The Satirist in an Unashamed World

“ It is, therefore, that nature has implanted in us a sense which tends to correct our disposition, where law and religion are seen to have no power. This sense is a desire of public estimation, which not only tends to give mankind perfection in every art and science, but also to render our personal character respectable. It is this susceptibility of shame and infamy which gives satire its efficiency. ”

“ Perhaps no satirist had a more thorough conception than our author of what is the real mission of satire in the moral history of mankind; —that is, to shew vice its own image—to scourge impudent imposture —to expose hypocrisy—to laugh down solemn quackery of every kind—to create blushes on brazen brows and fears of scorn in hollow hearts—to make iniquity, as ashamed, hide its face—to apply caustic, nay cautery, to the sores of society—and to destroy sin by shewing both the ridicule which attaches to its progress and the wretched consequences which are its end. ”

“ It is, therefore, not surprising that mankind should be so impressive to the power of satire, whose object is to describe their vices and follies, for the finger of public infamy to point at their deformities and delinquencies. Thus, where law cannot extend its awe and authority, satire wields the scourge of disgrace; and where religion cannot convince the atheist, attract the attention of the debauchee, or reform those who are subject to the power of habit and fashion, satire affords effectually her assistance. ”

“ The distinguishing note of satire is the angry one of reprobation. Here vices and follies are no longer set before us as a diverting spectacle, but emphasis is laid on their moral indignity. The satirist is at the point of view of the moral judge; only, instead of the calmness of the judge, he has something of the fierce attitude of the prosecutor who aims at exposing and denouncing the turpitude of an offence. ”

“ And here must I venture through all the Barricadoes and the Fortifications of popular Resentment; but Satires, like Incision, become necessary when the Humour rankles, and the Wound threatens Mortification; when Advice ceases to work; when Loss, Experience, and Disaster will not convince, then Satire reforms, by making the Error we embrace ridiculous: Shame works to make us forsake a Thing, [Pg x] which Instruction augments, or Persuasion could have no Effect upon.
Many and great Abuses, and of the last Importance to the People, have urged my Duty and demanded my Assistance ”

“ Satire, in its literary aspect, may be defined as the expression in adequate terms of the sense of amusement or disgust excited by the ridiculous or unseemly, provided that humour is a distinctly recognizable element, and that the utterance is invested with literary form. Without humour, satire is invective; without literary form, it is mere clownish jeering. It is indeed exceedingly difficult to define the limits between satire and the regions of literary sentiment into which it shades. The first exercise of satire was no doubt coarse and boisterous. ”

“ Is it not strange, that so bold a satire on human nature, in its actual state of existence, should excite no resentment in mankind, and that they should so readily take the alarm at an imaginary representation of it? But in the former case men are ready enough to see and allow all manner of vices and bad qualities of the mind in others, though they are so blinded by self-love as not to find the resemblance to themselves; but when their bodily form, common to all men, is vilified and debased, each individual brings the attack home to himself ”

“ This gentle diffusion of her presence is a less obtrusive rôle than satire has hitherto enjoyed but is none the less essential, and in any case it is all that can be allowed by a scientific, democratic society, too well informed to deal only with surfaces, too preoccupied with its own business and desires, such as they are, to worry much about the fiasco others make of theirs, too polite to scold even with wit, and too truly humorous to tolerate the superior pose. ”

“ But there is one man among all those millions whom it does not impress, whom it hardly ever touches; that is the man against whom it is directed. The one person for whom the whole satire has been written in vain is the man whom it is the whole object of the institution of satire to reach. ”

“ Show me that one human being who has been made essentially better by satire! O no, no! there is something in human nature which hardens itself against the lash—something in satire which excites only the lowest and worst of our propensities. ”

“ Satire, always as sterile as it in shameful and as impotent as it is insolent, paid them that usual homage which mediocrity pays to genius—doing, here as always, infinite harm to the public, blinding them to what is beautiful, teaching them that irreverence which is the source of all vileness and narrowness of life, but harming the artist not at all, rather confirming him in the perfect rightness of his work and ambition. ”

“ I will own I am fond of prying into old fashions and peculiarities; there is something attractive in their simplicity; and, in travelling along, whenever I find any vestige of the kind, I am as much rejoiced as ever was antiquary who had fished up a noseless bust out of the Tiber.
Amongst all the usages of former times, none was better than that of the court-fool, or licensed jester; but now-a-days men's vices and their weaknesses have become too irritable, and few are inclined to do penance under the scourge of satire.
Satirical talent is the most dangerous thing in the world. ”

“ In this country satire never had more than a sickly and uncertain existence, for the soul of it is wit, wherein we are dolefully deficient, the humor that we mistake for it, like all humor, being tolerant and sympathetic. Moreover, although Americans are "endowed by their Creator" with abundant vice and folly, it is not generally known that these are reprehensible qualities, wherefore the satirist is popularly regarded as a soul-spirited knave, and his ever victim's outcry for codefendants evokes a national assent. ”

“ In this lively crabbed production there are two distinct strains or bents to note. All the best critics have for some time admitted that in professed satire generally, and in Roman satire more than in any other, there is, if not a touch of cant, at any rate a distinct convention of moral indignation—a sort of stock-part of bluff, honestly old-fashioned, censuring of modern corruption—which the satirist takes up as a matter of business. ”

“ The book has the fault which is to be attributed to almost all satires, whether in prose or verse. The accusations are exaggerated. The vices are coloured, so as to make effect rather than to represent truth. Who, when the lash of objurgation is in his hands, can so moderate his arm as never to strike harder than justice would require? The spirit which produces the satire is honest enough, but the very desire which moves the satirist to do his work energetically makes him dishonest. In other respects The Way We Live Now was, as a satire, powerful and good. ”

“ Satirists, however, have done little to improve mankind: they have condemned and promoted vice; they have ridiculed and recommended folly. Instead of being the most chaste, severe, and instructive, it is notorious that (with few exceptions) they have been the most profligate, pernicious, and corrupting of all writers. ”

“ Such reality is not found in a satire, for a satire, as distinguished from a novel, both conceals and exaggerates: it gives half-truths instead of whole truths; it shows not all of life but only a part; and even this it cannot show quite truly, for its avowed object is to magnify some vice or foible. In doing so, a satire finds no means so effective as irony, which makes its appeal wholly to the intellect. A good novel, on the contrary, touches the head and the heart both; along with passages which give keen intellectual enjoyment, it offers passages which move its reader's tears. ”

“ I have read these two pieces a number of times, and found them amusing in their deliberate exaggeration. But when I look into them closely, I ask myself whether the phase of social evolution through which we are passing is really like that which the author holds up to ridicule, and whether his caricatures are not a generation or two behind the time. And it is always thus. In the matter of satire, it is the newspaper always that opens the way; the novel comes after it, and then, after a long interval, the theatre. The manners it describes have often ceased to exist ”

“ They combine with the intemperate tone and the satirist’s concluding confession, his self-identification with the object of satire, to create a sense of an unheroic satirist, one who does not represent a highly commendable satiric alternative. Satire must now turn its vision from the heroic, the apocalyptic, the broadly philosophical, even from the depraved, and become exceedingly ordinary. It must recognize that there is little hope in going back to lofty Augustan ideals. ”

“ And the amazing consideration is that in a nation which dislikes satire a satirist should be elected by the suffrage of his fellows.
Probably it is only in politics that we tolerate satire. In self-government we only half believe. We are divided in our own minds. We make laws furiously and laugh at the laws we make. We pretend that the little men of politics are great and then privately we indicate our real perception of the truth by telling how small they are. Politics is suspect and it stamps you as a person of penetration to show that you are aware what sham and dishonesty there is in them. ”

“ This form of satiric humour arises, not from the discrepancy between how we ought to behave and the way we do behave, but from a pervading sense of the ridiculousness of everything. It’s a response to life which affirms no coherent moral alternative simply because there is no such thing: the very faith in such a possibility is as absurd as everything else. ”

“ He knows that he is an ordinary man, and that he can count as many kindly memories, as many humane instincts, as many hours of decent work and responsibility as any other ordinary man. But behind all this he has his real weaknesses, the real ironies of his soul: behind all these ordinary merits lie the mean compromises, the craven silences, the sullen vanities, the secret brutalities, the unmanly visions of revenge. It is to these that satire should reach if it is to touch the man at whom it is aimed. ”

“ We may heartily enjoy his admirable flashes of wit, and, when he takes a serious tone, may oscillate agreeably between the beliefs that he is in solemn earnest, or in his bitterest humour; only we must not quite forget that the farce has a touch in it of tragedy, and that there is a real mystery somewhere. Satire, pure and simple, becomes wearisome. If a latent sense of humour is necessary to prevent a serious man from becoming a bore, it is still more true that some serious creed, however misty and indefinite, is required to raise the mere mocker into a genuine satirist. ”

“ To the poise and proportion contributed to satire by the emphasis on the quality of humor, must be added the justice that comes from a rationalized sympathy, and from the counter, positive element which restores the balance pulled down by destructive criticism. ”

“ Feeling must be dominated by reflection; even pathos demands this, for, if we lose ourselves in sorrowful feeling, no fair image can arise and steady us.
There is, however, much comedy that is obviously unsympathetic, even hostile. There is satire, which condemns, as well as humor which pardons. The one blames the unexpected and unconventional, the other sympathizes with it. Comedy is either biting or kindly. ”

“ It is here that satire becomes its salvation, for by giving much of the criticism a humorous turn it counteracts the didactic effect, enhances delight, and, to readers of a sensitive response, makes a point that would not be sharpened by increased vehemence. ”

“ I do not think that even a Swift or a Voltaire could have been irreconcilably opposed to a world which offered them so much merriment. The satire, which begins in moral fervor, must end in understanding. The bond that binds us to our fellows is too strong to be broken by the aloofness of our condemnation. ”

“ Shall they arraign the author of writing a malignant satire against human nature, when reduced to its most abject brutal state, and wholly under the dominion of the passions; and shall they give him no credit for the exalted view in which he has placed the nobler part of our nature, when wholly under the direction of right reason? Or are mankind so stupid, as in an avowed fable, to stop at the outside, the vehicle, without diving into the concealed moral, which is the object of all fable? Do they really take the Yahoo for a man, because it has the form of a man ”

“ Thus will the changeableness of men be demonstrated at the same time as their egoism. These puppets are monsters and these monsters puppets: my audience will not need to be told that ‘Il faut se hâter d’en rire de peur d’être obligé d’en pleurer.’”
So cruel a farce had never been seen. The public was accustomed in farces to two or three comic characters, to satire at the expense of two or three ridiculous types. Here was a caricature of all mankind. ”

“ Less than the bitterness of Penguin Island and the Histoire contemporaine would not have served for France; more than the laughter of Dooley would have been disproportionate and unmanly for us.
Satire is like parody in admitting the integrity of the subject; it is a pruning knife applied for the good of the tree; and irony is a dagger with corrosive poison at the tip. Satire is proper to America because essentially the satirist believes that life is all right, and that only the extravagances and frailties of American life, at the moment of writing, need correction or are subject to mockery. ”

“ It is that balance of instincts that is the essence of all satire: however fantastic satire may be, it must always be potentially rational and fundamentally moderate, for it must be ready to hit both to right and to left at opposite extravagances. ”