‘_diseased imagination_’ ... no, no, that’s not it. Words betray
one’s meaning. Boris dreams aloud in my presence. Every morning he
consents to remain during one hour in that state of semi-somnolence
in which the images which present themselves to us escape from the
control of our reason. They no longer group and associate themselves
according to ordinary logic, but according to unforeseen affinities;
above all, they answer to a mysterious inward compulsion--which is
the very thing I want to discover; and the ramblings of this child
are far more instructive than the most intelligent analysis of the
most conscious of minds could be. Many things escape the reason, and a
person who should attempt to understand life by merely using his reason
would be like a man trying to take hold of a flame with the tongs.
Nothing remains but a bit of charred wood, which immediately stops
flaming.”
She was again silent and began to turn over the pages of my book.
“How very little you penetrate into the human soul!” she cried; then
she laughed and added abruptly:
“Oh, I don’t mean you in particular; when I say _you_, I mean
novelists in general. Most of your characters seem to be built on
piles; they have neither foundations nor sub-soil. I really think
there’s more truth to be found in the poets; everything which is
created by the intelligence alone is false. But now I am talking of
what isn’t my business.... Do you know what puzzles me in Boris? I
believe him to be exceedingly pure.”
“Why should that puzzle you?”
“Because I don’t know where to look for the source of the evil. Nine
times out of ten a derangement like his has its origin in some sort of
ugly secret.”
“Such a one exists in every one of us, perhaps,” said I, “but it
doesn’t make us all ill, thank Heaven!”
At that Mme. Sophroniska rose; she had just seen Bronja pass by the
window.
“Look!” said she, pointing her out to me; “there is Boris’s real
doctor. She is looking for me; I must leave you; but I shall see you
again, shan’t I?”
For that matter, I understand what Sophroniska reproaches the novel
for not giving her; but in this case, certain reasons of art escape
her--higher reasons, which make me think that a good novelist will
never be made out of a good naturalist.
I have introduced Laura to Mme. Sophroniska. They seem to take to each
other, and I am glad of it. I have fewer scruples about keeping to
myself when I know they are chatting together. I am sorry that Bernard
has no companion of his own age; but at any rate the preparation for
his examination keeps him occupied for several hours a day. I have been
able to start work again on my novel.
III
EDOUARD EXPLAINS HIS THEORY OF THE NOVEL
NOTWITHSTANDING first appearances, and though each of them did his
best, Uncle Edouard and Bernard were only getting on together fairly
well. Laura was not feeling satisfied, either. How should she be?
Circumstances had forced her to assume a part for which she was not
fitted; her respectability made her feel uncomfortable in it. Like
those loving and docile creatures who make the most devoted wives,
she had need of the proprieties to lean on, and felt herself without
strength now that she was without the frame of her proper surroundings.
Her situation as regards Edouard seemed to her more and more false
every day. What she suffered from most and what she found unendurable,
if she let her mind dwell on it, was the thought that she was living
at the expense of this protector--or rather that she was giving him
nothing in exchange--or more exactly, that Edouard asked nothing of
her in exchange, while she herself felt ready to give him everything.
“Benefits,” says Tacitus, through the mouth of Montaigne, “are only
agreeable as long as one can repay them”; no doubt this is only true
of noble souls, but without question Laura was one of these. She, who
would have liked to give, was on the contrary continually receiving,
and this irritated her against Edouard. Moreover when she went over
the past in her mind, it seemed to her that Edouard had deluded her by
awakening a love in her which she still felt strong within her and then
by evading this love and leaving it without an object. Was not that the
secret motive of her errors--of her marriage with Douviers, to which
she had resigned herself, to which Edouard had led her--and then of her
yielding so soon after to the solicitations of the springtime? For she
must needs admit it to herself, in Vincent’s arms it was still Edouard
that she sought. And as she could not understand her lover’s coldness,
she accused herself of being responsible for it, and imagined that she
might have vanquished him, had she had more beauty or more boldness;
and as she could not succeed in hating him, it was herself she
upbraided and depreciated, denying herself all value, and refusing to
allow herself any reason for existing or the possession of any virtue.
Let us add further that this camping-out style of life, necessitated
by the arrangement of the rooms, though it might seem amusing to her
companions, hurt her delicacy in many sensitive places. And she could
see no issue to the situation, which yet was one it would be difficult
to prolong.
The only scrap of comfort and joy Laura was able to find in her present
life, was by inventing for herself the duties of god-mother or elder
sister towards Bernard. The worship of a youth so charming touched her;
the adoration he paid her prevented her from slipping down that slope
of self-contempt and loathing which may lead even the most irresolute
creature to the extremest resolutions. Bernard, every morning that he
was not called off before daybreak by an expedition into the mountains
(for he loved early rising), used to spend two good hours with her
reading English. The examination he was going up for in October was a
convenient excuse.
It cannot be said that his secretarial duties took up much of his
time. They were ill-defined. When Bernard undertook them he imagined
himself already seated at a desk, writing from Edouard’s dictation,
or copying out his manuscripts. Now Edouard never dictated, and his
manuscripts, such as they were, remained at the bottom of his trunk;
Bernard was free every hour of the day; but it only lay with Edouard
to make more calls upon Bernard, who was most anxious to have his
zeal made use of, so that Bernard was not particularly distressed by
his want of occupation, or by the feeling that he was not earning his
living--which, thanks to Edouard’s munificence, was a very comfortable
one. He was quite determined not to let himself be embarrassed by
scruples. He believed, I dare not say in Providence, but at any rate
in his star, and that a certain amount of happiness was due to him, as
the air is to the lungs which breathe it; Edouard was its dispenser
in the same way as the sacred orator, according to Bossuet, is the
dispenser of divine wisdom. Moreover Bernard considered the present
state of affairs as merely temporary, and was convinced that some day
he would be able to acquit his debt, as soon as he could bring to the
mint the uncoined riches whose abundance he felt in his heart. What
vexed him more was that Edouard made no demand upon certain gifts which
he felt within himself and which it seemed to him Edouard lacked. “He
doesn’t know how to make use of me,” thought Bernard, who thereupon
checked his self-conceit and wisely added: “Worse luck!”
But then what was the reason of this uncomfortable feeling between
Edouard and Bernard? Bernard seems to me to be one of those people
who find their self-assurance in opposition. He could not endure that
Edouard should have any ascendancy over him and, rather than yield
to his influence, rebelled against it. Edouard, who never dreamed
of coercing him, was alternately vexed and grieved to feel him so
restive and so constantly on the alert to defend--or, at any rate,
to protect--himself. He came to the pitch of doubting whether he
had not committed an act of folly in taking away with him these two
beings, whom he seemed only to have united in order that they should
league together against him. Incapable of penetrating Laura’s secret
sentiments, he took her reserve and her reticence for coldness. It
would have made him exceedingly uncomfortable if he had been able to
see more clearly; and Laura understood this; so that her unrequited
love spent all its strength in keeping hidden and silent.
Tea-time found them as a rule all assembled in the big sitting-room;
it often happened that, at their invitation, Mme. Sophroniska joined
them, generally on the days when Boris and Bronja were out walking. She
left them very free in spite of their youthfulness; she had perfect
confidence in Bronja and knew that she was very prudent, especially
with Boris, who was always particularly amenable with her. The
country was quite safe; for of course there was no question of their
adventuring on to the mountains, or even of their climbing the rocks
near the hotel. One day when the two children had obtained leave to go
to the foot of the glacier, on condition they did not leave the road,
Mme. Sophroniska, who had been invited to tea, was emboldened, with
Bernard’s and Laura’s encouragement, to beg Edouard to tell them about
his next novel--that is, if he had no objection.
“None at all; but I can’t tell you its story.”
And yet he seemed almost to lose his temper when Laura asked him
(evidently a tactless question) what the book would be like?
“Nothing!” he exclaimed; then, immediately and as if he had only been
waiting for this provocation: “What is the use of doing over again what
other people have done already, or what I myself have done already, or
what other people might do?”
Edouard had no sooner uttered these words than he felt how improper,
how outrageous and how absurd they were; at any rate they seemed to
him improper and absurd; or he was afraid that this was how they would
strike Bernard.
Edouard was very sensitive. As soon as he began talking of his work,
and especially when other people made him talk of it, he seemed to lose
his head.
He had the most perfect contempt for the usual fatuity of authors; he
snuffed out his own as well as he could; but he was not unwilling to
seek a reinforcement of his modesty in other people’s consideration; if
this consideration failed him, modesty immediately went by the board.
He attached extreme importance to Bernard’s esteem. Was it with a view
to conquering this that, when Bernard was with him, he set his Pegasus
prancing? It was the worst way possible. Edouard knew it; he said so to
himself over and over again; but in spite of all his resolutions, as
soon as he was in Bernard’s company, he behaved quite differently from
what he wished, and spoke in a manner which immediately appeared absurd
to him (and which indeed was so). This might almost make one suppose
that he loved Bernard?... No; I think not. But a little vanity is
quite as effectual in making us pose as a great deal of love.
“Is it because the novel, of all literary _genres_, is the freest,
the most _lawless_,” held forth Edouard, “... is it for that very
reason, for fear of that very liberty (the artists who are always
sighing after liberty are often the most bewildered when they get it),
that the novel has always clung to reality with such timidity? And I am
not speaking only of the French novel. It is the same with the English
novel; and the Russian novel, for all its throwing off of constraints,
is a slave to resemblance. The only progress it looks to is to get
still nearer to nature. The novel has never known that ‘formidable
erosion of contours,’ as Nietzsche calls it; that deliberate avoidance
of life, which gave style to the works of the Greek dramatists,
for instance, or to the tragedies of the French XVIIth century. Is
there anything more perfectly and deeply human than these works? But
that’s just it--they are human only in their depths; they don’t pride
themselves on appearing so--or, at any rate, on appearing real. They
remain works of art.”
Edouard had got up, and, for fear of seeming to give a lecture, began
to pour out the tea as he spoke; then he moved up and down, then
squeezed a lemon into his cup, but, nevertheless, continued speaking:
“Because Balzac was a genius, and because every genius seems to bring
to his art a final and conclusive solution, it has been decreed that
the proper function of the novel is to rival the _état-civil_.[4]
Balzac constructed his work; he never claimed to codify the novel; his
article on Stendhal proves it. Rival the _état-civil_! As if there
weren’t enough fools and boors in the world as it is! What have I to
do with the _état-civil_? _L’état c’est moi!_ I, the artist;
civil or not, my work doesn’t pretend to rival anything.”
Edouard, who was getting excited--a little factitiously, perhaps--sat
down. He affected not to look at Bernard; but it was for him that he
was speaking. If he had been alone with him, he would not have been
able to say a word; he was grateful to the two women for setting him on.
“Sometimes it seems to me there is nothing in all literature I admire
so much as, for instance, the discussion between Mithridate and his two
sons in Racine; it’s a scene in which the characters speak in a way we
know perfectly well no father and no sons could ever have spoken in,
and yet (I ought to say for that very reason) it’s a scene in which all
fathers and all sons can see themselves. By localizing and specifying
one restricts. It is true that there is no psychological truth unless
it be particular; but on the other hand there is no art unless it
be general. The whole problem lies just in that--how to express the
general by the particular--how to make the particular express the
general. May I light my pipe?”
“Do, do,” said Sophroniska.
“Well, I should like a novel which should be at the same time as true
and as far from reality, as particular and at the same time as general,
as human and as fictitious as _Athalie_, or _Tartuffe_ or
_Cinna_.”
“And ... the subject of this novel?”
“It hasn’t got one,” answered Edouard brusquely, “and perhaps that’s
the most astonishing thing about it. My novel hasn’t got a subject.
Yes, I know, it sounds stupid. Let’s say, if you prefer it, it hasn’t
got _one_ subject ... ‘a slice of life,’ the naturalist school
said. The great defect of that school is that it always cuts its slice
in the same direction; in time, lengthwise. Why not in breadth? Or in
depth? As for me I should like not to cut at all. Please understand;
I should like to put everything into my novel. I don’t want any cut
of the scissors to limit its substance at one point rather than at
another. For more than a year now that I have been working at it,
nothing happens to me that I don’t put into it--everything I see,
everything I know, everything that other people’s lives and my own
teach me....”
“And the whole thing stylized into art?” said Sophroniska, feigning the
most lively attention, but no doubt a little ironically. Laura could
not suppress a smile. Edouard shrugged his shoulders slightly and went
on:
“And even that isn’t what I want to do. What I want is to represent
reality on the one hand, and on the other that effort to stylize it
into art of which I have just been speaking.”
“My poor dear friend, you will make your readers die of boredom,” said
Laura; as she could no longer hide her smile, she had made up her mind
to laugh outright.
“Not at all. In order to arrive at this effect--do you follow me?--I
invent the character of a novelist, whom I make my central figure;
and the subject of the book, if you must have one, is just that very
struggle between what reality offers him and what he himself desires to
make of it.”
“Yes, yes; I’m beginning to see,” said Sophroniska politely, though
Laura’s laugh was very near conquering her. “But you know it’s always
dangerous to represent intellectuals in novels. The public is bored by
them; one only manages to make them say absurdities and they give an
air of abstraction to everything they touch.”
“And then I see exactly what will happen,” cried Laura; “in this
novelist of yours you won’t be able to help painting yourself.”
She had lately adopted in talking to Edouard a jeering tone which
astonished herself and upset Edouard all the more that he saw a
reflection of it in Bernard’s mocking eyes. Edouard protested:
“No, no. I shall take care to make him very disagreeable.”
Laura was fairly started.
“That’s just it; everybody will recognize you,” she said, bursting into
such hearty laughter that the others were caught by its infection.
“And is the plan of the book made up?” enquired Sophroniska, trying to
regain her seriousness.
“Of course not.”
“What do you mean? Of course not!”
“You ought to understand that it’s essentially out of the question for
a book of this kind to have a plan. Everything would be falsified if
anything were settled beforehand. I wait for reality to dictate to me.”
“But I thought you wanted to abandon reality.”
“My novelist wants to abandon it; but I shall continually bring him
back to it. In fact that will be the subject; the struggle between the
facts presented by reality and the ideal reality.”
The illogical nature of his remarks was flagrant--painfully obvious
to everyone. It was clear that Edouard housed in his brain two
incompatible requirements and that he was wearing himself out in the
desire to reconcile them.
“Have you got on far with it?” asked Sophroniska politely.
“It depends on what you mean by far. To tell the truth, of the actual
book not a line has been written. But I have worked at it a great deal.
I think of it every day and incessantly. I work at it in a very odd
manner, as I’ll tell you. Day by day in a note-book, I note the state
of the novel in my mind; yes, it’s a kind of diary that I keep as one
might do of a child.... That is to say, that instead of contenting
myself with resolving each difficulty as it presents itself (and every
work of art is only the sum or the product of the solutions of a
quantity of small difficulties), I set forth each of these difficulties
and study it. My note-book contains, as it were, a running criticism of
my novel--or rather of the novel in general. Just think how interesting
such a note-book kept by Dickens or Balzac would be; if we had the
diary of the _Education Sentimentale_ or of _The Brothers
Karamazof_!--the story of the work--of its gestation! How thrilling
it would be ... more interesting than the work itself....”
Edouard vaguely hoped that someone would ask him to read these notes.
But not one of the three showed the slightest curiosity. Instead:
“My poor friend,” said Laura, with a touch of sadness, “it’s quite
clear that you’ll never write this novel of yours.”
“Well, let me tell you,” cried Edouard impetuously, “that I don’t
care. Yes, if I don’t succeed in writing the book, it’ll be because
the history of the book will have interested me more than the book
itself--taken the book’s place; and it’ll be a very good thing.”
“Aren’t you afraid, when you abandon reality in this way, of losing
yourself in regions of deadly abstraction and of making a novel about
ideas instead of about human beings?” asked Sophroniska kindly.
“And even so!” cried Edouard with redoubled energy. “Must we condemn
the novel of ideas because of the groping and stumbling of the
incapable people who have tried their hands at it? Up till now we have
been given nothing but novels with a purpose parading as novels of
ideas. But that’s not it at all, as you may imagine. Ideas ... ideas,
I must confess, interest me more than men--interest me more than
anything. They live; they fight; they perish like men. Of course it may
be said that our only knowledge of them is through men, just as our
only knowledge of the wind is through the reeds that it bends; but all
the same the wind is of more importance than the reeds.”
“The wind exists independently of the reed,” ventured Bernard. His
intervention made Edouard, who had long been waiting for it, start
afresh with renewed spirit:
“Yes, I know; ideas exist only because of men; but that’s what’s so
pathetic; they live at their expense.”
Bernard had listened to all this with great attention; he was full of
scepticism and very near taking Edouard for a mere dreamer; but during
the last few moments he had been touched by his eloquence and had felt
his mind waver in its breath; “But,” thought Bernard, “the reed lifts
its head again as soon as the wind has passed.” He remembered what he
had been taught at school--that man is swayed by his passions and not
by ideas. In the mean time Edouard was going on:
“What I should like to do is something like the art of fugue writing.
And I can’t see why what was possible in music should be impossible in
literature....”
To which Sophroniska rejoined that music is a mathematical art, and
moreover that Bach, by dealing only with figures and by banishing all
pathos and all humanity, had achieved an abstract _chef d’œuvre_
of boredom, a kind of astronomical temple, open only to the few rare
initiated. Edouard at once protested that, for his part, he thought the
temple admirable, and considered it the apex and crowning point of all
Bach’s career.
“After which,” added Laura, “people were cured of the fugue for a long
time to come. Human emotion, when it could no longer inhabit it, sought
a dwelling place elsewhere.”
The discussion tailed off in an unprofitable argument. Bernard, who
until then had kept silent, but who was beginning to fidget on his
chair, at last could bear it no longer; with extreme, even exaggerated
deference, as was his habit whenever he spoke to Edouard, but with a
kind of sprightliness, which seemed to make a jest of his deference:
“Forgive me, sir,” said he, “for knowing the title of your book, since
I learnt it through my own indiscretion--which however you have been
kind enough to pass over. But the title seemed to me to announce a
story.”
“Oh, tell us what the title is!” said Laura.
“Certainly, my dear Laura, if you wish it.... But I warn you that I may
possibly change it. I am afraid it’s rather deceptive.... Well, tell it
them, Bernard.”
“May I?... _The Counterfeiters_,” said Bernard. “But now
_you_ tell us--who are these Counterfeiters?”
“Oh dear! I don’t know,” said Edouard.
Bernard and Laura looked at each other and then looked at Sophroniska.
There was a long sigh; I think it was drawn by Laura.
In reality, Edouard had in the first place been thinking of
certain of his fellow novelists when he began to think of _The
Counterfeiters_, and in particular of the Comte de Passavant. But
this attribution had been considerably widened; according as the
wind blew from Rome or from elsewhere, his heroes became in turn
either priests or free-masons. If he allowed his mind to follow its
bent, it soon tumbled headlong into abstractions, where it was as
comfortable as a fish in water. Ideas of exchange, of depreciation,
of inflation, etc., gradually invaded his book (like the theory of
clothes in Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_) and usurped the place
of the characters. As it was impossible for Edouard to speak of this,
he kept silent in the most awkward manner, and his silence, which
seemed like an admission of penury, began to make the other three very
uncomfortable.
“Has it ever happened to you to hold a counterfeit coin in your hands?”
he asked at last.
“Yes,” said Bernard; but the two women’s “No” drowned his voice.
“Well, imagine a false ten-franc gold piece. In reality it’s not worth
two sous. But it will be worth ten francs as long as no one recognizes
it to be false. So if I start from the idea that....”
“But why start from an idea?” interrupted Bernard impatiently. “If you
were to start from a fact and make a good exposition of it, the idea
would come of its own accord to inhabit it. If I were writing _The
Counterfeiters_ I should begin by showing the counterfeit coin--the
little ten-franc piece you were speaking of just now.”
So saying, he pulled out of his pocket a small coin, which he flung on
to the table.