Various

“ Halévy was a Parisian, Maupassant was a Norman acclimated to the habitudes of Paris, and Daudet carried with him throughout all his experiences in the French capital the dreamy soul of Provence; but Loti is essentially a modern. Man of the world, not alone by temperament but by reason of wide journeyings afield and minglings with men and women of all lands, he typifies the spirit of to-day in French literature as few other writers have done. He is a poetic idealist, or, perhaps more precisely, an idealistic realist, writing at a time when realism was most potent in France. ”

“ GUY DE MAUPASSANT, REALIST
The inflexible realist in fiction can be faithful only to what he sees; and what he sees is inevitably colored by the lens of his real self. For the literary observer of life there is no way of falsifying the reports which his senses, physical and moral, make to his own brain. If he wishes, he may make alterations in transcribing for his readers, but in so doing he confesses to himself a departure from truth as he sees it.
Pure realism, then, demands of its apostle both a faithful observation of life and a faithful statement of what he sees. ”

“ But if there was little of apparent beauty in our author’s character, it is impossible not to admire his industry, his will, his passionate devotion to a perfect art, his relentless literary fidelity to truth as he saw it, his magic mastery of diction and of dialogue, his incisive though unmoral analysis of character and life, his constant advance in craftsmanship to the end. To turn out something beautiful in form was to him worth a lifetime of effort. ”

“ If we see but little of Guy de Maupassant’s life in his writings, it is to them we must turn to discover his temperament and his philosophy—glimpses of which we have already had.
Absolutely French, almost a typical Latin, Maupassant was not unemotional; he merely refused to allow his emotions to color the characters he delineated. He was himself a passionate pleasure-seeker, determined to extract the last drop of satisfaction from life, but he erred in thinking that one may at the same time drain the cup of mental joys and that of physical pleasures. ”

“ The greetings of old friends at an end, he would whistle to Miracle, a venerable spaniel some fisherman had once found on a bit of wreckage at sea, and climb up to his mill, there to browse and dream and wander in fancy whithersoever the spirits of the place should beckon.
“The mill was a ruin,” he says; “a crumbling mass of stone, iron, and ancient boards which had not turned in the wind for many years, and which lay, with broken limbs, as useless as a poet, while all around on the hillside the miller’s trade prospered and ground and ground with all its wings. ”

“ A fourth trait in the French short-story is a minute, detached observation, tinged with cynicism—the inevitable result of realism. It is for this reason that so many French short-stories seem unsympathetic. Scientific observation—really, a German trait—is likely to be cold when applied to tumults of the soul! And the writer who as a moral vivisectionist relentlessly applies the scalpel runs the risk of becoming blasé, not to say cruel. He is more concerned with the truth of facts than with extracting the truth from facts. ”

“ The primacy of the French as conteurs is doubtless due quite as much to the rich and colorful provincial life which surrounds the capital as to their priority as tellers of short tales. It has been [Pg 10] said that Paris is France. Nothing could be less true. Here is a nation which presents the unique paradox of being at once and supremely homogeneous and heterogeneous. The life of each province is part of its soil, colored by the soil—or by the ever-present sea. Yet France has a spirit of nationality equalled by no other nation. ”

“ One pulled her ears, another her tail; Quinquet mounted himself upon her back, Béluguet tried his cap on her, and not one of those little scamps reflected that with a single good kick that excellent beast could have sent them all into the polar star, and even farther. But no! It is no vain thing to be the Pope’s mule, the mule of benedictions and indulgences. The children went blithely on, she did not get angry; and it was only against Tistet Védène that she bore malice. ”

“ VIVE LA FRANCE!
“Then he stood there, with his head resting against the wall, and without speaking, he motioned to us with his hand:
“'That is all; go.’”
On rereading “The Last Class” for the dozenth time, I find that it is surrounded with an emotional atmosphere which, textually, the story does not contain. I think this must be the aura emanating from the spirit of the story; for a great work of fiction is not only the product of emotion, but it kindles emotion, because it is a creation, an entity, a living being. ”

“ As we leave the Chamber we see an elderly woman of the bourgeoisie. It is the mother of the political mountebank—she is radiant and content.
“The Sabots of Little Wolff” is a typical tale, done in the manner of a legend. Never was the spirit of childhood—human and divine—more exquisitely set forth than in this wonderfully wrought story. How can it be told in other, or fewer, words than those simple and eloquent sentences of François Coppée! ”

“ In truth, I was not frightened, and the sole fear that I experienced was lest he should imagine that I was afraid. The harmless bullets contributed still more to maintain me in my heroic calm. My self-esteem told me that I was going into real danger, since at last I was under battery fire. I was enchanted to be so at my ease, and I dreamed with pleasure of telling in the salon of Madame B——, rue de Provence, how the redoubt of Cheverino was taken. ”

“ It was inevitable that a literary dweller in the French capital, reared among the traditions of a stage whose productions are classic, and a poet [Pg 22] who by both nature and environment breathed in the air of art, should turn to the drama after having won to the forefront in lyric and narrative expression. Successively he produced Deux Douleurs, Fais ce que dois, Les Bijoux de la Délivrance, Madame de Maintenon, and Le Luthier de Crémorne—the last-named an especially pleasing drama, full of that human feeling which marks Coppée in all his writings. ”

“ I love, with a profound and bestial love, at once contemptible and sacred, all that lives, all that thinks, all that we see about us,—days, nights, rivers, seas, and forests, the dawn, the rosy flesh and beaming eye of woman ”

“ In form our author’s books are varied, following rarely any preconceived plan, we may well suppose—only this, that the literary wanderer with his new book every year takes us by the hand and shows us the intimacies of his own life-experiences, discloses the little-known beauties and sadnesses he has uncovered everywhere, and turns into simple yet exquisitely wrought fictions the poignant truths that have entered his own heart. ”

“ We are justified in asserting the existence of a national type of short-story in France, or in any other land, when its special literary product reflects in theme the typical spirit of the nation, when its attitude toward life is characteristic, when its literary style is decidedly marked by national idioms, and when local color—by which I mean an individual flavor of characters and [Pg 4] locality—is marked enough to be recognized as a literary trait. Tested by each of these four standards—which I have ventured to set up rather arbitrarily—the short-story in France is the French short-story. ”

“ The story is a pretty one, although a trifle naïve, and I am going to try to tell it you just as I read it yesterday morning in a sky-colored manuscript, which smelled delightfully of dry lavender, and had long gossamer threads for binding threads.
He who has never seen the Avignon of the time of the Popes, has seen nothing. For gayety, for life, for animation, for a succession of fêtes, there never was a city its equal. ”

“ Loti’s direct disregard of the interests of conventional life, in favor of nature-children, constitutes one of his greatest literary charms. Freshness, simplicity of viewpoint, naïve boyishness of spirit—these excel all the accomplishments of the stylist’s art in an author whose style is as subtle as gossamer, as varicolored as the evening sea he painted with supernal beauty. ”

“ Technically it is a tale, with the picture-phrases of the sketch. It is a marvellous brief story rather than a marvellous short-story, which, as I have before remarked, must exhibit more plot, more complication, with its consequent dénouement, than is found in either the tale or the sketch. As a work of art, it ranks with the author’s most vivid stories. In the memorable phrase of Walter Pater, “Seldom or never has the mere pen of a writer taken us so close to the cannon’s mouth.” ”

“ Why, she will kill herself. Will you come down, you unhappy creature!”
Pécaïre! She could have asked nothing better than to come down; but how? The stairs—they were not to be thought of: one could mount those things, but as to coming down, one could break one’s legs a hundred times. And the poor mule was disconsolate; but as she roamed about the platform with her great eyes filled with vertigo she thought of Tistet Védène.
“Ah, bandit, if I escape—what a kick tomorrow morning!” ”

“ No people, however, could long enjoy an orgy of depression, and signs of moderation soon appeared. Guy de Maupassant, with all his abnormality, and Paul Bourget with all his pessimism, now and then touched the joyous side, and by and by a braver, more wholesome tone sounded in the French short-story—a tone of eclecticism, both of method and of philosophy. ”

“ The short-story nomenclature among the French is not clearly translatable, for three reasons—we have no precise English equivalents, critics do not entirely agree upon what equivalents are nearest to the French terms, and, best reason of all, the French short-stories have this in common with all others: their forms often overlap, and so bear marks of touching more than one type. And when I have said this I have said nothing to their discredit; only the Procrustean purist first builds a bed and then stretches or cuts every story-guest to fit! ”

“ And, pushing open the door, he entered, pale as death, into the room where he saw the landlord and the stupefied servant in a corner, and the man from Auvergne on his knees amid the disordered clothes, lovingly kissing his gold pieces.
“Enough of this,” he said in a thick voice. “It is I who have taken the money and who have put it in my comrade’s trunk. But that is too disgusting. I am a thief and not a Judas. Go hunt for the police. I’ll not try to save myself. Only, I must say a word in private to Savinien, who is here.” ”

“ There comes a day, you know, when no matter what you are looking at, you see Death lurking behind it.... As for me, for the last fifteen years I have felt the torment of it, as if I were carrying a gnawing beast. ”

“ SHORT-STORY MASTERPIECES
[Pg 21]
FRANÇOIS COPPÉE AND HIS WORK
There never has been a satisfactory definition of poetry, though all ambitious literary appraisers, from Aristotle down to Bernard Shaw, have essayed the task. But if to be able to institute apt and beautiful comparisons; to phrase in musical language thoughts of power, beauty, and feeling; to discern the ideal clothed in the real; to interpret the inner meanings of life—if this ability marks the poetic gift, then François Edouard Joachim Coppée was a poet—a poet in prose as well as in verse. ”

“ Loti wrote little verse, but he was a poet. He [Pg 126] moved in the upper layers of feeling—feeling for nature, for animals, for man, for woman—and always he was the idealistic, though not the ideal lover. His sympathies were positively unquenchable, and each new passion found him fresh, tender, elemental—and as sincere as the temporary lover can be. In elemental, primitive folk he found his personal loves and his fictive characters; in the death of a little bird or in the lives of two cats he centred a genuine interest; in the moods of the uncompassed sea he felt a vast concern. ”

“ Of the future no man may tell, but backed by the rich traditions of literary France, the air of artistry all about, the growth of a more unselfish socialized life, and the promise of stable national conditions, we may well look for the most satisfying results in the French short-story of tomorrow. ”

“ What feelings, then, must Daudet have known when he gave forth this little master-story! It must be these that I myself feel, for I do not, by analysis, find them all present in the text, even by suggestion. Happy artist, who can so project the creations of his soul that they henceforth live and [Pg 80] expand and communicate their messages to multitudes to him unknown! So all great fiction is alive; so lives the work of Alphonse Daudet.
The emotion in “The Siege of Berlin” is of a different type. It, too, finds its motif in the Franco-Prussian War; this time in the Siege of Paris itself. ”

“ Doubtless the contention could not be demonstrated that, when properly received, a great work of fictional art will arouse the same emotions in the reader as were first enkindled in the breast of its author when the story was born. ”