BOOKS--1905.
I.
"I have not read this author's books, and if I have read them I have
forgotten what they were about."
These words are reported as having been uttered in our midst not a
hundred years ago, publicly, from the seat of justice, by a civic
magistrate. The words of our municipal rulers have a solemnity and
importance far above the words of other mortals, because our municipal
rulers more than any other variety of our governors and masters represent
the average wisdom, temperament, sense and virtue of the community. This
generalisation, it ought to be promptly said in the interests of eternal
justice (and recent friendship), does not apply to the United States of
America. There, if one may believe the long and helpless indignations of
their daily and weekly Press, the majority of municipal rulers appear to
be thieves of a particularly irrepressible sort. But this by the way. My
concern is with a statement issuing from the average temperament and the
average wisdom of a great and wealthy community, and uttered by a civic
magistrate obviously without fear and without reproach.
I confess I am pleased with his temper, which is that of prudence. "I
have not read the books," he says, and immediately he adds, "and if I
have read them I have forgotten." This is excellent caution. And I like
his style: it is unartificial and bears the stamp of manly sincerity. As
a reported piece of prose this declaration is easy to read and not
difficult to believe. Many books have not been read; still more have
been forgotten. As a piece of civic oratory this declaration is
strikingly effective. Calculated to fall in with the bent of the popular
mind, so familiar with all forms of forgetfulness, it has also the power
to stir up a subtle emotion while it starts a train of thought--and what
greater force can be expected from human speech? But it is in
naturalness that this declaration is perfectly delightful, for there is
nothing more natural than for a grave City Father to forget what the
books he has read once--long ago--in his giddy youth maybe--were about.
And the books in question are novels, or, at any rate, were written as
novels. I proceed thus cautiously (following my illustrious example)
because being without fear and desiring to remain as far as possible
without reproach, I confess at once that I have not read them.
I have not; and of the million persons or more who are said to have read
them, I never met one yet with the talent of lucid exposition
sufficiently developed to give me a connected account of what they are
about. But they are books, part and parcel of humanity, and as such, in
their ever increasing, jostling multitude, they are worthy of regard,
admiration, and compassion.
Especially of compassion. It has been said a long time ago that books
have their fate. They have, and it is very much like the destiny of man.
They share with us the great incertitude of ignominy or glory--of severe
justice and senseless persecution--of calumny and misunderstanding--the
shame of undeserved success. Of all the inanimate objects, of all men's
creations, books are the nearest to us, for they contain our very
thought, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to
truth, and our persistent leaning towards error. But most of all they
resemble us in their precarious hold on life. A bridge constructed
according to the rules of the art of bridge-building is certain of a
long, honourable and useful career. But a book as good in its way as the
bridge may perish obscurely on the very day of its birth. The art of
their creators is not sufficient to give them more than a moment of life.
Of the books born from the restlessness, the inspiration, and the vanity
of human minds, those that the Muses would love best lie more than all
others under the menace of an early death. Sometimes their defects will
save them. Sometimes a book fair to see may--to use a lofty
expression--have no individual soul. Obviously a book of that sort
cannot die. It can only crumble into dust. But the best of books
drawing sustenance from the sympathy and memory of men have lived on the
brink of destruction, for men's memories are short, and their sympathy
is, we must admit, a very fluctuating, unprincipled emotion.
No secret of eternal life for our books can be found amongst the formulas
of art, any more than for our bodies in a prescribed combination of
drugs. This is not because some books are not worthy of enduring life,
but because the formulas of art are dependent on things variable,
unstable and untrustworthy; on human sympathies, on prejudices, on likes
and dislikes, on the sense of virtue and the sense of propriety, on
beliefs and theories that, indestructible in themselves, always change
their form--often in the lifetime of one fleeting generation.
II.
Of all books, novels, which the Muses should love, make a serious claim
on our compassion. The art of the novelist is simple. At the same time
it is the most elusive of all creative arts, the most liable to be
obscured by the scruples of its servants and votaries, the one
pre-eminently destined to bring trouble to the mind and the heart of the
artist. After all, the creation of a world is not a small undertaking
except perhaps to the divinely gifted. In truth every novelist must
begin by creating for himself a world, great or little, in which he can
honestly believe. This world cannot be made otherwise than in his own
image: it is fated to remain individual and a little mysterious, and yet
it must resemble something already familiar to the experience, the
thoughts and the sensations of his readers. At the heart of fiction,
even the least worthy of the name, some sort of truth can be found--if
only the truth of a childish theatrical ardour in the game of life, as in
the novels of Dumas the father. But the fair truth of human delicacy can
be found in Mr. Henry James's novels; and the comical, appalling truth of
human rapacity let loose amongst the spoils of existence lives in the
monstrous world created by Balzac. The pursuit of happiness by means
lawful and unlawful, through resignation or revolt, by the clever
manipulation of conventions or by solemn hanging on to the skirts of the
latest scientific theory, is the only theme that can be legitimately
developed by the novelist who is the chronicler of the adventures of
mankind amongst the dangers of the kingdom of the earth. And the kingdom
of this earth itself, the ground upon which his individualities stand,
stumble, or die, must enter into his scheme of faithful record. To
encompass all this in one harmonious conception is a great feat; and even
to attempt it deliberately with serious intention, not from the senseless
prompting of an ignorant heart, is an honourable ambition. For it
requires some courage to step in calmly where fools may be eager to rush.
As a distinguished and successful French novelist once observed of
fiction, "C'est un art _trop_ difficile."
It is natural that the novelist should doubt his ability to cope with his
task. He imagines it more gigantic than it is. And yet literary
creation being only one of the legitimate forms of human activity has no
value but on the condition of not excluding the fullest recognition of
all the more distinct forms of action. This condition is sometimes
forgotten by the man of letters, who often, especially in his youth, is
inclined to lay a claim of exclusive superiority for his own amongst all
the other tasks of the human mind. The mass of verse and prose may
glimmer here and there with the glow of a divine spark, but in the sum of
human effort it has no special importance. There is no justificative
formula for its existence any more than for any other artistic
achievement. With the rest of them it is destined to be forgotten,
without, perhaps, leaving the faintest trace. Where a novelist has an
advantage over the workers in other fields of thought is in his privilege
of freedom--the freedom of expression and the freedom of confessing his
innermost beliefs--which should console him for the hard slavery of the
pen.
III.
Liberty of imagination should be the most precious possession of a
novelist. To try voluntarily to discover the fettering dogmas of some
romantic, realistic, or naturalistic creed in the free work of its own
inspiration, is a trick worthy of human perverseness which, after
inventing an absurdity, endeavours to find for it a pedigree of
distinguished ancestors. It is a weakness of inferior minds when it is
not the cunning device of those who, uncertain of their talent, would
seek to add lustre to it by the authority of a school. Such, for
instance, are the high priests who have proclaimed Stendhal for a prophet
of Naturalism. But Stendhal himself would have accepted no limitation of
his freedom. Stendhal's mind was of the first order. His spirit above
must be raging with a peculiarly Stendhalesque scorn and indignation. For
the truth is that more than one kind of intellectual cowardice hides
behind the literary formulas. And Stendhal was pre-eminently courageous.
He wrote his two great novels, which so few people have read, in a spirit
of fearless liberty.
It must not be supposed that I claim for the artist in fiction the
freedom of moral Nihilism. I would require from him many acts of faith
of which the first would be the cherishing of an undying hope; and hope,
it will not be contested, implies all the piety of effort and
renunciation. It is the God-sent form of trust in the magic force and
inspiration belonging to the life of this earth. We are inclined to
forget that the way of excellence is in the intellectual, as
distinguished from emotional, humility. What one feels so hopelessly
barren in declared pessimism is just its arrogance. It seems as if the
discovery made by many men at various times that there is much evil in
the world were a source of proud and unholy joy unto some of the modern
writers. That frame of mind is not the proper one in which to approach
seriously the art of fiction. It gives an author--goodness only knows
why--an elated sense of his own superiority. And there is nothing more
dangerous than such an elation to that absolute loyalty towards his
feelings and sensations an author should keep hold of in his most exalted
moments of creation.
To be hopeful in an artistic sense it is not necessary to think that the
world is good. It is enough to believe that there is no impossibility of
its being made so. If the flight of imaginative thought may be allowed
to rise superior to many moralities current amongst mankind, a novelist
who would think himself of a superior essence to other men would miss the
first condition of his calling. To have the gift of words is no such
great matter. A man furnished with a long-range weapon does not become a
hunter or a warrior by the mere possession of a fire-arm; many other
qualities of character and temperament are necessary to make him either
one or the other. Of him from whose armoury of phrases one in a hundred
thousand may perhaps hit the far-distant and elusive mark of art I would
ask that in his dealings with mankind he should be capable of giving a
tender recognition to their obscure virtues. I would not have him
impatient with their small failings and scornful of their errors. I
would not have him expect too much gratitude from that humanity whose
fate, as illustrated in individuals, it is open to him to depict as
ridiculous or terrible. I would wish him to look with a large
forgiveness at men's ideas and prejudices, which are by no means the
outcome of malevolence, but depend on their education, their social
status, even their professions. The good artist should expect no
recognition of his toil and no admiration of his genius, because his toil
can with difficulty be appraised and his genius cannot possibly mean
anything to the illiterate who, even from the dreadful wisdom of their
evoked dead, have, so far, culled nothing but inanities and platitudes. I
would wish him to enlarge his sympathies by patient and loving
observation while he grows in mental power. It is in the impartial
practice of life, if anywhere, that the promise of perfection for his art
can be found, rather than in the absurd formulas trying to prescribe this
or that particular method of technique or conception. Let him mature the
strength of his imagination amongst the things of this earth, which it is
his business to cherish and know, and refrain from calling down his
inspiration ready-made from some heaven of perfections of which he knows
nothing. And I would not grudge him the proud illusion that will come
sometimes to a writer: the illusion that his achievement has almost
equalled the greatness of his dream. For what else could give him the
serenity and the force to hug to his breast as a thing delightful and
human, the virtue, the rectitude and sagacity of his own City, declaring
with simple eloquence through the mouth of a Conscript Father: "I have
not read this author's books, and if I have read them I have forgotten
. . ."
HENRY JAMES--AN APPRECIATION--1905
The critical faculty hesitates before the magnitude of Mr. Henry James's
work. His books stand on my shelves in a place whose accessibility
proclaims the habit of frequent communion. But not all his books. There
is no collected edition to date, such as some of "our masters" have been
provided with; no neat rows of volumes in buckram or half calf, putting
forth a hasty claim to completeness, and conveying to my mind a hint of
finality, of a surrender to fate of that field in which all these
victories have been won. Nothing of the sort has been done for Mr. Henry
James's victories in England.
In a world such as ours, so painful with all sorts of wonders, one would
not exhaust oneself in barren marvelling over mere bindings, had not the
fact, or rather the absence of the material fact, prominent in the case
of other men whose writing counts, (for good or evil)--had it not been, I
say, expressive of a direct truth spiritual and intellectual; an accident
of--I suppose--the publishing business acquiring a symbolic meaning from
its negative nature. Because, emphatically, in the body of Mr. Henry
James's work there is no suggestion of finality, nowhere a hint of
surrender, or even of probability of surrender, to his own victorious
achievement in that field where he is a master. Happily, he will never
be able to claim completeness; and, were he to confess to it in a moment
of self-ignorance, he would not be believed by the very minds for whom
such a confession naturally would be meant. It is impossible to think of
Mr. Henry James becoming "complete" otherwise than by the brutality of
our common fate whose finality is meaningless--in the sense of its logic
being of a material order, the logic of a falling stone.
I do not know into what brand of ink Mr. Henry James dips his pen;
indeed, I heard that of late he had been dictating; but I know that his
mind is steeped in the waters flowing from the fountain of intellectual
youth. The thing--a privilege--a miracle--what you will--is not quite
hidden from the meanest of us who run as we read. To those who have the
grace to stay their feet it is manifest. After some twenty years of
attentive acquaintance with Mr. Henry James's work, it grows into
absolute conviction which, all personal feeling apart, brings a sense of
happiness into one's artistic existence. If gratitude, as someone
defined it, is a lively sense of favours to come, it becomes very easy to
be grateful to the author of The Ambassadors--to name the latest of his
works. The favours are sure to come; the spring of that benevolence will
never run dry. The stream of inspiration flows brimful in a
predetermined direction, unaffected by the periods of drought, untroubled
in its clearness by the storms of the land of letters, without languor or
violence in its force, never running back upon itself, opening new
visions at every turn of its course through that richly inhabited country
its fertility has created for our delectation, for our judgment, for our
exploring. It is, in fact, a magic spring.
With this phrase the metaphor of the perennial spring, of the
inextinguishable youth, of running waters, as applied to Mr. Henry
James's inspiration, may be dropped. In its volume and force the body of
his work may be compared rather to a majestic river. All creative art is
magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening,
familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by
the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most
insignificant tides of reality.
Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may be
compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross gusts of
wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is rescue work, this
snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out
of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be
seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in
this world of relative values--the permanence of memory. And the
multitude feels it obscurely too; since the demand of the individual to
the artist is, in effect, the cry, "Take me out of myself!" meaning
really, out of my perishable activity into the light of imperishable
consciousness. But everything is relative, and the light of
consciousness is only enduring, merely the most enduring of the things of
this earth, imperishable only as against the short-lived work of our
industrious hands.
When the last aqueduct shall have crumbled to pieces, the last airship
fallen to the ground, the last blade of grass have died upon a dying
earth, man, indomitable by his training in resistance to misery and pain,
shall set this undiminished light of his eyes against the feeble glow of
the sun. The artistic faculty, of which each of us has a minute grain,
may find its voice in some individual of that last group, gifted with a
power of expression and courageous enough to interpret the ultimate
experience of mankind in terms of his temperament, in terms of art. I do
not mean to say that he would attempt to beguile the last moments of
humanity by an ingenious tale. It would be too much to expect--from
humanity. I doubt the heroism of the hearers. As to the heroism of the
artist, no doubt is necessary. There would be on his part no heroism.
The artist in his calling of interpreter creates (the clearest form of
demonstration) because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him,
silence is like death; and the postulate was, that there is a group
alive, clustered on his threshold to watch the last flicker of light on a
black sky, to hear the last word uttered in the stilled workshop of the
earth. It is safe to affirm that, if anybody, it will be the imaginative
man who would be moved to speak on the eve of that day without
to-morrow--whether in austere exhortation or in a phrase of sardonic
comment, who can guess?
For my own part, from a short and cursory acquaintance with my kind, I am
inclined to think that the last utterance will formulate, strange as it
may appear, some hope now to us utterly inconceivable. For mankind is
delightful in its pride, its assurance, and its indomitable tenacity. It
will sleep on the battlefield among its own dead, in the manner of an
army having won a barren victory. It will not know when it is beaten.
And perhaps it is right in that quality. The victories are not, perhaps,
so barren as it may appear from a purely strategical, utilitarian point
of view. Mr. Henry James seems to hold that belief. Nobody has rendered
better, perhaps, the tenacity of temper, or known how to drape the robe
of spiritual honour about the drooping form of a victor in a barren
strife. And the honour is always well won; for the struggles Mr. Henry
James chronicles with such subtle and direct insight are, though only
personal contests, desperate in their silence, none the less heroic (in
the modern sense) for the absence of shouted watchwords, clash of arms
and sound of trumpets. Those are adventures in which only choice souls
are ever involved. And Mr. Henry James records them with a fearless and
insistent fidelity to the _peripeties_ of the contest, and the feelings
of the combatants.
The fiercest excitements of a romance _de cape et d'epee_, the romance of
yard-arm and boarding pike so dear to youth, whose knowledge of action
(as of other things) is imperfect and limited, are matched, for the
quickening of our maturer years, by the tasks set, by the difficulties
presented, to the sense of truth, of necessity--before all, of conduct--of
Mr. Henry James's men and women. His mankind is delightful. It is
delightful in its tenacity; it refuses to own itself beaten; it will
sleep on the battlefield. These warlike images come by themselves under
the pen; since from the duality of man's nature and the competition of
individuals, the life-history of the earth must in the last instance be a
history of a really very relentless warfare. Neither his fellows, nor
his gods, nor his passions will leave a man alone. In virtue of these
allies and enemies, he holds his precarious dominion, he possesses his
fleeting significance; and it is this relation in all its manifestations,
great and little, superficial or profound, and this relation alone, that
is commented upon, interpreted, demonstrated by the art of the novelist
in the only possible way in which the task can be performed: by the
independent creation of circumstance and character, achieved against all
the difficulties of expression, in an imaginative effort finding its
inspiration from the reality of forms and sensations. That a sacrifice
must be made, that something has to be given up, is the truth engraved in
the innermost recesses of the fair temple built for our edification by
the masters of fiction. There is no other secret behind the curtain. All
adventure, all love, every success is resumed in the supreme energy of an
act of renunciation. It is the uttermost limit of our power; it is the
most potent and effective force at our disposal on which rest the labours
of a solitary man in his study, the rock on which have been built
commonwealths whose might casts a dwarfing shadow upon two oceans. Like
a natural force which is obscured as much as illuminated by the
multiplicity of phenomena, the power of renunciation is obscured by the
mass of weaknesses, vacillations, secondary motives and false steps and
compromises which make up the sum of our activity. But no man or woman
worthy of the name can pretend to anything more, to anything greater. And
Mr. Henry James's men and women are worthy of the name, within the limits
his art, so clear, so sure of itself, has drawn round their activities.
He would be the last to claim for them Titanic proportions. The earth
itself has grown smaller in the course of ages. But in every sphere of
human perplexities and emotions, there are more greatnesses than one--not
counting here the greatness of the artist himself. Wherever he stands,
at the beginning or the end of things, a man has to sacrifice his gods to
his passions, or his passions to his gods. That is the problem, great
enough, in all truth, if approached in the spirit of sincerity and
knowledge.
In one of his critical studies, published some fifteen years ago, Mr.
Henry James claims for the novelist the standing of the historian as the
only adequate one, as for himself and before his audience. I think that
the claim cannot be contested, and that the position is unassailable.
Fiction is history, human history, or it is nothing. But it is also more
than that; it stands on firmer ground, being based on the reality of
forms and the observation of social phenomena, whereas history is based
on documents, and the reading of print and handwriting--on second-hand
impression. Thus fiction is nearer truth. But let that pass. A
historian may be an artist too, and a novelist is a historian, the
preserver, the keeper, the expounder, of human experience. As is meet
for a man of his descent and tradition, Mr. Henry James is the historian
of fine consciences.
Of course, this is a general statement; but I don't think its truth will
be, or can be questioned. Its fault is that it leaves so much out; and,
besides, Mr. Henry James is much too considerable to be put into the
nutshell of a phrase. The fact remains that he has made his choice, and
that his choice is justified up to the hilt by the success of his art. He
has taken for himself the greater part. The range of a fine conscience
covers more good and evil than the range of conscience which may be
called, roughly, not fine; a conscience, less troubled by the nice
discrimination of shades of conduct. A fine conscience is more concerned
with essentials; its triumphs are more perfect, if less profitable, in a
worldly sense. There is, in short, more truth in its working for a
historian to detect and to show. It is a thing of infinite complication
and suggestion. None of these escapes the art of Mr. Henry James. He
has mastered the country, his domain, not wild indeed, but full of
romantic glimpses, of deep shadows and sunny places. There are no
secrets left within his range. He has disclosed them as they should be
disclosed--that is, beautifully. And, indeed, ugliness has but little
place in this world of his creation. Yet, it is always felt in the
truthfulness of his art; it is there, it surrounds the scene, it presses
close upon it. It is made visible, tangible, in the struggles, in the
contacts of the fine consciences, in their perplexities, in the sophism
of their mistakes. For a fine conscience is naturally a virtuous one.
What is natural about it is just its fineness, an abiding sense of the
intangible, ever-present, right. It is most visible in their ultimate
triumph, in their emergence from miracle, through an energetic act of
renunciation. Energetic, not violent: the distinction is wide, enormous,
like that between substance and shadow.
Through it all Mr. Henry James keeps a firm hold of the substance, of
what is worth having, of what is worth holding. The contrary opinion has
been, if not absolutely affirmed, then at least implied, with some
frequency. To most of us, living willingly in a sort of intellectual
moonlight, in the faintly reflected light of truth, the shadows so firmly
renounced by Mr. Henry James's men and women, stand out endowed with
extraordinary value, with a value so extraordinary that their rejection
offends, by its uncalled-for scrupulousness, those business-like
instincts which a careful Providence has implanted in our breasts. And,
apart from that just cause of discontent, it is obvious that a solution
by rejection must always present a certain lack of finality, especially
startling when contrasted with the usual methods of solution by rewards
and punishments, by crowned love, by fortune, by a broken leg or a sudden
death. Why the reading public which, as a body, has never laid upon a
story-teller the command to be an artist, should demand from him this
sham of Divine Omnipotence, is utterly incomprehensible. But so it is;
and these solutions are legitimate inasmuch as they satisfy the desire
for finality, for which our hearts yearn with a longing greater than the
longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth. Perhaps the only true
desire of mankind, coming thus to light in its hours of leisure, is to be
set at rest. One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James's novels. His
books end as an episode in life ends. You remain with the sense of the
life still going on; and even the subtle presence of the dead is felt in
that silence that comes upon the artist-creation when the last word has
been read. It is eminently satisfying, but it is not final. Mr. Henry
James, great artist and faithful historian, never attempts the
impossible.
ALPHONSE DAUDET--1898
It is sweet to talk decorously of the dead who are part of our past, our
indisputable possession. One must admit regretfully that to-day is but a
scramble, that to-morrow may never come; it is only the precious
yesterday that cannot be taken away from us. A gift from the dead, great
and little, it makes life supportable, it almost makes one believe in a
benevolent scheme of creation. And some kind of belief is very
necessary. But the real knowledge of matters infinitely more profound
than any conceivable scheme of creation is with the dead alone. That is
why our talk about them should be as decorous as their silence. Their
generosity and their discretion deserve nothing less at our hands; and
they, who belong already to the unchangeable, would probably disdain to
claim more than this from a mankind that changes its loves and its hates
about every twenty-five years--at the coming of every new and wiser
generation.
One of the most generous of the dead is Daudet, who, with a prodigality
approaching magnificence, gave himself up to us without reserve in his
work, with all his qualities and all his faults. Neither his qualities
nor his faults were great, though they were by no means imperceptible. It
is only his generosity that is out of the common. What strikes one most
in his work is the disinterestedness of the toiler. With more talent
than many bigger men, he did not preach about himself, he did not attempt
to persuade mankind into a belief of his own greatness. He never posed
as a scientist or as a seer, not even as a prophet; and he neglected his
interests to the point of never propounding a theory for the purpose of
giving a tremendous significance to his art, alone of all things, in a
world that, by some strange oversight, has not been supplied with an
obvious meaning. Neither did he affect a passive attitude before the
spectacle of life, an attitude which in gods--and in a rare mortal here
and there--may appear godlike, but assumed by some men, causes one, very
unwillingly, to think of the melancholy quietude of an ape. He was not
the wearisome expounder of this or that theory, here to-day and spurned
to-morrow. He was not a great artist, he was not an artist at all, if
you like--but he was Alphonse Daudet, a man as naively clear, honest, and
vibrating as the sunshine of his native land; that regrettably
undiscriminating sunshine which matures grapes and pumpkins alike, and
cannot, of course, obtain the commendation of the very select who look at
life from under a parasol.
Naturally, being a man from the South, he had a rather outspoken belief
in himself, but his small distinction, worth many a greater, was in not
being in bondage to some vanishing creed. He was a worker who could not
compel the admiration of the few, but who deserved the affection of the
many; and he may be spoken of with tenderness and regret, for he is not
immortal--he is only dead. During his life the simple man whose business
it ought to have been to climb, in the name of Art, some elevation or
other, was content to remain below, on the plain, amongst his creations,
and take an eager part in those disasters, weaknesses, and joys which are
tragic enough in their droll way, but are by no means so momentous and
profound as some writers--probably for the sake of Art--would like to
make us believe. There is, when one thinks of it, a considerable want of
candour in the august view of life. Without doubt a cautious reticence
on the subject, or even a delicately false suggestion thrown out in that
direction is, in a way, praiseworthy, since it helps to uphold the
dignity of man--a matter of great importance, as anyone can see; still
one cannot help feeling that a certain amount of sincerity would not be
wholly blamable. To state, then, with studied moderation a belief that
in unfortunate moments of lucidity is irresistibly borne in upon most of
us--the blind agitation caused mostly by hunger and complicated by love
and ferocity does not deserve either by its beauty, or its morality, or
its possible results, the artistic fuss made over it. It may be
consoling--for human folly is very _bizarre_--but it is scarcely honest
to shout at those who struggle drowning in an insignificant pool: You are
indeed admirable and great to be the victims of such a profound, of such
a terrible ocean!
And Daudet was honest; perhaps because he knew no better--but he was very
honest. If he saw only the surface of things it is for the reason that
most things have nothing but a surface. He did not pretend--perhaps
because he did not know how--he did not pretend to see any depths in a
life that is only a film of unsteady appearances stretched over regions
deep indeed, but which have nothing to do with the half-truths,
half-thoughts, and whole illusions of existence. The road to these
distant regions does not lie through the domain of Art or the domain of
Science where well-known voices quarrel noisily in a misty emptiness; it
is a path of toilsome silence upon which travel men simple and unknown,
with closed lips, or, maybe, whispering their pain softly--only to
themselves.
But Daudet did not whisper; he spoke loudly, with animation, with a clear
felicity of tone--as a bird sings. He saw life around him with extreme
clearness, and he felt it as it is--thinner than air and more elusive
than a flash of lightning. He hastened to offer it his compassion, his
indignation, his wonder, his sympathy, without giving a moment of thought
to the momentous issues that are supposed to lurk in the logic of such
sentiments. He tolerated the little foibles, the small ruffianisms, the
grave mistakes; the only thing he distinctly would not forgive was
hardness of heart. This unpractical attitude would have been fatal to a
better man, but his readers have forgiven him. Withal he is chivalrous
to exiled queens and deformed sempstresses, he is pityingly tender to
broken-down actors, to ruined gentlemen, to stupid Academicians; he is
glad of the joys of the commonplace people in a commonplace way--and he
never makes a secret of all this. No, the man was not an artist. What
if his creations are illumined by the sunshine of his temperament so
vividly that they stand before us infinitely more real than the dingy
illusions surrounding our everyday existence? The misguided man is for
ever pottering amongst them, lifting up his voice, dotting his i's in the
wrong places. He takes Tartarin by the arm, he does not conceal his
interest in the Nabob's cheques, his sympathy for an honest Academician
_plus bete que nature_, his hate for an architect _plus mauvais que la
gale_; he is in the thick of it all. He feels with the Duc de Mora and
with Felicia Ruys--and he lets you see it. He does not sit on a pedestal
in the hieratic and imbecile pose of some cheap god whose greatness
consists in being too stupid to care. He cares immensely for his Nabobs,
his kings, his book-keepers, his Colettes, and his Saphos. He vibrates
together with his universe, and with lamentable simplicity follows M. de
Montpavon on that last walk along the Boulevards.
"Monsieur de Montpavon marche a la mort," and the creator of that unlucky
_gentilhomme_ follows with stealthy footsteps, with wide eyes, with an
impressively pointing finger. And who wouldn't look? But it is hard; it
is sometimes very hard to forgive him the dotted i's, the pointing
finger, this making plain of obvious mysteries. "Monsieur de Montpavon
marche a la mort," and presently, on the crowded pavement, takes off his
hat with punctilious courtesy to the doctor's wife, who, elegant and
unhappy, is bound on the same pilgrimage. This is too much! We feel we
cannot forgive him such meetings, the constant whisper of his presence.
We feel we cannot, till suddenly the very _naivete_ of it all touches us
with the revealed suggestion of a truth. Then we see that the man is not
false; all this is done in transparent good faith. The man is not
melodramatic; he is only picturesque. He may not be an artist, but he
comes as near the truth as some of the greatest. His creations are seen;
you can look into their very eyes, and these are as thoughtless as the
eyes of any wise generation that has in its hands the fame of writers.
Yes, they are _seen_, and the man who is not an artist is seen also
commiserating, indignant, joyous, human and alive in their very midst.
Inevitably they _marchent a la mort_--and they are very near the truth of
our common destiny: their fate is poignant, it is intensely interesting,
and of not the slightest consequence.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT--1904 {1}
To introduce Maupassant to English readers with apologetic explanations
as though his art were recondite and the tendency of his work immoral
would be a gratuitous impertinence.
Maupassant's conception of his art is such as one would expect from a
practical and resolute mind; but in the consummate simplicity of his
technique it ceases to be perceptible. This is one of its greatest
qualities, and like all the great virtues it is based primarily on self-
denial.
To pronounce a judgment upon the general tendency of an author is a
difficult task. One could not depend upon reason alone, nor yet trust
solely to one's emotions. Used together, they would in many cases
traverse each other, because emotions have their own unanswerable logic.
Our capacity for emotion is limited, and the field of our intelligence is
restricted. Responsiveness to every feeling, combined with the
penetration of every intellectual subterfuge, would end, not in judgment,
but in universal absolution. _Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner_. And
in this benevolent neutrality towards the warring errors of human nature
all light would go out from art and from life.
We are at liberty then to quarrel with Maupassant's attitude towards our
world in which, like the rest of us, he has that share which his senses
are able to give him. But we need not quarrel with him violently. If
our feelings (which are tender) happen to be hurt because his talent is
not exercised for the praise and consolation of mankind, our intelligence
(which is great) should let us see that he is a very splendid sinner,
like all those who in this valley of compromises err by over-devotion to
the truth that is in them. His determinism, barren of praise, blame and
consolation, has all the merit of his conscientious art. The worth of
every conviction consists precisely in the steadfastness with which it is
held.
Except for his philosophy, which in the case of so consummate an artist
does not matter (unless to the solemn and naive mind), Maupassant of all
writers of fiction demands least forgiveness from his readers. He does
not require forgiveness because he is never dull.
The interest of a reader in a work of imagination is either ethical or
that of simple curiosity. Both are perfectly legitimate, since there is
both a moral and an excitement to be found in a faithful rendering of
life. And in Maupassant's work there is the interest of curiosity and
the moral of a point of view consistently preserved and never obtruded
for the end of personal gratification. The spectacle of this immense
talent served by exceptional faculties and triumphing over the most
thankless subjects by an unswerving singleness of purpose is in itself an
admirable lesson in the power of artistic honesty, one may say of
artistic virtue. The inherent greatness of the man consists in this,
that he will let none of the fascinations that beset a writer working in
loneliness turn him away from the straight path, from the vouchsafed
vision of excellence. He will not be led into perdition by the
seductions of sentiment, of eloquence, of humour, of pathos; of all that
splendid pageant of faults that pass between the writer and his probity
on the blank sheet of paper, like the glittering cortege of deadly sins
before the austere anchorite in the desert air of Thebaide. This is not
to say that Maupassant's austerity has never faltered; but the fact
remains that no tempting demon has ever succeeded in hurling him down
from his high, if narrow, pedestal.
It is the austerity of his talent, of course, that is in question. Let
the discriminating reader, who at times may well spare a moment or two to
the consideration and enjoyment of artistic excellence, be asked to
reflect a little upon the texture of two stories included in this volume:
"A Piece of String," and "A Sale." How many openings the last offers for
the gratuitous display of the author's wit or clever buffoonery, the
first for an unmeasured display of sentiment! And both sentiment and
buffoonery could have been made very good too, in a way accessible to the
meanest intelligence, at the cost of truth and honesty. Here it is where
Maupassant's austerity comes in. He refrains from setting his cleverness
against the eloquence of the facts. There is humour and pathos in these
stories; but such is the greatness of his talent, the refinement of his
artistic conscience, that all his high qualities appear inherent in the
very things of which he speaks, as if they had been altogether
independent of his presentation. Facts, and again facts are his unique
concern. That is why he is not always properly understood. His facts
are so perfectly rendered that, like the actualities of life itself, they
demand from the reader the faculty of observation which is rare, the
power of appreciation which is generally wanting in most of us who are
guided mainly by empty phrases requiring no effort, demanding from us no
qualities except a vague susceptibility to emotion. Nobody has ever
gained the vast applause of a crowd by the simple and clear exposition of
vital facts. Words alone strung upon a convention have fascinated us as
worthless glass beads strung on a thread have charmed at all times our
brothers the unsophisticated savages of the islands. Now, Maupassant, of
whom it has been said that he is the master of the _mot juste_, has never
been a dealer in words. His wares have been, not glass beads, but
polished gems; not the most rare and precious, perhaps, but of the very
first water of their kind.
That he took trouble with his gems, taking them up in the rough and
polishing each facet patiently, the publication of the two posthumous
volumes of short stories proves abundantly. I think it proves also the
assertion made here that he was by no means a dealer in words. On
looking at the first feeble drafts from which so many perfect stories
have been fashioned, one discovers that what has been matured, improved,
brought to perfection by unwearied endeavour is not the diction of the
tale, but the vision of its true shape and detail. Those first attempts
are not faltering or uncertain in expression. It is the conception which
is at fault. The subjects have not yet been adequately seen. His
proceeding was not to group expressive words, that mean nothing, around
misty and mysterious shapes dear to muddled intellects and belonging
neither to earth nor to heaven. His vision by a more scrupulous,
prolonged and devoted attention to the aspects of the visible world
discovered at last the right words as if miraculously impressed for him
upon the face of things and events. This was the particular shape taken
by his inspiration; it came to him directly, honestly in the light of his
day, not on the tortuous, dark roads of meditation. His realities came
to him from a genuine source, from this universe of vain appearances
wherein we men have found everything to make us proud, sorry, exalted,
and humble.
Maupassant's renown is universal, but his popularity is restricted. It
is not difficult to perceive why. Maupassant is an intensely national
writer. He is so intensely national in his logic, in his clearness, in
his aesthetic and moral conceptions, that he has been accepted by his
countrymen without having had to pay the tribute of flattery either to
the nation as a whole, or to any class, sphere or division of the nation.
The truth of his art tells with an irresistible force; and he stands
excused from the duty of patriotic posturing. He is a Frenchman of
Frenchmen beyond question or cavil, and with that he is simple enough to
be universally comprehensible. What is wanting to his universal success
is the mediocrity of an obvious and appealing tenderness. He neglects to
qualify his truth with the drop of facile sweetness; he forgets to strew
paper roses over the tombs. The disregard of these common decencies lays
him open to the charges of cruelty, cynicism, hardness. And yet it can
be safely affirmed that this man wrote from the fulness of a
compassionate heart. He is merciless and yet gentle with his mankind; he
does not rail at their prudent fears and their small artifices; he does
not despise their labours. It seems to me that he looks with an eye of
profound pity upon their troubles, deceptions and misery. But he looks
at them all. He sees--and does not turn away his head. As a matter of
fact he is courageous.
Courage and justice are not popular virtues. The practice of strict
justice is shocking to the multitude who always (perhaps from an obscure
sense of guilt) attach to it the meaning of mercy. In the majority of
us, who want to be left alone with our illusions, courage inspires a
vague alarm. This is what is felt about Maupassant. His qualities, to
use the charming and popular phrase, are not lovable. Courage being a
force will not masquerade in the robes of affected delicacy and
restraint. But if his courage is not of a chivalrous stamp, it cannot be
denied that it is never brutal for the sake of effect. The writer of
these few reflections, inspired by a long and intimate acquaintance with
the work of the man, has been struck by the appreciation of Maupassant
manifested by many women gifted with tenderness and intelligence. Their
more delicate and audacious souls are good judges of courage. Their
finer penetration has discovered his genuine masculinity without display,
his virility without a pose. They have discerned in his faithful
dealings with the world that enterprising and fearless temperament, poor
in ideas but rich in power, which appeals most to the feminine mind.
It cannot be denied that he thinks very little. In him extreme energy of
perception achieves great results, as in men of action the energy of
force and desire. His view of intellectual problems is perhaps more
simple than their nature warrants; still a man who has written _Yvette_
cannot be accused of want of subtlety. But one cannot insist enough upon
this, that his subtlety, his humour, his grimness, though no doubt they
are his own, are never presented otherwise but as belonging to our life,
as found in nature, whose beauties and cruelties alike breathe the spirit
of serene unconsciousness.
Maupassant's philosophy of life is more temperamental than rational. He
expects nothing from gods or men. He trusts his senses for information
and his instinct for deductions. It may seem that he has made but little
use of his mind. But let me be clearly understood. His sensibility is
really very great; and it is impossible to be sensible, unless one thinks
vividly, unless one thinks correctly, starting from intelligible premises
to an unsophisticated conclusion.
This is literary honesty. It may be remarked that it does not differ
very greatly from the ideal honesty of the respectable majority, from the
honesty of law-givers, of warriors, of kings, of bricklayers, of all
those who express their fundamental sentiment in the ordinary course of
their activities, by the work of their hands.
The work of Maupassant's hands is honest. He thinks sufficiently to
concrete his fearless conclusions in illuminative instances. He renders
them with that exact knowledge of the means and that absolute devotion to
the aim of creating a true effect--which is art. He is the most
accomplished of narrators.
It is evident that Maupassant looked upon his mankind in another spirit
than those writers who make haste to submerge the difficulties of our
holding-place in the universe under a flood of false and sentimental
assumptions. Maupassant was a true and dutiful lover of our earth. He
says himself in one of his descriptive passages: "Nous autres que seduit
la terre . . ." It was true. The earth had for him a compelling charm.
He looks upon her august and furrowed face with the fierce insight of
real passion. His is the power of detecting the one immutable quality
that matters in the changing aspects of nature and under the
ever-shifting surface of life. To say that he could not embrace in his
glance all its magnificence and all its misery is only to say that he was
human. He lays claim to nothing that his matchless vision has not made
his own. This creative artist has the true imagination; he never
condescends to invent anything; he sets up no empty pretences. And he
stoops to no littleness in his art--least of all to the miserable vanity
of a catching phrase.
ANATOLE FRANCE--1904
I.--"CRAINQUEBILLE"
The latest volume of M. Anatole France purports, by the declaration of
its title-page, to contain several profitable narratives. The story of
Crainquebille's encounter with human justice stands at the head of them;
a tale of a well-bestowed charity closes the book with the touch of
playful irony characteristic of the writer on whom the most distinguished
amongst his literary countrymen have conferred the rank of Prince of
Prose.
Never has a dignity been better borne. M. Anatole France is a good
prince. He knows nothing of tyranny but much of compassion. The
detachment of his mind from common errors and current superstitions
befits the exalted rank he holds in the Commonwealth of Literature. It
is just to suppose that the clamour of the tribes in the forum had little
to do with his elevation. Their elect are of another stamp. They are
such as their need of precipitate action requires. He is the Elect of
the Senate--the Senate of Letters--whose Conscript Fathers have
recognised him as _primus inter pares_; a post of pure honour and of no
privilege.
It is a good choice. First, because it is just, and next, because it is
safe. The dignity will suffer no diminution in M. Anatole France's
hands. He is worthy of a great tradition, learned in the lessons of the
past, concerned with the present, and as earnest as to the future as a
good prince should be in his public action. It is a Republican dignity.
And M. Anatole France, with his sceptical insight into an forms of
government, is a good Republican. He is indulgent to the weaknesses of
the people, and perceives that political institutions, whether contrived
by the wisdom of the few or the ignorance of the many, are incapable of
securing the happiness of mankind. He perceives this truth in the
serenity of his soul and in the elevation of his mind. He expresses his
convictions with measure, restraint and harmony, which are indeed
princely qualities. He is a great analyst of illusions. He searches and
probes their innermost recesses as if they were realities made of an
eternal substance. And therein consists his humanity; this is the
expression of his profound and unalterable compassion. He will flatter
no tribe no section in the forum or in the market-place. His lucid
thought is not beguiled into false pity or into the common weakness of
affection. He feels that men born in ignorance as in the house of an
enemy, and condemned to struggle with error and passions through endless
centuries, should be spared the supreme cruelty of a hope for ever
deferred. He knows that our best hopes are irrealisable; that it is the
almost incredible misfortune of mankind, but also its highest privilege,
to aspire towards the impossible; that men have never failed to defeat
their highest aims by the very strength of their humanity which can
conceive the most gigantic tasks but leaves them disarmed before their
irremediable littleness. He knows this well because he is an artist and
a master; but he knows, too, that only in the continuity of effort there
is a refuge from despair for minds less clear-seeing and philosophic than
his own. Therefore he wishes us to believe and to hope, preserving in
our activity the consoling illusion of power and intelligent purpose. He
is a good and politic prince.
"The majesty of justice is contained entire in each sentence pronounced
by the judge in the name of the sovereign people. Jerome Crainquebille,
hawker of vegetables, became aware of the august aspect of the law as he
stood indicted before the tribunal of the higher Police Court on a charge
of insulting a constable of the force." With this exposition begins the
first tale of M. Anatole France's latest volume.
The bust of the Republic and the image of the Crucified Christ appear
side by side above the bench occupied by the President Bourriche and his
two Assessors; all the laws divine and human are suspended over the head
of Crainquebille.
From the first visual impression of the accused and of the court the
author passes by a characteristic and natural turn to the historical and
moral significance of those two emblems of State and Religion whose
accord is only possible to the confused reasoning of an average man. But
the reasoning of M. Anatole France is never confused. His reasoning is
clear and informed by a profound erudition. Such is not the case of
Crainquebille, a street hawker, charged with insulting the constituted
power of society in the person of a policeman. The charge is not true,
nothing was further from his thoughts; but, amazed by the novelty of his
position, he does not reflect that the Cross on the wall perpetuates the
memory of a sentence which for nineteen hundred years all the Christian
peoples have looked upon as a grave miscarriage of justice. He might
well have challenged the President to pronounce any sort of sentence, if
it were merely to forty-eight hours of simple imprisonment, in the name
of the Crucified Redeemer.
He might have done so. But Crainquebille, who has lived pushing every
day for half a century his hand-barrow loaded with vegetables through the
streets of Paris, has not a philosophic mind. Truth to say he has
nothing. He is one of the disinherited. Properly speaking, he has no
existence at all, or, to be strictly truthful, he had no existence till
M. Anatole France's philosophic mind and human sympathy have called him
up from his nothingness for our pleasure, and, as the title-page of the
book has it, no doubt for our profit also.
Therefore we behold him in the dock, a stranger to all historical,
political or social considerations which can be brought to bear upon his
case. He remains lost in astonishment. Penetrated with respect,
overwhelmed with awe, he is ready to trust the judge upon the question of
his transgression. In his conscience he does not think himself culpable;
but M. Anatole France's philosophical mind discovers for us that he feels
all the insignificance of such a thing as the conscience of a mere street-
hawker in the face of the symbols of the law and before the ministers of
social repression. Crainquebille is innocent; but already the young
advocate, his defender, has half persuaded him of his guilt.
On this phrase practically ends the introductory chapter of the story
which, as the author's dedication states, has inspired an admirable
draughtsman and a skilful dramatist, each in his art, to a vision of
tragic grandeur. And this opening chapter without a name--consisting of
two and a half pages, some four hundred words at most--is a masterpiece
of insight and simplicity, resumed in M. Anatole France's distinction of
thought and in his princely command of words.
It is followed by six more short chapters, concise and full, delicate and
complete like the petals of a flower, presenting to us the Adventure of
Crainquebille--Crainquebille before the justice--An Apology for the
President of the Tribunal--Of the Submission of Crainquebille to the Laws
of the Republic--Of his Attitude before the Public Opinion, and so on to
the chapter of the Last Consequences. We see, created for us in his
outward form and innermost perplexity, the old man degraded from his high
estate of a law-abiding street-hawker and driven to insult, really this
time, the majesty of the social order in the person of another police-
constable. It is not an act of revolt, and still less of revenge.
Crainquebille is too old, too resigned, too weary, too guileless to raise
the black standard of insurrection. He is cold and homeless and
starving. He remembers the warmth and the food of the prison. He
perceives the means to get back there. Since he has been locked up, he
argues with himself, for uttering words which, as a matter of fact he did
not say, he will go forth now, and to the first policeman he meets will
say those very words in order to be imprisoned again. Thus reasons
Crainquebille with simplicity and confidence. He accepts facts. Nothing
surprises him. But all the phenomena of social organisation and of his
own life remain for him mysterious to the end. The description of the
policeman in his short cape and hood, who stands quite still, under the
light of a street lamp at the edge of the pavement shining with the wet
of a rainy autumn evening along the whole extent of a long and deserted
thoroughfare, is a perfect piece of imaginative precision. From under
the edge of the hood his eyes look upon Crainquebille, who has just
uttered in an uncertain voice the sacramental, insulting phrase of the
popular slang--_Mort aux vaches_! They look upon him shining in the deep
shadow of the hood with an expression of sadness, vigilance, and
contempt.
He does not move. Crainquebille, in a feeble and hesitating voice,
repeats once more the insulting words. But this policeman is full of
philosophic superiority, disdain, and indulgence. He refuses to take in
charge the old and miserable vagabond who stands before him shivering and
ragged in the drizzle. And the ruined Crainquebille, victim of a
ridiculous miscarriage of justice, appalled at this magnanimity, passes
on hopelessly down the street full of shadows where the lamps gleam each
in a ruddy halo of falling mist.
M. Anatole France can speak for the people. This prince of the Senate is
invested with the tribunitian power. M. Anatole France is something of a
Socialist; and in that respect he seems to depart from his sceptical
philosophy. But as an illustrious statesman, now no more, a great prince
too, with an ironic mind and a literary gift, has sarcastically remarked
in one of his public speeches: "We are all Socialists now." And in the
sense in which it may be said that we all in Europe are Christians that
is true enough. To many of us Socialism is merely an emotion. An
emotion is much and is also less than nothing. It is the initial
impulse. The real Socialism of to-day is a religion. It has its dogmas.
The value of the dogma does not consist in its truthfulness, and M.
Anatole France, who loves truth, does not love dogma. Only, unlike
religion, the cohesive strength of Socialism lies not in its dogmas but
in its ideal. It is perhaps a too materialistic ideal, and the mind of
M. Anatole France may not find in it either comfort or consolation. It
is not to be doubted that he suspects this himself; but there is
something reposeful in the finality of popular conceptions. M. Anatole
France, a good prince and a good Republican, will succeed no doubt in
being a good Socialist. He will disregard the stupidity of the dogma and
the unlovely form of the ideal. His art will find its own beauty in the
imaginative presentation of wrongs, of errors, and miseries that call
aloud for redress. M. Anatole France is humane. He is also human. He
may be able to discard his philosophy; to forget that the evils are many
and the remedies are few, that there is no universal panacea, that
fatality is invincible, that there is an implacable menace of death in
the triumph of the humanitarian idea. He may forget all that because
love is stronger than truth.
Besides "Crainquebille" this volume contains sixteen other stories and
sketches. To define them it is enough to say that they are written in M.
Anatole France's prose. One sketch entitled "Riquet" may be found
incorporated in the volume of _Monsieur Bergeret a Paris_. "Putois" is a
remarkable little tale, significant, humorous, amusing, and symbolic. It
concerns the career of a man born in the utterance of a hasty and
untruthful excuse made by a lady at a loss how to decline without offence
a very pressing invitation to dinner from a very tyrannical aunt. This
happens in a provincial town, and the lady says in effect: "Impossible,
my dear aunt. To-morrow I am expecting the gardener." And the garden
she glances at is a poor garden; it is a wild garden; its extent is
insignificant and its neglect seems beyond remedy. "A gardener! What
for?" asks the aunt. "To work in the garden." And the poor lady is
abashed at the transparence of her evasion. But the lie is told, it is
believed, and she sticks to it. When the masterful old aunt inquires,
"What is the man's name, my dear?" she answers brazenly, "His name is
Putois." "Where does he live?" "Oh, I don't know; anywhere. He won't
give his address. One leaves a message for him here and there." "Oh! I
see," says the other; "he is a sort of ne'er do well, an idler, a
vagabond. I advise you, my dear, to be careful how you let such a
creature into your grounds; but I have a large garden, and when you do
not want his services I shall find him some work to do, and see he does
it too. Tell your Putois to come and see me." And thereupon Putois is
born; he stalks abroad, invisible, upon his career of vagabondage and
crime, stealing melons from gardens and tea-spoons from pantries,
indulging his licentious proclivities; becoming the talk of the town and
of the countryside; seen simultaneously in far-distant places; pursued by
gendarmes, whose brigadier assures the uneasy householders that he "knows
that scamp very well, and won't be long in laying his hands upon him." A
detailed description of his person collected from the information
furnished by various people appears in the columns of a local newspaper.
Putois lives in his strength and malevolence. He lives after the manner
of legendary heroes, of the gods of Olympus. He is the creation of the
popular mind. There comes a time when even the innocent originator of
that mysterious and potent evil-doer is induced to believe for a moment
that he may have a real and tangible presence. All this is told with the
wit and the art and the philosophy which is familiar to M. Anatole
France's readers and admirers. For it is difficult to read M. Anatole
France without admiring him. He has the princely gift of arousing a
spontaneous loyalty, but with this difference, that the consent of our
reason has its place by the side of our enthusiasm. He is an artist. As
an artist he awakens emotion. The quality of his art remains, as an
inspiration, fascinating and inscrutable; but the proceedings of his
thought compel our intellectual admiration.
In this volume the trifle called "The Military Manoeuvres at Montil,"
apart from its far-reaching irony, embodies incidentally the very spirit
of automobilism. Somehow or other, how you cannot tell, the flight over
the country in a motor-car, its sensations, its fatigue, its vast
topographical range, its incidents down to the bursting of a tyre, are
brought home to you with all the force of high imaginative perception. It
would be out of place to analyse here the means by which the true
impression is conveyed so that the absurd rushing about of General
Decuir, in a 30-horse-power car, in search of his cavalry brigade,
becomes to you a more real experience than any day-and-night run you may
ever have taken yourself. Suffice it to say that M. Anatole France had
thought the thing worth doing and that it becomes, in virtue of his art,
a distinct achievement. And there are other sketches in this book, more
or less slight, but all worthy of regard--the childhood's recollections
of Professor Bergeret and his sister Zoe; the dialogue of the two upright
judges and the conversation of their horses; the dream of M. Jean
Marteau, aimless, extravagant, apocalyptic, and of all the dreams one
ever dreamt, the most essentially dreamlike. The vision of M. Anatole
France, the Prince of Prose, ranges over all the extent of his realm,
indulgent and penetrating, disillusioned and curious, finding treasures
of truth and beauty concealed from less gifted magicians. Contemplating
the exactness of his images and the justice of his judgment, the freedom
of his fancy and the fidelity of his purpose, one becomes aware of the
futility of literary watchwords and the vanity of all the schools of
fiction. Not that M. Anatole France is a wild and untrammelled genius.
He is not that. Issued legitimately from the past, he is mindful of his
high descent. He has a critical temperament joined to creative power. He
surveys his vast domain in a spirit of princely moderation that knows
nothing of excesses but much of restraint.