Art Criticism - The State University of New York

still is traditionally associated with the psychological makeup of artists. Many
of the literary and artistic masters of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries
exhibited "token" hysterical traits. Those with decadent personalities (traditionally
male literary and artistic figures) often have within their psyche
elements of hysteria. Famous examples are Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde. These
men are often seen as "tormented by their time," but women, exhibiting similar
traits of the decadent personality, are viewed as hysterics. As we well know,
Baudelaire and Wilde were not universally admired during their lives. But they
were not placed within the confines of a mental institution or thought of as
incurably "mad." This splitting, in which male symptoms are regarded as inherently
"positive" and female symptoms as inherently "negative," clearly shows
strict stereotyping of male in contrast to female roles.
The brothers Edmund and Jules Goncourt represented many such
decadent personalities in their work, and at times exhibited hysterical attributes
themselves. 38 Much of their writing, including a jointly written account of their
daily lives from 1851-1896,39 is preoccupied with illness and degeneration. 40
Jules, the more "highly strung and delicate" ofthe two brothers, suffered from
a nervous breakdown before dying in June of 1879. He was described during
his life as volatile, quick-witted, mischievous and spoiled. Edmund, the older of
the two, was slow, serious, poetic, eccentric, and phlegmatic. 41 Robert Baldick,
the translator of their Journal, describes the men:
This astonishing partnership owed its cohesion and duration-for
the Goncourts lived and worked together for over twenty years
with never more than a few hours apart-not only to the brothers'
affection and regard for each other but also to their fear, suspicion,
and dislike of the outside world. They were sick men, tortured by
their stomachs, their livers, and their nerves; sick men with high
ideals, living in a world where everything and everyone wounded
their delicate sensibilities or outraged their sense of values. 42
It becomes apparent from this passage that the Goncourts themselves
disdained the modern way of life (which made them "nervous") as did the
patients in previously mentioned cases of female hysteria or "nervousness."
The other component of their ailments were their problematic family and sexual
lives, which they often recall in the Journal. These events clearly contributed
. to their menta!' illness. More particularly, the Goncourts often write of their
disdain and disgust for women-a theme prevalent in almost all decadent
literature. 43
In 1870, in a discussion with Zola, the brothers stated that "the originality
of their work rested on nervous maladies," presumably in themselves
and in others.44 The brothers saw their "hysteria" as a necessary component
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Art Criticism