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TO MADAME X

Croisset, Wednesday evening, Midnight.

I have taken up the Bovary again, and since Monday have five pages almost done; almost is the word, for it is necessary to take it up again. How difficult it is! I fear that my comices (primary meetings) may be too long; it is a hard place. I have there all the personages of my book in action and in dialogue, mingled with one another, and beyond them all is a great landscape which envelopes them; if I can succeed with it, it will be very symphonic.

Bouilhet has finished the descriptive part of his Fossils. His mastodon ruminating in the moonlight on a prairie is enormously full of poesy and will be, perhaps, to the public, the most effective of all his pieces! There only remains the philosophic part, which is the last. About the middle of next month, he will go to Paris to select a lodging where he can install himself the first of November. Would that I were in his place!

Decidedly, the article by Verdun on Leconte (which I have an idea is Jourdan’s) is more stupid than hostile; I have laughed much at the comparison they make with the beautiful lines of the Fall of an Angel; what bearish politeness! As for the Indian Poems and the piece about Dies iræ, not a word. There is a certain ingenuousness about them, but why call the sperchius, sperkhios? That seems to me a true janoterie. What has become of the good Leconte, – is he progressing with his Celtic poem?

I have been re-reading some of Boileau, or rather all of Boileau, and with my pencil on the margin. This seems to me truly strong; one does not tire of what is well written, for style is life! It is the blood of the thought! Boileau has a little river, straight, not deep, but admirably limpid and well within its banks; and that is the reason why the waters have not dried up; nothing is lost of what he wishes to say. But how much art he has used and with so little effort!

Within the next two or three years, I intend to re-read attentively all the French classics and to annotate them; this is work that will serve me in my prefaces (my work of literary critic, you know); I wish to state there the insufficiency of schools as they are, and to declare plainly that we make no claim to being one of them, we outsiders, nor is it necessary to be one of them. On the contrary, we are in the line of transmission; that seems to me strictly exact; it reassures and encourages me. What I admire in Boileau is what I admire in Hugo; and where one has been good, the other is excellent. There is only one standard of beauty; it is the same everywhere, although under different aspects, and more or less coloured by the reflections that dominate it. Voltaire and Chateaubriand, for example, were mediocre for the same reasons, etc. I shall try to make it seen why the æsthetic critic is so much behind the historic and scientific critic; he has never had any base. The knowledge that is wanting is that of the anatomy of style; to know how a phrase is constructed, and where it should be attached. They study manikins and translations with professors, – imbeciles incapable of holding the instrument of the science they teach (I mean the pen), and the result is, they lack life!

Love! Love! the secret of the good God which does not easily give itself up, – the soul, without which nothing is understood.

When I have finished that (and the Bovary and Anubis first of all), I shall without doubt, enter into a new phase, and it seems slow getting there; I, who write so slowly, am gnawed by my plans. I wish to produce two or three long, epic antiques – romances in a grandiose setting, where the action may be forcefully fertile and the details rich in themselves, and luxurious and tragic as a whole; books of grand mural painting, of heroic size.

There was in the Revue de France (a fragment by Michelet upon Danton) a judgment of Robespierre that pleased me much; it stamped him as being in himself a government; and it was for that reason that all Republican governmental maniacs loved him. Mediocrity cherishes rules, but I hate them. I feel myself against them and against all restrictions, corporations, caste, hierarchy, levels, and droves, with an execration that fills my soul; it is on this side, perhaps, that I comprehend the martyr.

Adieu, beautiful ex-democrat.

TO MADAME X

Croisset, Wednesday, Midnight.

Have you still your tooth? Take steps, then, immediately to have it removed. There is nothing in the world worse than physical pain; and it is worse than death for a man, as Montaigne says, “to put himself under the skin of a calf to escape it.” Pain has this evil: it makes us feel life too much; it gives us, as it were, a proof of malediction to ourselves which weighs upon us; it humiliates us, and that is sad for beings that are sustained solely by their pride.

Certain natures suffer not so much, and people without nerves are happy; but of how many things are they not deprived? According as one rises in the scale of being, the nervous faculty increases, that is, the faculty for suffering. Are to suffer and to think the same thing, then? Is genius, after all, only a refinement of pain, that is to say, a meditation of the objective through the soul?

The sadness of Molière came wholly from the human stupidity which he felt contained in himself; he suffered from the Diaforus and Tartuffes which passed before the eyes of his brain. Do you not suppose that the soul of a Veronese imbibes colour like a piece of stuff plunged into the boiling vat of a dyer? All things appear to him as if magnifying glasses were before his eyes. Michael-Angelo said that marble trembled at his approach; what is sure is, that he himself trembled when he approached marble. Mountains, for this man, had souls; they were of a corresponding nature and there was a sympathy between them like that between analogous elements. And this should establish, I know not where or how, some kind of volcanic train that would make poor human implements explode.

I find myself nearly half through my comices. I have made fifteen pages this month, not finished them, – but whether they are good or bad, I know not. How difficult dialogue is when one especially wishes it to have character; to paint by dialogue, and keep it lively, precise, and distinguished while it remains commonplace is monstrous, and I know of no one who has done this in a book. It is necessary to write the dialogue in comedy, while the narrative takes the epic style.

This evening I began again that accursed page about the lamps which I have already written four times; it is enough to make one beat his head against a wall! I am trying to paint (in one page) the gradations of the enthusiasm of a multitude watching a good man as he places many lamps in succession upon the outside of the mayor’s residence; it is necessary to make seen the crowd howling with astonishment and joy, and that without any apparent motive or reflection on the part of the author.

You are astonished at some of my letters, you say; you find in them well-written, pretty malice; well, I write what I think; but when it comes to writing for others, and making them speak as they would have spoken, what a difference! A moment ago, for example, I was trying to show in a dialogue a particular man who must be at the same time good-natured, commonplace, a little vulgar and pretentious! And beyond all this one must make sure that the point is clear. In a word, all the difficulties that we have in writing come from a lack of order. It is a conviction that I now have, that if you are troubled to give the right turn to an expression, it is sure that you have not the idea. A very clear image or sentiment in the head leads to the word on paper. The one flows from the other. “Whatever is well conceived,” etc… I have been re-reading this in old father Boileau; or rather I have read him entirely again (I am now on his prose works), and find him a master man and a great writer rather than a poet. But how stupid they have made him out! What paltry interpreters he has had! The race of college professors, pedants of pale ink, have lived upon him and stretched him thin, chattering over him like a cloud of locusts in a tree. He was not dense! No matter, he was solid of root and well planted, straight and well-poised.

The literary critic seems to me a thing to be made anew; those who have meddled with it are not of the trade, and while perhaps they know the anatomy of a phrase, they have not a drop of the physiology of style.

And about La Servante? Why was I afraid that it would not be long? Because it is better to be too long than too short, although the general defect of poets is the length, as it is of prose writers, which makes the first wearisome and the second disgusting. Lamartine, Eugène Suë… Verse in itself is so convenient for disguising the absence of ideas! Analyse a beautiful passage of verse and another of prose, and you will see which is the fuller. Prose, art aside, must needs bristle with things to be discovered; but in verse the most trifling things appear. Thus we may say in comparison that the most unnoticed idea in a phrase of prose may suffice to make a whole sonnet; often, three or four plans are necessary in a prose work; do we expect to find this in poetry?

I have at this moment a great rage for Juvenal. What style! what style! and what a language Latin is! I also flatter myself that I begin to understand Sophocles a little. As for Juvenal, it goes along smoothly enough, save here and there for some hidden meaning, which I quickly perceive. I should much like to know, and with many details, why Saulcy refused Leconte’s article; what are the motives alleged? This must be interesting for us to know; try to get at the last word of the story.

Try to be better and to work better in Paris than in the country, for you have all your time to yourself. I grudge this poor Leconte his experience. In order to follow this trade as Bouilhet has for four years, eight and ten hours a day (and he had the boarding-house keepers at his back more than Leconte), I believe it is necessary to have the strongest constitution and a cerebral temperament of Titanic endurance. He will have merited glory as much as the other, but one can go to heaven only as a martyr, mounting on high with a crown of thorns, a pierced heart, bleeding hands and radiant face.

Adieu; a thousand kisses for thee!

TO MADAME X

Croisset, Wednesday, Midnight.

My head is on fire, as I remember to have had it after passing long days on horseback, because to-day I have rudely ridden my pen. I have written since half-past twelve without stopping (save for five minutes at one time and another to smoke a pipe, and about an hour for dinner). My comices were such a trial to me that I have broken loose from them, even to the extent of calling them finished, both Greek and Latin; from to-day, I do no more of them; it is too hard! it would be the death of me, and I wish to go to see you.

Bouilhet pretends that it will be the most beautiful scene in the book. What I am sure of is that it will be new and that the intention is good. If ever the effects of a symphony were reported in a book, it will be here. It is necessary for the roar to be heard through it all: the bellowing of the bulls, the sighs of love, and the phrases of the administrators at once distinguishable; and over all the sunlight and the gusts of wind that fan the large bonnets into motion. The most difficult passages of Saint Antony were child’s play in comparison. I have come to nothing dramatic except the interlacing of the dialogue and opposition in characters. I am now in the open; before another week, I shall have passed the knot upon which all depends. My brain seems too small to take in at a single glance this complex situation. I have written ten pages at a time, skipping from one phrase to another.

I am almost sure that Gautier did not see you in the street when he did not salute you; he is like myself, very near-sighted, and with me such things are customary. It would have been a gratuitous insolence, which is not his manner of behaviour; he is a great, good-natured man, very peaceful and very p – . As for espousing the animosities of a friend, I strongly doubt it, from the way in which he spoke to me in the first place. The dedication, in spite of your opinion, proves nothing at all pro or con. The poor boy hangs to everything, tacks his name to everything that is descending this Nile! If anyone could strengthen me in my literary theories, it would be he. The farther off the time when Ducamp followed my advice, the more he goes down; for, between Galaor and the Nil there is a frightful decadence, and in the Livre posthume, which is between them, he is at his lowest, and the force of the young Delessert is no better. Jacotot’s proposition was strangely revolting to me, and you were in the right. You try to be polite to a scamp like that? oh! no, no, no!

What a strange creature you are, dear friend, to send me diatribes still, as my chemist would call them. You ask me for a thing, I say “Yes,” and you still continue to mutter! Oh, well! since you conceal nothing from me (which I approve), I will not conceal from you that this appears to me to be a bad habit with you. You wish to establish between relations of a different nature a bond of which I cannot see the sense or the utility. I do not at all comprehend how the kindnesses you show me when I am in Paris, affect my mother in any way. For three years I have been at the Schlesingers’, where she has never set foot. In the same way, Bouilhet has been coming here every Sunday for eight years to sleep, dine and lunch, but we have not once seen his mother, who comes to Rouen nearly every month; and I assure you that my mother is not at all shocked. Nevertheless, it shall be according to your wish. I promise you, I swear it, that I will explain to her your reasons and that I will pray her to bring it about that you may see each other. As for the outcome, with the best will in the world, I can do nothing; perhaps you will please each other much, perhaps you will displease each other enormously. The good woman is not very approachable, and she has ceased to see not only all her old acquaintances but even her friends; I know only one of them and she does not live in the country.

I have just finished Boileau’s Correspondence; he was less narrow among his intimates than in Apollon. I found there many confidences that corrected his judgments. Télémaque was harshly enough judged, etc., and he avows that Malherbe was not a poet. But have you not noticed of how little value is the correspondence of the great men of that time? It is, in fact, all commonplace. Lyricism in France is a new faculty; I believe that the education of the Jesuits has been a considerable misfortune to letters. They have taken nature away from art. Since the end of the sixteenth century, even to the time of Hugo, all books, however beautiful they may be, smell of the dust of the college. I am now going to re-read all my French and to take a long time to prepare my history of the poetical sentiment of France. It is necessary to write criticism as one would write a natural history, with the absence of moral idea; it is not for us to declaim upon such and such a form, but to show in what it consists, how it is attached to another and by what it lives (æstheticism awaits its Saint-Hilaire, that great man who has shown the legitimacy of monsters). When the human soul is treated with the impartiality with which physical science is treated in the study of material things, an immense step will have been taken; it is the only means by which humanity can put itself above itself. It will then consider itself frankly through the mirror of its works; it will be like God and judge from on high.

Well, I believe that feasible; perhaps, as in mathematics, we have only to find the method. Before all, it will be applicable to art and to religion, which are the two great manifestations of the idea. Suppose one begins thus: the first idea of God being given (the most simple possible), the first poetic sentiment being born (the most slender that could be), each finds at first its manifestation, and easily finds it in the savage infant, etc.; here is, then, the first point: you have already established relations. Now, if one were to continue, making count of all relative contingents, climate, language, etc.; then, from degree to degree one could come up to the art of the future, and the hypothesis of the Beautiful, to a clear conception of its reality, to that ideal type where all our effort should tend; but it is not for me to charge myself with this task, for I have other pens to cut.

Adieu.

TO MADAME X

Croisset, Friday, Midnight, 1854.

I have passed a sad week, not because of my work, but on your account, and because of my thoughts concerning you. I will tell you more privately the personal reflections that were the result of this state of mind.

You believe that I do not love you, my poor dear friend, and say that you are only a secondary consideration in my life. I have hardly any human affection for anyone greater than I feel for you, and as for affection towards woman, I swear to you that you stand first in my heart, – the only one; and I will affirm further: I never have felt a similar love – so prolonged, so sweet, above all, so profound.

As to the question of my immediate installation in Paris, I must give up the plan at once; it is impossible to carry it out now, to say nothing of the money I should have but have not. I know myself well: it would mean the loss of the winter; and perhaps of my book. Bouilhet spoke very easily about it, he, who is fortunate enough to be able to write anywhere, who for twelve years worked in continual confusion. But for me it is like beginning a new life. I am like a pan of milk – in order that cream shall rise, I must not be disturbed! But I say to you again: if you wish that I should come, now, instantly, for a month, two months, four months, cost what it may, I will go. If not, this is my plan: from the present time until I finish Bovary, I will visit you oftener, – eight times in two months, without missing a week, except for that time when you will not be able to see me until the end of January. Then we shall meet regularly through April, June, and September, and in a year I shall be very near the end of my book.

I have talked over all this with my mother. Do not accuse her, even in your heart, because she is on your side. I have concluded pecuniary settlements with her, and she is about to make arrangements for the care of my rooms, my linen, etc., for a year. I have engaged a servant whom I shall take to Paris, so you see that my resolution is not wholly unshakeable, and if I am not buried here under about three hundred pages, you may see me before long installed in the capital. I shall disturb nothing at my rooms, because I always work best there, and I shall probably pass most of my time there, on account of my mother, who is growing old; so reassure yourself, I shall show enough filial affection, and be very good!

Do you know whither the sadness of all this has led me, and what I should like to do? I should like to throw literature to the winds forever, to do nothing more, but go and live with you! I say to myself; Is art worth so much trouble, so much weariness for me, so many tears for her? Of what use is all this effort, perhaps to arrive only at mediocrity in the end? For I own to you that I am not cheerful; I have sad doubts at times regarding myself and my work. I have just re-read Novembre, from curiosity. I did the same thing eleven years ago to-day. I had so far forgotten it that it seemed quite new to me, but it is not good, and the effect is not satisfactory. I see no way of re-writing it; I should be compelled to recast it entirely, because although here and there I find a good phrase, a good comparison, there is no homogeneity of style. Conclusion: Novembre will go the same way with Sentimental Education, and will remain with it indefinitely in my portfolio. Ah, what good sense I showed in my youth not to publish! How I should have blushed for it now!

I am about to write a monumental letter to the “Crocodile.” Hasten to send me yours, because it is several days since my mother wrote to Madame Farmer, and she persecutes me to let her read my letter before I send it away.

I am re-reading Montaigne. It is singular how I am filled with the spirit of this good fellow! Is this a coincidence, or is it because when I was eighteen years old I read only Montaigne during a whole twelvemonth? I am really astonished, however, to find very often in his writings the most delicate analysis of my own sentiments. He has the same tastes, the same opinions, the same manner of living, the same manias. There are persons I admire more than Montaigne, but there is no one I would evoke more gladly, or with whom I could talk better.

Thine ever.