So Runs the World | Page 7

art. I believe that if in the future the poetry will find listeners, they will
repeat to the poets the words of Paul Verlaine, whom by too summary

judgment they count among incomprehensible originals:
"De la musique encore et toujours."
And nobody need be afraid, from a social point of view, for
Sienkiewicz's objectivity. It is a manly lyricism as well as epic, made
deep by the knowledge of the life, sustained by thinking, until now
perhaps unconscious of itself, the poetry of a writer who walked many
roads, studied many things, knew much bitterness, ridiculed many
triflings, and then he perceived that a man like himself has only one
aim: above human affairs "to spin the love, as the silkworm spins its
web."
S.C. DE SOISSONS.
"THE UNIVERSITY," CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

PART SECOND
SO RUNS THE WORLD
ZOLA.
I have a great respect for every accomplished work. Every time I put on
the end of any of my works finis, I feel satisfied; not because the work
is done, not on account of future success, but on account of an
accomplished deed.
Every book is a deed--bad or good, but at any rate accomplished--and a
series of them, written with a special aim, is an accomplished purpose
of life; it is a feast during which the workers have the right to receive a
wreath, and to sing: "We bring the crop, the crop!"
Evidently the merit depends on the result of the work. The profession
of the writer has its thorns about which the reader does not dream. A
farmer, bringing the crop to his barn, has this absolute surety, that he
brings wheat, rye, barley, or oats which will be useful to the people. An

author, writing even with the best of faith, may have moments of doubt,
whether instead of bread he did not give poison, whether his work is
not a great mistake or a great misdeed, whether it has brought profit to
humanity, or whether, were it not better for the people and himself, had
he not written anything, nothing accomplished.
Such doubts are foes to human peace, but at the same time they are a
filter, which does not pass any dirt. It is bad when there are too many of
them, it is bad when too few; in the first case the ability for deeds
disappears, in the second, the conscience. Hence the eternal, as
humanity, need of exterior regulator.
But the French writers always had more originality and independence
than others, and that regulator, which elsewhere was religion, long
since ceased to exist for them. There were some exceptions, however.
Balzac used to affirm that his aim was to serve religion and monarchy.
But even the works of those who confessed such principles were not in
harmony with themselves. One can say that it pleased the authors to
understand their activity in that way, but the reading masses could
understand it and often understood it as a negation of religious and
ethical principles.
In the last epoch, however, such misunderstanding became impossible,
because the authors began to write, either in the name of their personal
convictions, directly opposite to social principles and ties, or with
objective analysis, which, in its action of life, marks the good and the
evil as manifestations equally necessary and equally justified.
France--and through France the rest of Europe--was overflowed with a
deluge of books, written with such lightheartedness, so absolute and
with such daring, not counting on any responsibility toward people, that
even those who received them without any scruples began to be
overcome with astonishment. It seemed that every author forced
himself to go further than they expected him to. In that way they
succeeded in being called daring thinkers and original artists. The
boldness in touching certain subjects, and the way of interpreting them,
seemed to be the best quality of the writer. To that was joined bad faith,
or unconscious deceiving of himself and others. Analysis! They

analyzed in the name of truth, which apparently must and has the right
to be said, everything, but especially the evil, dirt, human corruption.
They did not notice that this pseudo-analysis ceases to be an objective
analysis, and becomes a sickish liking for rotten things coming from
two causes: in the first place from the corruption of the taste, then from
greater facility of producing striking effects.
They utilized the philological faculty of the senses, on the strength of
which repulsive impressions appear to us stronger and more real than
agreeable, and they abused that property beyond measure.
There was created a certain kind of travelling in putridness, because the
subjects being exhausted very quickly, there was a necessity to find
something new which could attract. The truth itself, in the name of
which it was done, was put in