What an admirable definition I rediscover with surprise in the
fatalist Pascal!
"Nature acts progressively, itus et reditus. It goes on and returns,
then it goes still further, then half as far, then further than
ever." [Footnote: George Sand had copied this and fastened it over
her work table at Nohant.]
What a way of speaking, eh? How the language turns, is twisted, made
supple, is condensed under this grandiose "hand."
CVII. TO GEORGE SAND
Tuesday night
What do I say about it, dear master? Should one excite or repress
the sensitiveness of children? It seems to me that one should not
have any set rule about it. It is according as they have a tendency
to too much or too little. Moreover, the basis isn't changed. There
are tender natures and hard natures, irremediably so. And then the
same sight, the same lesson can produce opposite effects. Could
anything have hardened me more than having been brought up in a
hospital and having played, as a child, in a dissecting
amphitheatre? But no one is more sensitive than I am to physical
suffering. It is true that I am the son of an extremely humane man,
sensitive in the true meaning of the word. The sight of a suffering
dog made tears come to his eyes. He did his surgical operations none
the less well, and he invented some dreadful ones.
"Show little ones only the sweet and the good of life until the time
when reason can help them to accept or to fight the bad." Such is
not my opinion. For then something terrible, an infinite
disenchantment is bound to be produced in their hearts. And then,
how could reason form itself, if it does not apply itself (or if one
does not apply it daily) to distinguish good from evil? Life ought
to be a continual education; one must learn everything--from talking
to dying.
You tell me very true things about the unconsciousness of children.
He who could read clearly in these little brains would grasp in them
the roots of the human race, the origin of the gods, the sap which
produces actions later on, etc. A negro who talks to his idol, and a
child who talks to her doll seem to me close together.
The child and the savage (the primitive) do not distinguish the real
from the fantastic. I remember very clearly that at five or six
years of age I wanted to "send my heart" to a little girl with whom
I was in love (I mean my material heart). I could see it in the
middle of straw, in a basket, an oyster basket.
But no one has been so far as you in these analyses. There are some
infinitely profound pages about it in the Histoire de ma vie. What I
say is true, since minds quite opposite to yours have been amazed at
them. For instance, the Goncourts.
The good Tourgueneff ought to be in Paris at the end of March. What
would be fine, would be for us all three to dine together.
I am thinking again of Sainte-Beuve. Without doubt one can get along
without thirty thousand francs a year. But there is something easier
yet: that is, when one has them, not to launch into abuse, every
week, in the papers. Why doesn't he write books, since he is rich
and has talent?
I am just now reading Don Quichotte again. What a tremendous old
book! Is there any more beautiful?
CVIII. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Nohant, 7 March, 1869
Still alone with my grandchildren; my nephews and friends come to
spend two out of every three days with me, but I miss Maurice and
Lina. Poor Calamatta is at the last gasp.
Give me the address of the Goncourts, you have never given it to me.
Shall I never know it? My letter is still waiting there for them.
I love you and embrace you. I love you much, much, and I embrace you
very warmly.