ESSAYS
Jacques Barzun
SHAW VERSUS STENDHAL
Comparative literature is a fruitful branch oflearning, but
comparisons between two authors are usually sterile . "The Good
Society in Carlyle and in Ruskin," "The Incidence of Crime in Dos–
toevsky and Edgar Allan Poe" are topics that appeal to graduate
students , but they yield only parallel enumerations: "Carlyle thinks
this, and Ruskin says that ." How much better for everybody to read
Carlyle, then Ruskin, and store the opinions of each side by side in
the memory .
Yet it sometimes happens that a comparison closely pursued
leads the mind to an instructive difference , a single and striking
divergence among similarities, which helps to mark a change of di–
rection in culture, an epoch in history or human psychology. This
possibility , I think, justifies the attempt to bring into one view what
Stendhal and Shaw wrote as critics of music. The outcome is by no
means limited to the realm of art.
What is required to make such a comparison productive is that
there be a large common ground between the two minds or two bod–
ies of work- not merely a large
subject,
but a position within the sub–
ject showing many points of congruence up to the sought-for point of
disparity.
Now in bringing together Stendhal and Shaw, the common
sub–
ject
is : What should be said about music? And the common ground
or position is what I am about to describe . The musical scene no
doubt changed between 1810 and 1890, but the repertoires of the
two periods overlapped to a very large extent. The two critics are
moreover alike in being primarily writers of fiction, each with a
unique place in the first rank. Both men began to write music criti–
cism early in life, simultaneously with other kinds of criticism (in–
cluding that of painting) and before they produced any of their great
fictions. (Plays, we should recall,
are
fiction . The illogical habits of
modern librarians should not obscure that ancient fact.)
But these fundamental similarities are far from exhausting the
list, even of externals . Stendhal and Shaw acquired their passion for
