Henry James and ‘The Auditive Intelligence’

Abstract

Henry James regarded two of his earliest encounters with the French actor Benoît-Constant Coquelin as amongst the self-proclaimed ‘landmarks’ of his life. In the first of these, recorded in his Notebooks on 26 December 1881, James recalls seeing Charles Lomon’s play Jean Dacier in September 1877 in Paris, with Coquelin ‘as hero’: It threw me into a great state of excitement; I thought seriously of writing to Coquelin, telling him I had been his school-mate, etc. It held up a glowing light to me – seemed to point to my own path. If I could have sat down to work then I probably should not have stopped soon. But I didn’t. I couldn’t; I was writing things for which I needed to be paid from month to month. (I like to remind myself of these facts – to justify my innumerable postponements.) I remember how, on leaving the theatre – it was a lovely evening – I walked about a long time under the influence not so much of the piece as of Coquelin’s acting of it, which had made the thing so human, so brilliant, so valuable. I was agitated with what it said to me that I might do – what I ought to attempt [ … ].1