CCCVIII. TO GEORGE SAND
Monday evening, 3rd April, 1876
I have received your volume this morning, dear master. I have two or
three others that have been loaned to me for a long time; I shall
send them off, and I shall read yours at the end of the week, during
a little two-days' trip that I am forced to take to Pont-l'Eveque
and to Honfleur for my Histoire d'un coeur simple, a trifle now "on
the stocks," as M. Prudhomme would say.
I am very glad that Jack has pleased you. It is a charming book,
isn't it? If you knew the author you would like him even better than
his book. I have told him to send you Risler and Tartarin. I am sure
in advance that you would thank me for the opportunity of reading
these two books.
I do not share in Tourgueneff's severity as regards Jack, nor in the
immensity of his admiration for Rougon. The one has charm, the other
force. But neither one is concerned ABOVE ALL else with what is for
me the end of art, namely, beauty. I remember having felt my heart
beat violently, having felt a fierce pleasure in contemplating a
wall of the Acropolis, a perfectly bare wall (the one on the left as
you go up to the Propylaea). Well! I wonder if a book independently
of what it says, cannot produce the same effect! In the exactness of
its assembling, the rarity of its elements, the polish of its
surface, the harmony of its ensemble, is there not an intrinsic
virtue, a sort of divine force, something eternal as a principle? (I
speak as a Platonist.) Thus, why is a relation necessary between the
exact word and the musical word? Why does it happen that one always
makes a verse when one restrains his thought too much? Does the law
of numbers govern then the feelings and the images, and is what
seems to be the exterior quite simply inside it? If I should
continue a long time in this vein, I should blind myself entirely,
for on the other side art has to be a good fellow; or rather art is
what one can make it, we are not free. Each one follows his path, in
spite of his own desire. In short, your Cruchard no longer knows
where he stands.
But how difficult it is to understand one another! There are two men
whom I admire a great deal and whom I consider real artists,
Tourgueneff and Zola. Yet they do not admire the prose of
Chateaubriand at all, and even less that of Gautier. Phrases which
ravish me seem hollow to them. Who is wrong? And how please the
public when one's nearest friends are so remote? All that saddens me
very much. Do not laugh.
CCCIX. TO GEORGE SAND
Sunday evening... 1876
You OUGHT to call me inwardly, dear master, "a confounded pig,"--for
I have not answered your last letter, and I have said nothing to you
about your two volumes, not to mention a third that I received this
morning from you. But I have been, for the last two weeks, entirely
taken up by my little tale which will be finished soon. I have had
several errands to do, various readings to finish up with, and a
thing more serious than all that, the health of my poor niece
worries me extremely and, at times, disturbs my brain, so that I do
not know at all what I am doing! You see that my cup is bitter! That
young woman is anemic to the last degree. She is wasting away. She
has been obliged to leave off painting, which is her sole
distraction. All the usual tonics do no good. Three days ago, by the
orders of another physician, who seems to me more learned than the
others, she began hydrotherapy. Will he succeed in making her digest
and sleep? in building up her strength? Your poor Cruchard takes
less and less pleasure in life, and he even has too much of it,
infinitely too much. Let us speak of your books, that will be
better.
They have amused me, and the proof is that I have devoured with one
gulp and one after another, Flamarande and the Deux Freres. What a
charming woman is Madame Flamarande, and what a man is M. Salcede.
The narrative of the kidnapping of the child, the trip in the
carriage, and the story of Zamora are perfect passages. Everywhere
the interest is sustained and at the same time progressive. In
short, what strikes me the most in these two novels (as in all
yours, moreover), is the natural order of the ideas, the talent, or
rather the genius for narrative. But what an abominable wretch is
your M. Flamarande! As for the servant who tells the story and who
is evidently in love with Madame, I wonder why you did not show more
plainly his personal jealousy.
Except for the count, all are virtuous persons in that story, even
extraordinarily virtuous. But do you think them really true to life?
Are there many like them? It is true that while reading, one accepts
them because of the cleverness of the execution; but afterwards?
Well, dear master, and this is to answer your last letter, this is,
I think what separates us essentially. You, on the first bound, in
everything, mount to heaven, and from there you descend to the
earth. You start from a priori, from the theory, from the ideal.
Thence your pity for life, your serenity, and to speak truly, your
greatness.--I, poor wretch, I am stuck on the earth as with soles of
lead; everything disturbs me, tears me to pieces, ravages me, and I
make efforts to rise. If I should take your manner of looking at the
whole of life I should become laughable, that is all. For you preach
to me in vain. I cannot have another temperament than my own; nor
another esthetics than what is the consequence of it. You accuse me
of not letting myself go, according to nature. Well, and that
discipline? that virtue? what shall we do with it? I admire M.
Buffon putting on cuffs when he wrote. This luxury is a symbol. In
short I am trying simply to be as comprehensive as possible. What
more can one exact?
As for letting my personal opinion be known about the people I put
on the stage: no, no, a thousand times no! I do not recognize the
right to that. If the reader does not draw from a book the moral
that should be found there, the reader is an imbecile or the book is
false from the point of view of accuracy. For, the moment that a
thing is true, it is good. Obscene books likewise are immoral only
because they lack truth. Things are not "like that" in life.
And observe that I curse what they agree to call realism, although
they make me one of its high priests; reconcile all that.
As for the public, its taste disgusts me more and more. Yesterday,
for instance, I was present at the first night of the Prix Martin, a
piece of buffoonery that, for my part, I think full of wit. Not one
of the witty things in the play produced a laugh, and the
denouement, which seems out of the ordinary, passed unperceived.
Then to look for what can please seems to me the most chimerical of
undertakings. For I defy anyone to tell me by what means one
pleases. Success is a consequence and must not be an end. I have
never sought it (although I desire it) and I seek it less and less.
After my little story, I shall do another,--for I am too deeply
shaken to start on a great work. I had thought first of publishing
Saint-Julien in a periodical, but I have given the plan up.
CCCX. TO GEORGE SAND
Friday evening...1876
Ah! thank you from the bottom of my heart, dear master! You have
made me pass an exquisite day, for I have read your last volume, la
Tour de Percemont.--Marianne only to-day; as I had many things to
finish, among others my tale of Saint-Julien, I had shut up the
aforesaid volume in a drawer so as not to succumb to the temptation.
As my little story was finished last night, I rushed upon your book
when morning came and devoured it.
I find it perfect, two jewels! Marianne moved me deeply and two or
three times I wept. I recognized myself in the character of Pierre.
Certain pages seemed to me fragments of my own memoirs, supposing I
had the talent to write them in such a way! How charming, poetic and
true to life all that is! La Tour de Percemont pleased me extremely.
But Marianne literally enchanted me. The English think as I do, for
in the last number of the Athenaeum there is a very fine article
about you. Did you know that? So then, for this time, I admire you
completely and without the least reserve.
There you are, and I am very glad of it. You have never done
anything to me that was not good; I love you tenderly!
CCCXI. TO GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Sunday, Nohant, 5th April, 1876.
Victor Borie is in Italy, what must I write him? Are you the man to
go to find him and explain the affair to him? He is somewhere near
Civita-Vecchia, very much on the go and perhaps not easy to catch up
with.
I am sure that he would receive you with open arms, for, although a
financier to his finger-tips he has remained very friendly and nice
to us. He does not tell us if he is on his mountain of alum for
long. Lina is writing to him and will know soon, shall she tell him
that you are disposed to go to meet him, or that you will wait until
his return to Paris? anyway until the 20th of May he will get
letters addressed to him at the Hotel Italy in Florence. We shall
have to be on the watch, for he writes AT LONG INTERVALS.
I have not the time to say any more to you today. People are coming
in. I have read Fromont et Risler; I charge you to thank M. Daudet,
to tell him that I spent the night in reading it and that I do not
know whether I prefer Jack or Risler; it is interesting, I might
almost say GRIPPING.
I embrace you and I love you, when will you give me some Flaubert to
read?