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PARTISAN REVIEW
A revealing intermediate work in the development of this lit–
erature is the almost forgotten novel
Brother Matthew) or The Ex–
cesses of the Human Intellect)
by Dulaurens, who went to prison
for writing atheistic books, where he died. In the character of Father
John we can already clearly perceive Rousseauist virtue manifesting
all the signs of that bestiality which is one of its basic components.
The opposite of this is Voltairean lucidity.
The cruelty we find in Mirabeau's
Jardin d es Supplices
is of a
purely contemplative kind, and is far removed from De Sade's and
Dulaurens' indulgence of the unbridled will. It is a cruelty that
makes the variegated world shine with an added radiance, as a dark
cloth lends added luster to the silk flowers embroidered on it. Walking
about in these magnificent gardens, one comes upon vantage points
from which one can see Chinese torturers at work, and the torments
one witnesses arouse in one's heart a love of life of unexpected force.
The colors and sounds evoke feelings of deep voluptuousness, the flow–
ers in particular exuding an unearthly fragrance. The spiritual process
that takes place is a kind of polarization: pleasure and pain, which
ordinarily we find mingled in more or less equal amounts, are sepa–
rated and set off against each other- while on one hand the image
of man writhes in the dust, on the other it strides along as if in the
enjoyment of a higher and freer existence.
Although the Roman circus aroused only a blind fury in the
populace, in people of better education it probably awakened some
such feeling as we get from the
Jardin des Supplices- that
proud
exaltation man experiences when he looks upon fate. At the same
time, however, they must have been aware of a base and demoniac
element in their enjoyment of the spectable, for otherwise they would
not have veiled the statues of the gods looking down upon the arena.
Now and then we discover creatures in our cities who seem to
revel in the torments of their fellows. But it can always be observed
that they are spirits in bondage: a mob leading the twilight existence
of caged brutes, or people of Asiatic habits in whom something of
the enervation of the steam bath still persists. As soon as the social
order begins to totter, particularly in the interval between two his–
torical eras, such creatures emerge from their cellars and crannies
or from their private zones of depravity. Their aim is the establishment
of a despotism more or less under the control of the intelligence, but
