“French And English”
By G. K. Chesterton
It is obvious that there is a great deal of difference between being international and being cosmopolitan. All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national. And it is largely because those who call themselves the friends of peace have not dwelt sufficiently on this distinction that they do not impress the bulk of any of the nations to which they belong. International peace means a peace between nations, not a peace after the destruction of nations, like the Buddhist peace after the destruction of personality. The golden age of the good European is like the heaven of the Christian: it is a place where people will love each other; not like the heaven of the Hindu, a place where they will be each other. And in the case of national character this can be seen in a curious way. It will generally be found, I think, that the more a man really appreciates and admires the soul of another people the less he will attempt to imitate it; he will be conscious that there is something in it too deep and too unmanageable to imitate. The Englishman who has a fancy for France will try to be French; the Englishman who admires France will remain obstinately English. This is to be particularly noticed in the case of our relations with the French, because it is one of the outstanding peculiarities of the French that their vices are all on the surface, and their extraordinary virtues concealed. One might almost say that their vices are the flower of their virtues.
Thus their obscenity is the expression of their passionate love of dragging all things into the light. The avarice of their peasants means the independence of their peasants. What the English call their rudeness in the streets is a phase of their social equality. The worried look of their women is connected with the responsibility of their women; and a certain unconscious brutality of hurry and gesture in the men is related to their inexhaustible and extraordinary military courage. Of all countries, therefore, France is the worst country for a superficial fool to admire. Let a fool hate France: if the fool loves it he will soon be a knave. He will certainly admire it, not only for the things that are not creditable, but actually for the things that are not there. He will admire the grace and indolence of the most industrious people in the world. He will admire the romance and fantasy of the most determinedly respectable and common-place people in the world. This mistake the Englishman will make if he admires France too hastily; but the mistake that he makes about France will be slight compared with the mistake that he makes about himself. An Englishman who professes really to like French realistic novels, really to be at home in a French modern theatre, really to experience no shock on first seeing the savage French caricatures, is making a mistake very dangerous for his own sincerity. He is admiring something he does not understand. He is reaping where he has not sown, and taking up where he has not laid down; he is trying to taste the fruit when he has never toiled over the tree. He is trying to pluck the exquisite fruit of French cynicism, when he has never tilled the rude but rich soil of French virtue.
The thing can only be made clear to Englishmen by turning it round. Suppose a Frenchman came out of democratic France to live in England, where the shadow of the great houses still falls everywhere, and where even freedom was, in its origin, aristocratic. If the Frenchman saw our aristocracy and liked it, if he saw our snobbishness and liked it, if he set himself to imitate it, we all know what we should feel. We all know that we should feel that that particular Frenchman was a repulsive little gnat. He would be imitating English aristocracy; he would be imitating the English vice. But he would not even understand the vice he plagiarised: especially he would not understand that the vice is partly a virtue. He would not understand those elements in the English which balance snobbishness and make it human: the great kindness of the English, their hospitality, their unconscious poetry, their sentimental conservatism, which really admires the gentry. The French Royalist sees that the English like their King. But he does not grasp that while it is base to worship a King, it is almost noble to worship a powerless King. The impotence of the Hanoverian Sovereigns has raised the English loyal subject almost to the chivalry and dignity of a Jacobite. The Frenchman sees that the English servant is respectful: he does not realise that he is also disrespectful; that there is an English legend of the humorous and faithful servant, who is as much a personality as his master; the Caleb Balderstone, the Sam Weller. He sees that the English do admire a nobleman; he does not allow for the fact that they admire a nobleman most when he does not behave like one. They like a noble to be unconscious and amiable: the slave may be humble, but the master must not be proud. The master is Life, as they would like to enjoy it; and among the joys they desire in him there is none which they desire more sincerely than that of generosity, of throwing money about among mankind, or, to use the noble mediaeval word, largesse - the joy of largeness. That is why a cabman tells you you are no gentleman if you give him his correct fare. Not only his pocket, but his soul is hurt. You have wounded his ideal. You have defaced his vision of the perfect aristocrat. All this is really very subtle and elusive; it is very difficult to separate what is mere slavishness from what is a sort of vicarious nobility in the English love of a lord. And no Frenchman could easily grasp it at all. He would think it was mere slavishness; and if he liked it, he would be a slave. So every Englishman must (at first) feel French candour to be mere brutality. And if he likes it, he is a brute. These national merits must not be understood so easily. It requires long years of plentitude and quiet, the slow growth of great parks, the seasoning of oaken beams, the dark enrichment of red wine in cellars and in inns, all the leisure and the life of England through many centuries, to produce at last the generous and genial fruit of English snobbishness. And it requires battery and barricade, songs in the streets, and ragged men dead for an idea, to produce and justify the terrible flower of French indecency.
When I was in Paris a short time ago, I went with an English friend of mine to an extremely brilliant and rapid succession of French plays, each occupying about twenty minutes. They were all astonishingly effective; but there was one of them which was so effective that my friend and I fought about it outside, and had almost to be separated by the police. It was intended to indicate how men really behaved in a wreck or naval disaster, how they break down, how they scream, how they fight each other without object and in a mere hatred of everything. And then there was added, with all that horrible irony which Voltaire began, a scene in which a great statesman made a speech over their bodies, saying that they were all heroes and had died in a fraternal embrace. My friend and I came out of this theatre, and as he had lived long in Paris, he said, like a Frenchman: “What admirable artistic arrangement! Is it not exquisite?” “No,” I replied, assuming as far as possible the traditional attitude of John Bull in the pictures in Punch - “No, it is not exquisite. Perhaps it is unmeaning; if it is unmeaning I do not mind. But if it has a meaning I know what the meaning is; it is that under all their pageant of chivalry men are not only beasts, but even hunted beasts. I do not know much of humanity, especially when humanity talks in French. But I know when a thing is meant to uplift the human soul, and when it is meant to depress it. I know that Cyrano de Bergerac (where the actors talked even quicker) was meant to encourage man. And I know that this was meant to discourage him.” “These sentimental and moral views of art,” began my friend, but I broke into his words as a light broke into my mind. “Let me say to you,” I said, “what Jaurès said to Liebknecht at the Socialist Conference: ‘You have not died on the barricades.’ You are an Englishman, as I am, and you ought to be as amiable as I am. These people have some right to be terrible in art, for they have been terrible in politics. They may endure mock tortures on the stage; they have seen real tortures in the streets. They have been hurt for the idea of Democracy. They have been hurt for the idea of Catholicism. It is not so utterly unnatural to them that they should be hurt for the idea of literature. But, by blazes, it is altogether unnatural to me! And the worst thing of all is that I, who am an Englishman, loving comfort, should find comfort in such things as this. The French do not seek comfort here, but rather unrest. This restless people seeks to keep itself in a perpetual agony of the revolutionary mood. Frenchmen, seeking revolution, may find the humiliation of humanity inspiring. But God forbid that two pleasure-seeking Englishmen should ever find it pleasant!”
— G. K. Chesterton.
“French And English”
By G. K. Chesterton
It is obvious that there is a great deal of difference between being international and being cosmopolitan. All good men are international. Nearly all bad men are cosmopolitan. If we are to be international we must be national. And it is largely because those who call themselves the friends of peace have not dwelt sufficiently on this distinction that they do not impress the bulk of any of the nations to which they belong. International peace means a peace between nations, not a peace after the destruction of nations, like the Buddhist peace after the destruction of personality. The golden age of the good European is like the heaven of the Christian: it is a place where people will love each other; not like the heaven of the Hindu, a place where they will be each other. And in the case of national character this can be seen in a curious way. It will generally be found, I think, that the more a man really appreciates and admires the soul of another people the less he will attempt to imitate it; he will be conscious that there is something in it too deep and too unmanageable to imitate. The Englishman who has a fancy for France will try to be French; the Englishman who admires France will remain obstinately English. This is to be particularly noticed in the case of our relations with the French, because it is one of the outstanding peculiarities of the French that their vices are all on the surface, and their extraordinary virtues concealed. One might almost say that their vices are the flower of their virtues.
Thus their obscenity is the expression of their passionate love of dragging all things into the light. The avarice of their peasants means the independence of their peasants. What the English call their rudeness in the streets is a phase of their social equality. The worried look of their women is connected with the responsibility of their women; and a certain unconscious brutality of hurry and gesture in the men is related to their inexhaustible and extraordinary military courage. Of all countries, therefore, France is the worst country for a superficial fool to admire. Let a fool hate France: if the fool loves it he will soon be a knave. He will certainly admire it, not only for the things that are not creditable, but actually for the things that are not there. He will admire the grace and indolence of the most industrious people in the world. He will admire the romance and fantasy of the most determinedly respectable and common-place people in the world. This mistake the Englishman will make if he admires France too hastily; but the mistake that he makes about France will be slight compared with the mistake that he makes about himself. An Englishman who professes really to like French realistic novels, really to be at home in a French modern theatre, really to experience no shock on first seeing the savage French caricatures, is making a mistake very dangerous for his own sincerity. He is admiring something he does not understand. He is reaping where he has not sown, and taking up where he has not laid down; he is trying to taste the fruit when he has never toiled over the tree. He is trying to pluck the exquisite fruit of French cynicism, when he has never tilled the rude but rich soil of French virtue.
“Francesi e Inglesi”
Di G. K. Chesterton
È ovvio che vi sia una grande differenza tra l’essere internazionali e l’essere cosmopoliti. Tutti gli uomini buoni sono internazionali. Quasi tutti gli uomini cattivi sono cosmopoliti. Se dobbiamo essere internazionali dobbiamo essere nazionali. Ed è in gran parte perché coloro che si dicono amici della pace non hanno insistito a sufficienza su questa distinzione, che essi non fanno presa sul grosso di alcuna delle nazioni cui appartengono. Pace internazionale significa una pace tra le nazioni, non una pace dopo la distruzione delle nazioni, come la pace buddhista dopo la distruzione della personalità. L’età dell’oro del buon europeo è come il cielo del cristiano: è un luogo dove le persone si ameranno l’un l’altra; non come il cielo dell’indù, un luogo dove esse saranno l’una l’altra. E nel caso del carattere nazionale ciò si può vedere in un modo curioso. Si troverà generalmente, credo, che quanto più un uomo davvero apprezza e ammira l’anima di un altro popolo, tanto meno tenterà di imitarla; sarà consapevole che vi è in essa qualcosa di troppo profondo e troppo ingovernabile per imitarlo. L’inglese che ha un debole per la Francia cercherà di farsi francese; l’inglese che ammira la Francia rimarrà ostinatamente inglese. Questo si nota in particolare nel caso dei nostri rapporti coi francesi, perché è una delle spiccate peculiarità dei francesi che i loro vizi siano tutti in superficie, e le loro straordinarie virtù celate. Si potrebbe quasi dire che i loro vizi sono il fiore delle loro virtù.
Così la loro oscenità è l’espressione del loro appassionato amore di trascinare tutte le cose alla luce. L’avarizia dei loro contadini significa l’indipendenza dei loro contadini. Ciò che gli inglesi chiamano la loro rozzezza per le strade è un aspetto della loro eguaglianza sociale. L’aria preoccupata delle loro donne è connessa con la responsabilità delle loro donne; e una certa inconsapevole brutalità di fretta e di gesto negli uomini è legata al loro inesauribile e straordinario coraggio militare. Di tutti i paesi, dunque, la Francia è il peggiore che uno sciocco superficiale possa ammirare. Uno sciocco odii pure la Francia: se lo sciocco l’ama, presto sarà un furfante. Egli di certo l’ammirerà, non solo per le cose che non sono lodevoli, ma addirittura per le cose che non ci sono. Ammirerà la grazia e l’indolenza del popolo più industrioso del mondo. Ammirerà il romanzesco e la fantasia del popolo più risolutamente rispettabile e ordinario del mondo. Questo errore l’inglese lo farà se ammira la Francia troppo in fretta; ma l’errore che egli fa sulla Francia sarà lieve in confronto all’errore che fa su se stesso. Un inglese che professa di amare davvero i romanzi realisti francesi, di sentirsi davvero a casa in un moderno teatro francese, di non provare alcun turbamento al primo vedere le selvagge caricature francesi, commette un errore molto pericoloso per la propria sincerità. Sta ammirando qualcosa che non comprende. Sta mietendo dove non ha seminato, e raccogliendo dove non ha deposto; sta cercando di assaggiare il frutto quando non ha mai faticato sull’albero. Sta cercando di cogliere il frutto squisito del cinismo francese, quando non ha mai dissodato il rude ma ricco suolo della virtù francese.
The thing can only be made clear to Englishmen by turning it round. Suppose a Frenchman came out of democratic France to live in England, where the shadow of the great houses still falls everywhere, and where even freedom was, in its origin, aristocratic. If the Frenchman saw our aristocracy and liked it, if he saw our snobbishness and liked it, if he set himself to imitate it, we all know what we should feel. We all know that we should feel that that particular Frenchman was a repulsive little gnat. He would be imitating English aristocracy; he would be imitating the English vice. But he would not even understand the vice he plagiarised: especially he would not understand that the vice is partly a virtue. He would not understand those elements in the English which balance snobbishness and make it human: the great kindness of the English, their hospitality, their unconscious poetry, their sentimental conservatism, which really admires the gentry. The French Royalist sees that the English like their King. But he does not grasp that while it is base to worship a King, it is almost noble to worship a powerless King. The impotence of the Hanoverian Sovereigns has raised the English loyal subject almost to the chivalry and dignity of a Jacobite. The Frenchman sees that the English servant is respectful: he does not realise that he is also disrespectful; that there is an English legend of the humorous and faithful servant, who is as much a personality as his master; the Caleb Balderstone, the Sam Weller. He sees that the English do admire a nobleman; he does not allow for the fact that they admire a nobleman most when he does not behave like one. They like a noble to be unconscious and amiable: the slave may be humble, but the master must not be proud. The master is Life, as they would like to enjoy it; and among the joys they desire in him there is none which they desire more sincerely than that of generosity, of throwing money about among mankind, or, to use the noble mediaeval word, largesse - the joy of largeness. That is why a cabman tells you you are no gentleman if you give him his correct fare. Not only his pocket, but his soul is hurt. You have wounded his ideal. You have defaced his vision of the perfect aristocrat. All this is really very subtle and elusive; it is very difficult to separate what is mere slavishness from what is a sort of vicarious nobility in the English love of a lord. And no Frenchman could easily grasp it at all. He would think it was mere slavishness; and if he liked it, he would be a slave. So every Englishman must (at first) feel French candour to be mere brutality. And if he likes it, he is a brute. These national merits must not be understood so easily. It requires long years of plentitude and quiet, the slow growth of great parks, the seasoning of oaken beams, the dark enrichment of red wine in cellars and in inns, all the leisure and the life of England through many centuries, to produce at last the generous and genial fruit of English snobbishness. And it requires battery and barricade, songs in the streets, and ragged men dead for an idea, to produce and justify the terrible flower of French indecency.
La cosa si può render chiara agli inglesi solo capovolgendola. Si supponga che un francese venisse dalla Francia democratica a vivere in Inghilterra, dove l’ombra delle grandi casate cade ancora dappertutto, e dove persino la libertà fu, nella sua origine, aristocratica. Se il francese vedesse la nostra aristocrazia e le piacesse, se vedesse il nostro snobismo e gli piacesse, se si mettesse a imitarlo, tutti sappiamo che cosa proveremmo. Tutti sappiamo che proveremmo che quel particolare francese era un ripugnante moscerino. Starebbe imitando l’aristocrazia inglese; starebbe imitando il vizio inglese. Ma non capirebbe neppure il vizio che plagia: soprattutto non capirebbe che il vizio è in parte una virtù. Non capirebbe quegli elementi negli inglesi che bilanciano lo snobismo e lo rendono umano: la grande bontà degli inglesi, la loro ospitalità, la loro poesia inconsapevole, il loro conservatorismo sentimentale, che davvero ammira la piccola nobiltà. Il monarchico francese vede che agli inglesi piace il loro Re. Ma non afferra che, mentre è vile adorare un Re, è quasi nobile adorare un Re impotente. L’impotenza dei sovrani hannoveriani ha innalzato il leale suddito inglese quasi alla cavalleria e alla dignità di un giacobita. Il francese vede che il servitore inglese è rispettoso: non si rende conto che è anche irrispettoso; che esiste una leggenda inglese del servitore umoristico e fedele, che è tanto una personalità quanto il suo padrone; il Caleb Balderstone, il Sam Weller. Vede che gli inglesi ammirano un nobile; non tiene conto del fatto che essi ammirano un nobile soprattutto quando non si comporta da tale. Amano che un nobile sia inconsapevole e amabile: lo schiavo può essere umile, ma il padrone non deve essere superbo. Il padrone è la Vita, come essi vorrebbero goderla; e tra le gioie che desiderano in lui non ve n’è alcuna che desiderino più sinceramente di quella della generosità, del gettare danaro tra gli uomini, o, per usare la nobile parola medievale, largesse - la gioia della larghezza. Ecco perché un cocchiere vi dice che non siete un gentiluomo se gli date la tariffa esatta. Non solo la sua borsa, ma la sua anima è ferita. Avete ferito il suo ideale. Avete sfregiato la sua visione del perfetto aristocratico. Tutto ciò è davvero molto sottile ed elusivo; è molto difficile separare ciò che è mera servilità da ciò che è una sorta di nobiltà vicaria nell’amore inglese per un lord. E nessun francese potrebbe facilmente afferrarlo affatto. Lo crederebbe mera servilità; e se gli piacesse, sarebbe uno schiavo. Così ogni inglese deve (dapprima) sentire il candore francese come mera brutalità. E se gli piace, è un bruto. Questi meriti nazionali non vanno intesi con tanta facilità. Richiede lunghi anni di pienezza e di quiete, la lenta crescita di grandi parchi, la stagionatura delle travi di quercia, il cupo arricchirsi del vino rosso nelle cantine e nelle locande, tutto l’ozio e la vita dell’Inghilterra attraverso molti secoli, per produrre alla fine il generoso e geniale frutto dello snobismo inglese. E richiede batteria e barricata, canti per le strade, e uomini cenciosi morti per un’idea, per produrre e giustificare il terribile fiore dell’indecenza francese.
When I was in Paris a short time ago, I went with an English friend of mine to an extremely brilliant and rapid succession of French plays, each occupying about twenty minutes. They were all astonishingly effective; but there was one of them which was so effective that my friend and I fought about it outside, and had almost to be separated by the police. It was intended to indicate how men really behaved in a wreck or naval disaster, how they break down, how they scream, how they fight each other without object and in a mere hatred of everything. And then there was added, with all that horrible irony which Voltaire began, a scene in which a great statesman made a speech over their bodies, saying that they were all heroes and had died in a fraternal embrace. My friend and I came out of this theatre, and as he had lived long in Paris, he said, like a Frenchman: “What admirable artistic arrangement! Is it not exquisite?” “No,” I replied, assuming as far as possible the traditional attitude of John Bull in the pictures in Punch - “No, it is not exquisite. Perhaps it is unmeaning; if it is unmeaning I do not mind. But if it has a meaning I know what the meaning is; it is that under all their pageant of chivalry men are not only beasts, but even hunted beasts. I do not know much of humanity, especially when humanity talks in French. But I know when a thing is meant to uplift the human soul, and when it is meant to depress it. I know that Cyrano de Bergerac (where the actors talked even quicker) was meant to encourage man. And I know that this was meant to discourage him.” “These sentimental and moral views of art,” began my friend, but I broke into his words as a light broke into my mind. “Let me say to you,” I said, “what Jaurès said to Liebknecht at the Socialist Conference: ‘You have not died on the barricades.’ You are an Englishman, as I am, and you ought to be as amiable as I am. These people have some right to be terrible in art, for they have been terrible in politics. They may endure mock tortures on the stage; they have seen real tortures in the streets. They have been hurt for the idea of Democracy. They have been hurt for the idea of Catholicism. It is not so utterly unnatural to them that they should be hurt for the idea of literature. But, by blazes, it is altogether unnatural to me! And the worst thing of all is that I, who am an Englishman, loving comfort, should find comfort in such things as this. The French do not seek comfort here, but rather unrest. This restless people seeks to keep itself in a perpetual agony of the revolutionary mood. Frenchmen, seeking revolution, may find the humiliation of humanity inspiring. But God forbid that two pleasure-seeking Englishmen should ever find it pleasant!”
— G. K. Chesterton.
Quando ero a Parigi poco tempo fa, andai con un amico inglese a una successione straordinariamente brillante e rapida di commedie francesi, ciascuna della durata di una ventina di minuti. Erano tutte sorprendentemente efficaci; ma ce n’era una così efficace che io e il mio amico ci mettemmo a litigare fuori, e per poco non dovemmo essere separati dalla polizia. Voleva mostrare come gli uomini si comportino davvero in un naufragio o in un disastro navale, come crollino, come urlino, come si azzuffino l’un l’altro senza scopo e per puro odio d’ogni cosa. E poi vi era aggiunta, con tutta quell’orribile ironia che Voltaire inaugurò, una scena in cui un grande statista teneva un discorso sopra i loro corpi, dicendo che erano tutti eroi e morti in un fraterno abbraccio. Io e il mio amico uscimmo dal teatro, e poiché egli era vissuto a lungo a Parigi, disse, da francese: “Che ammirevole disposizione artistica! Non è squisito?” “No,” risposi, assumendo per quanto possibile l’atteggiamento tradizionale di John Bull nelle vignette del Punch — “No, non è squisito. Forse è privo di significato; se è privo di significato non m’importa. Ma se ha un significato io so qual è; è che sotto tutto il loro sfarzo di cavalleria gli uomini non sono soltanto bestie, ma perfino bestie braccate. Non so molto dell’umanità, specialmente quando l’umanità parla in francese. Ma so quando una cosa è fatta per elevare l’anima umana, e quando è fatta per deprimerla. So che il Cyrano de Bergerac (dove gli attori parlavano ancora più in fretta) era fatto per incoraggiare l’uomo. E so che questo era fatto per scoraggiarlo.” “Queste sentimentali e morali concezioni dell’arte,” cominciò il mio amico, ma irruppi nelle sue parole come una luce irruppe nella mia mente. “Lasci che le dica,” dissi, “ciò che Jaurès disse a Liebknecht al Congresso socialista: ‘Voi non siete morto sulle barricate.’ Voi siete un inglese, come me, e dovreste essere amabile quanto lo sono io. Questa gente ha un certo diritto di essere terribile nell’arte, perché è stata terribile in politica. Possono sopportare finte torture sulla scena; hanno visto torture vere nelle strade. Sono stati feriti per l’idea di Democrazia. Sono stati feriti per l’idea del Cattolicesimo. Non è per loro così del tutto innaturale essere feriti per l’idea di letteratura. Ma, per mille fulmini, per me è del tutto innaturale! E la cosa peggiore di tutte è che io, che sono un inglese, amante della comodità, debba trovare conforto in cose come questa. I francesi qui non cercano conforto, ma piuttosto inquietudine. Questo popolo irrequieto cerca di mantenersi in una perpetua agonia dell’umore rivoluzionario. I francesi, cercando la rivoluzione, possono trovare ispirante l’umiliazione dell’umanità. Ma Dio non voglia che due inglesi in cerca di piacere la trovino mai piacevole!”
— G. K. Chesterton.