I send you a little work of which it cannot be said, without injustice,
that it has neither head nor tail; since all of it, on the contrary,
is at once head and tail, alternately and reciprocally. Consider, I
pray you, what convenience this arrangement offers to all of us, to
you, to me and to the reader. We can stop where we wish, I my musing,
you your consideration, and the reader his perusal--for I do not hold
the latter's restive will by the interminable thread of a fine-spun
intrigue. Remove a vertebra, and the two parts of this tortuous fantasy
rejoin painlessly. Chop it into particles, and you will see that each
part can exist by itself. In the hope that some of these segments will
be lively enough to please and to amuse you, I venture to dedicate to
you the entire serpent.
I have a little confession to make. It was while glancing, for at
least the twentieth time, through the famous _Gaspard de la Nuit_, by
Aloysius Bertrand (a book known to you, to me, and to a few of our
friends, has it not the highest right to be called famous?), that
the idea came to me to attempt an analogous plan, and to apply to
the description of modern life, or rather of a life modern and more
abstract, the process which he applied in the depicting of ancient
life, so strangely picturesque.
Which of us has not, in his moments of ambition, dreamed the miracle
of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rime, sufficiently supple,
sufficiently abrupt, to adapt itself to the lyrical movements of the
soul, to the windings and turnings of the fancy, to the sudden starts
of the conscience?
It is particularly in frequenting great cities, it is from the flux
of their innumerable streams of intercourse, that this importunate
ideal is born. Have not you yourself, my dear friend, tried to convey
in a chanson the strident cry of the glazier, and to express in a
lyric prose all the grievous suggestions that cry bears even to the
house-tops, through the heaviest mists of the street? But, to speak
truth, I fear that my jealousy has not brought me good fortune. As
soon as I had begun the work, I saw that not only was I laboring far,
far, from my mysterious and brilliant model, but that I was reaching
an accomplishment (if it can be called _an accomplishment_) peculiarly
different--accident of which all others would doubtless be proud,
but which can but profoundly humiliate a mind which considers it the
highest honor of the poet to achieve exactly what he has planned.
Devotedly yours,