,
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 215
Chinese, Armenians, Iranians, Hindus, Germans,
Scandinavians, Arabs, etc., under his many names,
Moses, Pythagoras (Mazel, ARCHYTAS DE META-
PONTE), Vasco de Gama (LUSIADS); no feminine
examples.
5. Lofty Bearing: QUEEN OF THE OCCIDENT
(Chinese), Constantin (THE MARTYRS), Goethe,
Chateaubriand.
6. The Venerable: Dhiritarastra (MAHAB-
HARATA), Charles-Quint (Werner, LUTHER), Mar-
quis de Nangis and Monsieur de St. Vallier (Hugo,
MARION DELORME, LE Roi S'AMUSE).
7. The Calm: Madame Hedouin (Zola, POT-
BOUILLE), the family aspect of Madame Lupar
(Lemonnier); WILLIAM TELL (Schiller).
8. The Merciful: No feminine examples. Mas-
culine: August (ClNNA), Joseph (Lope, LABORS
OF JACOB).
9. Generous Tenderness : Stratonica (Plutarch,
GENEROUS ACTS OF WOMEN), Sarah in the Bible;
no masculine examples.
10. The Hospitable: Thespius, Acestes
GENEID), Alcinous (ODYSSEY).
11. Protectors: the Manitous, Fetiches, Lares.
Modern allegorical figures (Republic, Fatherland,
Agriculture, Hygiene, etc.). Countess Mathilde,
benefactress of the Papacy; Lord Chang (Pl-PA-Kl).
216 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
12. Protection by the Weak: the aged Kin-lao
(STORY OF THE RIVER BANKS) . No great feminine
examples.
13. See others under the Chevaleresques of
Minerva.
CERES
I THE GENEROUS AND PRODIGAL
1. Benevolent Good-nature: Madame Hans
(THE ACCOMPLISHED SOUBRETTE) ; Hannon, Peri-
plectomenes, Lysimachus and Hegion (Plautus,
THE CARTHAGINIAN, THE BRAGGART SOLDIER,
THE MERCHANT, THE CAPTIVES), ABB CON-
STANTIN (Halevy).
2. The Charitable: Saints by the hundred,
Bhima (MAHABHARATA), Squire AUworthy (TOM
JONES), Omar Abd-el-Aziz (Bokhari, THE CROWN
OF KINGS), Tchang-touan (THE JADE SCEPTER);
Madame de la Chantrie (Balzac, THE OTHER
SIDE OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY).
3. The Generous: Ceres ; Aristeus (GEORGICS) .
4. The Liberal: PLUTUS (Aristophanes);
Lakchmi (BHAGAVAD-GITA) .
5. The Sumptuous: Haroun-al-Raschid (THOU-
SAND AND ONE NIGHTS), Hatim-tsai (KlTAB-
ADAB ES SELATHIN), JEAN DE PARIS.
6. The Ostentatious: Few women; possibly
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 217
La Bruyere's ZENOBIE; his MAN OF STRANGE
COSTUMES, Brussac (Capus, LA BOURSE OU LA
VIE).
7. The Prodigal: Madame Ranevsky (Chek-
hov, THE CHERRY ORCHARD), ^Esop's GRASS-
HOPPER, La Bruydre's EGINE; Cleante (Molidre,
THE MISER), Phidippides (Aristophanes, THE
CLOUDS).
8. Gamesters: The heroines of Dancourt; LE
JOUEUR (Regnard), Sacco (Fiesco). Tragic:
several in THE LAND OF COCKAIGNE (Serao),
Diard (THE HUMAN COMEDY), Yudhistira (MAHAB-
HARATA).
II THE GAY AND SENSUAL
1. The Gay: THE MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR,
Baubo, Mistress Waters (TOM JONES), Roger
Bontemps, LE ROI D'YVETOT, FANFAN-LA-TULIPE.
2. Optimists: BASILIDE (La Bruyere), THE
OPTIMIST (Collin d'Harleville). No notable fem-
inine cases.
3. Quiet Epicureans: Helvetius; no women.
4. Bohemians: Jerome Coignard (Anatole
France, AT THE SIGN OF THE REINE PEDAUQUE),
THE CHEVALIER DE GRAMMONT (Hamilton), the
heroes of Murger, Jean Frollo (NOTRE-DAME DE
PARIS), Ha-fei-kinh (THE GAGE OF LOVE), Giboyer
(LES EFFRONTES). No feminine examples.
218 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
5. Buffoons: the Fool in KING LEAR, Karpin-
dala (Rajacekhara, KARPAMANJARI), Wamba (Scott,
IVANHOE), Sancho Panza, KARADSCHOUSCHE the
Turkish hump-back, the Graciosos, Tabarin; no
good feminine examples.
6. Kindly Old People: Dicepolis (Aristophanes,
THE BIRDS), Calliphon (Plautus, PSEUDOLUS),
Chremes and Micion (Terence, HAUTONTIMO-
RUMENOS, THE ADELPHI), Lovewit (Ben Jonson,
THE ALCHEMIST); few feminine examples.
7. Jovial Drunkards: Pleydell (Scott, GUY
MANNERING), Bardolph and Sir Toby in Shakes-
peare, Gnafron of the puppet-theatre, Silenus
(Euripides, CYCLOPS) ; the Bacchantes, Anais
(Berton and Simon, ZAZA), Aunt Caroline (Man-
delstamm, SUSANNAH).
8. Estimable Drunkards: DON PIER CARUSO
(Bracco).
9. Degraded by Drunkenness: Victorine the
ragpicker (Balzac, COMTE DE SALLENEUVE), and
Victoria the queen; Eilert Lovborg, Molvik and
Ulric Brendel (Ibsen, HEDDA GABLER, THE WILD
DUCK and ROSMERSHOLM) the Baron in THE
LOWER DEPTHS (Gorki), THEAGENE and THEODAS
(La BruyeYe), Santeul, Coupeau (Zola, L'ASSOM-
MOffi).
10. Sinister Drunkards: Emperor Wenceslaus,
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 219
Emeric Baracs (Geza Gardenyi, THE WINE),
Macquart (Zola, THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS),
Agave (Euripides, BACCHANTES).
11. Drunken Rogues: Vermichel (Balzac, THE
PEASANTS), Champagne (Regnard, THE SERE-
NADE) ; feminine examples are wanting.
12. Gluttons: Gargamelle (Rabelais), various
Ogresses (notably the stepmother of THE SLEEP-
ING BEAUTY), GARGANTUA, Falstaff (HENRY IV,
HENRY VI, MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR), the
antique Hercules and Mercury s, HANSWURST
(Goethe), Vitellius.
13. Gourmands and Epicures: Brillat-Savarin,
Rossini, HERMIPPE and PHILIPPE (La Bruydre).
No feminine examples.
14. Parasites: COUSIN PONS (the unique
sympathetic case), the Greek, Latin and Hindu
parasites, notably in THE EARTHEN CHARIOT,
Italians like Chiaco in the DECAMERON (IV, 8)
and Frenchmen like Des Rillettes (Courteline,
THE BOWLING-GREEN).
Ill THE VULGAR AND PRACTICAL
1. The Lazy: MONSIEUR BADIN (Courteline);
no fetninine examples.
2. Egoists: Madame de Grignan and a num-
ber of the MONDAINES of Balzac (Baronnes
d'Aldrigger and du Chatelet, Countess de St.
220 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
Herem, etc.); the husband in Mirbeau's VlEUX
MENAGE, Berg (Tolstoi, WAR AND PEACE), GNA-
THON, the opulent GlTON and the intestate
GERONTE (La Bruyere).
3. The Too Prudent: Chrysothemis (Sophocles,
ANTIGONE).
4. The Pusillanimous: Prusias (Corneille,
NlCOMEDE), Drances (^ENEID), said to be a por-
trait of Cicero. Comic: Chrysale (FEMMES
SAVANTES) ; Lepic (J. Renard, POIL DECAROTTE).
No feminine examples.
5. The Craven: Calyphas (Marlowe, TAMER-
LANE). Very few good studies.
6. Comic Poltroons: One side of Falstaff and
of the Greek Hermes, Dionysos (Aristophanes,
THE FROGS), John Daw (Ben Jonson, EPICOENE).
7. Moral Cowardice: Monsieur Lupar (Lemon-
nier, MADAME LUPAR). No good feminine ex-
amples.
8. The Rustic and Simple: the comic Nurses
(ROMEO, THE LITTLE FRENCH LAWYER), mas-
seuses, etc.
9. The Vulgar-souled: Madame Lechat
(Mirbeau, LES AFFAIRES . . . ), ARTISTS'
WIVES (Daudet). Masculine examples are gayer:
Baron le Cogne (Monjoyeux) corresponding
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 221
rather to Ursule (CESAR BlROTTEAU), or to
Mesdames Verson and Lupin, also from Balzac.
10. The Squalid and Dirty: Agatha Picquetard
(HUMAN COMEDY), the Slave in THE CHAIN
(Menander), Dulcinea del Toboso (DON QUIXOTE),
the Marquis de Senantes (Hamilton, MEMOIRS OF
THE CHEVALIER DE GRAMMONT), Gryllus
(ODYSSEY).
11. The Stupid: Catoblepas (Flaubert, TEMP-
TATION OF ST. ANTHONY). Almost no good lit-
erary studies as yet.
12. Good Sense: Sarcey, Boileau, etc.
13. Vulgar Common Sense: Don Paolo
(Bracco, THE TRIUMPH), BOUVARD (Flaubert).
VULCAN
I THE EARNEST AND SERIOUS
1. Narrow Professionals: Duchess d'Olivares
(DON CARLOS) and other duennas (RUY BLAS,
HERNANI etc.) ; the prefect Julien Brignac (Brieux,
MATERNITY), J a vert (LES MISERABLES), Fix
(AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS), our
categorical "scientific minds," Bridoie (PANTA-
GRUEL>.
2. The Clumsy and Awkward: Vanidre (THE
MAGIC SKIN); Clotilde de Grandlieu (SPLENDORS
AND MISERIES OF COURTESANS). Comic: our old
222 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
men on bicycles; the American woman in JE NE
SAIS QUOI (Croisset and Waleffe), and our pro-
vincials aping Parisians.
3. The Resigned and Stoical : Zeno, Epictetus,
Job, Aritchandra, Hector (Hiade), Curiace
(HORACE), Oliver (CHANSON DE ROLAND), Jean
(Zola, THE DOWNFALL), Eustache de St. Pierre
(Belloy, BURGHERS OF CALAIS), the ascetics; St.
Felicite, the mother of the Maccabees, Epicharis,
Le6na, Veturia. No good literary examples in
the feminine.
4. The Just and Upright: Vera (RESURREC-
TION), few other feminine examples; Bayard in
GASTON AND BAYARD (Belloy), the ugly Don
Juan (Alarcon, WALLS HAVE EARS), Godfrey de
Bouillon (JERUSALEM DELIVERED), Lakchmana
(RAMAYANA).
5. The Honest and Straightforward: Cornelia,
mother of VlTTORIA COROMBONA (Webster);
Abner (ATHALIE), the peasant SlE-JIN-KOUEI, a
score of fine figures in THE HUMAN COMEDY, not
long since taxed with immorality, Muller (Schiller,
CABAL AND LOVE), Thomas Mowbray (Shakes-
peare, RICHARD II), BENOIT (AND BENOITE,
Haraucourt). Comic: the Spartans of the Greek
stage, our Alsatians.
6. The Inflexible: the honest and fierce Lise
Macquart of the VENTRE DE PARIS (Zola), the
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 223
elder Brutus, Timoleon (Massinger, THE SLAVE).
See also the Just under Juno.
7. The Austere and Correct: Bronte (d'Annun-
zio, LA GLORIA), Casca (JULIUS CAESAR). Fewer
and fewer feminine examples.
8. The Grave and Laborious: RUTH, Martha
in the Gospels, Denise (Zola, L'OEUVRE), Giotto
as drawn by Boccacio (DECAMERON VI, 5),
Demosthenes.
9. The Pious and Honorable: Mesdames
Vaillant and Mathurine in Balzac; his Jean- Jules
Popinot, Washington, Louis XVI, Kruger.
10. Laborious Enthusiasts: Flaubert.
11. The Physically Strong, often Weak in
Character: Hercules, INGOMAR THE BARBARIAN
(Halm), Pierre (Tolstoi, WAR AND PEACE),
Samson, Ursus (QUO VADIS?). No very good
feminine examples.
II THE DELUDED AND DISCOURAGED
1. The Weak: Pierre (Tolstoi, POWER OF
DARKNESS), DRAYMAN HENSCHEL (Hauptmann).
No goc^d feminine examples.
2. The Forgiving: Richard (Daudet, THE
LITTLE PARISH), Maurice Darlay (Capus and
Arene, THE ADVERSARY): comic: BOUBOUROCHE
(Courteline). No notable feminine examples.
224 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
3. Victims of Perfidy: Alessandro Faro (Praga,
ALLELUIA), Risler in FROMONT JUNIOR AND RISLER
SENIOR (Daudet), Count de Restaud (Balzac,
GOBSECK, OLD GORIOT), BISCLAVARET (Marie de
France).
4. The Unloved: larbas (Marlowe, DIDO),
De Granville (HUMAN COMEDY), MISS HARRIETT
(Maupassant).
5. Ridiculous Young Wooers: the Bridegroom
in PEER GYNT, De Leon (Madame du Deffand) .
6. Ridiculous Old Wooers: Don Guritan
(RUY BLAS), Des Soupirs and Cheurpied (Dan-
court, COQUETTES' SUMMER), Ferdinand (Bour-
sault, THE LIVING CORPSE).
7. The Deceived: Chaumette (Marcelle
Tinayre, THE STORM BIRD), Theseus (PHAEDRA);
Marie Leczinska.
8. Deceived and Unlucky; the Freethinker
in THE TWO CONSCIENCES (Anthelme), the
Governor (Benavente, LA GOBERNADORA).
9. Deceived but Repellant: Marie-Therse
(Rolland, LA MONTESPAN).
10. Deceived Philosophers: Thoas, Laertes.
11. Cuckolds: Dandin, Charles Bovary, Mene-
laus (Shakespeare, TROILUS AND CRESSIDA) , Amphi-
tryon (Plautus, Moliere, Dryden), Marcus Aure-
lius. No good feminine types.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 225
12. The Flouted and Derided: Strepsiades
(Aristophanes, THE CLOUDS), the People (Aristo-
phanes, THE KNIGHTS), Bruin in REYNARD,
"initiates" into secret societies.
13. Hypochondriacs: THE IMAGINARY INVALID
(Moliere), THE HYPOCHONDRIAC (J. B. Rousseau),
Morose (Ben Jonson, EPICOENE), IRENE (La
Bruyere) .
14. The Ingenuous, more touching, will be
classed with the Weak under Diana, with the
exception of
III THE UNSELFISH AND DEVOTED
1. The Ingenuously Unselfish: Marion Kolb
(LOST ILLUSIONS) and other old servants. Comic :
Mysis and Sophronia (Terence) , Crocotia, Staphyla
and Syra (Plautus), Smeraldine (Gozzi, THE
GREEN BIRD), Pantalon (Gozzi, THE RAVEN,
THE SERPENT WOMAN), Parmenon, Strasime,
Trachalion, Stratilex, Tyndarus, Messenion, Gru-
mon, Simon and Charion (Plautus), Geta (Terence,
ADELPHI), Gilotin (Boileau, LUTRIN), Gervais
(Mickiewicz, THADDEUS SOPLITZA).
2. purses and Foster-fathers: Masculine,
comic: Pantalon; tragic: Christemo, Jonathas
and Perez de Lagounia (Balzac, THE GIRL WITH
GOLDEN EYES, THE MAGIC SKIN, THE MARANAS),
Chao-Koung (841 A. C.) whose history is repeated
226 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
in that of Matsuo in THE VILLAGE SCHOOL (by
the Japanese Tokido Izuma). Feminine: Bran-
gaene (TRISTAN AND ISEULT), Euryclea (ODYSSEY),
Euriclea (Alfieri, MYRRHA), Gilissa (Aeschylus,
CHOEPHORES). Lycoris of Tarsus (APOLLONIUS
OF TYRE). And above all these, St. Joseph,
veritable emblem of the paternity which is not
physical, but an act of faith and love.
3. Unselfish Devotion: the Moujiks of Tolstoi,
Gurnemanz and Kurwenal (Wagner, PARSIFAL,
TRISTAN) ; Pauline (Shakespeare, WINTER'S TALE),
Coriola (Webster, DUCHESS OF AMALFI), and, in
the comic, Lisette (MARIVAUX, THE GAME OF
LOVE AND CHANCE), Suzanne (Beaumarchais,
THE GUILTY MOTHER).
4. Devotion to the Point of Sacrifice: the
servant Keou-tching-yu (THE MYSTERIOUS BOX),
Manon Godard (THE OTHER SIDE OF CONTEM-
PORARY HISTORY), Paolo (Anne Radcliffe, THE
ITALIAN).
5. Devotion for Love of God: GENEVIEVE
(Lamartine), many servants misunderstood by
the masters who exploit and laugh at them, the
Sisters of Charity, missionaries, etc.
6. Artful Devotion: Francoise Cochet, Mes-
dames Olivier and Gobain in THE HUMAN COMEDY;
the servant of Kouo-hoa in THE PLEDGED SLIPPER.
7. Important Guardians or Servitors : Heimdall
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 227
standing on the rainbow, Argus, Cerberus, Charon,
the Douvalapalaias ; Iris, Heve.
8. Devotion Freely Given: Kent (KING LEAR),
Achates (^NEID), Pisanio (CYMBELINE), Barach
called Hussan (Gozzi, TURANDOT), Aubrey (Beau-
mont and Fletcher, ROLLO). These border upon
Friends (see Vesta); likewise upon the following:
9. Devotion because of an Unrealizable Love:
Quasimodo, Butscha (MODESTE MlGNON), Gran-
taire (LES MlSERABLES); no feminine examples
which equal these.
i
10. Disciples (see also Vesta): the Friends of
Socrates, Mile de Gournay, Heloise, etc.
11. Zealots: Seide (Voltaire, MAHOMET),
Lelius (Lucan, PHARSALIA), Argillan (Tasso,
JERUSALEM DELIVERED), Ujitomo in THE SHOGUN
(Japanese), Ivan (De Maistre, PRISONERS OF THE
CAUCASUS); the female adorers of Robespierre.
Devotion here serves as a pretext for satisfying
the instinct of cruelty.
MARS
I MURDERERS AND ASSASSINS
1. Hired Murderers: Ithamore (Marlowe,
THE JEW OF MALTA), the Moor in FIESCO
(Schiller), Gubetta (Hugo, LUCRECE BORGIA),
Franchissini (Balzac, OLD GORIOT).
228 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
2. Bravos and Assassins: the Scythians in
Athens, Cossacks, Baxter (VlCAR OF WAKEFIELD),
etc.
3. Poisoners: the most notable cases are
feminine: the wife of the poet Lucretius, Mesdames
Lafarge and Syveton (in the opinions, perhaps
erroneous, of their contemporaries), La Brinvilliers,
Myrille (Prodrome, RHODANTHE AND DOSICLES).
4. Vindictive Murderers: Clytemnestra, the
Danaides, Yanetta (Brieux, THE RED ROBE),
the athlete Cleometes.
5. Slayers of Children: Medea, THYESTES
(Euripides, Seneca, Crebillon, etc.)
6. Fratricides and Parricides: Cain (GENESIS,
Byron, Gessner), Eteocles in a dozen famous
tragedies, Balthasar (Verhaeren, THE CLOISTER),
Albert (Pushkin, THE MISER BARON). No great
feminine examples.
7. Unconscious Murderers: Etienne Lantier
(Zola, LA BfiTE HUMAINE) ; the mythologic Scylla.
8. Cunning and Cynical Murderers: Joseph
(Mirbeau, JOURNAL D'UNE FEMME DE CHAMBRE),
Bernadille (Montfleury, LA FEMME JUGE ET
PARTEE). No women.
9. Murderers through Desire of Wealth and
Advancement: the young Tascheron (Balzac, A
COUNTRY PARSON) ; no feminine examples.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 229
10. Murderous but Ridiculous Brigands:
Choppart, called the Amiable (THE COURIER OF
LYONS), Jean Hiroux. No feminine examples.
11. Sinister Brigands: Dubosc (COURIER OF
LYONS), Pilla Borsa (Marlowe, THE JEW OF
MALTA), Taillefer (HUMAN COMEDY), Kirata
(STORY OF THE TEN CHILDREN, by the Hindu
Dandin), Cartouche, Mandrin; no feminine ex-
amples.
12. Furious Bandits: Those who subdued
Hercules, Antiphates the cannibal (ODYSSEY),
Bhakas (MAHABHARATA), Polyphemus.
13. Cold-blooded Murderers: M. Thiers,
author of the greatest massacre in the history of
civil wars, Sylla, Marius, etc.
H THE VIOLENT AND REBELLIOUS
1. Rebels against the Law: THE ROBBERS
(Schiller), Pisander called Marullo THE SLAVE
(Massinger), Enrico (Tirso de Molina, DAMNED
FOR LACK OF FAITH), the savage and edifying
Eusebio (Calderon, DEVOTION TO THE CROSS),
FRA DlAVOLO, Ferrante Palla (Stendhal, CHART-
REUSE DE PARME). No good feminine examples
of this nature.
2. The Brutal and Primitive: Nimrod (GENE-
SIS), Matho (SALAMMB6), Zamolxis (Mazel, ARCH-
TAS DE METAPONTE); LA FILLE SAUVAGE (Curel).
230 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
3. The Quarrelsome: Don Fernand the bully,
the only violent "character" in La Bruydre,
Bianchi (Balzac, THE MARANAS).
4. "Mousquetaires:" THE THREE MUSK-
ETEERS and similar heroes of cloak and sword.
5. Braggarts: Lamachus (Aristophanes, THE
ACHARNIANS), the MILES GLORIOSUS of Plautus,
Thrason (Terence, THE EUNUCH), Olibrius of
the MYSTERIES, the Rodomont of Boiardo and
Ariosto. No feminine examples.
6. Cruel Warriors: Han-yen-tcheo (THE
PAGODA OF HEAVEN), Duhcasana (MAHABHA-
RATA), Alarcon in JERUSALEM DELIVERED, Davout
(Tolstoi, WAR AND PEACE), THE AMAZONS (Mazel).
7. Savage Hunters: Nimrod again, ST. JULIAN
THE HOSPITALLER (Flaubert), the father in THE
FOSSILS (Curel), ESAU (Jehan Behourt), Hippolyte.
8. The Abusive: Vallenod (Stendhal, LE
ROUGE ET LE NOIR), our polemists who fancy
themselves Juvenals; the Elder Sister of the
fairy tale, from whose mouth came toads.
9. The Uncivil: THE PEASANT (Epicharmus) ,
L'OPINIONATRE (Brueys) ; Boileau's ''BRUSQUE
IMPERTINENTE" in the SATIRE ON WOMEN.
10. The Shrewish or Surly : Marianne (Grimm,
THE COLLIER OF CROYDON), Katherine (TAMING
OF THE SHREW); Ajax (Shakespeare, TROILUS
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 231
AND CRESSIDA), Cleomachus and Antemonides
(Plautus, THE BACCHAE, THE CARTHAGINIAN),
Squire Western (TOM JONES), Isegrim (Regard);
MLLE FIFI (Maupassant). Tragic: AJAX (Soph-
ocles, etc.), Cloten (Shakespeare, CYMBELINE),
HORACE (Corneille), Romulus, Sigismond (Cal-
deron, LIFE IS A DREAM), Philippe Brideau
(HUMAN COMEDY), Caliban (THE TEMPEST).
11. The Irascible: Achilles (ILIAD), HAKON
JARL (Oehlenschlager).
12. Ravishers: Besides the Violators (Venus),
the Turk Asena, Agassamenes, Boreas, the Cen-
taurs, those "picadors of antiquity."
13. The Impulsive: Mile Dumesnil; Varem-
baud (Bruyerre, IN PEACE).
14. Revolutionaries by Temperament: The
Titans (Hesiod, THEOGONY), DANTON (Buchner,
Rolland, etc.), our Communards, Souvorine (Zola,
GERMINAL), our anarchists.
15. Tyrannicides: Harmodius, Aristogiton,
Caserio; CHARLOTTE CORDAY (Ponsard, Silvestre,
etc.). The Regicides might here be added.
Ill THE BOLD AND FEARLESS
s
1. Heroines of Sacred History: Jahel, Judith;
no equivalent masculine examples.
2. Patriot Heroes: Jeanne Hachette, Clelie,
232 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
the Amazons of Dahomey; NlCOMEDE, Gustav
Conrad (Mickiewicz, FEAST OF THE DEAD).
3. Intrepid Warriors: SIEGFRIED, RHESUS
(Euripides; ILIAD), Richard Coeur-de-lion, Hot-
spur (Shakespeare, HENRY IV), THE ClD, CHARLES
XII, SlE-JIN-KOUEI (by the courtesan Tchang-
koue-pin), and all the Mars of all the cults.
4. Calm and Noble Courage: Porus (Racine,
ALEXANDRE-LE-GRAND), Xiphares (MITHRIDATE).
5. Moral Rebels: The Prophets, St. John the
Baptist; HEDDA GABLER (Ibsen), RENEE MAU-
PERIN (Goncourt).
6. Enthusiasts: Nicolas Rostof (Tolstoi, WAR
AND PEACE), Silvere (Zola, FORTUNE OF THE
ROUGONS).
7. Ridiculous Enthusiasts: Bambaef (Tour-
geneff, SMOKE).
8. The Generous and Honest: Neoptolemes
(Sophocles, PHILOCTETES), Nemours (Delavigne,
LOUIS XI), BRITANNICUS, Seleucus (Corneille,
RODOGUNE), Hemon (Sophocles, ANTIGONE),
Antoninus (Massinger and Dekker, THE VIRGIN
MARTYR).
9. Comic Audacity: Cecile (Labiche, DEUX
TlMIDES). No masculine examples.
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 233
DIANA
I THE TENDER AND SENTIMENTAL
1. The Indiscreetly Sentimental : Dona Leonor
and Dona Mencia (Calderon), Dona Sol
(HERNANI), Schiller's MARY STUART and the
Queen in his DON CARLOS, Madame de Renal
(Stendhal, LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR). No good
masculine examples.
2. Easily Disposed to Follow the Beloved:
Abigail (Marlowe, THE JEW OF MALTA), Sieglinde
(Wagner, WALKtiRE), JULIET, THISBE; Fan in
THE SACRIFICE OF FAN (Kong-ta-yong), Calyste
du Guenic (Balzac).
3. The Tender: Jacqueline (Marivaux, SUR-
PRISES OF LOVE), Leonie (Regnard, THE SERENADE)
Glycere (Alciphron, EROTIC LETTERS), Charlotte
de Kergarouet (Balzac, BEATRIX), Lieou-mei
(Kiao-meng-fou, THE GAGE OF LOVE), Ingrid
(Ibsen, PEER GYNT).
4. Amorous Adolescents and Children: PETIT-
COEUR (Jean Viollis), Georges (NANA), Justin
(MADAME BOVARY); Jeannine (Bataille, THE
ENCHANTMENT).
5. Passionate Friendships of Childhood and
Adolescence: not well studied as yet.
6. Lover-friends: Pauline (THE MAGIC SKIN);
no good masculine equivalents.
234 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
7. Pure Lovers: Jean-Paul Richter; Madame
Rcamier.
8. Tender Visionaries: Elsa (LOHENGRIN);
St. Francis of Assisi, Frederic in Picard's JERICHO.
9. The Silently Tender: Aude (CHANSON DE
ROLAND).
10. Tender Self-sacrifice: BERENICE (Racine;
Corneille), DUCHESS DE LA VALLIERE (Bulwer-
Lytton, Dumas, Nota, etc.); Attale (NlCOMEDE).
11. Humble Lovers: GERTRUDE (Bouchinot),
Cecile (Pharamond, MONSIEUR BONNET); no cor-
responding masculine examples.
12. The Seduced and Betrayed: Fantine in
LES MlSERABLES, Annette (Brieux, MATERNITY),
Gretchen (FAUST), Marie Beaumarchais (Goethe,
CLAVIGO), Elvira (DON JUAN). Comic: Molidre's
Charlotte and Mathurine.
II THE WEAK
1. Tenderness to Terrible Rivals: lo (Aeschy-
lus, PROMETHEUS BOUND), Atalide (BAJAZET),
PRINCESS MALEINE (Maeterlinck), Romilde
(Alfieri, ROSAMONDE), Madame Elvsted (HEDDA
GABLER). No entirely symmetrical masculine
examples.
2. Beloved by Formidable Men: Junia
(BRITANNICUS), Palmire (MAHOMET), Esmeralda
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 235
(NOTRE-DAME DE PARIS), Fleur-de- Marie (MYS-
TERIES OF PARIS).
3. Espoused by Imposing Men: Zenocrate
(Marlowe, TAMERLANE), Calphurnia (Shakespeare,
JULIUS CAESAR), Leonora (FIESCO). Parodies:
Madame Vital (Balzac, COMEDIENS SANS LE
SAVOIR), Gina (Ibsen, THE WILD DUCK). Mascu-
line parodies would be highly amusing.
4. Victims of Husbands: Desdemona
(OTHELLO) and, in another nuance, Jane Grey
(Webster and Dekker, SIR THOMAS WYAT),
MADAME DE CHAMBLAY (Dumas), the wife of the
Brigand in MAROUSSIA (Stahl). No symmetric
cases in the masculine.
5. Persecution by Rejected Suitors: CLARISSA
HARLOWE, the chaste Suzanne.
6. Pure and Gentle Victims: Iphigenia in a
dozen tragedies, Polyxena in as many more, the
daughter of JEPHTHA (Boyer, Buchanan) ; Balder.
7. Helpless Children or Young Girls: TlN-
TAGILES, the LAMB of ^Esop and of Scripture,
ASTYANAX in half a dozen tragedies, CHILDREN
OF EDWARD (Delavigne), Arthur (Shakespeare,
KJNG JOHN), ladjnadatta (RAMAYANA), Andro-
meda.
8. Youthful Victims: ATYS (Quinault), Adonis,
Hyacinth, etc.
236 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
9. Victims of Social Corruption: MADAME
BAPTISTE (Maupassant).
10. Moral Weakness : Lisa Bolkousky (Tolstoi,
WAR AND PEACE), Madame Grandet (Balzac);
Wenceslas Steinbock (COUSIN BETTE), Carlo
(Praga, UNDINE), EDWARD II (Marlowe), RICHARD
II (Shakespeare), Jonathan (A. Gide, SAUL).
11. Weak Parents: the Miller (Pushkin,
ROUSSALKA), Juan Roxo (Lope de Vega, FON-
TOVEJUNE).
12. The Shy: Orlando (Shakespeare, As YOU
LIKE IT), LES DEUX TIMIDES (Labiche).
13. The Hesitant: L'lRRESOLU (Destouches),
L'lRRESOLU (Berr), L'lNDECIS (Fontainas).
14. Boobies: MONSIEUR MUSARD (Picard).
15. The Capricious: Emma Regoli (Torelli,
THE HUSBANDS), Angelique in ROLAND FURIEUX;
THE INCONSTANT (Collin d'Harleville), PROTEUS
and THE SPOILED CHILD (Destouches).
16. The Null and Banal: Many sketches in
THE HUMAN COMEDY.
17. Weak in Mind, but nevertheless superior:
ALICE (Bulwer-Lytton) ; THE IDIOT (Dostoievsky).
18. Madness: Ophelia (HAMLET) and Gretchen
(FAUST), the heroes of Poe; comic: Triboullet
(PANTAGRUEL), Androgyne (Ben Jonson, VOL-
PONE).
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 237
19. Artless Simpletons: Dame Pliant (Ben
Jonson, THE ALCHEMIST), the innumerable Jocris-
ses and Janots, the Pierrots, the Shakespearean
Clowns, Wagner in Goethe's FAUST, the sceptic
Trouillogan so well scouted by our good Father
Rabelais, Voltaire's CANDIDE, Han in THE TRANS-
MIGRATION OF YO-CHEO, the two Poirets in Balzac,
etc. We might here distinguish between (a) the
ordinary Artless Simpleton, (b) the Amorous
Simpleton, (c) the same married, before arriving
among the "Deceived," (d) the Poltroon, (e) the
Lofty Simpleton (bordering upon Jupiter), (f) the
Duped Simpleton, who belongs rather to Vulcan.
20. The Heedless and Absent-minded:
MENALQUE (La Bruyere), LE DISTRAIT (Regnard),
the Monk with the Pot of Meal (PANCATANTRA) .
No feminine examples.
21. The Ingenuously Sensible: the old Count
Rostof in WAR AND PEACE, LE JONGLEUR DE
NOTRE-DAME. Comic: the old Pantalon (Gozzi,
THE GREEN BIRD).
22. The Humble and Pathetic: the Child in
MOTHER AND CHILD (C. L. Philippe) ; CINDERELLA.
Ill THE PURE
s
1. Ingenues: Aminta (Tirso, THE SEDUCER
OF SEVILLE), Aute (Lope, DISCOVERY OF THE NEW
WORLD), Lelie (La Fontaine, THE ENCHANTED CUP.
238 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
2. Purity Despite Impure Environment:
YVETTE (Maupassant), seminarists in barracks,
a potential poet in a boarding-school, etc.
3. Purity of Soul Despite Physical Impurity:
Sonia (Dostoievsky, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT).
4. Purity Sweetened by Tenderness: Virginia
in PAUL AND VIRGINIA, Cymodocee in THE
MARTYRS, Miranda in THE TEMPEST, La Bruyere's
ARTEMIRE.
5. The Pure: ION (Euripides), Joas (ATHALIE),
Blanche (Huysmans, L'OBLAT), Dom Marc (Ver-
haeren, THE CLOISTER).
6. The Simple: L'lNGENU (Voltaire), Friday
(ROBINSON CRUSOE).
7. The Upright: Gennaro and Didier (Hugo,
LUCRECE BORGIA, MARION DELORME), Rudenz
(WILLIAM TELL), TELEMAQUE (Fenelon); Blanche
of Castile, PIERRETTE (Balzac), Isabella (MEASURE
FOR MEASURE).
8. The Chaste: HlPPOLYTE (Euripides),
Joseph (PARSIFAL), St. Alexis, Daphne, Tarsia
(APOLLONIUS OF TYRE) ; Sts. Catherine and Claire,
and above all, of course, the Virgin Mother of
Christ.
Ill THE 369 UNPUBLISHED CHARACTERS
AND THEIR 154,980 VARIETIES
In the course of the preceding classification I
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 239
have noted the absence of 369 species of characters
in our literatures. 57 other species have been
but little studied. Among these 426 categories,
309 belong to the feminine, of which 155 are
comic and 154 tragic. 56 comic and 61 tragic
characters form the masculine contingent. Of
these 426 cases, if some are met with in fiction,
they are wanting in drama, or vice versa.
Now all, or nearly all, may be multiplied by
the 5 principal ages: Infancy, Adolescence,
Youth, Maturity, Old Age. It follows, in short,
that avarice, courage, love, ambition, etc., create,
as I have already said, types which differ widely
according as these passions reign in a child, in
an old man, in an old maid, in a young wife or
in a middle-aged man.
Let us take only the 369 cases entirely unused.
The 1845 varieties obtained by means of this
multiplication by 5 will be multiplied in turn
by the different social positions, for the ambition
of a CESAR BIROTTEAU, for example, shows neces-
sarily an aspect quite distinct from those offered
in MACBETH, or in a peasant anxious to extend
the boundaries of his field.
4$ince we can reckon 7 principal social classes
(Royalty, Aristocracy, Upper Middle-class, Lower
Middle-class, Working Class, Peasantry and Pro-
letariat) we have at the least 12,915 unpublished
240 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
types, and this by confining our multiplication
to the 369 cases entirely unused. Let us not
forget that not only among the 57 cases lightly
touched upon, but likewise among the cases
already analyzed in literature, some of the 4 or
5 ages (especially Infancy, Adolescence and Old
Age) and of the social ranks (notably the lowest)
have been for the most part neglected. So, after
a study of -these new lacunae, we can carry our
figure of 12,915 to 20, 30 or 40,000.
Let us keep for the present to our 12,915. In
our Classification we contented ourselves with
subdividing into 3 each of the 12 Divine Types,
considering them in relation to the two sexes, and
in both a tragic and a comic light. Each of these
sub-types in itself tends likewise, in curious
fashion, toward a new duodenary subdivision:
the Pious offered us 11 categories, the Faithful
14, the Jealous 12, etc. And I have rather
avoided than sought this perpetual grouping of
the Dozen, for I wished to leave the greatest
possible elasticity in the meshes of the net which
I was endeavoring to draw about Humanity.
"Very well," it may be said, "from your 369
unused types we see springing the 12,915 new
characters which you tell us to multiply by 12,
and thereby estimate 154,980 lacunae in our
literature. But tell us now how to fill them,
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION 241
these irritating lacunae! Tell us what to do,
direct our hands, if you can, in the drawing of
these 154,980 figures, or simply of these 12,915
characters, or even of the 369 unused types
which you have just pointed out!"
Nothing could please me better than such a
request.
In constituting each one of the characters
which are wanting in our literatures, it is neces-
sary first to establish its PROPORTIONS.
After which, it remains only to study the art
of presenting them, these proportions, by means
of the laws of LITERARY PERSPECTIVE. These
two studies the PROPORTIONS of the human
soul and PERSPECTIVE in matters of psychology
will form the objects of the two chapters
through which I now invite the reader to follow
me, before I bring this book to its conclusion.
A Treatise on the Proportions of
the Human Soul
CHAPTER XI
I THE COMPLETE SOUL
In each of us, it has been affirmed above, there
exists not simply one character, one individual,
one Self, nor a group of two or three, nor a
collectivist colony, as the more audacious psy-
chologists claim, but the sum of ALL human
souls, since the human soul is everywhere the
same and in every one complete.
But it has allowed itself not without struggles
to be to some extent enslaved, ankylosed:
1st : By EDUCATION, mental, moral and physical.
2nd: By verbal EQUIVOQUE, the base upon
which mythologists have raised their "etymolog-
ical system," which recalls to our minds that
Socrates likewise attributed all sins to misunder-
standing, to imperfect definitions.
3rd: By EXAMPLE, that vast "euhemerism"
which descends from the heights of legendary
history to the familiar relations of daily life.
Such are the three routes by which the Complete
Soul within every man is led to accept, to adopt
the special attitude to which his companions,
TREATISE ON PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL 243
likewise artificially moulded, wish to reduce it,
in short, his "function." And by it the rest
of his free activity is suppressed. He has con-
sented to play a role, he has become an actor in
the human comedy, a hypocrite among hypo-
crites. His soul, priestess of the PARTIAL HUMAN
TYPE which has been assigned to it, abjures for
the sake of this idol the totality which it rightly
should be, the image of God, which is infinite and
perfect. Henceforth, confused by the press of
unacknowledged revolts rising from the sacri-
ficed portions of its plenitude, it will deny, desper-
ately and boldly, the existence of this totality,
will endeavor "to conform its conduct to its
principles," becoming thus a double or multiple
being, contradictory at all points, instead of
remaining single, complete and harmonious.
So, into each of these fictions which constitute
a Character, we must descend. And in seeking
behind the PARTIAL HUMAN TYPE which has been
adopted, for the eleven others forced back into
shadow, we shall establish the "Proportions" of
the deformed and martyrized soul.
In even the noblest Olympians, these "propor-
tions" are in some degree imperfect. Among
those of Hellas, for example, no place is found
for tender purity. We must turn toward the
ancient India of the Aryans, or toward hyper-
244 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
borean snows to find the image of innocence; in
Greece it is, so to speak, obliterated by the two
neighboring deities Ares and Hestia. From them,
in fact, Artemis-Hecate receives, on the one hand,
her cruelty and taste for violent exercises, and
on the other the shadow and parody of piety in
the sorceries of Thrace, while her Phcebean gentle-
ness, thus corrupted, does not shine in any myth
with the chaste light which our sentimentalism
vainly attributes to it. What a contrast dost
thou show us, O sainted Virgin of Judea!
Everywhere, in each religion, each nation,
each individual whom we shall find denying or
neglecting one of these twelve aspects and despis-
ing it as "foreign," we shall, persevering, obtain
an acknowledgment of it. And it is the lacunae
thus filled which will illumine for us, by complet-
ing it, the Individual, the Century, the People,
etc., heretofore false or illusory by role or by
custom, and for that reason superficially and ill
understood.
II FROM WITHOUT INWARD: POLITICS
AND PSYCHOLOGY: THEOPHRASTUS.
The Evolution of these divers aspects, these
divers instincts, these divers types through History
will explain for us their succession in the single
human heart.
TREATISE ON PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL 245
Instead of proceeding, in short, from the latter,
invisible and consequently unknown, to the social
group, exterior, visible, tangible and known, as
our age is accustomed to do, is it not more in
accord with the scientific method of the age to
take the opposite course?
The idealist Plato, without doubt, powerfully
illuminated Politics by connecting the passions
with its diverse revolutions, showing in each
of the latter the consequence of one of the former,
and a Taine has in our own day made use, if not
of the idea, at least of the image, in explaining
the overthrow of the French social system. But
if, taking up the profound idea of the Greek
philosopher, we now examine it in an inverse
sense, which is to say scientifically, proceeding
from visible Politics to the mentality of the indi-
vidual, what a clearly personified and OBJECTIVATED
psychology will Politics incarnate for us !
This psychology history is daily broadening
and consolidating; we have begun to grasp the
rhythm of it through the ages (in the law of four-
century periods and of twelve generations). In
turn, epic or POETRY in general, if we may
believe Aristotle gives us its most durable
verities, as the DRAMA, with its action and mim-
icry, presents its most perfect and tangible image,
according to the same author. We here catch
246 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
a glimpse of what PANTOMIME, which connects
these with the plastic arts, might become, were
it one day resuscitated from the pitiful shroud
of our Pierrots. The Roman alone perceived its
possibilities of greatness when he applied it not
only to the interpretation of Greek drama, but
to the events of his own civil life, which he knew
to be decisive in the history of the world.
Thus we emerge from the psychological mists
of philosophy to grasp at last concrete realities,
discarding the abstract phantoms of vague
' 'faculties" to seize upon actions and forces.
The irreconcilable (and hereditary) duality of
our nature, the four elements or "tempera-
ments" between which it continues to be torn,
their six possible combinations, identified with
the six directions in which our energy can move
within the three dimensions of space, finally
the twelve limits which are created when they
meet with the first obstacle which forces them
back, the twelve physiognomy- types which we
have re-encountered in all groupings, all these
we shall demand that every soul reveal and con-
fess to, in our conviction that every soul is iden-
tical with the complete human soul, and that we
cannot know or account for the bases of its domi-
nant "character" without first having examined
it successively from these dozen angles.
TREATISE ON PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL 247
We shall call to witness, in the first place, the
THEORISTS, eldest and most original of whom is
Theophrastus. A "character" in his collection
is usually preceded by a definition, in conformity
with the taste of his master Aristotle, and is
frequently summed up in a final formula.
Between these, it is sketched in traits whose
number varies from 6 to 16. There is, indeed,
but a single sketch in 6 traits, the TARDILY
EDUCATED, so little developed that Molidre could
draw from it only the first act of the BOURGEOIS
GENTILHOMME, and we find, on the other hand,
but two figures having 16 traits, the SHAME-
LESS FELLOW and the BOOR, necessarily a little
heavy, while the sentences, purposely full of
repetitions, reach but 15 for the LOQUACIOUS.
If 8 strokes of the pencil were sufficient for the
DISCONTENTED, as for the SUSPICIOUS and the
IRRITATING MAN, 9 for the OSTENTATIOUS and
10 for the ZEALOUS, the PROUD and the RASCAL,
it is easily seen that, with its repetitions sup-
pressed, the DISSIMULATOR, and, with four of
his secondary traits readily reduced to two, the
SUPERSTITIOUS, both so admirable, will return
to the dozen ARfiTES under which are thus pre-
sented to us twenty of these twenty-eight mar-
velous "tanagras." Besides the two preceding,
five others consist of 11 traits each (the WHEEDLER,
the ABSENT-MINDED, the BRUTAL, the VAIN-
248 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
GLORIOUS, the GRANDEE), three of 13 (the NEWS-
MONGER, the SLOVEN, the BORE) and all the
rest of exactly 12 (the FLATTERER, the GARRULOUS,
the BOLDLY GREEDY, the NIGGARD, the MISER,
the SLANDERER and the COWARD.
Now these traits, these ARfiTES of a figurine,
may be themselves classed in 2 categories, which
is to say in a half-dozen couples; these in turn
can be re-divided, sometimes into two groups,
sometimes into three. The COWARD, for example,
is shown in 6 attitudes at sea and 6 in war. Or
again, we find in the ABSENT-MINDED, 3 groups
of 4 traits each, in themselves perfectly symme-
tric, the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 10th traits, the
4th, 6th, llth and 12th, the 3rd, 7th, 8th and
9th. Of these three groups, the first shows the
personage IN THAT WHICH CONCERNS HIMSELF,
characterized here by a perpetual absence of
mind; the second tetrad describes him in the
ORDINARY RELATIONS of life; the third represents
him speaking and acting AS IF ON THE STAGE OF
A THEATRE: he appears at first LYRIC, then EPIC,
then DRAMATIC. And we need but study a little
the six facets thus coupled by each of these three
axes analogous to those which in Chapter VI
opposed the objective and possessive, active and
sensitive, intellectual and material to see appear-
ing at the 12 aretes the 12 eternal figures of the
gods.
TREATISE ON PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL 249
Doubtless we have here exceeded altogether
the intention of the author (although a Greek),
but we perhaps exceed less the ideal' which he
instinctively pursued, just as it was uncon-
sciously pursued by the makers of Legend, full
of beautiful tales, naive and logical, whose epi-
sodes have none the less been gathered by the
successors of Dupuis into a "solar myth" and
the twelve signs of the Zodiac!
Both Legend and Theophrastus were but obey-
ing an AESTHETIC INSTINCT which consists in
adaptation to the general rhythm of the universe;
this rhythm proceeds from the three dimensions
which oblige man, physical and moral, dynamic
man to distribute his energies in six directions,
until, forced back by conflicting energies, they
turn obliquely and are quickly condensed into
twelve laws, twelve "gods sprung from man."
We know that the 28 studies of Theophrastus
were drawn, as La Bruy&re says, "from the Ethics
and Morals of Aristotle," and that "the founda-
tion of the characters described therein comes
from the same source." The stream from that
source may be followed across the centuries,
from the day of the author of the POETICS to the
moment when, swollen by the tributaries which
from every direction have brought to it Chris-
tianity with its amazing decrees, it became a
250 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
vast theological river carrying the sum of all
European moralities.
In each of the component items accorded by
St. Thomas Aquinas or his predecessors to a
vice, in each of the definitions or conclusions of
the Greek moralist and his successors
we may grasp a link of the DIDACTIC chain whereby
the monography of that vice is connected with
the whole of the general classification adopted
by the author; and each classification may be
brought back, as we have observed, to our tab-
leau of the Twelve Gods.
This didactic element comes finally to com-
plete the elements or tetrads, lyric, epic and
dramatic, above pointed out in each "figurine"
of character. In short, after having detached it
from one of the articles of moral theology, we
find that it exhibits, as we shall see, the 12 prin-
cipal traits.
Ill ST. BERNARD, ST. BENOIT AND SENECA:
THE VARIOUS LITERARY FORMS
Let us take from St. Bernard, for example,
the TREATISE ON THE DIFFERENT DEGREES OF
HUMILITY AND PRIDE. We find distributed in
3 groups the 12 steps by which the scholar descends
into Pride. He here retraces inversely precisely
the path by which he climbed the 12 degrees of
TREATISE ON PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL 251
humility, according to the ride previously given
by St. Benoit. From the height to which the
great Patriarch led him with HUMILITY OF THE
EYES, the last of the Fathers shows him beginning
to descend by CURIOSITY OF MIND. LEVITY next
soon causes him to lose his CALM AND GENTLE
SPEECH. INAPPROPRIATE MIRTH will take from
him the benefit of INFREQUENT LAUGHTER.
BOASTFULNESS will destroy the work of SILENCE.
Individual PECULIARITY will make him detest the
COMMON RULE. ARROGANCE will replace the
HABIT OF ESTEEMING HIMSELF INFERIOR TO OTHERS,
a right and virtuous habit based upon a pro-
found reason, as may be seen by what was said
in Chapter II on THE IMITATION OF CHRIST.
Foolish PRESUMPTION triumphs over a wholesome
CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS USELESSNESS. He UPHOLDS
HIS FAULTS like a poor pagan, instead of CAN-
DIDLY ACKNOWLEDGING EVEN HIS SINFUL
THOUGHTS. PRETENDED CONFESSION destroys
what edification he may have formerly given by
ENDURANCE IN THE SPIRIT OF OBEDIENCE. REBEL-
LION enters on the scene, in place of SUBMISSION
TO SUPERIORS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD; then follows
LIBERTY TO SIN, in place of SELF-DENIAL; finally,
at the bottom step, the HABIT OF SIN uproots the
CONSTANT FEAR OF GOD.
We may go now, if we wish, to the heart of the
details: the 12 types of Scholar, appearing on
252 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
the 12 steps of this ladder, may each be outlined
before the reader in a dozen traits, like the
Characters of Theophrastus.
Upon the step of ARROGANCE do we not see
standing out conspicuously the VAIN, whose
admirable portrait, by the same St. Bernard,
may here be quoted:
"The Vain Man is loud of voice or sulkily silent;
he is dissolute in joy, angry in grief; inwardly
dishonest and outwardly honest; he is stiff in his
demeanor, sharp in his responses; always ready
to attack, always weak in defense; he yields
with bad grace; he is importunate to obtain his
desires; he does not do those things which he can
and should do, but he is quick to attempt what
he cannot and should not do." (DE MOR.
XXXIV, 16).
And we could, without straining a point, reduce
to the same "Proportions" the portraits which
fill the writings of orators and moralists in all
literatures. Constantly does the effort to per-
fect and condense one of these portraits lead
toward these duodenary Proportions.
Flaubert, that master of pure prose, observed
likewise that the labor of the stylist involuntarily
inclines the rhythm of a phrase toward the duo-
denary proportions of the alexandrine. So in-
nately is this rhythm a part of us !
TREATISE ON PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL 253
Need we recall the 12 visible signs of an angry
man, according to Seneca (DE IRA) ?
"His eyes flash and glitter; his face reddens;
his heart beats rapidly; his lips tremble; his
teeth grind; his hair bristles; he breathes hard
and with a hiss; his joints crack as he clenches
his hands; he growls or bellows; his hasty words
interrupt each other; he beats his hands together;
he stamps his foot," and, as the author sum-
marizes him in a final 13th trait, "all his agitated
being exhales menace."
But why enlarge further upon the THEORISTS?
It is the same with the HISTORIANS, although here
the painter inscribes a famous name under his
study. That of Seneca, above quoted, might be
entitled NERO.
We find simply that in reality the theoretical
essays upon this or that passion, vice or virtue
NEVER HAVE THE ABSTRACT CHARACTER they
are assumed to have. Each of these essays
represents a human being, duly constituted, a
little anthropomorphic god (there are no others,
since man, according to the Bible, is theomorphic),
a demon or an angel, as the Middle Ages
would have termed him, a personage necessarily
equipped with all his organs.
The Theatre of the subtile Middle Ages, with
its Moralities especially, abounds in such little
254 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
gods; despite their allegorical names they gambol
about, and in their animation display more real
life than has remained in their descendants of
the drama of Character, of Manners or of Plot.
FALSE-SEEMING here acts and speaks with another
verisimilitude, another resemblance to what we
see around us, than do the characters of Messieurs
C., D., L. etc.; mediaeval VAIN-GLORY is far
more a human being, walking, rejoicing, eating,
sleeping, than the GLORIEUX of Destouches,
adorned with twenty titles of nobility, yet is
not the comedy of Character superior in this
respect to that of Manners or of Plot?
If, instead of vaguely designating Don Fernand
as his AMBITIOUS, Destouches had transferred
his characteristic signs to this or that favored
celebrity, he would have written a so-called
HISTORIC DRAMA. In the majority of the
"Characters" of the moralist La Bruy&re, we can
recognize the figures drawn in the various Memoirs
of the period; Memoirs which, in restoring them
to their civil state, make of them also historic
studies. So purely imaginary is the distinction
between the art of the MORALIST and that of the
HISTORIAN!
Still more do the EPIC POET and the NOVELIST,
more generous in their types, mingle with the
moralists. The LYRIC POET in turn whether
TREATISE ON PROPORTIONS OF THE HUMAN SOUL 255
he shows us one of the convulsions of his own
soul, or the reflection therein of a light from this
or that face of the external world does he not
also give us the "document" of an attitude, of
one of the ARfiTES of the Self everywhere identical,
just as the epic poet, the novelist, the theologian,
the historian and the moralist have already done?
Perspective in Matters of
Psychology
CHAPTER XII
I COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
Certainly it is interesting, after having con-
templated the elements of a character at their
crisis in the LYRIC, and after having studied its
analysis by the THEORISTS of the soul, moralists,
technicians, casuists, to follow, through his-
tory, epic, romance, in a word, through NARRA-
TIVE, the fashion in which these elements evolve,
in which they succeed one another, and to con-
sider them from the point of view of unilinear
time.
Two characters arranged in parallel, according
to the manner of Plutarch, whether characters
of individuals or of peoples, even three, four,
five or more, whose course we observe synchroni-
cally, may form not merely a historian's diver-
sion, but may inaugurate a science as yet unstudied
and fecund: that of Comparative Biography.
Will it not be interesting to grasp them, these
characters, in an epitome which permits us to
perceive their reciprocal action in the group with
which they are intertwined, and that of their
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 257
constitutive elements upon each other, thanks to
certain actions?
It is this which is achieved, with rigorous econ-
omy, in Comedy. From Aristophanes the art
springs complete. His Socrates in THE CLOUDS,
inspired apparently by the Homeric MARGITES
is shown us in 12 attitudes, farcical, odious or
absurd, corresponding to exactly as many epi-
sodes. It is these episodes which, enriched by
what we call a Prologue and by the songs of the
Chorus, form the whole of the play.
Now, of these 12 attitudes, 4 are of ACTION
and FEELING, 4 of IDEALISM and REALISM, 4 of
APPEAKANCE and POSSESSIVITY, which corre-
sponds, as we perceive, to our distribution within
the 3 dimensions of space of the 6 directions of
our energy.
The 4 scenes of ACTION-FEELING are: the
impious teaching of the Philosopher (Socrates
here being but the incarnation of all novel philos-
ophy in the eyes of Aristophanes) ; his communi-
cation of Wrong Reasoning to the young man
(who, it may be remembered, was brought by his
father with a view to obtaining from the Master
such sophisms as might permit them to evade
their Debts and escape the irritating Duties which
were knocking at the family door) ; the inevitable
consequence, the son ill-treating the father; the
258 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
avenging reaction postponed more or less, but
inevitable, the father of the family finally enlight-
ened and attacking the Philosopher.
The 4 scenes of IDEALISM-REALISM, of grotesque
contrasts, show us: the Philosopher suspended
"between earth and heaven" in a basket (the
same which we encounter again in the famous
LAI DE VlRGILE); then singing of the Clouds, his
cousins in metaphysics and the very worthy
emblems of ephemeral systems; the meditative
concentration . . . under the coverlet where
the unfortunate Strepsiade feels himself being
devoured by bugs; the scandalous triumph of
Wrong.
If these scenes describe the Master himself,
those which remain will tell us of his RELATIONS
WITH OTHERS, his teachings: the preposterous
inventions of the School; the bizarre posture of
the Disciples bent earthward; the lesson in Phi-
lology (remembered, like Theophrastus' descrip-
tion of the TARDILY EDUCATED, by MolieYe when
writing his BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME) ; and,
above all, the principles of an "amoralism" and
of a "struggle for life," eternally modern.
Tartufe, more sinister, exhibits the hypocrisy
of the "roundheads," his contemporaries.
4 attitudes present him to us IN PERSON: at
church, multiplying his genuflections and signs
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 259
of the cross ; then his theatrical and formal entrance
into the action; then bashful and awkward before
Dorine, and lastly avidly usurping the property
of others.
4 scenes show the INFLUENCE of his deceptive
words on OTHERS: the first recounting the amaz-
ing omnipotence of this mere layman; the second,
the foolish infatuation of Orgon for a man pos-
sessed of no authority except through the blind-
ness of his victim; in the third, that of the "Et
Tartufe," we can put our finger on that colossal
naivete, almost amorous; another scene reminds
us of it sadly and ironically in the belated obsti-
nacy of Madame Pernelle.
4 scenes show Tartufe occupied in PURE ACTION :
his Declaration to Elmire; the Equivoque by
which he afterward withdraws himself so easily
from the affairs; the Confession which he makes
in Act IV of his true nature; and the final COUP
DE THEATRE when he expels from the house its
legitimate proprietors.
The impious DON JUAN is a very brother to
him; as pictured originally by Tirso de Molina;
a hypocrite and libertine, who likewise mocks
at Heaven and invokes it brazenly. Despite the
golden and rose-colored vestures which we have
since bestowed upon him, he still retains his Satanic
physiognomy.
260 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
In Molidre's portrait Don Juan ventures his
own Apology. His attitude toward the creditors
further differentiates him; he is a rich man, or at
least a man of credit, of reputation; he is a man of
today, while Tartufe is but a man of tomorrow.
The evil which Tartufe does to people of property
Don Juan does to the poor; his filial disrespect
lastly completes, with a 4th trait, his ORDINARY
RELATIONS WITH OTHERS, of which the rupture
with Elvire is also a part.
The 4 ARfiTES which outline his PERSONAL
PHYSIOGNOMY may be thus enumerated: his easy
conquests of Act II and his scepticism so clearly
proclaimed in Act III; then his libertinism in its
two aspects; then his attitude toward the weeping
Elvire, and his blasphemous parody of repentance.
The 4 parts most essential to the ACTION-SEN-
TIMENT seem to be: the warning felt by the poor
woman; the invitation to the Commander; the
fanfaronnade of the visit to him; the final and
damnatory obstinacy at the moment of the
avenging catastrophe.
In reality this GRAND SEIGNEUR, whom it
is as ridiculous for our comedians to represent
in a sympathetic light as it is to show the MIS-
ANTHROPE pathetically this lofty personage
gives forth, as it were, in the world of deceit, the
highest note of a scale which is run by Goupil in
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 261
the ROMANS DE RENARD; it descends by Tartufe
and Socrates already cited, then by THE ALCHE-
MIST of Jonson to the hero of the FOURBERIES DE
SCAPIN.
Although this farce has but two acts, Scapin
therein has time to make his Apology (Act II,
scene 3) like Don Juan. The 4 scenes of his
INTRIGUE are outlined by: the story of the pre-
tended forced Marriage; the bargaining for the
sum destined to break it off; the story of the
Galley; and the old parade of the Sack and the
blows of the Stick.
Scapin is especially CHARACTERIZED by: the
larcenies which he himself acknowledges; the
boldness with which he begs through Leandre
his indispensable support; his feigned reluctance
to accept the money which Argante confides to
him, and his ardor in vengeance.
The 4 last and secondary traits are sketched:
in the stratagem of Sylvestre, disguised by him
as a bravo; in that which procures him his final
pardon; in his malice, and in that repetition of
the paternal return which, taken from Plautus,
furnished Shakespeare with so good a theme for
the Falstaff of his HENRY IV.
In the latter drama Falstaff is likewise por-
trayed in 12 essential lines: a Portrait by others
and an Apology by himself, corresponding t
262 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
the definition and the conclusion which frame
the figures of Theophrastus are added to the
rest, as in Moliere: the Apology in the scene to
which I have just referred, and the Portrait
under the form, so original, of contumely. (Act I.)
Here is the first tetrade of the 12 essential
lines: the amusing heaviness of the hero flying
from the ambuscade prepared for him by the
princely joker; his adulation when he sees, later,
his boastings belied; the gluttony of which the
note found in his pocket gives evidence; and, on
the field of battle, his superb tirade against honor.
The second tetrad consists of: his cries which
make his whole part in the ambuscade ; the notched
sword and the false wounds he exhibits in support
of his lying narrative; his brazen reproaches to
the hostess, his creditor, and his rhodomontade
belied by Prince Henry.
Lastly, in the tetrad of ACTION-SENTIMENT,
we have: the haste with which he recruits his
calamitous regiment; his conduct on the field of
battle; the fashion in which he there simulates
death, and that in which he claims the corpse of
the heroic Hotspur.
We have come to the play of TWO chief charac-
ters, the dimensions of Shakespearean drama
permitting, in effect, their development at the
same time. Prince Henry is sketched in the
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 263
Portrait-monologue of Act I, pendant to the
character of Falstaff, almost as a Dionysos beside
his father Silenus.
Then we see him in turn: exhibiting his famil-
iarity with the porters at the tavern; mirthfully
mimicking the reproaches which he expects from
his father; dignified before the sheriff, and finally
rebuking his ex-companion Falstaff, thrust behind
him with all his past youthful folly. Such are
his RELATIONS WITH OTHERS.
His INDIVIDUALITY shows itself from the begin-
ning: a joker at the expense of Francis as of
Falstaff; haunted, at bottom, by the image of
Hotspur; later, superior to the vain-glory which
he abandons to the Falstaffian "bluff;" and,
beside this, full of fraternal delicacy.
The ACTION finally projects him: suddenly great
before his father; brave and happy on the field
of battle; obstinately gay despite his wounds,
and piously affected before Hotspur, slain by him.
Moliere, on the contrary, in default of the
same dimensions, could not similarly detail C6H-
mdne beside the MISANTHROPE.
The latter, however, reveals himself by: his
reproaches to Philinte; his attitude toward the
sonnet of Oronte; his attacks on worldly scandal,
and his obstinacy at the time of the intervention
of the marshals.
264 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Coming to words with the prudish Arsinoe,
blundering and maladroit toward Eliante (IV, 2) ;
he is rejected by the former, whom he has wounded
(V, 6), and fails equally with the latter (V, 8);
all secondary actions and intended to portray
his ORDINARY RELATIONS WITH OTHERS.
The PRINCIPAL ACTION consists of: his quarrels
with Celimne (II, 1); his jealousy conflicting
with her coquetry (IV, 3); putting her to the
necessity of speaking out (V, 2), and exhibiting
toward her all the failings of his character, too
stiff and unyielding.
But the Coquette, having been once described
by him (II, 1), is but half -developed -in 6 scenes
instead of 12: that of the Portraits (II, 4) and
that in which she caricatures Arsinoe (III, 3);
that in which she contends with the said Arsinoe
(III, 5) and that in which she teases Alceste
(IV, 3) ; that in which she tries to steal away (V, 2)
and that in which, pardoned, she still remains
the coquette she has always been and will always
be (V, 7).
We have one Sketch of her by others (I, 1) and
her Apology by herself (III, 5).
The narrowness of the Classic framework
explains why the characters surrounding the
Protagonist are so little amplified; the breadth
of the Romantic frame, on the contrary, demands
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 265
that the number of chief characters be increased,
to avoid emptiness. For lack of an equal to his
ALCHEMIST, Ben Jonson permits him to drift
somewhat uncertainly, after the Portrait con-
tumely of the beginning. Nevertheless the essen-
tial elements are re-encountered :
The rogue beseeching his innocent victim, to
dupe her; his role of go-between; his boldness in
defying the Spaniard in English and his feigned
divination of the name of Dame Pliant complete
the first drawing of our Cunning character.
After which, rival of his accomplice (the dis-
guised domestic Face) with the poor lady, he
attempts, having been unable to obtain her
himself, to make her sully herself; he flouts the
candid "godchild of the fairy" and exploits him,
or designs to make use of the prostitute Dol, his
instrument. Thus are presented the 4 outlines
of the occultist in his CONDUCT TOWARD HIS
DUPES AND HIS "BROTHERS."
The ACTION may be summarized in a quater-
nary not less traditional : imposing, for the prom-
ised success of the great work, a condition
which the neophyte cannot fulfill (drolly enough,
it is chastity which is here in question); bringing
the property with a view to "transmuting" it;
selling to the solemn Anabaptist rascals, more
scrupulous in words than in conscience, the said
266 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
property, and finally preparing the general pillage,
in which his professional vices cause him to be taken.
The relative lack of consistency with which
the rest of the characters may be charged (Dol
Common, Face, Lovewit, etc.), and which we
re-encounter today upon the modern stage, where,
likewise, attempts are made to disguise it by
frenzied action (romanticism), or, with less suc-
cess, by the idle talk and "MOTS" of modernism,
this lack might easily be found even in the Pro-
tagonist, in default of a study sufficiently dis-
closing to the author his various principal aspects.
Thus LE GLORIEUX, by Destouches, repeats,
even to satiety, the same effects, almost all too
weak. His Portrait drags through three succes-
sive scenes (Act I, sc. 2, 3, 4) independently of
his sensational entrance (II, 10), a reminiscence
of TARTUFE.
The letter which exasperates his crisis of vanity
(II, 12); the pompous enumeration of his proper-
ties aind distinctions (IV, 1) ; his shame of his
father (IV, 8) and the nomenclature of his titles
in the contract PORTRAY him well enough.
But his imprudent contempt for Lisette; her
advice (a weak feature) ; the disdain which Philinte
inspires in him, and the public denial of his father
merely add heaviness to the piece, and we seem
to feel the glacial breath of the THESIS-DRAMA.
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 267
As to the PURE ACTION, it is too long; the pre-
tensions of the GLORIEUX to Isabelle, repeated
three times (II, 11 and 13; III, 1); his haughty
bearing toward her, his blundering with his
partisan, his renewed blundering with Lisinon;
the final maladroitness by which he alienates
Isabelle, and especially his conversation, false
in tone and, to tell the truth, "theatrical."
Is there need to cite other proofs of duodenary
Perspective? Shall we enumerate the 12 fiTOUR-
DERIES of L'ETOURDI? These consist of:
1st, breaking off the apologue of Mascarille in
presence of Truffaldin; restitution of Anselme's
purse; his amnesia when disguised as an Armenian,
and his amorous abstraction even at the table
of Truffaldin.
2nd, preventing Anselme's buying of Celie;
the defense of her reputation, very MAL A PROPOS,
against the suspicions of his rival Leandre, which
Mascarille had already almost turned aside; deny-
ing that the latter had quit his service, and deliv-
ering Andrds, opportunely arrested.
3rd, the inopportune invention of a pretended
father of Celie, directing Truffaldin to guard her,
just when Leandre, abused by the ingenious
Mascarille, had imprudently confided to him the
purchase; the denouncing of the project for the
abduction by the said Leandre, preventing that
268 THE ART OP INVENTING CHARACTERS
prepared by Mascarille; the confiding of the
latter's ruse to Andre's in avowing his love for
Celie; persistence in making Mascarille abandon
the jargon which he affects to speak.
And need we count the 12 falsehoods of LE
MENTEUR? Need we cite, from various epochs
and genres, THE MISER, THE BRAGGART SOLDIER,
LE JOUEUR, LE BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME, THE
CONSTANT PRINCE, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW,
Bartholo in THE BARBER OF SEVILLE, Arnolphe
in THE SCHOOL FOR WIVES? Not to weary the
reader, I content myself with figuring their
analyses in the accompanying table.
We may here establish, for every well-marked
character:
A a, his Portrait by the persons who gravitate
about him, and
A b, the Apologies which he makes in person
(both portraits and apologies being divisible in
turn into a dozen features);
B a, 4 scenes in which he REVEALS HIMSELF in
his "idiosyncrasy," to speak in the philosoph-
ical argot;
B b, 4 scenes in which his RELATIONS WITH
OTHERS especially appear;
B c, 4 scenes, lastly, in which his nature forms
the principal spring of the ACTION.
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 269
Note, in addition, that in each of these two
last groups, 2 of the 4 scenes almost always
counterbalance the 2 others: if the hero is at the
bottom in the first couple, he is at the top in the
second.
II THE CHARACTERS OF MOLI*IRE
SHAKESPEARE, PLAUTUS, BALZAC
Of TARTUFE, of DON JUAN, of THE MISER,
THE MISANTHROPE, etc., the epitomes offered us
differ, but not the point of view from which the
author makes us contemplate them.
The "Molieresque method" being once precisely
stated, it will be interesting to dispose his elements
under the angle, for example, at which the
Shakespearean characters appear to us, and
so on for other authors. This work will give us
PERSPECTIVE AS EACH MASTER HAS CONCEIVED IT.
I fear, as I have said, to weary the reader;
otherwise I would show how such a study, pro-
ceeding from one literature, one school, one
writer successively to all the others, would create
for the first time a veritable philosophic and
scientific LITERARY HISTORY.
From a general character like the Greek Apollo,
we see separating and evolving the pure Artist
and the unfortunate Lover: these are reunited
in Orpheus. There is also the character of the
270 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Unfortunate pure and simple. These three
branches produced, in the Homeric epoch, the
Unfortunate Artist (Demodocus), the Inspired
and Fatal Prophetess (Cassandra), the Lover
ill-fated and unknowingly criminal (CEDIPUS) and
the Parricide almost equally innocent (Orestes),
all overshadowed by the same god. To Parody
he has given Marsyas, then MARGITES, ancestor
of all pedants; elevated to a serious plane, these
furnish the Fantastic types of artists, intellec-
tuals, Utopians or their caricatures. The lati-
tudes and developments of races and the per-
sonalities of authors being here mingled, we
obtain progressively, from the various branches
of this "genealogical tree:" Winckelmann, Ruy-
Blas, Abbe Mouret, the Misanthrope, Timon of
Athens, the cook Vatel, Philaminte, Trissotin,
Tribulat Bonhommet, Fourier, Balthazar Claes,
the heroes of Hoffman, Cousin Pons, etc.
As for the SPECIAL PERSPECTIVE of a single
work, we may ascertain, in the said work:
In what manner the twelve elements of a
character fit into those of surrounding characters;
how this relationship changes in a second work
by the same author;
how it changes when we pass to a new author
treating the same subject, or a different sub-
ject;
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 271
then when we pass to a new school, literature
or epoch;
how far these diverse works permit of sharply
drawn characters, and so on
But especially will it be interesting to study,
in the works of a single writer, the ENTIRE SCOPE
of the characters which he offers the public.
Every one of these incarnates one of the souls
of the "poet of a thousand souls." They dis-
tribute themselves according to the inevitable
division of the main enclosing lines, and each of
these groups, showing us one side of the poet,
tells us on what number of points and at what
level will emerge the complete being, which he
felt in his heart and which he wished, by means
of these creations, to bring from out the shadow
wherein Society endeavors to compress the greater
part of our nature.
MolieYe's company of actors were, so to speak,
his organs ; his comedians represented and were
but the "lines of ARfiTE" of his great soul.
Of his women, by a curious illusion, he wished to
make VESTA types: Henriette, Elise, Elmire,
Psyche, Alcmene; and only little by little, in spite
of himself, it is said, did he consent to let them
slip toward the false and coquettish: Celimene,
Angelique, and Beline. La Grange long imper-
sonated his Lelies, his Valeres, his Horaces, his
272 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Cleantes, his Erastes, his Leandres, his Clitandre,
his Cleonte and, above all, his Don Juan. Baron
came later to double the roles dedicated to the
eternal comic VENUS: Myrtil, I'Amour and Octave
in the FOURBERIES. The insufficiency of Be j art
(Don Louis, Madame Pernelle) obliged the Master
to assume besides the MERCURIES, his ordinary
roles (Mascarille, Miron, Sosie, Scapin, etc.)
the jealous, tyrannical and grumbling, the dotards,
the derided and the deceived (JUPITER, VULCAN,
NEPTUNE): the Sganarelles, Arnolphe, Georges
Dandin, Don Pedro, Orgon, Harpagon, Alceste,
Chrysale, Argan. He had even to substitute, in
the foolishly majestic, for Thorilliere, to whom
fell the JUPITERS, and who incarnated Geronimo,
Arbate, Philinte, Hali, Jupiter in AMPHITRYON,
Dorante in the BOURGEOIS GENTILHOMME, and
the King in PSYCHE. Another Jupiter, that of
PSYCHE, fell to Croisy, but that actor was better
suited, by his sombre visage, to ill-tempered and
pedantic types, odious or ridiculous (APOLLO-
VULCAN): Metaphraste, Vadius, Lysidas, Mar-
phurius the Master of Philosophy, Oronte of the
sonnet, Dimanche, Harpin, Sotenville. The MARS
of the company was De Brie: La Rapidre, the
Commissioners, the Guards, the Master of Arms,
etc. The joyous CERES blossomed in Madeleine
Bejart: Marinette, Marotte, Lisette, Frosine,
Dorine; the DIANAS belonged to Mile de Brie:
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 273
Celie, Lucile, Madelon, Climdne, Agnes, Eliante,
Daphne, Claudine and Mathurine.*" Mile du Pare
was for long the MINERVA: Cathos, Climdne, the
formal Marquises, the prudes like Arsino6; sh<
did not live to play the FEMMES SAVANTES.
It would not be impossible for some Cuvier of
the mimic art to reconstitute, by means of the
characters of Shakespeare or Plautus, the physiog-
nomies, the roles and abilities of their actors,
who likewise were but the organs, but the mem-
bers of the magnified person of the poet.
In Shakespeare, VESTA appears, in religion, as
Sister Isabella, and in the home as Helena, Her-
mione, Catherine of Aragon; by a change of
sex we have Friar Laurence, Horatio, etc. JUNO
animates Apemantus, Jacques, Ligarius, Margaret
of Anjou, Queen Constance, and Leontes, Post-
humus and Othello. The Satanic Neptune is
expressed in King John, Hamlet's uncle, Wolsey,
Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Shylock, Pandarus and
Polonius. MINERVA directs Imogen and Rosa-
lind, inspires Beatrice and Portia, Antony in
JULIUS CAESAR, Mercutio and even Autolycus.
VENUS appears in Cleopatra and Cressida; APOLLO
reigns over Hamlet as over the antique Orestes,
over Lear as over (EDIPUS AT COLONUS, and even
Timon; in the comedies he excites the passions of
Holofernes and of the young Ferdinand. Do we
274 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
not recognize MERCURY in Maria and in Puck;
then, degraded by a mingling with Juno, in Ther-
sites and lago? Of JUPITERS Shakespeare pre-
sents few save in the far-away Julius Caesar,
Timon (in the beginning) or Oberon; I willingly
conclude that he lacked interpreters rather than
models. It is not thus with CERES; his actor
represented these when female characters (such
as the MERRY WIVES, Juliet's nurse, the hos-
tesses, etc.) as when males: Falstaff, Sir Toby
and the buffoons like Falconbridge or the Fool
in LEAR. It is curious that the comic VULCAN
everywhere most numerous appears on the
Shakespearean stage only in Menelaus in^ TROILUS,
while the "devoted" type is present in Pauline,
Gloster and Pisanio. His MARS actors could
play the women (Katherine THE SHREW) as well
as the savage hired murderers of KING JOHN,
MACBETH, etc., or the boasters like Parole or
Ajax. But the DIANA of the troupe must have
been indeed poetic to incarnate Juliet, Desdemona
and Ophelia!
In Plautus, likewise actor as well as author,
VESTA bears the names of Eunomia, Myrrhine
and Peristrate, and, in the masculine, Eutycus
and Sagaristion; JUNO only that of Antiphon;
NEPTUNE that of Euclion on the one hand, and,
in the darker roles, the names of Cappadox,
Dordale, Lycus, Ballion or Labrax. MINERVA
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OP PSYCHOLOGY 276
furnishes little but Simia and the little Pegnion;
VENUS, the Bacchis, Gymnasia, Erotia, Pasi-
compsa, Philocomasia, Philematia, Delphium,
Lemniselene, Adelphasia, Thais, etc. APOLLO
brings the passionate lovers: Agorastocles, Cali-
dore, Lysiteles, Pleusidippides, Diabolus, Argy-
rippes, Stratippocles and Charinus; he gives, too,
beside the pedants, his famous Cooks of THE
MERCHANT, CASINA, PSEUDOLUS and the
AULARIA. MERCURY is incarnated in the traitor
Stalagme and in Geta, Sophoclidiscus, Chrysale,
Chalinus, Lampadion, Toxile, Milphion and all
the cunning slaves. An actor of JUPITERS seems
to have been lacking in the company, for the
good-nature of Hegion, of Lysimachus, of Peri-
plectomenes relates them rather to some CERES
actor already charged with Calliphon, Micion,
Philton, Callicles, and various joyous roles in the
Masques. His VULCAN interpreted the slaves,
simple and limited, such as Syra, Crocotia, or
Gripus, Parmenion, Trachalion, Stratilax, Tyn-
darus, Messenion, Grumion, Simon, Demones,
Charmide and Chorion, even the Dotards derived
from the imbecile Etruscan Papus: Theuropides,
Periphanes, etc. His MARS played Cleomachus,
Antemonides and THE BRAGGART SOLDIER. He
must have had two DIANAS among his interpreters,
to present Philenia, the daughter of Saturion,
Thelestis, Silenia, the unfortunate Philippa, and
276 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
Panegyris, conjointly with Pinacis and Ptole-
mocratia or the timid Phedrome.
Again we have the 12 gods, under their quad-
ruple hypostasis masculine and feminine, tragic
and laughable in the novels of Balzac, for
example.
His Crevel, a conceited ninny, mayor of a Pari-
sian ARONDISSEMENT, his notary Lupin, his Phileas
Beauvisage; the haughty Delphine de Nucingen,
the elder Madame de Portenduere, the respectable
Marquis d'Esgrignon, the first Madame Matifat,
the beneficent and venerable Madame de la
Chanterie; his numerous Maecenases (Anselme
Popinot, the Marquis di Negro, the Due de Ver-
neuil, etc.) do they not proceed from the lofty
and protecting Jupiter? His prodigal and vicious
Marquis de Salleneuve, the Marquis de Rouvre,
Savinien de Portendudre, Georges Marest, Diard
the gamester, Plissoud the toper, the gay Mes-
dames Vermut and Fontanien, Palferine (on one
side at least), the careless Merle, Oscar Husson
and Vatel, his drunkards (Chardin senior, Ver-
michel, the lazy Cantinet), the glutton Bargeton,
the more delicate Montriveau and Montpersan
or the abbe Gondrand, the egoist Vicomte de
Beauseant, even the gross Agathe Picquetard or
the vulgar Ursule in CESAR BlROTTEAU, do
not all these recall our CERES type?
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 277
I need not continue. But the HUMAN COMEDY
furnishes a world in itself. It has supplied
examples for almost all the important subdivisions
of our Classification, and it leaves nothing to be
desired but the perfecting of some few among
these examples.
The richness of this work is truly unique.
Beside Balzac, how many illustrious authors show
an astonishing poverty in their creations! When
one of the 12 principal ARfiTES is found to be
altogether missing, the case becomes serious.
The antique Olympus perished, as I have inti-
mated, through failure to achieve a chastely
sentimental Diana, for the new faith succeeded in
entering through that breach. The same lacuna,
symmetrically, must have existed at heart in
each of the great gods, whence their increasing
corruption and insensibility, in the name of
which the men from the East attacked them
upon their altars and in the hearts of their fol-
lowers, whom they recalled to the complete and
primitive Ideal.
Everywhere this law asserts itself: to the
absence or inferior development of a character-
type, of a "god," of a line important to the equi-
librium of the human total, there corresponds a
similar absence or inferior development of some-
thing answering to that "line of ARfiTB" in all
278 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
other characters, since, at a certain depth, there
should be found in each the conception of the
complete man.
Thus the absence of the JUPITER type in Plautus,
of the CERES type in Corneille, of the MINERVA
type in Zola explains why, in each of their crea-
tions, some one spot gives forth a hollow sound
and shows a puffed and exaggerated aspect,
the mask, in reality, of a vacancy.
Ill VACANCIES TO BE FILLED
How should the author have proceeded to fill
these? We have already seen. He would have
had only to complete his series of characters; he
would thus have studied man complete, not
forgetting one of his essential organs, one of his
possible general "attitudes," which is to say one
of the characters called individual because this
attitude is therein habitually accentuated, and
shows always this ARfiTE.
The shrouding of this or that ARfiTE in shadow
should never be a complete suppression. The
writer, if he wishes to make his work harmonious
and true, a chorus of the divine types, should
no more mutilate his study of life, of man com-
plete, or that of a "special character" when he
detaches it, than the great artist forgets the
existence of aspects painted by his predecessors,
PERSPECTIVE IN MATTERS OF PSYCHOLOGY 279
although the style of his own work may be novel
and revolutionary. The total subsists, although
the parts emphasized may not be the same.
It is the imitators, the mediocrities, the sec-
tarians who, in literature as in art and else-
where fail to distinguish, in the shadows where
they lurk, the parts not clearly in evidence, who
forget or deny these, who despise or pretend to
abolish them.
Thus the work they produce is but that of a
school, a party, a fashion or a sect. They pre-
sent, instead of a profile in relief, a mere flat
silhouette; instead of a face, a mask; instead of a
human being, divinely supple, but a puppet of
limited and mechanical gestures.
The style of the Masters, I repeat once more,
has nothing in common with these caricatures
and partial characters.
They suppress nothing, even in their boldest
condensations of the eternal Proportions of the
soul. They know that the soul in this respect
differing from the body, and armed, we might
say, for infinite life has but one form, and that
form complete, a veritable image of the Divine.
These sublime Proportions the Masters put,
with all the art whose principal secrets I have
just revealed, in a new "Perspective," new
280 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
because the point of view of these Masters is
new, and because the attitude given by them to
their models is also new. Far from diminishing
or mutilating individuality, they each time unveil
and bring into light, supported by the organism
in its entirety, some hitherto unknown side.
Of these mysteries, nevertheless, 369 remain to
be revealed.
Conclusion
The 369 unused types which we have discovered
in the course of this classification represent unex-
plored regions in the soul of each one of us. Open,
ing these regions in the individual as in Humanity,
we complete the geography of the Soul.
We maintain nevertheless, like parallels of
latitude and longitude, its Duodenary Proportions.
These we have found in all life, in everything
which, like ourselves, is Rhythm. We see them
everywhere in art and in poetry: epic (Song of
Izdhubal, Homeric Poems, ^Eneid, etc.) or tragic
(in China, Rome, France, etc.) of all ages, in
the cadences of all known verse-forms, as well
as in the movements of history (comparative
heredity, law of four-century periods) and in
theogonies.
We have just re-encountered them enclosed by
the indispensable lines with which a La Bruydre,
a St. Bernard, a Seneca or a Theophrastus encircle
their figurines; we have found them as unmis-
takably in the silhouettes of dramatic or literary
heroes ; we have followed the pencils of the Masters
putting them into Perspective.
An entire volume would be necessary to follow
the application of this Perspective by each one
282 THE ART OF INVENTING CHARACTERS
of them. But I have fulfilled the triple promise
made at the beginning of this book:
1st, to reduce each Character to elements
whose combinations suffice (the systems hereto-
fore contradictory being reconciled) to recon-
stitute the most complex personality;
2nd, to classify methodically all the figures of
history, legend and poetry, taken from the most
widely separated countries and centuries, in
groups less and less dense, which is to say more
and more closely approaching individuality;
3rd, to count and measure exactly the lacunae
in our literary creations or psychological obser-
vations, and to fill them with an equal number
of characters, whose proportions, according to
promise, I have likewise sketched.
And while we have seen issuing from this patient
labor several future structures already well begun,
those of Comparative Heredity, the Rhythms
of History, the mathematical laws of narrative
and dramatic Composition, a theory of Compara-
tive Literature, Comparative Biography, modern-
ized Rhetoric, Universal Versification, we have
had the certainty of building, for the first time,
a veritable "New Science," whose rules are not
sentimental but definite and exact: the SCIENCE
OF THE HUMAN HEART.
University of California
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