— Adam Donaldson Powell
The following remark appears in Jules Huret’s Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire (1891), a famous series of interviews with contemporary French writers. During Huret’s interview with Jean Moréas, Moréas says:
« Je leur sais gré de nous avoir débarrassés des naturalistes ; mais ils sont à côté de l’art véritable. La poésie sait dire sans malice et sans ostentation des choses bien plus profondes et bien plus humaines que toute la psychologie avec ses petits airs entendus. Un poème de Ronsard ou de Hugo c’est de l’art pur ; un roman, fût-il de Stendhal ou de Balzac, c’est de l’art mitigé. J’aime beaucoup nos psychologues ; mais il faut qu’ils restent à leur rang, c’est-à-dire au-dessous des poètes. »
— Jean Moréas, interview in Jules Huret, Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire (Paris: Bibliothèque-Charpentier, 1891), section “M. Jean Moréas.”
A careful translation is:
“I am very grateful to our psychologists for having rid us of the naturalists; but they stand beside, not within, true art. Poetry knows how to express, without affectation or ostentation, things far deeper and more human than all psychology with its knowing airs. A poem by Ronsard or Hugo is pure art; a novel—even by Stendhal or Balzac—is mixed art. I like our psychologists very much, but they must remain in their place, that is to say, beneath the poets.”
A few observations:
- The familiar English version “I very much like our psychologists; but they must stay in their place, that is to say beneath the poets.” is essentially accurate, though it omits the preceding sentences and smooths out il faut qu’ils restent à leur rang (“they must remain in their rank/place”).
- Moréas is referring to the psychological novelists of his day (writers emphasizing psychological analysis), not to psychologists as a scientific profession in the modern sense.
- The statement is part of a broader argument that poetry is “pure art,” whereas even the greatest novels are “mixed art.”
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