Chapter XVIII (2)

Such imaginary cases and the conclusions drawn from them prove only this, that there are men who know that it is not right to steal, to lie, to kill, but who are so loath to stop doing this that they use all the efforts of their mind in order to justify their acts. There does not exist a moral rule for which it would be impossible to invent a situation when it would be hard to decide which is more moral, the departure from the rule or its fulfilment. The same is true of the question of non-resistance to evil: men know that it is bad, but they are so anxious to live by violence, that they use all the efforts of their mind, not for the elucidation of all the evil which is produced by man's recognition of the right to do violence to others, but for the defence of this right. But such invented cases in no way prove that the rules about not lying, stealing, killing are incorrect.

"_Fais ce que doit, advienne que pourra_,--do what is right, and let come what may,"--is an expression of profound wisdom. Each of us knows unquestionably what he ought to do, but none of us knows or can know what will happen. Thus we are brought to the same, not only by this, that we must do what is right, but also by this, that we know what is right, and do not know at all what will come and result from our acts.

The Christian teaching is a teaching as to what a man must do for the fulfilment of the will of Him who sent him into the world. But the reflections as to what consequences we assume to result from such or such acts of men not only have nothing in common with Christianity, but are that very delusion which destroys Christianity.

No one has yet seen the imaginary robber with the imaginary child, and all the horrors, which fill history and contemporary events, have been produced only because men imagine that they can know the consequences of the possible acts.

How is this? Men used to live a beastly life, violating and killing all those whom it was advantageous for them to violate and kill, and even eating one another, thinking that that was right. Then there came a time, when, thousands of years ago, even in the time of Moses, there appeared the consciousness in men that it was bad to violate and kill one another. But there were some men for whom violence was advantageous, and they did not recognize the fact, and assured themselves and others that it was not always bad to violate and kill men, but that there were cases when this was necessary, useful, and even good. And acts of violence and murder, though not as frequent and cruel, were continued, but with this difference, that those who committed them justified them on the ground of usefulness to men. It was this false justification of violence that Christ arraigned. He showed that, since every act of violence could be justified, as actually happens, when two enemies do violence to one another and both consider their violence justifiable, and there is no chance of verifying the justice of the determination of either, it is necessary not to believe in any justifications of violence, and under no condition, as at first was thought right by humanity, is it necessary to make use of them.

It would seem that men who profess Christianity would have carefully to unveil this deception, because in the unveiling of this deception does one of the chief manifestations of Christianity consist. But the very opposite has happened: men to whom violence was advantageous, and who did not want to give up these advantages, took upon themselves the exclusive propaganda of Christianity, and, preaching it, asserted that, since there are cases in which the non-application of violence produces more evil than its application (the imaginary robber who kills the child), we must not fully accept Christ's teaching about non-resistance to evil, and that we may depart from this teaching in the defence of our lives and of those of other men, in the defence of our country, the protection of society from madmen and malefactors, and in many other cases. But the decision of the question as to when Christ's teaching ought to be set aside was left to those very men who made use of violence. Thus Christ's teaching about non-resistance to evil turned out to be absolutely set aside, and, what is worse than all that, those very men whom Christ arraigned began to consider themselves the exclusive preachers and expounders of His teaching. But the light shineth in the dark, and the false preachers of Christianity are again arraigned by His teaching.

We can think of the structure of the world as we please, we may do what is advantageous and agreeable for us to do, and use violence against people under the pretext of doing good to men, but it is absolutely impossible to assert that, in doing so, we are professing Christ's teaching, because Christ arraigned that very deception. The truth will sooner or later be made manifest, and will arraign the deceivers, even as it does now.

Let only the question of the human life be put correctly, as it was put by Christ, and not as it was corrupted by the churches, and all the deceptions which by the churches have been heaped on Christ's teaching will fall of their own accord.

The question is not whether it will be good or bad for human society to follow the law of love and the resulting law of non-resistance, but whether you--a being that lives to-day and is dying by degrees to-morrow and every moment--will now, this very minute, fully do the will of Him who sent you and clearly expressed it in tradition and in your reason and heart, or whether you want to act contrary to this will. As soon as the question is put in this form, there will be but one answer: I want at once, this very minute, without any delay, without waiting for any one, and without considering the seeming consequences, with all my strength to fulfil what alone I am indubitably commanded to do by Him who sent me into the world, and in no case, under no condition, will I, can I, do what is contrary to it, because in this lies the only possibility of my rational, unwretched life.

_January 12, 1896._

INTRODUCTIONS TO BOOKS

1890-94

INTRODUCTIONS TO BOOKS

A. STOCKHAM'S TOKOLOGY

The present book does not belong to the vast number of all kinds of books, from the philosophical and the scientific to the artistic and practical, which, with other words, in other permutations and combinations, say and repeat the old familiar, sickeningly familiar, commonplaces. This book is one of those rare books which do not treat of what everybody talks about and nobody needs, but of what nobody talks about and what is important and necessary for all. It is important for the parents to know how they should act, in order without unnecessary suffering to bring forth uncorrupted and healthy children, and still more important it is for the future children to be born under the best of conditions, as, indeed, it says in one of the mottoes of the book, "To be well-born is the right of every child."

The book is not one of those which are read only that no one may say that he has not read this book, but one of those the reading of which leaves traces, compelling men to change their lives, to mend what is irregular in them, or at least to think of doing so. This book is called _Tokology_, the science of the bearing of children. There are all kinds of strange sciences, but there is no such science, and yet, after the science of how to live and die, this is the most important science. This book has had enormous success in America, and has greatly influenced American mothers and fathers. In Russia it ought to have an even greater influence. The questions about abstaining from tobacco and all kinds of exciting beverages, beginning with alcohol and ending with tea, the questions about eating without the slaughter of living beings, vegetarianism, the questions about sexual continence in domestic life, and many others, which partly have been solved and partly are being worked out, and possess a vast literature in Europe and in America, have not yet been touched upon by us, and so Mrs. Stockham's book is particularly important for us: it at once transfers the reader into a new world of a living human movement.

In this book every thinking woman--for this book is chiefly intended for women--will find first of all an indication that there is absolutely no need of continuing to live as insipidly as her forefathers lived, but that it is possible to find better paths of life, using for this purpose science, the experience of men, and her own free thought, and, as the first model of such a use she will find in this book many precious counsels and hints, which will make life easier for herself, her husband, and her children.

_February 2, 1890._

AMIEL'S DIARY

About a year and a half ago I chanced for the first time to read Amiel's book, _Fragments d'un Journal Intime_. I was struck by the significance and profundity of its contents, the beauty of the exposition, and, above all, the sincerity of this book. As I read it, I marked down the passages which more particularly startled me. My daughter undertook to translate these passages, and thus were formed the extracts from the _Fragments d'un Journal Intime_, that is, the extracts from the extracts of Amiel's diary in several volumes not yet printed, which he conducted from day to day for the period of thirty years.

Henri Amiel was born in Geneva in 1821 and was early left an orphan. Having graduated from the higher courses in Geneva, Amiel went abroad and there passed several years at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. Upon returning in 1849 to his home, he at the age of twenty-eight years received in the Geneva Academy a professorship, at first of æsthetics, and later of philosophy, and this he held until his death.

Amiel's whole life was passed in Geneva, where he died in 1881, having in no way risen above the large number of the most ordinary of professors, who, mechanically compiling their lectures from the latest books in their particular specialties, just as mechanically transmit them to their hearers, and from a still greater number of poets without contents, who furnish these quite useless, but still marketable wares to periodicals that are published in tens of thousands of copies.

Amiel did not have the slightest success either in the learned or in the literary field. As he was approaching old age, he wrote of himself as follows:

"What have I been able to extract from those gifts which were bestowed upon me, from the peculiar conditions of my life of half a century? Are all my collected scribblings, my correspondence, these thousands of intimate pages, my lectures, my articles, my verses, my different notes anything but dry leaves? To whom and for what have I ever been of any use? And will my name live a day longer than I myself, and will it have any significance for any one? Insignificant, empty life! _Vie nulle._"

About Amiel and his diary two well-known French writers, his friend, the well-known critic, E. Scherer, and the philosopher, Caro, have written after his death. Interesting is that sympathetic, but partially patronizing air with which both these authors treat Amiel, when they regret that he was deprived of those qualities which are necessary for the performance of real work. And yet, the real work of these two writers--the critical labours of E. Scherer and the philosophic labours of Caro--will hardly much outlive their authors, while the accidental, not real work of Amiel, his diary, will always remain a live book, necessary for men and influencing them for the good.

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure in which he reveals to us the inner working of his soul, of course, if this work is new, and not previously accomplished. No matter what he may write, a drama, a learned work, a story, a philosophic treatise, a lyric poem, a criticism, a satire, it is only this inner work of his soul which is dear to us, and not the architectural structure in which he, for the most part, and I think, always, distorting them, clothes his thoughts and feelings.

Everything which Amiel poured into a ready mould, his lectures, treatises, poems, was completely dead; but his diary, where, without thinking of the form, he spoke only to himself, full of life, wisdom, instruction, consolation, will for ever remain one of the best books accidentally left to us by such men as Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Epictetus.

Pascal says: "There are but three kinds of people: those who, having found God, serve Him; those who, not having found Him, are busy seeking Him, and those who, not having found Him, none the less do not seek Him.

"The first are sensible and happy, the last are senseless and unhappy, the second are unhappy, but sensible."

I think that the difference established by Pascal between the first and the second, between those who, as he says in another passage, having found God, serve Him with their whole hearts, and those who, not having found Him, seek Him with their whole hearts, is not only not so great as he thought, but does not even exist. I think that those who with their whole hearts and suffering ("_en gemissant_," as Pascal says) seek God, already serve Him. They serve Him with this, that with these sufferings of their seeking they lay out and open for others the road to God, as Pascal himself did in his thoughts, and as Amiel did all his life in his diary.

Amiel's whole life, as it is presented to us in this diary, is full of this seeking after God, which is suffering with the whole heart. The contemplation of this seeking is the more instructive in that it never ceases to be a seeking, never stops, never passes into the consciousness of the acquisition of truth and into instruction. Amiel says neither to himself nor to others: "I now know the truth,--hear me!" On the contrary, it seems to him, as is proper for him who sincerely seeks the truth, that the more he finds out, the more he has still left to know, and he, without stopping, does everything he can for the purpose of finding out more and more of the truth, and so constantly feels his ignorance. He constantly dwells upon what Christianity and the condition of a Christian ought to be, without for a moment dwelling on the thought that Christianity is precisely what he professes, and that he himself personifies the condition of a Christian. And yet his whole diary is full of expressions of the profoundest Christian understanding and feeling. These expressions act most powerfully on the reader on account of their very unconsciousness and sincerity. He speaks with himself, without thinking that he is heard, without trying to appear sure of what he is not sure, without concealing his suffering and his seeking.

It is as though we were present, without the master's knowledge, at the most secret, profound, impassioned inner work of the soul, which is generally concealed from the view of an outsider.

For this reason it is possible to find many statelier and more eloquent expressions of Amiel's religious feeling, but it is hard to find such as are more intimate and more heart-stirring. Shortly before his death, when he knew that his disease might any day end in strangulation, he wrote:

"When you no longer reflect that you have tens of years, one year, a month free before yourself, when you already count tens of hours, and the future night bears in itself the menace of the unexplored, it is evident that you decline art, science, politics, and are satisfied with conversing with yourself, and that is possible until the very end. This inward conversation is the only thing which is left to him who is sentenced to death and whose execution is delayed. He (this condemned man) concentrates upon himself. He no longer emits rays, but only converses with his soul. He no longer acts, but only contemplates.... Like a hare, he returns to his lair to die; and this lair is his conscience, his thought. So long as he can hold a pen and has a moment of solitude, he concentrates himself before this echo of himself and holds converse with God.

"This, by the way, is not a moral investigation, a repentance, a call. It is only the 'amen' of submission.

"My child, give me your heart.

"Renunciation and agreement are less difficult for me than for others, because I want nothing. I should only want not to suffer. Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane asked for the same. Let us do the same that He did. 'Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt,'--and we will wait."

Such he is on the day before his death. He is not less sincere and serious throughout his whole diary, in spite of the elegance, and now and then choiceness of his diction, which became a habit with him. In the course of all the thirty years of his diary he feels that we all so thoroughly forget, that we are all condemned to death and that our execution is only delayed. And it is for this very reason that this book is so sincere, serious, and useful.

_1893._

S. T. SEMÉNOV'S PEASANT STORIES

I have long ago formed a rule to judge every artistic production from three sides: (1) from the side of its contents,--in how far that which is revealed by the artist from a new side is important and necessary for men, because every production is a production of art only when it reveals a new side of life; (2) to what extent the form of the production is good, beautiful, and in correspondence with the contents; and (3) in how far the relation of the artist to his subject is sincere, that is, in how far he believes in what he represents. This last quality always seems to me to be the most important one in an artistic production. It gives to an artistic production its force, makes an artistic production infectious, that is, evokes in the hearer and reader those sensations which the artist experiences.

Seménov possesses this quality in the highest degree.

There is a certain story by Flaubert, translated by Turgénev, _Julian the Merciful_. The last episode of the story, which is intended to be most touching, consists in this, that Julian lies down in the same bed with a leper, whom he warms up with his body. This leper is Christ, who carries Julian off to heaven with Him. All that is told with great mastery, but I always remain very cold during the reading of this story. I feel that the author himself would not have done, and would not even have wished to do so, and I never feel any agitation in reading about this wonderful exploit.

But Seménov describes the simplest story, and it always touches me. A village lad comes to Moscow to find himself a place, and with the influence of a countryman of his, a coachman, who is living with a wealthy merchant, he here gets the position of assistant janitor. This place was formerly occupied by an old man. It was by the advice of his coachman that the merchant sent away the old man and in his place put the young lad. The lad arrives in the evening to begin his work, and in the yard hears the old man's complaints in the servants' room, for having been discharged for no cause whatsoever, only to make room for the young fellow. The lad suddenly feels pity for the old man and is ashamed to have pushed him out. He reflects for a moment, wavers, and finally decides to give up the place, which he needs and which has pleased him so much.

All this is told in such a way that every time when I read it I feel that the author not only would have wished to act similarly in such a case, but would certainly have done so, and his feeling infects me, and I am happy, and it seems to me that I have done something good or would be glad to do something good.

Sincerity is Seménov's chief characteristic. But, besides it, the contents are always significant,--significant, because they deal with the most important class of Russia, the peasantry, which Seménov knows as only a peasant, who himself lives the hard life of a peasant, can know. The contents of his stories are also significant, because in all of them the chief interest is not in the external events, not in the peculiarities of the situations, but in the approximation to and the removal from the ideal of Christian truth, which stands firm and clear in the soul of the author and serves him as a safe measure for the valuation of the worth and importance of human acts.

The form of the stories fully corresponds to the contents: it is serious and simple, and the details are always correct,--there are no false notes. What is particularly good is the figurative language of the persons in the stories, which is frequently quite new, and always artless and strikingly powerful.

_March 23, 1894._

THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT

It was, I think, in the year 1881 that Turgénev, during a visit at my house, took a French novel, under the name of _Maison Tellier_, out of his satchel and gave it to me.

"Read it, if you have a chance," he said, apparently with indifference, just as the year before he had handed me a number of the _Russian Wealth_, in which there was an article by Garshín, who was making his début. Evidently, as in the case of Garshín, so even now, he was afraid he might influence me in one way or another, and wished to know my uninfluenced opinion.

"He is a young French author," he said; "look at it,--it is not bad; he knows you and esteems you very much," he added, as though to encourage me. "As a man he reminds me of Druzhínin. He is just as excellent a son and friend, _un homme d'un commerce sur_, as was Druzhínin, and, besides, he has relations with the labouring people, whom he guides and aids. Even in his relations to women he reminds me of Druzhínin."

And Turgénev told me something remarkable and incredible in regard to Maupassant's relations in this respect.

This time, the year 1881, was for me the most ardent time of the inner reconstruction of my whole world-conception, and in this reconstruction the activity which is called artistic, and to which I formerly used to devote all my strength, not only lost for me the significance formerly ascribed to it, but even became distinctly distasteful to me on account of the improper place which it had occupied in my life and which in general it occupies in the concepts of the men of the wealthy classes.

For this reason I was at that time not in the least interested in such productions as the one which Turgénev recommended to me. But, to oblige him, I read the book which he gave me.

Judging from the first story, _Maison Tellier_, I could not help but see, in spite of the indecent and insignificant subject of the story, that the author possessed what is called talent.

The author was endowed with that particular gift, called talent, which consists in the author's ability to direct, according to his tastes, his intensified, strained attention to this or that subject, in consequence of which the author who is endowed with this ability sees in those subjects, upon which he directs his attention, something new, something which others did not see. Maupassant evidently possessed that gift of seeing in subjects something which others did not see. But, to judge from the small volume which I had read, he was devoid of the chief condition necessary, besides talent, for a truly artistic production. Of the three conditions: (1) a correct, that is, a moral relation of the author to the subject, (2) the clearness of exposition, or the beauty of form, which is the same, and (3) sincerity, that is, an undisguised feeling of love or hatred for what the artist describes,--Maupassant possessed only the last two, and was entirely devoid of the first. He had no correct, that is, no moral relation to the subjects described. From what I had read, I was convinced that Maupassant possessed talent, that is, the gift of attention, which in the objects and phenomena of life revealed to him those qualities which are not visible to other men; he also possessed a beautiful form, that is, he expressed clearly, simply, and beautifully what he wished to say, and also possessed that condition of the worth of an artistic production, without which it does not produce any effect,--sincerity,--that is, he did not simulate love or hatred, but actually loved and hated what he described. But, unfortunately, being devoid of the first, almost the most important condition of the worth of an artistic production, of the correct, moral relation to what he represented, that is, of the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, he loved and represented what it was not right to love and represent, and did not love and did not represent what he ought to have loved and represented. Thus the author in this little volume describes with much detail and love how women tempt men and men tempt women, and even some incomprehensible obscenities, which are represented in _La Femme de Paul_, and he describes the labouring country people, not only with indifference, but even with contempt, as so many animals.

Particularly striking was that lack of distinction between bad and good in the story _Une Partie de Campagne_, in which, in the form of a most clever and amusing jest, he gives a detailed account of how two gentlemen with bared arms, rowing in a boat, simultaneously tempted, the one an old mother, and the other a young maiden, her daughter.

The author's sympathy is during the whole time obviously to such an extent on the side of the two rascals, that he ignores, or, rather, does not see what the tempted mother, the girl, the father, and the young man, evidently the fiancé of the daughter, must have suffered, and so we not only get a shocking description of a disgusting crime in the form of an amusing jest, but the event itself is described falsely, because only the most insignificant side of the subject, the pleasure afforded to the rascals, is described.

In the same volume there is a story, _Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme_, which Turgénev recommended to me more particularly, and which more particularly displeased me on account of the author's incorrect relation to the subject. The author apparently sees in all the working people whom he describes nothing but animals, who do not rise above sexual and maternal love, and so the description leaves us with an incomplete, artificial impression.

The insufficient comprehension of the lives and interests of the working classes, and the representation of the men from those classes in the form of half-animals, which are moved only by sensuality, malice, and greed, forms one of the chief and most important defects of the majority of the modern French authors, among them Maupassant, not only in this story, but also in all the other stories, in which he touches on the people and always describes them as coarse, dull animals, whom one can only ridicule. Of course, the French authors must know the conditions of their people better than I know them; but, although I am a Russian and have not lived with the French people, I none the less assert that, in describing their masses, the French authors are wrong, and that the French masses cannot be such as they are described. If there exists a France as we know it, with her truly great men and with those great contributions which these great men have made to science, art, civil polity, and the moral perfection of humanity, those labouring masses, which have held upon their shoulders this France and her great men, do not consist of animals, but of men with great spiritual qualities; and so I do not believe what I am told in novels like _La Terre_, and in Maupassant's stories, just as I should not believe if I were told of the existence of a beautiful house standing on no foundation. It is very possible that the high qualities of the masses are not such as are described in _La petite Fadette_ and in _La Mare au Diable_, but these qualities exist, that I know for certain, and the writer who describes the masses, as Maupassant does, by telling sympathetically of the "_hanches_" and "_gorges_" of Breton domestics, and with contempt and ridicule the life of the labouring people, commits a great error in an artistic sense, because he describes the subject from only one, the most uninteresting, physical side, and completely overlooks the other, the most important, spiritual side, which forms the essence of the subject.

In general, the reading of the volume which Turgénev gave me left me completely indifferent to the young writer.

I was at that time so disgusted with the stories, _Une Partie de Campagne_, _La Femme de Paul_, and _L'Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme_, that I did not at that time notice the beautiful story, _Le Papa de Simon_, and the superb story, so far as the description of a night is concerned, _Sur l'Eau_.

"There are in our time, when there are so many who are willing to write, a number of people with talent, who do not know to what to apply it, or who boldly apply it to what ought not and should not be described," I thought. I told Turgénev so. And I entirely forgot about Maupassant.

The first thing from Maupassant's writings which after that fell into my hands was _Une Vie_, which somebody advised me to read. This book at once made me change my opinion concerning Maupassant, and after that I read with interest everything which was written over his name. _Une Vie_ is an excellent novel, not only incomparably the best novel by Maupassant, but almost the best French novel since Hugo's _Les Misérables_. Besides the remarkable power of his talent, that is, of that peculiar, strained attention, directed upon an object, in consequence of which the author sees entirely new features in the life which he is describing, this novel combines, almost to an equal degree, all three conditions of a true artistic production: (1) the correct, that is, the moral, relation of the author to the subject, (2) the beauty of form, and (3) sincerity, that is, love for what the author describes. Here the meaning of life no longer presents itself to the author in the experiences of all kinds of debauched persons,--here the contents, as the title says, are formed by the description of a ruined, innocent, sweet woman, who is prepared for anything beautiful, a woman who is ruined by that very gross, animal sensuality which in the former stories presented itself to the author as the central phenomenon of life, which dominates everything, and the author's whole sympathy is on the side of the good.

The form, which is beautiful even in the first stories, is here carried to a high degree of perfection, such as, in my opinion, has not been reached by any other French prose writer. And, besides, what is most important, the author here really loves, and loves strongly, the good family which he describes, and actually despises that coarse male who destroys the happiness and peace of this dear family and especially of the heroine of the novel.

It is for that reason that all the events and persons of this novel are so vivid and impress themselves on our memory: the weak, good, slatternly mother; the noble, weak, dear father, and the daughter, who is still dearer in her simplicity, absence of exaggeration, and readiness for everything good; their mutual relations, their first journey, their servants, their neighbours, the calculating, coarsely sensuous, stingy, petty, impudent fiancé, who, as always, deceives the innocent girl with the customary base idealization of the grossest of sentiments; the marriage; Corsica, with the charming descriptions of nature; then the life in the country; the coarse deception of the husband; the seizure of the power over the estate; his conflicts with his father-in-law; the yielding of the good people; the victory of impudence; the relation to the neighbours,--all that is life itself, with all its complexity and variety. But not only is all this described vividly and well,--there is over all a sincere, pathetic tone, which involuntarily affects the reader. One feels that the author loves this woman, and that he does not love her merely for her external forms, but for her soul, for what there is good in it, and that he sympathizes with her and suffers for her, and this sensation is involuntarily transferred to the reader. And the questions as to why, for what purpose, this fair creature was ruined, and why it should be so, naturally arise in the reader's soul, and make him stop and reflect on the meaning and significance of human life.

In spite of the false notes, which here and there occur in the novel, as, for example, the detailed account of the girl's skin, or the impossible and unnecessary details about how the deserted wife, by the advice of the abbot, again becomes a mother, details which destroy all the charm of the heroine's purity; in spite of the melodramatic and unnatural history of the revenge of the insulted husband,--in spite of these blemishes, the novel not only appears to me to be beautiful, but through it I no longer saw in the author the talented babbler and jester, who does not know and does not want to know what is good and what bad, such as he had appeared to me to be, judging him from the first book, but a serious man, who looks deeply into man's life and is beginning to make things out in it.

The next novel of Maupassant which I read was _Bel-Ami_.

_Bel-Ami_ is a very filthy book. The author apparently gives himself the reins in the description of what attracts him, and at times seems to be losing the fundamental, negative point of view upon his hero and passes over to his side; but in general, _Bel-Ami_, like _Une Vie_, has for its basis a serious thought and sentiment.

In _Une Vie_ the fundamental thought is the perplexity in the presence of the cruel senselessness of the agonizing life of a beautiful woman, who is ruined by the gross sensuality of a man; here it is not only the perplexity, but also the indignation of the author at the sight of the welfare and success of a gross sensuous beast, who by his very sensuality makes a career for himself and attains a high position in the world, an indignation also at the sight of the corruption of that milieu in which the hero attains his success. There the author seems to ask: "Why, for what purpose, is the fair creature ruined? Why did it happen?" Here he seems to be answering the questions: "Everything pure and good has perished and continues to perish in our society, because this society is corrupt, senseless, and terrible."

The last scene of the novel, the marriage in a fashionable church of the triumphant rascal, who is adorned with the Order of the Legion of Honour, with the pure young maiden, the daughter of the old, formerly irreproachable mother of the family, whom he seduced, the marriage, which is blessed by the bishop and is recognized as something good and proper by all the persons present, expresses this idea with unusual force. In this novel, in spite of its being clogged with obscene details, in which the author unfortunately seems to delight, we can see the same serious relations of the author to life.

Read the conversation of the old poet with Duroy, when they come out after dinner from the Walters, I think. The old poet lays bare life before his young interlocutor and shows it to him such as it is, with its eternal, unavoidable companion and end,--death.

"It already holds me, _la gueuse_," he says of death. "It has already loosened my teeth, pulled out my hair, mauled my limbs, and is about to swallow me. I am already in its power,--it only plays with me, as a cat plays with a mouse, knowing that I cannot get away from it. Glory, wealth,--what is it all good for, since it is not possible to buy a woman's love with them, and it is only a woman's love that makes life worth living. And death will take that away. It will take this first, and then health, strength, and life itself. And it is the same with everybody. And that is all."

Such is the meaning of the remarks of the aging poet. But Duroy, the fortunate lover of all those women whom he likes, is so full of sensuous energy and strength that he hears, and yet does not hear, and understands, and yet does not understand, the words of the old poet. He hears and understands, but the spring of his sensuous life bubbles up with such force that the incontestable truth, which promises the same end to him, does not appal him.

It is this inner contradiction which, besides its satirical significance, forms the chief meaning of _Bel-Ami_. The same thought sparkles in the beautiful scenes of the death of the consumptive journalist. The author puts the question to himself as to what life is and how the contradiction between the love of life and the knowledge of unavoidable death is to be solved,--and he does not answer the questions. He seems to be seeking and waiting, and does not decide one way or another. Consequently the moral relation to life continues to be correct in this novel also.

But in the next novels after that this moral relation to life begins to become entangled, the valuation of the phenomena of life begins to waver, to grow dim, and in the last novels is completely distorted.

In _Mont-Oriol_ Maupassant seems to combine the motives of the two preceding novels, and repeats himself as regards contents. In spite of the beautiful descriptions, full of refined humour, of a fashionable watering-place and of the activity of the doctors in this place, we have here the same male, Paul, who is just as base and heartless as the husband in _Une Vie_, and the same deceived, ruined, yielding, weak, lonely, always lonely, dear woman, and the same indifferent triumph of insignificance and baseness as in _Bel-Ami_.

The thought is the same, but the author's relation to what he describes is now considerably lower, especially lower than in the first novel. The inner valuation of the author as to what is good and bad begins to become entangled. In spite of all the mental desire of the author to be objective without any bias, the rascal Paul apparently enjoys the author's complete sympathy. For this reason the history of Paul's love, his attempts to seduce, and his success in this produce a false impression. The reader does not know what the author wants,--whether he wants to show the whole emptiness and baseness of Paul, who with indifference turns away from the woman and offends her, only because her form is spoiled from being pregnant with a child by him, or whether he wants, on the contrary, to show how agreeable and nice it is to live the way this Paul lives.

In the next novels after that, _Pierre et Jean_, _Fort comme la Mort_, and _Notre Cœur_, the moral relation of the author to his persons is still more entangled, and is entirely lost in the last. On all these novels already lies the stamp of indifference, haste, fictitiousness, and, above all, again that absence of a correct moral relation to life which was noticeable in his first writings. This begins at the same time that Maupassant's reputation as a fashionable author becomes established, and he is subject to that terrible temptation to which every well-known author, particularly such an attractive one as Maupassant, falls a prey. On the one side, the success of the first novels, newspaper laudations, and flattery of society, especially of the women; on the second, the evergrowing rewards, which, however, do not keep pace with the constantly growing demands; on the third,--the insistence of publishers, who vie with one another, flatter, implore, and no longer judge of the quality of the productions offered by the author, but in ecstasy accept everything which appears over the name that has established its reputation with the reading public. All these temptations are so great that they evidently intoxicate the author: he succumbs to them, and, though he continues to work out his novels as regards their forms, and does it even better than before, and even loves what he describes, he no longer loves what he describes because it is good and moral, that is, because it is loved by everybody, and hates what he describes not because it is bad and despised by everybody, but only because one thing accidentally pleases and another displeases him.

Upon all the novels of Maupassant, beginning with _Bel-Ami_, lies this stamp of haste and, above all, of fictitiousness. From that time on Maupassant no longer does what he did in his first two novels,--he does not take for the foundation of his novels certain moral demands and on their basis describe the activity of his persons, but writes his novels as all artisan novelists write theirs, that is, he invents the most interesting and the most pathetic or most contemporary persons and situations, and from these composes his novel, adorning it with all those observations which he has happened to make and which fit into the canvas of the novel, without the slightest concern how the events described are related to the demands of morality. Such are _Pierre et Jean_, _Fort comme la Mort_, and _Notre Cœur_.

No matter how much we are accustomed to read in French novels about how families live by threes, and how there is always a lover, whom all but the husband know, it still remains quite incomprehensible to us how it is that all husbands are always fools, _cocus_, and _ridicules_, and all lovers, who in the end marry and become husbands, are neither _ridicules_ nor _cocus_, but heroes. And still less can we understand in what way all women are loose in morals and all mothers holy.

It is on these unnatural and improbable and, above all, profoundly immoral situations that _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la Mort_ are constructed. And so the sufferings of the persons who are in these situations do not touch us much. Pierre's and Jean's mother, who was able to pass all her life in deceiving her husband, evokes little sympathy for herself when she is compelled to confess her sin to her son, and still less when she justifies herself, asserting that she could not help making use of the opportunity of happiness which presented itself to her. Still less can we sympathize with the gentleman who, in _Fort comme la Mort_, during his whole life deceived his friend, corrupted his wife, and now laments because, having grown old, he is not able to corrupt also the daughter of his paramour. But the last novel, _Notre Cœur_, does not even have any inner problem, except the description of all kinds of shades of sexual love. What is described is a satiated, idle debauchee, who does not know what he wants, and who now falls in with just as debauched, mentally debauched, a woman, without even any justification of sensuality, and now parts from her and falls in with a servant girl, and now again falls in with the first and, it seems, lives with both. Though in _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la Mort_ there are touching scenes, this last novel provokes nothing but disgust in us.

The question in Maupassant's first novel, _Une Vie_, stands like this. Here is a good, clever, dear human being, ready for anything good, and this being for some reason is sacrificed, at first to a coarse, petty, stupid animal of a husband, and then to just such a son, and perishes aimlessly, without having given anything to the world. What is this for? The author puts the question like that, and does not seem to give any answer. But his whole novel, all his sentiments of sympathy for her and disgust with what ruined her serve as an answer to his question. If there is one man who has understood her sufferings and has given expression to this understanding, these sufferings are redeemed, as Job says to his friends, when they say that no one will find out about his suffering. Let a suffering be made known and understood, and it is redeemed. Here the author saw and comprehended this suffering and showed it to men. And this suffering is redeemed, because, as soon as it is understood by men, it will sooner or later be destroyed.

In the next novel, _Bel-Ami_, the question is no longer as to why there is any suffering for the worthy, but why there is wealth and glory for the unworthy. And what are this wealth and glory, and how are they acquired? And just as before, this question includes an answer, which consists in the negation of everything which is so highly valued by the crowd. The contents of this second novel are still serious, but the moral relation of the author to the subject described is considerably weakened, and while in the first novel only here and there occur blemishes of sensuality, which spoil the novel, in _Bel-Ami_ these blemishes expand, and many chapters are written in mere obscenity, in which the author seems to revel.

In the next novel, _Mont-Oriol_, the questions as to why and for what purpose are the sufferings of the dear woman and the success and joys of the savage male are no longer put, but it seems to be assumed that it ought to be so, and the moral demands are almost not felt; instead there appear, without any need and evoked by no artistic demands, obscene, sensuous descriptions. As a striking example of this violation of art, in consequence of the incorrect relation of the author to the subject, may with particular vividness serve the detailed description of the appearance of the heroine in the bathtub, which is given in this novel. This description is of no use whatsoever, and is in no way connected with the external or the internal meaning of the novel: bubbles cling to the pink body.

"Well?" asks the reader.

"That's all," replies the author. "I describe, because I like such descriptions."

In the next two novels, _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la Mort_, no moral demand whatever is to be found. Both novels are constructed on debauchery, deception, and lying, which bring the _dramatis personæ_ to tragic situations.

In the last novel, _Notre Cœur_, the condition of the _dramatis personæ_ is most monstrous, savage, and immoral, and these persons no longer struggle against anything, but only seek enjoyments, of ambition, of the senses, of the sexual passion, and the author seems to sympathize completely with their strivings. The only conclusion one can draw from this last novel is this, that the greatest happiness in life is sexual intercourse, and that, therefore, we must in the most agreeable manner make use of this happiness.

Still more startling is this immoral relation to life as it is expressed in the quasi-novel, _Yvette_. The contents of this terribly immoral production are as follows: a charming girl, with an innocent soul, but corrupted in the forms which she has acquired in the corrupt surroundings of her mother, deludes the debauchee. He falls in love with her, but, imagining that this girl consciously talks that insinuating nonsense which she has learned in her mother's company, and which she repeats like a parrot, without understanding it, he imagines that the girl is corrupt, and coarsely proposes a _liaison_ with her. This proposition frightens and offends her (she loves him), opens her eyes to her position and to that of her mother, and makes her suffer deeply. The touching situation--the conflict of the beauty of the innocent soul with the immorality of the world--is beautifully described, and it would have been well to stop here, but the author, without the least external or internal need, continues his narration and causes this gentleman to make his way to the girl at night and seduce her. In the first part of the novel the author had evidently been on the side of the girl, and in the second he suddenly passed over to the side of the debauchee. One impression destroys the other, and the whole novel falls to pieces and breaks up, like bread which has not been kneaded.

In all his novels after _Bel-Ami_ (I am not speaking now of his shorter stories, which form his chief desert and fame,--of them I shall speak later), Maupassant obviously surrendered himself to the theory, which not only existed in his circle in Paris, but which now exists everywhere among artists, that for an artistic production we not only need have no clear conception of what is good and what bad, but that, on the contrary, the artist must absolutely ignore all moral questions,--that in this does a certain merit of the artist consist. According to this theory an artist can and must represent what is true, what exists, or what is beautiful, what, consequently, pleases him, or even what can be useful as material for "science," but it is not the business of the artist to trouble himself about what is moral or immoral, good or bad.

I remember, a famous painter showed me once his painting, which represented a religious procession. Everything was exquisitely painted, but I could not see any relation of the artist to his subject.

"Well, do you consider these rites good, and do you think that they ought to be performed, or do you not?" I asked the artist.

The artist said to me, with a certain condescension to my naïveté, that he did not know and did not consider it necessary to know: his business was to represent life.

"But do you at least love this?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Well, do you despise these rites?"

"Neither the one nor the other," replied, with a smile of compassion for my stupidity, the modern highly cultured artist, who represented life without understanding its meaning and without either loving or hating its phenomena. Even so unfortunately thought Maupassant.

In his introduction to _Pierre et Jean_ he says that people tell the writer: "_Consolez-moi, attristez-moi, attendrissez-moi, faites-moi râcer, faites-moi rire, faites-moi frémir, faites-moi pleurer, faites-moi penser. Seuls quelques esprits d'élites demandent á l'artiste: faites-moi quelque chose de beau dans la forme qui vous conviendra le mieux d'après votre tempérament._"

It was to satisfy the demand of these chosen spirits that Maupassant wrote his novels, imagining naïvely that that which was considered beautiful in his circle was the beautiful which art ought to serve.

In the same circle in which Maupassant moved, it is woman, a young, beautiful, for the most part a nude woman, and the sexual intercourse with her that have preëminently been considered to be that beauty which art must serve. Such an opinion was held not only by Maupassant's fellows in "art," by painters, sculptors, novelists, and poets, but also by philosophers, the teachers of the younger generations. Thus the famous Renan says frankly in his work, _Marc Aurèle_, while condemning Christianity for its lack of appreciation of feminine beauty:

"_Le défaut du christianisme apparait bien ici, il est trop uniquement moral: la beauté chez-lui est tout-à-fait sacrifiée. Or, aux yeux d'une philosophie complète, la beauté, loin d'être un avantage superficiel, un danger, un inconvénient, est un don de Dieu, comme la vertu. Elle vaut la rertu; la femme belle exprime aussi bien une face du but divin, une des fins de Dieu, que l'homme de génie ou la femme vertueuse. Elle le sait et de là sa fierté. Elle sent instinctivement le trésor infini qu'elle porte en son corps; elle sait bien, que sans esprit, sans talent, sans grace vertu, elle compte entre les premières manifestations de Dieu: et pourquoi lui interdire de mettre en valeur le don, qui lui a été fait, de sortir le diamant qui lui est échu?_