At last, I shall be able perhaps today: for I am furious to think
that perhaps you are accusing me of forgetting you, when I am
prevented by weakness that is entirely physical, in which my
affections count for nothing. You tell me that they KNOCK you too
much. I read only le Temps and it is a good deal for me even to open
a paper to see about what it is talking. You ought to do as I do and
IGNORE criticism when it is not serious, and even when it is. I have
never been able to see what good it is to the author criticised.
Criticism always starts from a personal point of view, the authority
of which the artist does not recognize. It is because of that
usurpation of powers in the intellectual order of things, that
people get to discussing the Sun and the Moon; but that does
not prevent them in the least from showing us their good tranquil
faces.
You do not want to be a man of nature, so much the worse for you!
therefore you attach too much importance to the details of human
things, and you do not tell yourself that there is in you a NATURAL
force that defies the IFS and the BUTS of human prattle. We are of
nature, in nature, by nature, and for nature. Talent, will, genius,
are natural phenomena like the lake, the volcano, the mountain, the
wind, the star, the cloud. What man dabbles in is pretty or ugly,
ingenious or stupid; what he gets from nature is good or bad; but it
is, it exists and subsists. One should not ask from the jumble of
appreciation called CRITICISM, what one has done and what one wants
to do. Criticism does not know anything about it; its business is to
gossip.
Nature alone knows how to speak to the intelligence in a language
that is imperishable, always the same, because it does not depart
from the eternally true, the absolutely beautiful. The hard thing,
when one travels, is to find nature, because man has arranged it
everywhere and has almost spoiled it everywhere; probably it is
because of that that you are bored, it is because it is disguised
and travestied everywhere. However, the glaciers are still intact, I
presume.
But I cannot write further, I must tell you quickly that I love you,
that I embrace you affectionately. Give me news of yourself. I hope
to be on my feet in a few days. Maurice is waiting until I am robust
before he goes: I am hurrying as much as I can! My little girls
embrace you, they are superb. Aurore is devoted to mythology (George
Cox, Baudry translation). You know that? An adorable work for
children and parents. Enough, I can no more. I love you; don't have
black ideas, and resign yourself to being bored if the air is good
there.
CCLXXXI. TO GEORGE SAND
Righi, 14 July, 1874;
What? ill? poor, dear master! If it is rheumatism, do as my brother
does, who in his character of physician, scarcely believes in
medicine. Last year he went to the baths at Aix in Savoy, and in two
weeks he was cured of the pains that had tormented him for six
years. But to do that you would have to move, to resign your habits,
Nohant and the dear little girls. You will remain at home and YOU
WILL BE WRONG. You ought to take care of yourself ... for those who
love you.
And as regard this, you send me, in your last letter, a horrid
thing. Could I, for my part, suspect you of forgetting Cruchard!
Come now, I have, first of all, too much vanity and next, too much
faith in you.
You don't tell me how your play is getting on at the Odeon.
Speaking of plays, I am going again to expose myself to insults of
the populace and the penny-a-liners. The manager of the Cluny
Theatre, to whom I took le Sexe faible, has written me an admiring
letter and is disposed to put on that play in October. He is
reckoning on a great money success. Well, so be it! But I am
recalling the enthusiasm of Carvalho, followed by an absolute chill!
and all that increases my scorn for the so-called shrewd people who
pretend to know all about things. For, in short, there is a dramatic
work, declared by the managers of the Vaudeville and the Cluny
"perfect," by the Theatre Francais "unplayable," and by the manager
of the Odeon "in need of rewriting from one end to the other." Draw
a conclusion now! and listen to their advice! Never mind, as these
four gentlemen are the masters of your destinies because they have
the money, and as they have more mind than you, never having written
a line, you must believe them and submit to them.
It is a strange thing how much pleasure imbeciles find in
floundering about in the work of another! in cutting it, correcting
it, playing the pedagogue! Did I tell you that I was, because of
that, very much at odds with a certain *****. He wanted to make
over, sometime ago, a novel that I had recommended to him, which was
not very good, but of which he is incapable of turning the least
phrase. And I did not hide from him my opinion about him; inde irae.
However, it is impossible for me to be so modest as to think that
that good Pole is better than I am in French prose. And you want me
to remain calm! dear master! I have not your temperament! I am not
like you, always soaring above the miseries of this world. Your
Cruchard is as sensitive as if he were divested of skin. And
imbecility, self-sufficiency, injustice exasperate him more and
more. Thus the ugliness of the Germans who surround me shuts off the
view of the Righi!!! Zounds! What mugs!