



Produced by Marc D'Hooghe at http://www.freeliterature.org
(Images generously made available by the Internet Archive.)





EGOISTS,

A BOOK OF SUPERMEN


STENDHAL, BAUDELAIRE, FLAUBERT, ANATOLE FRANCE,

HUYSMANS, BARRÈS, NIETZSCHE, BLAKE, IBSEN,

STIRNER, AND ERNEST HELLO


BY

JAMES HUNEKER


WITH PORTRAIT OF STENDHAL; UNPUBLISHED LETTER OF

FLAUBERT; AND ORIGINAL PROOF PAGE OF MADAME BOVARY


NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1909



[Illustration: Henry Beyle-Stendhal--Redrawn by Edwin B. Child
from a crayon portrait.]


TO

DR. GEORG BRANDES



"Leb' Ich, wenn andere leben?"--Goethe


The studies gathered here first appeared in _Scribner's
Magazine_, the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _North American
Review_, the _New York Times_, and the _New York Sun_.




CONTENTS

       I. A Sentimental Education: Henry Beyle-Stendhal
      II. The Baudelaire Legend
     III. The Real Flaubert
      IV. Anatole France
       V. The Pessimists' Progress: J.-K. Huysmans
      VI. The Evolution of an Egoist: Maurice Barrès
     VII. Phases of Nietzsche

            I. The Will to Suffer
           II. Nietzsche's Apostasy
          III. Antichrist?

    VIII. Mystics

            I. Ernest Hello
           II. "Mad Naked Blake"
          III. Francis Poictevin
           IV. The Road to Damascus
            V. From an Ivory Tower

      IX. Ibsen
       X. Max Stirner



I

A SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION

HENRY BEYLE-STENDHAL



I


The fanciful notion that psychical delicacy is accompanied by a
corresponding physical exterior should have received a death-blow
in the presence of Henry Beyle, better known as Stendhal. Chopin,
Shelley, Byron and Cardinal Newman did not in personal appearance
contradict their verse, prose and music; but Stendhal, possessing an
exquisite sensibility, was, as Hector Berlioz cruelly wrote in his
Memoirs: "A little pot-bellied man with a spiteful smile, who tried to
look grave." Sainte-Beuve is more explicit. "Physically his figure,
though not short, soon grew thick-set and heavy, his neck short and
full-blooded. His fleshy face was framed in dark curly hair and
whiskers, which before his death were assisted by art. His forehead
was fine: the nose turned up, and somewhat Calmuck in shape. His lower
lip, which projected a little, betrayed his tendency to scoff. His eyes
were rather small but very bright, deeply set in their cavities, and
pleasing when he smiled. His hands, of which he was proud, were small
and daintily shaped. In the last years of his life he grew heavy and
apoplectic. But he always took great pains to conceal the symptoms of
physical decay even from his own friends."

Henri Monnier, who caricatured him, apparently in a gross manner,
denied that he had departed far from his model. Some one said that
Stendhal looked like an apothecary--Homais, presumably, or M.
Prudhomme. His maternal grandfather, Doctor Gagnon, assured him when
a youth that he was ugly, but he consolingly added that no one would
reproach him for his ugliness. The piercing and brilliant eye that
like a mountain lake could be both still and stormy, his eloquent and
ironical mouth, pugnacious bearing, Celtic profile, big shoulders, and
well-modelled leg made an ensemble, if not alluring, at least striking.
No man with a face capable of a hundred shades of expression can be
ugly. Furthermore, Stendhal was a charming _causeur_, bold, copious,
witty. With his conversation, he drolly remarked, he paid his way into
society. And this demigod or monster, as he was alternately named by
his admirers and enemies, could be the most impassioned of lovers. His
life long he was in love; Prosper Mérimée declares he never encountered
such furious devotion to love. It was his master passion. Not Napoleon,
not his personal ambitions, not even Italy, were such factors in
Stendhal's life as his attachments. His career was a sentimental
education. This ugly man with the undistinguished features was a
haughty cavalier, an intellectual Don Juan, a tender, sighing swain, a
sensualist, and ever lyric where the feminine was concerned. But once
seated, pen in hand, the wise, worldly cynic was again master. "My head
is a magic-lantern," he said. And his literary