CCXCIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Paris, 11 December, 1875
Things are going a little better, and I am profiting by the occasion
to write to you, dear, good, adorable master.
You know that I have abandoned my big novel in order to write a
little MEDIEVAL bit of nonsense, which won't run to more than
thirty pages. It puts me in a more decent setting than that of
modern times, and does me good. Then I am hunting for a contemporary
novel, but I am hesitating among several embryonic ideas; I should
like to do something concise and violent. The string of the necklace
(that is to say, the main idea) is still to seek.
Externally my life is scarcely changed: I see the same people, I
receive the same visits. My faithful ones on Sunday are first of
all, the big Tourgueneff, who is nicer than ever, Zola, Alphonse
Daudet, and Goncourt. You have never spoken to me of the first two.
What do you think of their books?
I am not reading anything at all, except Shakespeare, whom am going
through from beginning to end. That tones you up and puts new air
into your lungs, just as if you were on a high mountain. Everything
appears mediocre beside that prodigious felow.
As I go out very little, I have not yet seen Victor Hugo. However,
this evening I am going to resign myself to putting on my boots, so
that I can go to present my compliments to him. His personality
pleases me infinitely, but his court! ... mercy!
The senatorial elections are a subject of diversion to the public of
which I am a part. There must have occurred, in the corridors of the
Assembly, dialogues incredibly grotesque and base. The XlXth century
is destined to see all religions perish. Amen! I do not mourn any of
them.
At the Odeon, a live bear is going to appear on the boards. That is
all that I know about literature.
CCC. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT, in Paris
Nohant, 18th and 19th December, 1875
At last I discover my old troubadour who was a subject of chagrin
and serious worry to me. Here you are yourself again, trusting in
the very natural luck of external events, and discovering in
yourself the strength to control them, whatever they may be, by
effort. What is it that you call some one in HIGH FINANCE? For my
part, I don't know; I am in relations with Victor Borie. He will do
me a favor if he sees it to his interest. Must I write him?
Then you are going to start grubbing again? So am I; for since
Flamarande I have done nothing but mark time, while waiting for
something better. I was so ill all summer! but my strange and
excellent friend Favre has cured me wonderfully, and I am taking a
new lease on life.
What's our next move? For you, of course, DESOLATION, and, for me,
consolation. I do not know on what our destinies depend; you see
them pass, you criticise them, you abstain from a literary
appreciation of them, you limit yourself to depicting them, with
deliberate meticulous concealment of your personal feelings.
However, one sees them very clearly through your narrative, and you
make the people sadder who read you. As for me, I should like to
make them less sad. I cannot forget that my personal victory over
despair was the work of my will and of a new way of understanding
which is entirely opposed to what I had before.
I know that you criticise the intervention of the personal doctrine
in literature. Are you right? Isn't it rather a lack of conviction
than a principle of esthetics? One cannot have a philosophy in one's
soul without its appearing. I have no literary advice to give you, I
have no judgment to formulate on the author friends of whom you
speak. I, myself have told the Goncourts all my thought; as for the
others, I firmly believe that they have more education and more
talent than I have. Only I think that they, and you especially, lack
a definite and extended vision of life. Art is not merely
painting. True painting, moreover, is full of the soul that wields
the brush. Art is not merely criticism and satire: criticism and
satire depict only one side of the truth.
I want to see a man as he is, he is not good or bad, he is good and
bad. But he is something more ... nuance. Nuance which is for me the
purpose of art, being good and bad, he has an internal force which
leads him to be very bad and slightly good,--or very good and
slightly bad.
I think that your school is not concerned with the substance, and
that it dwells too much on the surface. By virtue of seeking the
form, it makes the substance too cheap! it addresses itself to the
men of letters. But there are no men of letters, properly speaking.
Before everything, one is a man. One wants to find man at the basis
of every story and every deed. That was the defect of l'Education
sentimentale, about which I have so often reflected since, asking
myself why there was so general a dislike of a work that was so well
done and so solid. This defect was the absence of ACTION of the
characters on themselves. They submitted to the event and never
mastered it. Well, I think that the chief interest in a story is
what you did not want to do. If I were you, I would try the
opposite; you are feeding on Shakespeare just now, and you are doing
well! He is the author who puts men at grips with events; observe
that by them, whether for good or for ill, the event is always
conquered. In his works, it is crushed underfoot.
Politics is a comedy just now. We have had tragedy, shall we end
with the opera or with the operetta? I read my paper conscientiously
every morning; but aside from that moment, it is impossible for me
to think of it or to be interested in it. All of it is absolutely
void of any ideal whatsoever, and therefore I cannot get up any
interest in any of the persons concerned in that scullery. All of
them are slaves of fact because they have been born slaves of
themselves.
My dear little girls are well. Aurore is a well-set-up girl, a
beautiful upright soul in a strong body. The other one is grace and
sweetness. I am always an assiduous and a patient teacher, and very
little time is left to me to write PROFESSIONALLY, seeing that I
cannot keep awake after midnight and that I want to spend all my
evening with my family; but this lack of time stimulates me and
makes me find a true pleasure in digging away; it is like a
forbidden fruit that I taste in secret.
All my dear world embraces you and rejoices to hear that you are
better. Did I send you Flamarande and the pictures of my little
girls? If not, send me a line, and I send you both.
Your old troubadour who loves you,