DISPOSICIONES ECONÓMICAS

N. ⁹ Here's your manuscript. I have read it all the way through.

R. All the way through? I see: you expect few will do the same?

N. Vel duo, vel nemo.

R. Turpe et miserabile.¹⁰ But I want a straightforward judgment.

N. I dare not.

R. You have dared everything with that single word. Explain yourself.

N. My judgment depends on the answer you are going to give me. Is this correspondence real, or is it a fiction?

R. I don't see that it matters. To say whether a Book is good or bad, how does it matter how it came to be written?

N. It matters a great deal for this one. A Portrait always has some value provided it is a good likeness, however strange the Original. But in a Tableau based on imagination, each human figure must possess features common to mankind, or else the Tableau is worthless. Even if we allow that both are good, there remains a difference, which is that the Portrait is of interest to few People; the Tableau alone can please the Public.

R. I follow you. If these Letters are Portraits, they are of no interest; if they are Tableaux, they are poor imitations. Is that not it?

N. Precisely.

R. This way, I will extract your answers from you before you have answered me.

Besides, since I cannot adequately respond to your question, you must resolve mine unaided. Assume the worst case: my Julie...

N. Oh! if only she had existed!

R. What then?

N. But surely it's no more than a fiction.

R. Suppose it is.

N. In that case, I've never seen such a bad piece of work. These Letters are no Letters;

this Novel is no Novel; the characters are people from the other world.¹¹

R. Then I am sorry for this one.

N. Take comfort; fools are not wanting there either; but yours are not in nature.

R. I might... No, I see the turn your curiosity is taking. Why do you decide it so? Do you know how vastly Men differ from each other? How opposite characters can be? To what degree morals, prejudices vary with the times, places, eras? Who is daring enough to assign exact limits to Nature, and assert: Here is as far as Man can go, and no

further?

N. With such fine reasoning, unheard-of Monsters, Giants, Pygmies, fantasies of all kinds, anything could be specifically included in nature:

everything would be disfigured; we would no longer have any common model! I repeat, in Tableaux of humankind, Man must be recognizable to everyone.

R. I agree, provided one also knows how to distinguish what constitutes variations from what is essential to the species. What would you say of those who could recognize our own only in French costume?

N. What would you say of someone who, depicting neither features nor shape,

presumed to paint a human figure with a veil for raiment? Wouldn't one be entitled to ask him where the man is?

R. Neither features nor shape? Are you being fair? No one is perfect: that is the fantasy.

A young maiden offending the virtue she sets store by, and brought back to her duty by abhorrence of a greater crime; a too compliant friend, finally punished by her own heart for her excessive indulgence; an honest and sensible young man, full of weakness and fine words; an elderly Gentleman infatuated with his nobility, sacrificing everything to opinion; a generous and valiant Englishman, forever driven by wisdom, forever

reasoning without reason...

N. An uncomplaining and hospitable husband keen on setting up his wife's former lover in his own house....

R. I refer you to the inscription for the Engraving.* ¹² N. The beautiful Souls!... The beautiful phrase!

R. O Philosophy! what trouble thou dost take to shrink hearts, to make men little!

N. The spirit of romance magnifies them and deceives them. But to the point. The two women friends?... How about them?... And that sudden conversion in the Temple?...

Grace, I suppose?...

R. Monsieur...

N. A Christian woman, a devout woman who does not instruct her children in the catechism; who dies unwilling to entreat God; whose death nonetheless edifies a Pastor, and converts an Atheist!.... Oh!...

R. Monsieur...

N. As for the focus, it is everywhere at once, it is nil. Not a single evil deed; not a single wicked man to make us fear for the good ones. Events so natural, so simple that they are too much so; nothing unexpected; no dramatic surprises. Everything is foreseen well in advance; everything comes to pass as foreseen. Is it worth recording what

anyone can see every day in his own home or in his neighbor's?

R. In other words, you must have ordinary men and exceptional events? I think I would prefer the opposite. Besides, you are judging what

* See the seventh Engraving.

you have read as one would a Novel. It is not a Novel; you said so yourself. It is a Collection of Letters...

N. Which are no Letters: I think I said that as well. What epistolary style! How stilted it is! What a profusion of exclamations! What affectations! What bombast just to convey everyday things! What big words for small ideas! Seldom any sense, any accuracy;

never any discrimination, or force, or depth. Diction that is always in the clouds, and thoughts that forever crawl on the ground. If your characters are in nature, admit that their style is not very natural.

R. I admit that, given your point of view, that is the way it must seem to you.

N. Are you supposing that the Public will see it differently; and was it not my judgment you asked for?

R. I am replying to elicit a longer version of it. I see that you would rather have Letters written to be printed.

N. Such preference seems rather well founded for letters one is giving to the printer.

R. Then we shall never see men in books except as they wish to represent themselves?

N. The Author as he wishes to represent himself; those he depicts such as they are. But that advantage is still lacking here. Not a single Portrait vigorously brushed; not a single character passably delineated; no grounded observation; no knowledge of the world. ¹³ What does one learn in the small sphere of two or three Lovers or Friends constantly wrapped up in themselves?

R. One learns to love mankind. In large circles one learns only to hate mankind.

Your judgment is harsh; the Public's is bound to be even harsher. Without calling it unjust, I would like to tell you in turn the way I see these Letters; less to excuse the defects for which you fault them, than to discover their source.

In seclusion, one has other ways of seeing and feeling than in involvement with the world; the passions differently modified also have different expressions; the

imagination, constantly encountering the same objects, is more vividly affected by them.

That small number of images keeps returning, mixes with all these notions, and lends them the odd and repetitious turn one notices in the conversation of Solitary Folk. Does it then follow that their language is highly forceful? Not at all; it is merely

extraordinary. It is only in the world that one learns to speak forcefully. First of all, because one must say everything differently and better than others would, and second, because being obliged at every moment to make assertions

one doesn't believe, to express sentiments one does not feel, one attempts to give what one says a persuasive turn to make up for the lack of inner persuasion. Do you believe that really impassioned people have those intense, strong, colorful ways of speaking that you admire in your Dramas and Novels? No; passion wrapped up in itself

expresses itself with more profusion than power; it doesn't even try to persuade; it doesn't even suspect that anyone could mistrust it. When it says what it feels, it does so less to explain it to others than to unburden itself. Love is depicted more vividly in great cities; is it better felt there than in hamlets?

N. In other words, weakness of language proves strength of feeling?

R. Sometimes it at least reveals its truth. Read a love letter written by an Author in his study, by a wit trying to shine. If he has at least a little fire in his brain, his letter will, as we say, scorch the paper; the heat will go no farther. You will be charmed, even stirred perhaps; but with a stirring that is fleeting and arid, that will leave you nothing to remember but words. In contrast, a letter really dictated by love; a letter from a truly passionate Lover, will be desultory, diffuse, full of verbose, disconnected, repetitious passages. His heart, filled with an overflowing sentiment, ever repeats the same thing, and is never done, like a running spring that flows endlessly and never runs dry.

Nothing salient, nothing remarkable; neither the words, nor the turns, nor the sentences are memorable; there is nothing in it to admire or to be struck by. And yet one feels the soul melt; one feels moved without knowing why. The strength of the sentiment may not strike us, but its truth affects us, and that is how one heart can speak to another. But those who feel nothing, those who have only the fancy jargon of the passions, are unfamiliar with beauties of this kind and disdain them.

N. Go on.

R. Very well. In this latter sort of letters, though the thoughts are commonplace, the style nonetheless is not familiar, and should not be. Love is but illusion; it fashions for itself, so to speak, another Universe; it surrounds itself with objects that do not exist, or to which it alone has given being; and as it renders all its sentiments by images, its language is always figurative. ¹⁴ But such figures lack precision and sequence; its eloquence is in its disorder; it convinces more when it reasons less. Enthusiasm is the final degree of passion. When passion is at the full, it perceives its object as perfect;

makes it into its idol; places it in Heaven; and just as the enthusiasm of devoutness borrows the language of love, so does the enthusiasm of love borrow also the language of devoutness. It can see nothing but Paradise, Angels, the virtues of Saints, the delights of the celestial abode. In these transports, in the midst of such lofty images, will love evoke them in pedestrian terms? Will it bring itself to lower, to sully its ideas with

vul-gar phrases? Will it not elevate its style? Give it nobility, dignity? How can you speak of Letters, of epistolary style? When writing to one's beloved, who cares about that! It is no longer Letters one writes, but Hymns.

N. Citizen, ¹⁵ shall we check your pulse?

R. No: look at the snow on my head.¹⁶ There is an age for experience; another for memory. Sentiment dies out in the long run; but the sensible soul always remains.

Let me return to our Letters. If you read them as the work of an Author who wishes to please, or who has pretensions of writing, they are detestable. But take them for what they are, and judge them according to their kind. Two or three simple but sensible youths discuss among themselves the interests of their hearts. It never occurs to them to shine in each other's eyes. They know and love each other too much for susceptibility to have any further effect between them. They are children, will they think as men? They are foreigners, will they write correctly? They live in solitude,¹⁷ will they know the world and society? Filled with the single sentiment that occupies them, they are in delirium, and think they are philosophizing. Would you have them know how to observe, judge, reflect? They know nothing of all that. They know how to love; they relate everything to their passion. Is the importance they give to their extravagant ideas less amusing than all the wit they might display? They talk about everything; they get everything wrong; they reveal nothing but themselves; but in revealing themselves, they make themselves endearing. Their errors are more worthy than the knowledge of Sages.

Their honest hearts carry everywhere, even in their very faults, the prejudices of virtue, always confident and constantly betrayed. They go unheard, they go unanswered, they are disabused by everything. They avoid discouraging truths: finding nowhere what they are feeling, they turn in on themselves; they detach themselves from the rest of Creation;

and inventing among themselves a little world different from ours, there they create an authentically new spectacle.

N. I allow that a man of twenty and maidens of eighteen should not, however educated, talk like Philosophers, even if they think that's what they are. I also admit, and this difference has not escaped me, that these maidens turn out to be women of merit, and this young man a better observer. I make no comparison between the beginning and the end of the work. The details of domestic life expunge the faults of an earlier age: the chaste spouse, the thoughtful woman, the worthy materfamilias¹⁸ cause us to forget the guilty mistress. But that itself is subject to criticism: the end of the collection makes the beginning all the more reprehensible; one would say that they are two different books which the same persons should not read. Setting out to depict reasonable people, why begin at a

point where they have not yet reached that stage? The childish games that precede the lessons of wisdom dissuade the reader from waiting for them; the evil scandalizes before the good can edify; finally, indignant, he gives up and casts the book aside just when he was about to profit from it.

R. I think, on the contrary, that the end of this collection would be superfluous to readers repelled by the beginning, and that this very beginning has to be agreeable to those for whom the end can be useful. Thus, those who do not read it to the end will lose nothing, because it isn't suited to them; and those who can profit from it would not have read it had it begun more solemnly. To make what you have to say useful, first you have to get the attention of those who ought to put it to use.

My means have changed, but not my purpose. When I tried to speak to men no one

listened to me; perhaps by addressing children I shall be better listened to; and children do not relish the taste of naked reason any better than that of ill-disguised medicines.

Cosí a l'egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi Di soavi licor gl'orli del vaso:

Succhi amari ingannato intanto ei beve, E da l'inganno suo vita riceve. 19

Just so, in order to get a sick child to take medicine,

are we accustomed to rubbing the edge of the vessel with some sweet liquor.

He nonetheless swallows that bitter liquid,

and obtains his cure from the deception we have perpetrated.

N. I'm afraid you are again mistaken: they will lick the edges of the vessel and not drink the liquor.

R. Then it will no longer be my fault; I will have done my best to make it go down.

My young people are lovable; but to love them at thirty, you need to have known them at twenty. You need to have lived a long time with them in order to enjoy their company;

and it is only after deploring their faults that you are able to appreciate their virtues.

Their letters are not immediately engaging; but little by little they win you over: you can neither take them nor leave them. Grace and ease are not to be found in them, nor

reason, nor wit, nor eloquence; sentiment there is, it is communicated to the heart by degrees, and it alone ultimately makes up for all the rest. It is a long ballad the stanzas of which taken separately are not at all moving, but their succession has a cumulative effect. That is what I feel when I read them: tell me whether you feel the same thing?

N. No. Yet I understand such an effect in your case. If you are the author, the effect is obvious. If you are not, I can still understand it. A man living in the world cannot accustom himself to the extravagant ideas, the

affected bathos, the continual false reasoning of your good people. A man living in solitude can appreciate them; you yourself said why. But before publishing this manuscript, don't forget that the public is not made up of Hermits. The best you can hope for would be for your little fellow to be taken for a Céladon, your Edward for a Don Quixote, your chatterboxes for two Astrées, and be laughed at like so many real madmen. ²⁰ But prolonged madness is hardly entertaining: you have to write like Cervantes to get people to read six volumes of visions.²¹

R. The reason that would lead you to suppress this Work encourages me to publish it.

N. What! the certainty of not being read?

R. With a little patience, you will understand me.

When it comes to morality, no reading, in my view, will do worldly people any good.

First, because the abundance of new books they leaf through, and which alternately state the pros and cons, destroys the effect of the former by the latter and nullifies the whole.

Select books which are reread are equally ineffectual: if they support worldly maxims, they are superfluous; and if they oppose them, they are futile. They find their readers linked to social vices by chains they cannot break. The man of the world who wants his soul stirred for a moment to put it back into the moral order, encountering invincible resistance on all sides, is always forced to maintain or return to his initial situation. I am persuaded that there are few people born good who have not tried this, at least once in their lives; but soon discouraged by a vain effort, they don't repeat it, and they get used to regarding the morality of books as babble of idle people. The further one gets from the bustle, from great cities, from large gatherings, the smaller the obstacles become. There is a point where these obstacles cease to be insurmountable, and that is where books can be of some use. When one lives in isolation, since there is no hurry to read to show off one's reading, it is less varied and more meditated upon; and since it is no longer counterbalanced so strongly from without, it has a much greater effect within.

Select books which are reread are equally ineffectual: if they support worldly maxims, they are superfluous; and if they oppose them, they are futile. They find their readers linked to social vices by chains they cannot break. The man of the world who wants his soul stirred for a moment to put it back into the moral order, encountering invincible resistance on all sides, is always forced to maintain or return to his initial situation. I am persuaded that there are few people born good who have not tried this, at least once in their lives; but soon discouraged by a vain effort, they don't repeat it, and they get used to regarding the morality of books as babble of idle people. The further one gets from the bustle, from great cities, from large gatherings, the smaller the obstacles become. There is a point where these obstacles cease to be insurmountable, and that is where books can be of some use. When one lives in isolation, since there is no hurry to read to show off one's reading, it is less varied and more meditated upon; and since it is no longer counterbalanced so strongly from without, it has a much greater effect within.