PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1832
PREFACE TO THE EDITION OF 1842
PART FIRST
PART SECOND
PART THIRD
PART FOURTH
CONCLUSION
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_MADAME DELMARE DISCOVERS NOUN'S BODY_
_MADAME DELMARE DRESSES DE RAMIÈRES WOUNDS_
_THE BOAR HUNT_
_SIR RALPH SAVES INDIANA_
_MADAME DELMARE'S FLIGHT_
_RALPH AND INDIANA SEEK DEATH TOGETHER_
[Illustration 01: _MADAME DELMARE DISCOVERS
NOUN'S BODY_
_Terror nailed her to the spot; but the stream
flowed on, slowly drawing a body from the reeds
among which it had caught, and bringing it toward
Madame Delmare._]
INTRODUCTION
I wrote Indiana during the autumn of 1831. It was my first novel; I
wrote it without any fixed plan, having no theory of art or philosophy
in my mind. I was at the age when one writes with one's instincts, and
when reflection serves only to confirm our natural tendencies. Some
people chose to see in the book a deliberate argument against marriage.
I was not so ambitious, and I was surprised to the last degree at all
the fine things that the critics found to say concerning my subversive
purposes. Criticism is far too acute; that is what will cause its death.
It never passes judgment ingenuously on what has been done ingenuously.
It looks for noon at four o'clock, as the old women say, and must cause
much suffering to artists who care more for its decrees than they ought
to do.
Under all régimes and in all times there has been a race of critics,
who, in contempt of their own talent, have fancied that it was their
duty to ply the trade of denouncers, of purveyors to the prosecuting
attorney's office; extraordinary functions for men of letters to assume
with regard to their confrères! The rigorous measures of government
against the press never satisfy these savage critics. They would have
them directed not only against works but against persons as well, and,
if their advice were followed, some of us would be forbidden to write
anything whatsoever.
At the time that I wrote _Indiana_, the cry of Saint Simonism was raised
on every pretext. Later they shouted all sorts of other things. Even now
certain writers are forbidden to open their mouths, under pain of seeing
the police agents of certain newspapers pounce upon their work and hale
them before the police of the constituted powers. If a writer puts noble
sentiments in the mouth of a mechanic, it is an attack on the
bourgeoisie; if a girl who has gone astray is rehabilitated after
expiating her sin, it is an attack on virtuous women; if an impostor
assumes titles of nobility, it is an attack on the patrician caste; if a
bully plays the swashbuckling soldier, it is an insult to the army; if a
woman is maltreated by her husband, it is an argument in favor of
promiscuous love. And so with everything. Kindly brethren, devout and
generous critics! What a pity that no one thinks of creating a petty
court of literary inquisition in which you should be the torturers!
Would you be satisfied to tear the books to pieces and burn them at a
slow fire, and could you not, by your urgent representations, obtain
permission to give a little taste of the rack to those writers who
presume to have other gods than yours?
Thank God, I have forgotten the names of those who tried to discourage
me at my first appearance, and who, being unable to say that my first
attempt had fallen completely flat, tried to distort it into an
incendiary proclamation against the repose of society. I did not expect
so much honor, and I consider that I owe to those critics the thanks
which the hare proffered the frogs, imagining from their alarm that he
was entitled to deem himself a very thunderbolt of war.