FOREWORD
M. Henry Bordeaux’s latest novel, “The Fear of Living,” appeared several months ago, at a season when the “summer novel” was flourishing. That season belongs to the big purveyors of commercial literature and is not the time at which to speak of a real writer. I have, therefore, purposely postponed until to-day my few words about this book, which both public and press have welcomed warmly, but without sufficiently marking its true place. It is one of the best novels that has appeared for a long time. It contrasts, by its vivid originality, with everything that the storytellers of to-day give us. It is a new and daring departure.
It is that, primarily, through the philosophy of life which the author has expressed in it. The “fear of living” is a new and deep-seated evil among us. We value our peace above everything, we wish to keep it at all hazards, however dearly we must pay for it. We shun responsibilities, avoid risks and chances of struggle, flee from adventure and danger, seek to escape from everything that makes for the charm and value of life. We no longer have any faith in the future,because we no longer have faith in ourselves. Writers used for a time to chronicle this sickly weakness under the name of “dilettantism.” Then, the fashion having changed, they began to exalt the claims of energy. But what they understand by that word is nothing but the keen desire to satisfy our passions and ambitions. In place of lazy selfishness they have substituted ruthless selfishness. To spare oneself all kinds of boredom, or to procure oneself the greatest amount of pleasure, these are the only two conceptions they recommend to us. But here is a writer who thinks that to live does not mean to bury oneself in a corner, nor yet to amass money and wear oneself I out with pleasure. He thinks that a life in which I one has suffered, struggled, and worked for others, not for oneself, that a life whose years are counted by emotions, sacrifices, devotions, and renunciations, is a well-filled life. He says it, he believes it, and, while we read it, he makes us believe it. It may be absurd, extravagant, and romantic to the last degree but it is not commonplace.
The characters in the “Fear of Living” are almost all respectable people. Now it is a dogma in our literature that respectable people are not interesting. The heroes of a novel may be rogues, even mediocre and vulgar rogues, turned out “by the dozen”; their adventures may be reduced to some mean little act, commonplace, ridiculous, andsensational. It does not matter; they win our sympathy, and we are ready to find them amusing or touching. But a family that ruins itself to save the honor of a name, a mother who lets her children go one by one to do their duty, a young man who prefers the charm of a pure marriage to the temptations of a sensual love—what interest have such people for us? And even if we do meet the like in our daily life, in the name of Heaven let us leave them where they are, and not let them burden the novel with their sad faces! Such is the prejudice that M. Henry Bordeaux has not feared to face boldly.
Finally he has tried to write a realistic work, and you cannot find a scene in it that is one of the commonplace situations in realism. No infidelity, no child-murder, no atrocious swindling! It has the air of being written as a wager. We have come, indeed, to the point of limiting realistic art to the portrayal only of that which is trivial, low, and worthless. Reality has become with us a synonym for ugliness. We have calmly laid down these definitions. “Every work is realistic which paints vile characters and repulsive scenes, even if these characters be morbid and these scenes be the artificial dreams of a sickly imagination. Unrealistic is every work in which any account is taken of the virtues which are the current coin of most lives.” Awriter must be possessed of a rare independence of mind, combined with no ordinary confidence in himself, to maintain that both nobility of soul and elevation of character are also realities.
This is the point of view adopted by M. Henry Bordeaux. There is more true realism in his book than in fifty chosen from among the works of the most famous “Naturalists.” The figures in it all live. The study of provincial manners is very finely developed in it. One chapter might seem a little exaggerated, if one did not feel that its truth is photographic. It is the one in which the Mayor, officially ordered to tell Madame Guibert of the death of her son who had been killed by the enemy, is afraid to compromise himself by crossing the threshold of people classed as reactionaries and sends a policeman in his place! Added to it all is a charming sympathy with nature. Both the people and their surroundings become our familiar friends in this modest home at Le Maupas, the peaceful setting of so many scenes of sorrow.
M. Henry Bordeaux was already honorably known to us through some stories written with a delicate touch, and some judicious critical essays. “The Fear of Living” raises him from his former rank and classes him as a Novelist.
RENE DOUMIC.
(Journal des Débats, 30th Sept. 1902).