Pierre et Jean (Peter and John)

Front matter

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Introduction

“the novel.”

I have no intention of pleading here for the little novel that follows. On the contrary, the ideas that I shall endeavor to make plain, may rather attract criticism on the style of psychological study which I have undertaken in Pierre 'and Jean.

I wish to give my attention to the novel in general.

I am not the only one to whom the same reproach has been addressed by the same critics, each time a new book has appeared.

In the midst of eulogistic phrases, I invariably find this one from the same pens :

“The greatest fault of this work is

that, properly speaking, it is not a novel.’^ 13

We might reply' to this by the same argument :

“ The greatest fault of the writer who does me the honor of judging my work is that he is not a critic.’^

What, in fact, are the essential characteristics of the critic ?

He must, without prejudices, without preconceived opinions, without the ideas of any particular school, without connections with any class of artist, understand, distinguish and explain the most adverse tendencies, the most contrary temperaments, and admit the most diversified researches of art.

Bov ary, Adolphe, M. de C amors, L’Assommoir, Sappho, etc., still dares to write: “This is a novel and that is not,” seems to me endowed with a perspicacity that very much resembles incompetency.

Generally this critic understands a novel, as consisting of an adventure more or less probable, arranged in the style of a drama in three acts; the first containing the exposition, the second the action, and the third the denouement.

This style of composition is perfectly admirable on condition that all others should be accepted as well.

Do any rules for writing a novel exist, outside of which a written narrative should bear another name ?

If Don Quixote is a novel, is Le Rouge et le Noir another ? If Monte Cristo is a novel, is D A ssornmoir one also } Can a comparison be established between the Elective Affinities Goethe, the Three Musketeers of Dumas, Madame Bovary by Flaubert, M. de Camors by M. O.

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PIERRE ET JEA.V

Feuillet and Germinal by M. Zola? Which of these works is a novel ? What are those famous rules ? Whence do they come ? Who established them ? In virtue of what principle, of what authority, and of what course of reasoning ?

It appears, however, that these critics know in a sure and indubitable manner what constitutes a novel, and what distinguishes it from another work which is not one. This signifies simply that, without being producers, they have a leaning toward one school, and that they reject, as novelists themselves do, all the works conceived and executed outside of their own esthetics.

An intelligent critic should, on the contrary, seek for everything that least resembles the novels already written, and induce young authors to venture into new paths as much as possible.

All writers, Victor Hugo, as well as M. Zola, have persistently claimed the absolute and indisputable right of composing, that is, to imagine or observe, according to their personal conception of art. Talent comes of originality, which is a special manner of thinking, seeing, understanding and judging. Now, the critic who pretends to define the novel according to the ideas he has formed from his favorite novels, and to establish certain invariable rules of composition, will always combat the genius of an artist who introduces a new style. A critic who would truly deserve the name should be simply an analyst without tendencies, without preferences, without passions, and, like a judge in painting, should take note only of the artistic value of the object of art submitted to him. His comprehension, open to everything, should so completely absorb his personality that he could appreciate and even praise the very books which, as a man, he does not like, but which he should understand as a judge.

But most critics are, after all, only i8 readers, and the result is, that they often find fault without reason, or praise us without reserve and without measure.

The reader, who seeks in a book merely to satisfy the natural tendencies of his mind, demands that the writer should respond to his predominating taste, and invariably qualifies as remarkable or well written, the work wherein he finds the passage that pleases his idealistic, gay, jovial, sad, dreamy, or positive imagination.

In fact, the public is composed of numerous groups, who cry out to us:

“ Console me.”

” Amuse me.”

“ Sadden me.”

“ Move me.”

“Make me dream.”

“ Make me tremble.”

“ Make me weep.”

“ Make me think.”

A few superior minds alone ask of the artist :

“Make us something beautiful, in whatever form you wish, according to your temperament.”

The artist tries, succeeds or fails.

The critic should appreciate the result only according to the nature of the effort, and he has no right to consider the tendencies.

This has already been written a thousand times, but it must be repeated again.

After the literary schools, which have endeavored to give us a deformed, superhuman, poetic, tender, charming or superb vision of life, has come a realistic or naturalistic school, which professes to show us the truth, nothing but the truth and the whole truth.

We must admit, with equal interest, these theories of art, that differ so widely, and judge the works they produce solely from the point of view of their artistic value, by accepting, a priori, the general ideas which gave them birth.

To contest the right of a writer to produce a poetic or a realistic work, is to wish to force him to modify his temperament, to challenge his originality, to not permit him to use the eye and intelligence which nature has given him.

To reproach him of seeing things, beautiful or ugly, small or heroic, graceful or sinister, is to reproach him of being conformed in such or such manner, and of not having a vision concurrent with our own.

Let us leave him free to understand, to observe, to conceive as he pleases, provided he is an artist. Let us become poetically exalted to judge an idealist, and let us prove to him that his dream is mediocre, common-place, not sufficiently foolish or magnificent ; but, if we judge a naturalist, let us show him where the difference lies between truth in life and truth in books.

It it evident that schools so different must use absolutely contrary methods of compositions

The novelist who transforms the constant, brutal, and displeasing truth, to draw from it an exceptional and stirring adventure, without perceptibly exaggerating probability, must manipulate events at his will, and prepare and arrange them to please and move the reader. The plan of his novel is but a series of ingenious combinations leading adroitly to the denouement. The incidents are disposed and graduated toward the culminating point and final effect, which is a capital and decisive event, satisfying all the curiosities awakened at the beginning, placing a barrier to further interest, and terminating the related narrative so completely, that we feel no desire to know what will become of the most interesting personages on the morrow.

The novelist who, on the contrary, pretends to give us an exact picture of life, must carefully avoid all series of events that might appear exceptional. His aim is, not to relate a narrative to amuse or rouse our sympathies, but to force us to think, to understand the deep and hidden meaning of events. By dint of having seen and meditated, he looks on the universe, things, facts, and men in a certain way peculiar to him, and which is the result of the ensemble of his observations and mature reflections. It is that personal vision of the world, which he tries to communicate to us by reproducing it in a book. To move us, as he himself has been, by the spectacle of life, he must reproduce it before our eyes with a scrupulous exactness. He must, therefore, compose his work in a manner so skillful, so dissimulated, and of so simple an appearance, that it is impossible to perceive and indicate the plan, or discover his intentions.

Instead of planning an adventure and developing it in such a manner as to render it interesting to the denouement, he will take his personage or personages at a certain period of their existence, and conduct them by natural transitions to the following period. He will, in that manner, indicate how the mind is modified under the influence of surrounding circumstances, or how sentiments and passions are developed; how we love or hate; how we combat in all social centers; how business interests, money interests, family or political interests, continually struggle against each other.

The hability of his plan will, therefore, consist, not in the emotion or the charm, in an attractive beginning or in an exciting catastrophe, but in the skillful grouping of constant little facts, from which the definitive sense of the work will disengage itself. If ten years of life require three hundred pages to show its particular and characteristic significance in the midst of the beings thq^t surrounded it, he must know how to eliminate from the innumerable and daily small occurrences, all those that are useless, and place in a strong light, in a special manner, all those that would have remained unseen by less keen-sighted observers, and which give to his book its weight and value.

We understand that such a manner of composing, so different from the old process visible to all eyes, often misleads the critic, and he fails to discover all the fine, secret and invisible threads employed by certain modern artists, instead of the unique cord called “Plot.”

In brief, if the “Novelist” of yesterday chose and related the crisis of life, the painful states of soul and heart, the novelist of to-day writes the history of the heart, of the soul, and of the intelligence in their normal state. To produce the effect aimed at, that is, the emotion of simple reality, and to disengage the artistic teachings that he wishes to draw from it, that is, the revelation of what is really the contemporaneous man before his eyes, he must employ facts of irrefutable and incontestable truth only.

But, in placing ourselves at the same point of view as these realistic artists, we should discuss and contest their theory, which may be summed up in these words : “Nothing but the truth, and the whole truth.”

Their intention being to disengage the philosophy of certain constant and current facts, they must often alter those events to th^ advantage of probability and to the detriment of truth, for Le vrai pent qudque fois nitre pas vraisemblable. The realist, if he be an artist, will endeavor, not to show us the common-place photography of life, but to give us the vision more complete, more striking, more convincing than reality itself.

To relate everything would be impossible, for it would require at least one volume for each day, to enumerate the multitude of insignificant incidents that fill up our existence.

A choice is thus imposed, — this is the first stroke at the theory of the whole truth.

Life, moreover, is composed of things, the most different, the most unforeseen, the most contradictory, and the most incongruous; it is brutal, without sequel, without links, full of inexplicable .catastrophes, illogical and contradictory, which should be classed in the chapter of miscellaneous facts.

This is why the artist, having chosen his theme, will take from this life, encumbered by hazard and futilities, only the characteristic details, useful to his subject, and reject all the rest.

Let us take one example among a thousand. The number of people who die each day, through accident, is considerable in the world. But can we make a tile fall on the head of the principal personage, or throw him under the wheels of a carriage in the middle of a narrative, under the pretext that we must furnish an accident t

Life, moreover, leaves everything in the same conditions, precipitates facts or

PIERRE ET JEAAT drags them on indefinitely. Art, on the contrary, consists in using precautions and preparations, in managing clever and dissimulating transitions, in placing in full light, by the mere tact of the composition, the essential events, and to give to the others the suitable degree of relief, according to their importance, to produce the profound sensation of the special truth that we wish to demonstrate.

To make truth, therefore, consists in giving the complete illusion of truth, according to the ordinary logic of facts, and not to servilely transcribe them in the pell-mell of their succession.

I conclude, therefore, that talented realists ought rather to call themselves illusionists.

What childishness, moveover, to believe in reality since we each carry our own in our thoughts and in our organs. Our eyes, our ears, our sense of smell, our different tastes, create as many realities as there are men in the world. And our minds, which receive the instructions of these diversely impressed organs, understand, analyze and judge, as if each of us belonged to a different race.

Each of us, therefore, simply creates for himself an illusion of the world, a poetic, sentimental, joyous, melancholic, filthy or lugubrious illusion, according to his nature. And the writer has no other mission than to faithfully reproduce this illusion, with all the tactics of art which he has learned, and of which he can dispose.

Illusion of the beautiful, which is a human convention! Illusion of the ugly, which is a changing opinion! Illusion of the real, never immutable! Illusion of the ignoble, which attracts so many beings! The great artists are those who impose on humanity their particular illusions.

We should, therefore, never become angry against any theory, since each of them is simply the generalized expression of a temperament which is analyzing itself.

There are two in particular, which have often been discussed by opposing one to the other, instead of admitting the one and the other — that of the novel of pure analysis, and that of the objective novel. The partisans of analysis demand that the writer should undertake to indicate the least evolutions of the mind, and all the most secret motives that determine our actions, while according to the fact itself only a secondary importance.

It is the objective point, a simple limit, the pretext of the novel. According to their theory we should write those precise and dreamy works, wherein imagination confounds itself with observation, in the manner of a philosopher compiling a psychological treatise, exposing the causes by taking them from their most distant origin, giving all the “whys” of all the impulses, and discerning all the reactions of the soul, acting under the impulsion of interests, passions or instincts.

The partisans of objectivity (what a vile word) pretend, on the contrary, to give us the exact representation of what takes place in life, carefully avoiding all complicated explanations, all dissertations on motives, and limiting themselves to bringing before our eyes the personages and events.

For them, psychology should be hidden in the book, as it is hidden in reality under the facts of existence.

The novel conceived in that manner gains in interest, in movement, in color and in liveliness.

Thus, instead of explaining at length the state of mind of the personage, the objective writers seek the action or gesture which a man in a determined situation would inevitably accomplish in that particular state of mind. And they make him conduct himself, from one end of the volume to the other, in such a manner that all his actions, all his movements, may be the reflection of his inner- self, of all his thoughts, of all his impulses or of all his hesitations. Thus, they hide, instead of exposing, the psychology, making it the carcass of the work, as the invisible frame-work of bone is the carcass of the human body. The artist who paints our portrait does not show our skeleton.

It also seems to me, that the novel executed in this manner gains in sincerity. It is, to begin with, more lifelike, for the people whom we see moving around us do not tell us what motives they are obeying.

We must, then, take into account that if, by dint of observing men, we can determine their nature with sufficient accuracy to foresee the manner in which they would act in almost all circumstances, if we can say with precision; “Such a man of such temperament in such a case would do this,” it does not follow that we could determine, one by one, all the secret evolutions of his thoughts; all the mysterious solicitations of his instinct, which are not similar to our own; all the confused incitations of his nature, the organs, the nerves, the flesh and the blood of which differ from our own.

Whatever may be the genius of a weak, gentle, passionless man, devoted solely to science and work, he can never transport himself completely enough in the soul and body of an exuberant, sensual and violent man, carried away by his desires, and even by his vices, to understand and indicate the impulses and secret sensations of a being so different, even though he can foresee and relate all the actions of his life.

In brief, he who writes pure psychology can only substitute himself for all his personages in the different situations in which he places them, for it is impossible for him to change his organs, which are the sole intermediaries between exterior life and ourselves, imposing on us their perceptions, determining our sensibilities and creating in us a soul essentially different from all those that surround us. Our vision, our knowledg^e of the world, acquired by the help of our senses, our ideas on life, can only be transported in part into all the personages whose inner and unknown nature we pretend to unveil. It is, then, always ourselves whom we depict under the guise of a king, of an assassin, a thief or an honest man, of a courtesan or a nun, of a young girl or a market-woman, for we are obliged to place the problem thus : If I were a king, an assassin, a thief, a courtesan, a nun, a young girl or a market-woman, what would I do, what would I think, how would I act? We, therefore, diversify our personages merely by changing the age, sex, social situation and all the circumstances in the life of that “self” whom nature has surrounded with an impassable barrier of organs.

The skill consists in hiding this '"self” from the reader under all the divers masks that serve to hide it.

But if, from the point of view of com-

P TERRE ET JEAN plete exactitude, the pure psychological analysis is contestable, it may, nevertheless, produce works of art as beautiful as any other method of work. To-day we have the symbolists. Why not ? Their artistic dream is respectable, and what is particularly interesting in them is, that they know and proclaim the extreme difficulty of art.

In fact, one must be very foolish, very audacious, very conceited or very stupid to write nowadays. After so many masters of such varied natures, of such manifold genius, what is left to do that has not been done, what is left to say that has not been said ? Who amongst us can boast of having written a page, a phrase, that can not be found, almost the same, somewhere else. When we read, we, so saturated with French writings that our entire body gives us the impression of being a dough made of words, do we ever find a line, a thought, which is not familiar, of which we have not, at least, a confused presentiment ?

The man who only seeks to amuse his readers by means already known, writes with confidence — in the candor of his mediocrity — works destined for the ignorant and idle crowd. But they on whom weigh all the past ages of literature, they whom nothing satisfies, whom everything disgusts, because they dream of something higher, to whom everything seems already despoilt, whose works always give them the impression of a useless and common labor, conclude by judging literary art as a mysterious and indiscernable thing, which a few pages from the great masters scarcely unveil to us.

Twenty verses, twenty phrases, read at once thrill us to the heart like a surprising revelation ; but the verses that follow resemble all other verses, the prose that flows after it resembles all other prose.

Men of genius are, no doubt, free from these anxieties and torments, because they carry within them an irresistible creative force. They do not judge themselves. The others, we, who are simply tenacious and conscientious workers, can struggle against invincible discouragement only by continued efforts.

Two men by their simple and luminous teachings have given me this force, of always attempting — Louis Bouilhet and Gustave Flaubert.

If I speak of them and of myself here, it is that their advice, summed up in a few lines, may perhaps be useful to.some young men who are less confident in themselves than beginners in literature usually are.

Bouilhet — whom I knew first, somewhat intimately, about two years before I gained the friendship of Flaubert — by dint of repeating to me that a hundred verses, perhaps less, sufficed to make the reputation of an artist, provided they are irreproachable, and contain the essence of talent and the originality of a man, even of the second order, made me understand that continual work and profound knowledge of the metier can, on a day of lucidity, of power and impulse, by the happy meeting of a subject concurring with the tendencies of our mind, give birth to a short work, unique and as perfect as we can produce.

I then understood, that the best known writers have seldom left more than one volume, and that, before all, we must have that chance of finding and discerning, in the midst of the multitude of matters presented to otir choice, that which will absorb all our faculties, all our talent, all our artistic power.

Later, Flaubert, whom I sometimes met, took a liking to me. I ventured to submit a few essays to him. He kindly read them, and said: “I do not know if you have talent. What you have shown me proves that you have a certain degree of intelligence, but do not forget this.

young man, that talent — to quote the words of Buffon — is merely long patience. Work ! ”

I did work, and returned to him frequently, understanding that I pleased him, for he laughingly called me his disciple.

For seven years I wrote verses, I wrote stories, I wrote novels, I even wrote a detestable drama. Of all this nothing remains. The master read all, then at breakfast the following Sunday, developed his criticism and impressed on me, little by little, two or three principles which are the total of his long and patient teachings. “ If we have an originality, he said, we must before all disengage it; if we have none, we must acquire one.”

“ Talent is a long patience.” We must look on what we wish to express long enough and with enough attention to discover an aspect that has not been seen and portrayed by another. There is, in everything, something unexplored, because we always use our eyes with the recollection of what has been thought before on the subject we are contemplating. The least thing contains something of the unknown. Let us find it. To describe a fire that flames and a tree in a field, we must remain facing that fire and that tree until they no longer resemble, to us, any other tree or fire.

This is the way we became original.

Having, moreover, impressed upon me that there is not, in the entire world, two grains of sand, two flies, two hands, or two noses absolutely alike, he forced me to describe in a few phrases, a being or an object in a manner that would clearly particularize it and distinguish it from all the other beings or all the other objects of the same race or of the same species.

“ When you pass a grocer sitting at his door,” he would say to one, “ajanitor smoking his pipe, a cab-stand, show me that grocer and that janitor, their attitude, all their physical appearance, indicate by the skill of the picture, all their moral nature, in such a manner that I cannot confound them with any other grocer or any other janitor, and let me see by a single word in what the cab-horse differs from the fifty others that follow and precede it.”

I have developed, elsewhere, his ideas on style. They are closely connected with the theory of observation that I have just explained.

Whatever may be the thing we wish to say, there is but one word to express it, one verb to animate it, and but one adjective to qualify it. We must, then, seek until we have discovered this word, this verb, and this adjective, and never be content with very nearly, never have recourse to artifice, however dexterous, or to buffooneries of language to avoid difficulty.

We can interpret and indicate the most subtile things by applying this line of Boileau :

There is no necessity for the odd, complicated, limitless and Chinese vocabulary, which is imposed on us nowadays under the name of artistic writing, to impress all the shades of thought ; but we must discern with an extreme lucidity, all the modifications of the value of a word according to the place it occupies. ^Let us have fewer nouns, verbs and adjectives of almost indiscernible meaning, but more of different phrases, diversely constructed, ingeniously turned, full of sonority and clever rhythms. Let us strive to be excellent stylists, rather than mere collectors of rare terms.

It is, in fact, more difficult to turn the phrase at our will, to make it say everything, even what it does not express, to fill it with hidden meanings, secret and not formulated intentions, than to invent new expressions, or seek in the depths of old forgotten books all those which have lost their use and signification, and which are for us like dead verbs.

The French language, moreover, is a pure water which affected writers never have and never can trouble. Each century has thrown into this limpid current, its styles, its pretentious archai'sme, and its preciosities, and nothing of these useless attempts, of these powerless efforts now survive. The nature of this is to be clear, logical and nervous. It does not allow itself to be weakened, obscured or corrupted.

Those who to-day draw characters, without attention to abstract terms, those who pour rain or hail on the cleanness of window panes, can also cast stones at the . simplicity of their fellow-laborers! They may, perhaps, strike their confreres, who have a body, but they cannot reach simplicity, which has none.

Guy de Maupassant.

Chapter 1

“Zut!” suddenly cried old Roland, furiously drawing in his line over the bow of the boat, where he had sat motionless for over a quarter of an hour, with his eyes fixed intently on the waters. “Not even a bite since noon.”

“Well! Well! Gerome !” exclaimed Madame Roland, starting up from her nap in the stern of the boat, where she was seated beside Mme. Rosemilly, who had been invited to this fishing party.

“They don’t bite any more,” growled the old man, impatiently. “ Men should always go fishing by themselves; it takes women too long to get ready.”

His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who were seated, one on the larboard, and the other on the starboard side, each with a line rolled around his index finger, laughed boisterously at their father’s impatience, while Jean called out to him:

“You are not very flattering to our guest, father.”

“ I beg your pardon, Madame Rosemilly,” stammered the old man, confusedly, “ but I am made that way. I invite ladies because I enjoy their company, and then, as soon as I feel the water under me, I only think of fishing,”

“ You have, nevertheless, quite a number of fine fish, ” murmured Mme. Roland, now fully awakened, and looking tenderly at the vast expanse of sky and water.

But her husband shook his head negatively, casting, however, a satisfied look at the basket in which the fish captured by the three men were still palpitating with life; their extended fins and the soft noise of their slippery scales as they came in contact, giving evidence of their powerless and feeble efforts to escape from the deadly atmosphere.

Old Roland placed the basket between his knees, tipped it forward to see those in the bottom, thereby increasing their agonizing struggles; and a strong odor from their bodies, mingled with the wholesome smell of sea water, came up from the wellfilled basket.

The old fisherman inhaled this delightedly, as if they were roses, and exclaiming:

“ How nice and fresh they are! ” then continued : “ How many did you catch. Doctor? ”

“Oh! not many; three or four only,” replied Pierre, his elder son, a man of thirty, with black side whiskers, trimmed like those of a magistrate, and without moustache or imperial.

“ And you, Jean ?” he asked, turning to his younger son.

Jean, a tall fair-haired young man, with thick whiskers, and much younger than his brother, smiled as he murmured: “About as many as Pierre, four or five.”

They repeated this lie each time they went out fishing with their father, who was thus easily convinced that he was the most skillful of fishermen, and was delighted beyond measure.