It is three days since I wrote this letter, and every day I have
been on the point of throwing it into the fire; for it is long and
diffuse and probably useless. Natures opposed on certain points
understand each other with difficulty, and I am afraid that you will
not understand me any better today than formerly. However, I am
sending you this scrawl so that you can see that I am occupied with
you almost as much as with myself.
You must have success after that bad luck which has troubled you
deeply. I tell you wherein lie the certain conditions for your
success. Keep your cult for form; but pay more attention to the
substance. Do not take true virtue for a commonplace in literature.
Give it its representative, make honest and strong men pass among
the fools and the imbeciles that you love to ridicule. Show what is
solid at the bottom of these intellectual abortions; in short,
abandon the convention of the realist and return to the time
reality, which is a mingling of the beautiful and the ugly, the dull
and the brilliant, but in which the desire of good finds its place
and its occupation all the same.