So Runs the World | Page 8

a corner in the presence of such
exigencies. Are you familiar with Zola's "La Terre"? This novel is to
represent a picture of a French village. Try and think of a French
village, or of any other village. How does it look altogether? It is a
gathering of houses, trees, fields, pastures, wild flowers, people, herds,
light, sky, singing, small country business, and work. In all that,
without any doubt, the manure plays an important part, but there is
something more behind it and besides it. But Zola's village looks as if it
was composed exclusively of manure and crime. Therefore the picture
is false, the truth twisted, because in nature the true relation of things is
different. If any one would like to take the trouble of making a list of
the women represented in French novels, he would persuade himself
that at least ninety-five per cent. of them were fallen women. But in
society it is not, and cannot be, so. Probably even in the countries
where they worshipped Astarte, there were less bad women.
Notwithstanding this, the authors try to persuade us that they are giving
a true picture of society, and that their analysis of customs is an
objective one. The lie, exaggeration, liking for rotten things--such is the
exact picture in contemporary novels. I do not know what profit there is
in literature like that, but I do know that the devil has not lost anything,
because through this channel flows a river of mud and poison, and the
moral sense became so dulled that finally they tolerated such books
which a few decades ago would have brought the author to court.

To-day we do not wish to believe that the author of "Madame Bovary"
had two criminal suits. Had this book been written twenty years later,
they would have found it too modest.
But the human spirit, which does not slumber, and the organism that
wishes to live, does not suffer excess of poison. Finally there came a
moment for hiccoughs of disgust. Some voices began to rise asking for
other spiritual bread; an instinctive sentiment awakes and cries that it
cannot continue any longer in this way, that one must arise, shake off
the mud, clean, change! The people ask for a fresh breeze. The masses
cannot say what they want, but they know what they do not want; they
know they are breathing bad air, and that they are suffocating. An
uneasiness takes hold of their minds. Even in France they are seeking
and crying for something different; they began to protest against the
actual state of affairs. Many writers felt that uneasiness. They had some
moments of doubt, about which I have spoken already, and those
doubts were stronger on account of the uncertainty of the new roads.
Look at the last books of Bourget, Rod, Barrès, Desjardin, the poetry of
Rimbaud, Verlaine, Heredia, Mallarmé, and even Maeterlinck and his
school. What do you find there? The searching for new essence and
new form, feverish seeking for some issue, uncertainty where to go and
where to look for help--in religion or mysticism, in duty outside of faith,
or in patriotism or in humanity? Above all, however, one sees in them
an immense uneasiness. They do not find any issue, because for it one
needs two things: a great idea and a great talent, and they did not have
either of them. Hence the uneasiness increases, and the same authors
who arouse against rough pessimism of naturalistic direction fell into
pessimism themselves, and by this the principal importance and aim of
a reform became weaker. What remains then? The bizarre form. And in
this bizarre form, whether it is called symbolism or impressionism, they
go in deeper and become more entangled, losing artistic equilibrium,
common sense, and serenity of the soul. Often they fall into the former
corruption as far as the essence is concerned, and almost always into
dissonance with one's self, because they have an honest sentiment that
they must give to the world something new, and they know not what.
Such are the present times! Among those searching in darkness,

wandering and weary ones, one remained quiet, sure of himself and his
doctrine, immovable and almost serious in his pessimism. It was Emile
Zola. A great talent, slow but powerful and a potent force, surprising
objectivism if the question is about a sentiment, because it is equal to
almost complete indifference, such an exceptional gift of seeing the
entire soul of humanity and things that it approaches this naturalistic
writer to mystics--all that gives him a very great and unusual
originality.
The physical figure does not always reproduce the spiritual
individuality. In Zola, this relation comes out very strikingly. A square
face, low forehead covered with wrinkles, rough features, high
shoulders