If certain pages of this book should incur the serious reproach of
tending toward novel beliefs, if unbending judges shall consider their
tone imprudent and perilous, I should be obliged to reply to the
criticism that it does too much honor to a work of no importance; that,
in order to attack the great questions of social order, one must either
be conscious of great strength of purpose or pride one's self upon great
talent, and that such presumption is altogether foreign to a very simple
tale, in which the author has invented almost nothing. If, in the course
of his task, he has happened to set forth the lamentations extorted from
his characters by the social malady with which they were assailed; if he
has not shrunk from recording their aspirations after a happier
existence, let the blame be laid upon society for its inequalities, upon
destiny for its caprices! The author is merely a mirror which reflects
them, a machine which reverses their tracing, and he has no reason for
self-reproach if the impression is exact, if the reflection is true.
Consider further that the narrator has not taken for text or devise a
few shrieks of suffering and wrath scattered through the drama of human
life. He does not claim to conceal serious instruction beneath the
exterior form of a tale; it is not his aim to lend a hand in
constructing the edifice which a doubtful future is preparing for us and
to give a sly kick at that of the past which is crumbling away. He knows
too well that we live in an epoch of moral deterioration, wherein the
reason of mankind has need of curtains to soften the too bright glare
which dazzles it. If he had felt sufficiently learned to write a
genuinely useful book, he would have toned down the truth, instead of
presenting it in its crude tints and with its startling effects. That
book would have performed the functions of blue spectacles for weak
eyes.
He does not abandon the idea of performing that honorable and laudable
task some day; but, being still a young man, he simply tells you to-day
what he has seen, not presuming to draw his conclusions concerning the
great controversy between the future and the past, which perhaps no man
of the present generation is especially competent to do. Too
conscientious to conceal his doubts from you, but too timid to transform
them into certainties, he relies upon your reflections and abstains from
weaving into the woof of his narrative preconceived opinions, judgments
all formed. He plies with exactitude his trade of narrator. He will tell
you everything, even painful truths; but, if you should wrap him in the
philosopher's robe, you would find that he was exceedingly confused,
simple story-teller that he is, whose mission is to amuse and not to
instruct.
Even were he more mature and more skilful, he would not dare to lay his
hand upon the great sores of dying civilization. One must be so sure of
being able to cure them when one ventures to probe them! He would much
prefer to arouse your interest in old discarded beliefs, in
old-fashioned, vanished forms of devotion, to employing his talent, if
he had any, in blasting overturned altars. He knows, however, that, in
these charitable times, a timorous conscience is despised by public
opinion as hypocritical reserve, just as, in the arts, a timid bearing
is sneered at as an absurd mannerism; but he knows also that there is
honor, if not profit, in defending lost causes.
To him who should misunderstand the spirit of this book, such a
profession of faith would sound like an anachronism. The narrator hopes
that few auditors, after listening to his tale to the end, will deny the
moral to be derived from the facts, a moral which triumphs there as in
all human affairs; it seemed to him, when he wrote the last line, that
his conscience was clear. He flattered himself, in a word, that he had
described social miseries without too much bitterness, human passions
without too much passion. He placed the mute under his strings when they
echoed too loudly; he tried to stifle certain notes of the soul which
should remain mute, certain voices of the heart which cannot be awakened
without danger.
Perhaps you will do him justice if you agree that the being who tries to
free himself from his lawful curb is represented as very wretched
indeed, and the heart that rebels against the decrees of its destiny as
in sore distress. If he has not given the best imaginable rôle to that
one of his characters who represents _the law_, if that one who
represents _opinion_ is even less cheerful, you will see a third
representing _illusion_, who cruelly thwarts the vain hopes and
enterprises of passion. Lastly, you will see that, although he has not
strewn rose-leaves on the ground where the law pens up our desires like
a sheep's appetite, he has scattered thistles along the roads which lead
us away from it.
These facts, it seems to me, are sufficient to protect this book from
the reproach of immorality; but, if you absolutely insist that a novel
should end like one of Marmontel's tales, you will perhaps chide me on
account of the last pages; you will think that I have done wrong in not
casting into misery and destitution the character who has transgressed
the laws of mankind through two volumes. In this regard, the author will
reply that before being moral he chose to be true; he will say again,
that, feeling that he was too new to the trade to compose a
philosophical treatise on the manner of enduring life, he has restricted
himself to telling you the story of _Indiana_, a story of the human
heart, with its weaknesses, its passions, its rights and its wrongs, its
good qualities and its evil qualities.
Indiana, if you insist upon an explanation of every thing in the book,
is a type; she is woman, the feeble being whose mission it is to
represent _passions_ repressed, or, if you prefer, suppressed by _the
law_; she is desire at odds with necessity; she is love dashing her head
blindly against all the obstacles of civilization. But the serpent wears
out his teeth and breaks them in trying to gnaw a file; the powers of
the soul become exhausted in trying to struggle against the positive
facts of life. That is the conclusion you may draw from this tale, and
it was in that light that it was told to him who transmits it to you.
But despite these protestations the narrator anticipates reproaches.
Some upright souls, some honest men's consciences will be alarmed
perhaps to see virtue so harsh, reason so downcast, opinion so unjust.
He is dismayed at the prospect; for the thing that an author should fear
more than anything in the world is the alienating from his works the
confidence of good men, the awakening of an ominous sympathy in
embittered souls, the inflaming of the sores, already too painful, which
are made by the social yoke upon impatient and rebellious necks.
The success which is based upon an unworthy appeal to the passions of
the age is the easiest to win, the least honorable to strive for. The
historian of _Indiana_ denies that he has ever dreamed of it; if he
thought that he had reached that result, he would destroy his book, even
though he felt for it the artless fatherly affection which swaddles the
rickety offspring of these days of literary abortions.
But he hopes to justify himself by stating that he thought it better to
enforce his principles by real examples than by poetic fancies. He
believes that his tale, with the depressing atmosphere of frankness that
envelopes it, may make an impression upon young and ardent brains. They
will find it difficult to distrust a historian who forces his way
brutally through the midst of facts, elbowing right and left, with no
more regard for one camp than for the other. To make a cause odious or
absurd is to persecute it, not to combat it. It may be that the whole
art of the novelist consists in interesting the culprits whom he wishes
to redeem, the wretched whom he wishes to cure, in their own story.
It would be giving overmuch importance to a work that is destined
doubtless to attract very little notice, to seek to protect it against
every sort of accusation. Therefore the author surrenders
unconditionally to the critics; a single charge seems to him too serious
to accept, and that is the charge that he has written a dangerous book.
He would prefer to remain in a humble position forever to building his
reputation upon a ruined conscience. He will add a word therefore to
repel the blame which he most dreads.
Raymon, you will say, is society; egoism is substituted for morality and
reason. Raymon, the author will reply, is the false reason, the false
morality by which society is governed; he is the man of honor as the
world understands the phrase, because the world does not examine closely
enough to see everything. The good man you have beside Raymon; and you
will not say that he is the enemy of order; for he sacrifices his
happiness, he loses all thought of self before all questions of social
order.
Then you will say that virtue is not rewarded with sufficient blowing of
trumpets. Alas! the answer is that we no longer witness the triumph of
virtue elsewhere than at the boulevard theatres. The author will tell
you that he has undertaken to exhibit society to you, not as virtuous,
but as necessary, and that honor has become as difficult as heroism in
these days of moral degeneration. Do you think that this truth will
cause great souls to loathe honor? I think just the opposite.