Delphi complete works of.., p.451
Delphi Complete Works of Alphonse Daudet (Illustrated), page 451
“Most of the time people don’t understand each other. Ferocious and time-honored antipathies do not stand a moment before a few minutes’ contact.”
And although there was a constellation of the “arrived” and of the “illustrious” at those Thursday reunions, there was also no lack of beginners, because he had a warm interest in new talents. Uncertain of himself, he did not disdain those obscure powers which announce themselves in some writer of the future and issue out in overwhelming or paradoxical words, in a frenzy of criticism or of blind enthusiasm. A great number of those who to-day hold the first rank were in their days of beginning encouraged and sustained by him. What a host of letters to editors, to managers of newspapers and theatres, what a lot of recommendations and notes of introduction!
“Alas,” said he, “I can no longer use my actual presence!” He knew very well the power of his own speech and what the most eloquent letter lacks in persuasive gestures and accents of sincerity.
That love of youth, even in its faults and vanities, was part of his eager desire to know: he wished to see and understand. An attitude, a grasp of the hand, a look, a word from a person revealed more to him than a piece of verse or a picture. He adored Plutarch, who in his biographies followed the sensible rule which adds to the portrait of a great man his way of eating, drinking and walking, his preferences and even his hobbies. He approved absolutely certain decisive pages which Marcel Schwob wrote on this subject at the beginning of his Vies Imaginaires. Details which are small in appearance are in fact serious channels through which we penetrate to the clearer view of ancient times and thread the labyrinth of dead souls.
Opinions are “things of the word,” transitory and insignificant things; that is the reason that the life of political people is generally so wretched and commonplace. The market-place, the pretorian tribune, the ante-chambers of sovereigns, federal chambers and legislatures, as well as the conversations there taking place, are no better than ghosts, phantoms and masks. This or that habit, this vice, that peculiarity of speech or of costume, this touch of gluttony or luxury in Talleyrand or Napoleon the Great becomes in our eyes extremely important and takes on the lively air of a confession. This it is that is called by pedants bonhomie, but more correctly by others “humanity.”
Now what interests us in such notes as these in history is that quality whereby they differ from other things, whatever may be the differences themselves.
When he was creating my father saw what he created. When he was writing he heard. A certain number of physicians belonging to the new school came to interview him on this point and in pedantic words they have simplified a natural and complete method. Ever since the celebrated “Schema” of Charcot, people keep repeating indefinitely the old scholastic distinction between “auditives” and “rituals,” categories which have nothing absolute in them, and are of no use except as an hypothesis. And if he heard he also spoke. He practised the sound of his dialogues and tried the harmony of his descriptions. Fear of wordiness, which was always on the increase with him, caused him to use, especially in his last works, a picturesque brevity in which every sensation is like a lightning flash; reflection does snot come to the surface but silently emanates from the characters. He has been reproached, but very foolishly, for his curt and nervous phrases which are as near the actuality as possible, since every word plays a trick with us and deceives us as to its duration.
I have forgotten none of the fine regulations which he scrupulously applied: “Whether the question is a book or an article, whether a direct creation or a criticism, never take up the pen unless you have something to say.” If the literary mania continues to develop itself, very soon there will not be a single Frenchman who has not got out his own book.
“Setting, ideas, situations, characters, all these are not right until a very slow and instructive digestion has been gone through with, in which all nature, gifted in the least of its component parts, collaborates with the writer. We are like women in a hopeful situation; people can see it in our very faces. We have the pregnant woman’s ‘mask.’
“Style is a state of intensity. The greatest number of things in the fewest number of words. Don’t fear to repeat yourself, according to Pascal’s counsel. There are no synonyms.
“Push always toward clearness and concise lucidity. Our tongue has its own moral laws. Whoever attempts to avoid them will not last. Our tongue is suppler than any other, as intellectual as it is logical, more closely ranged than declamatory and has quick and short reflections in very precise forms. It is not favorable to antique terms or phrases. It appeals more to the mind than the ear. There are very few shades which it does not express, very few true distinctions which it does not define. It is especially triumphant when expressing ideas suggested.
“Descendants of the Latins, who were a constructive people, we have a taste for solid things. Harmony also is indispensable, even for picturing the passions where disorder is a beauty. Let that same disorder only be a seeming one: let us be aware of a profound rule and order underneath!
That will always be in conformity with the truth; the worst of tempests submits to its own laws.
“Description of a character carried on to its final completion should not be made except little by little, according as the character reveals itself and according as life reacts upon it.
“Society, landscape and circumstances, all that environs us, have a share in our state of mind. You must enter into the person you are describing, into his very skin, and see the world through his eyes and feel it through his senses. Direct intervention on the part of the writer is an error.
“On the other hand the theory of impassiveness is exaggerated. He who tells a story has the right to be moved, himself; but with discretion, and as it were behind the scenes, by the affairs of heroes and heroines, but without doing harm to that illusion which makes the charm. All the live forces of the author are taken up by the expression of reality. Lyricism, realism and even frenzy, all these may unite and produce power. Beauty has no label. Sincerity includes everything.
“It is necessary to have respect for the reader: An author has morally a guardianship over souls. Sure of his means and being able to corrupt, he is culpable if he abuses his trust, if he ruins vital nobility, if he does not go from below upward, which is the direction of an honest conscience. Intellectually, too, he should have respect for the reader and insist only upon the essential things, not falsify enthusiasm but keep his scrupulousness simple and pure.
“Truth is a perfect union of soul between the author and that which surrounds him, between that which he conceives and perceives and that which he expresses. The realm of imagination itself has its truth. There are lies on Mount Parnassus as well as in the street.
“Art consists of more than mere selection. It includes decision and boldness besides. No hypocrisy, no fraud! The roadways of life lie open. It is not permitted to deviate from them nor to halt by the way.
“There is the courage of the author to be considered, which consists in accomplishing his mission to the very end. The bold are always victorious. The timid ones always remain incomplete. It is not necessary to help on one’s work; because it goes of itself. No obstacle, however frank and powerful, will prevent its triumphing.
“There is danger in thinking about pleasing. Another danger is to wish to astonish. Notoriety flies always from those who seek it through low means.”
A very incomplete enumeration. I shall rectify it as I go on. My father presented the same principles in the richest and most multitudinous forms. But the foundation remains unchanged.
These few profound and solid rules, which he laid down whilst we were talking in private, gave him the chance to use a delightful variety of images and of impressions for all the rest, for the transitory affairs of life. Just as in conversation he was never caught napping when a reply was due from him, for he uttered it quickly, brilliantly and in winged words, in the same way the small affairs of daily intercourse and the most trivial episodes could never take him unawares. We had gradually formed such a habit of these delightful and charming conversations during which the hours slipped by over our books, that an elliptical language had gradually grown up between us for our own special use. Each one filled out the other’s thought and then prolonged the idea by a remark, the sense of which he indicated in the fewest words, where only the essential was uttered.
That you will find again in his work; it is a faithful mold of his mind. The largest good sense, that masterly gift in comparison with which the most brilliant qualities are worth but little, animates the whole of his work with a deathless breath — that good sense which Descartes called “least common to man.” So fruitful is its action that it no longer expresses itself but leaves the field clear to the imagination, which thereafter becomes as free as any goddess, smiling, fleeing and clad in curtal robe.
The reader is ever close behind the author and the author inspires him with confidence. Take for example some poet, Carlyle, we will say, a rain of stars and of metaphors which play across the sky and the veiled night. Notwithstanding all his genius, why has Carlyle only a very narrow place in human imaginings? It is because he lacks that intimate harmony which souls ecstatic over fancied images unconsciously demand. He has never conquered our confidence. A word from the lips, a slightest word from the lips of him who has completely conquered us by his wisdom takes on a magical value. Whither he ascends, thither we follow. We fraternize through enthusiasm. A sympathy is set up between the most magnificent genius and the reader. We are astonished, we are astonished, but we are not conquered.
What I have attempted to express as well as I could in these words was carved into my mind by my father in clear and marvellously exact terms. I myself was one of his works. He desired to finish me in every part as he did the others. Alas, poor stuff that it was! If you have not been able to profit by his teaching, at any rate pass on his fertile words! Be exact and truthful! Perhaps another will be found for whom this torch, piously relit, may show the way. Many a time while listening to my friend have I thought:
“If I am destined to survive him, I shall call upon my memory for a grand effort of revival. I shall impose upon myself the task of putting down in writing those fugitive beauties, often as impossible to transmit as words of love which lack the time and the countenances of the lovers.” And ye who read, be indulgent to me, for I bring hither my entire conscience. A witness of a most noble spectacle, I have tried to retain phrases, gestures, intonations and play of features. My father loved the truth. I wish to serve truth in my turn down to the most intimate scenes, guided by him and encouraged by the lofty recollection of his character.
III. AS FATHER AND AS HUSBAND — THE VENDOR OF HAPPINESS.
MY FATHER WAS often wont to repeat: “When my task is finished I should like to establish myself as a Vendor of Happiness; my profits would consist in my success.”
Then he would add:— “There are so many men who are somnambulists and pass through existence without seeing where they are, stumbling against obstacles and bruising their brows against walls which it would be easy for them to circumvent! I have put this phrase in the mouth of one of my characters:— ‘All things in life have a side or a meaning through which they can be grasped.’ But that is no metaphor.”
Then he would toss his head with an indulgent half smile and a sigh:— “There is no such thing as commonplace in the world; it only exists in people’s minds. Renan is a little sad because Gavroche is as learned as he is. But Gavroche is a parrot. In his brain words have no value at all. Suppose a young person talks about death. It is very rarely the case that one notices in him the existence of that black gulf which this terrible syllable at once opens in the soul of an old man.
You know the emotion which all of a sudden comes upon us at sight of some noun or verb which we had been carelessly repeating up to the day on which the true and deep-seated meaning appeared to us. Revelations of that sort are the result of the teaching of years.
“I am not boasting, I was a precocious mind. At an early age I understood, in my very bones, the actual value of many of the words which youth employs with the utmost carelessness and ease. Disease and sorrow produce another sort of maturity. They lend truthfulness to language. In such cases people live on their capital instead of living on their interest; for it cannot be ignored that emotions and even a somewhat burning thought represent a loss of substance, the one step farther on. Oh, the wisdom of the very sick! Oh, eyes too brilliant and too well informed! In the public gardens, dragged about in sick chairs, I meet people whose looks frighten me.”
“Then, father, the vendor of happiness...?”
“I mean no allegory; the vendor would go to the sick and to every one; by tenderness he would gain their confidence; like a patient and gentle physician he would examine the moral wound, mark its extent and progress and reassure the sick man through the spectacle of his fellows; that is the argument of egoism which never faileth! From that point he would gradually rise toward the picture of a restricted but still a noble destiny, if only the patient knows how to employ himself by drying the tears about him and consoling others while consoling himself. To put one’s goal beyond oneself to place one’s ideal outside of oneself — that is to escape from Fate to a certain extent.”
How many a time, entering unexpectedly his study, have I not caught sight of attitudes of anguish in his visitors and interrupted confidences which I felt were grave and pressing! If secrecy had not been asked my friend would then show the situation to me, and all the difficulties whose simplest and most “humane” solution he was seeking.
But when I said to him:— “Be vendor of happiness to yourself!” he answered: “My existence is a mere matter of effort from day to day. I have the greatest confidence in those little efforts of the will which bind me down to some fixed hour, such as to seat myself at the table notwithstanding my sufferings, to disdain and affront my illness. Imagine the torture of the circular wall which little by little grows smaller, the torture of one impossibility after the other! How true it is, that phrase repeated by the coquette in front of her looking-glass: — To think that I shall regret all that tomorrow! Well, the never-ending cares of the father of a family, the anxieties as to my household are a great resource for me. The feeling of responsibility is enough to keep a man on his legs after his strength has given out. Then I think about my fellow-men. If financial want is added to their sufferings, if they have not the resources of fire and of food and of wine and of warm affection — why then I consider myself still happier.
“I keep my pitifulness fresh by repeating to myself that there are far worse sorrows than mine, and so I do not use up all my pity on myself. You know that a good many philosophers banish pity from their republic as if it were a weakness or degradation, or as if it were a lack of energy.
“The vendor of happiness would preach the religion of active pity and not of useless fears. To him who suffers, suffering is always new. But to witnesses thereof, even tender and energetic ones, suffering grows old and becomes a mere habit. I tell a sick person: ‘Give yourself distractions and through your spirit wrestle to the very end; do not weary and harass the people about you.’”
“The Stoics long ago discovered the pleasure which people find in the constant exercise of energy. I could suggest a thousand tricks to a patient who is gifted with imagination. I would advise a person who is not able to mix laughter with actualities to place his sufferings before him on a grand scale until he reaches the point when the beauty of the struggle makes its appearance and gives grandeur to the whole. That is a particular kind of intoxication which makes the least subtle person strangely intelligent; it is one of the keys of human nature.
“And, to start with, everything takes its place and falls into its natural plane. Little trivial sorrows which increase for us our enjoyments and moral laziness recoil toward the background and reach their proper level. Had it not been for my sickness, perhaps I might have been an ‘author,’ a prey to the sillinesses of the profession, trembling at criticism, off my head through praise and duped by empty triumphs. Of course I have weaknesses... nevertheless I have been purified... At the Lamalou Baths I have met ‘Sosies [Character in the Amphitryon of Plautus, whose semblance was taken by Mercury; Molière used him in one of his plays.] of suffering’ in the shape of men belonging to the most varied professions. They were all transcendental and ‘above themselves,’ lighted up by swift gleams which traversed their flesh and penetrated their very souls.
“Among the confessions which I have received, those made me by the damned ones down there seem to show a special kind of harshness and frankness. The very words they use have more breadth and more relief.”
The notes taken by my father in regard to this subject during his stay at hot baths are very typical and fine. Such observations on the part of a man of letters astonished the physicians, because they were more complete and subtle than those which might have been collected by a scientist. Without preconceived ideas and intermingled theories, they possessed the clearness of a cross-examination put on paper. The most frightful shames, the secret wretchednesses of men, women and aged men are stated there discreetly with the wisdom of a physician-poet. Most of our neighbors in the hotel, some of them strangers from America, Spain and Russia, arranged their hours so as to made their treatment coincide with that of the novelist. He reassured them and quieted their spirits, thus completing the work of the physician. Many of them confided to him with that zeal in giving details, that ardor and extraordinary pride which are common to people who possess a grave and still undefined malady. He noted down, classified and compared the most peculiar nervous troubles, manias, fears, chronic or recurrent disorders; these deviations from the course of nature often aided him in understanding nature; they would light up some obscure region and thus do service to his constant search after knowledge.
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