[BNP/E3, 134 – 70-74]

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258 I “nous savons que la particularité de la pensée mystique c’est le manque d’attention”.

260 Comparison of Tolstoi’s artistic manner with the painting of the preraphaelites.

261 Vision nette of things; yet inability to perceive their rapports. (Mystics, Tolstoi).

262 Since (Nordau argues) the Sonate is less artistic than the earliest works, and since it was by the Sonate that Tolstoi was 1^st famous, it is obvious that his fame in not on behalf of his artistic merits.

264 A philosophic argument on End.

267 Nordau explains optimism and pessimism simply as health and disease.

277 Nordau against alms, (forgetting that man is determined and has no fault in being lazy or bad).

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289 Il est vrai… (Nordau admits) that que l’agriculture pourrait occuper sainement et utilement beaucoup plus d’hommes qu’actuellement, si le sol était la propriété de la collectivité et que chacun n’en reçût d’autre part, et seulement en part viagère, que celle qu’il pourrait cultivar à fond.” Etc.

290-1 True statements against the idea of a return to nature. Nature our enemy, says Nordau; we’ve to create artificial conditions to fight her.

292 “la rêverie religieuse n’est qu’un cas particulier d’un état d’esprit général, et que le mysticisme est toute obscurité et incohérence maladives de pensée accompagnées d’émotivité, par conséquent celles aussi qui ont pour fruit le système à la foi matérialiste, panthéiste, chrétien, ascétique, rousseaulâtre et communiste de Tolstoï.”

[71^r]

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295 Kowalewski says that mania of doubt is exclusively a “psychose dégénérative.”

295-6 A particular form of manie du doute la rage de contredire et le penchant à des affirmations bizarres, que Sollier, entre autres, note comme un des Stigmates de la dégénérescence”. E.g. Tolstoi attacking tradition for tradition, Shakespeare for being admired.

296 Good people, degeneracy. “En opposition au débile égoïste”, Legrain says, “plaçons le débile bon jusqu’à l’exagération, philanthrope, échafaudant mille systèmes absurdes en vue du bonheur de l’humanité” p. 28

“Tout plein de son amour pour l’humanité, le malade débile aborde sans hésiter la question sociale pas ses côtés les plus ardus, et la tranche imperturbablement par une série d’inventions grotesques” p. 195 “Délire chez les dégénérés”

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(cont.)

This unreasonable philanthropy a form of that emotivity which, for Morel, is the fundamental characteristic of degeneration. (Nordau more or less)

297-8 (On woman). Aversion for woman has the same reason as extreme[1] love for her. Both depend on the abnormal condition of the sexual centres. Both on the obsession of woman. Sane man periodically either sexual or indifferent not so the degenerative. (I think Nordau gives a bad explanation of this when he says that aversion to woman is a creation of seeing in her an element of danger, of impulse to crime, etc).

Nevertheless p. 300 Comparison of horror of erotomaniacs for woman to the horror of the dipsomaniacs for drink. This last noted by Magnan.

299 Marriage a social not sexual institution. “L’homme peut – ou devrait du moins – choisir par amour

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pour épouses, une femme déterminée; mais ce qui, son choix fait et son but atteint, le retient dans le mariage, ce n’est plus l’amour physiologique, mais un mélange compliqué d’habitude, de reconnaissance, d’amitié asexuelle, de commodité, le désir de se procurer des avantages économiques (au nombre desquels il faut naturellement compter un intérieur bien réglé, la représentation mondaine, etc.), l’idée de devoir envers ses enfants et l’état, plus ou moins aussi l’imitation machinale d’un usage général.”

301 “L’hystérie d’épuisement si répandue était le sol indispensable sur lequel, seul, pouvait prospérer le tolstoïsme.”

Effect of Tolstoi system on various countries according to their character.

England (on account of spinsters), the continence-side of {…} France, the war against science gives his utopic socialism.

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305 Wagner, unites many stigmas.

307 Wagner repeats in his works what he has said in others. A degenerate’s (graphomaniac’s) tendency, (since his ideas are not clear, who cannot find in his books the clear expression of his ideas) repeats himself.

318 When Wagner deplores la populace and the ills of modern civilization he shows what every degenerate, even born criminals as well as the martyrs of progress: the profound discontent of existent things. But the degenerate’s revolt is against useful and insignificant things, whereas the reformer’s is against things really evil.

319 Anarchist fury.

320 Sexual exaltation, brutal mad.

322 Worry on German audiences who hear the sensual things of Wagner.

Dr. Paul Aubry says (here p. 323) “Cette affection (l’érotisme) se caractérise par une rage de jouissance inconcevable au moment du rapprochement.”

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324 Abuse of italics by Wagner, spacing of letters etc proper to graphomaniacs (Lombroso) as the mystic cannot ever express his ideas he has recourse to these stigma expedients.

324-5 Puns of Wagner.

325 et seq Mysticism the phenomenon of permanence in an irreligious man (as Wagner) the religious sentiment taught him in his youth. Wagner’s use of the word redemption.

333 Contradiction a characteristic of thought pathologically mystic. This is not observed in mystics by ignorance by imitation by laziness of thought: these may depart from a foolish representation but they follow its consequences logically.

336 X Wagner’s idea of a pure woman saving a man from a sensual and dangerous woman lover (says Nordau) of the vague sentiment that in aught of pure, of chaste etc lies the cure of erotism.

337 In Wagner love always a calamity. (Siegmund pay his possession of Sieglinde with death.) / 399

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340 Explanation of sensual states of degenerates (Wagner)

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342 X Wagner fascinated by Wandering Jew.

Cf. Shelley (Alexander Search)

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341 The difference between sane and insane poet: one is capable of plunging into the reality, the other not.

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348 Sollier. Music intense in idiots and imbeciles. The least intellectual of arts. (Emotivity is its essence says Nordau.) Also Lombroso who declares that people stricken by folie das grandeurs and paralysie générale surpass other aliénés in musical talent.

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352 A characteristic way of thinking for degenerates: the unconscious and somnambuly manner in which they jump over the surest partitions of the arts and (Alexander Search) strive to annul the differentiation which evolution has brought about. Preraphaelites with painting, symbolists with word-sound, Wagner with leit-motif (also word-colour). Same thing with (358) “mélodie infinie” which is a récitatif (the récitatif was the primitive in music)

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359 Always the argument inverted to cover as good an organic deficiency[2].

364. 364. “Cette persévérance entêtée dans une seule et même idée fondamentale”, which Lombroso indicates as one of the characteristics of graphomaniacs (and only of graphomaniacs? not of all degenerates? Alexander Search) the only personal quality (says Nordau) to which Wagner owes a little fame. But his real fame made by the particularities of the nervous life of the times.

366 Wagner and Liszt – this latter exactly the same qualities of degenerate men – graphomania – but lesser and a greater pianist.

366 Wagner’s passion for graphomaniacs

370 et War and the masses. War’s bad effect on the nerves of the masses. People more brutal after war; yet not more brutal but more irritable and their augmented irritability is a form of nervous debility.

[74^v]

372 Legrand du Saulle: “Le Délire des Persécutions”, Paris, 1871.

[1] extreme ^/supreme\

[2] deficiency ^/necessity\