un of country ministers and country doctors. And
if these accessory characters have seemed mere abstractions to some
people, it depends on the fact that ordinary men are to a certain
extent impersonal in the exercise of their callings. This means
that they are without individuality, showing only one side of
themselves while at work. And as long as the spectator does not
feel the need of seeing them from other sides, my abstract
presentation of them remains on the whole correct.

In regard to the dialogue, I want to point out that I have departed
somewhat from prevailing traditions by not turning my figures into
catechists who make stupid questions in order to call forth witty
answers. I have avoided the symmetrical and mathematical
construction of the French dialogue, and have instead permitted the
minds to work irregularly as they do in reality, where, during
conversation, the cogs of one mind seem more or less haphazardly to
engage those of another one, and where no topic is fully exhausted.
Naturally enough, therefore, the dialogue strays a good deal as, in
the opening scenes, it acquires a material that later on is worked
over, picked up again, repeated, expounded, and built up like the
theme in a musical composition.

The plot is pregnant enough, and as, at bottom, it is concerned
only with two persons, I have concentrated my attention on these,
introducing only one subordinate figure, the cook, and keeping the
unfortunate spirit of the father hovering above and beyond the
action. I have done this because I believe I have noticed that the
psychological processes are what interest the people of our own day
more than anything else. Our souls, so eager for knowledge, cannot
rest satisfied with seeing what happens, but must also learn how it
comes to happen! What we want to see are just the wires, the
machinery. We want to investigate the box with the false bottom,
touch the magic ring in order to find the suture, and look into the
cards to discover how they are marked.

In this I have taken for models the monographic novels of the
brothers de Goncourt, which have appealed more to me than any other
modern literature.

Turning to the technical side of the composition, I have tried to
abolish the division into acts. And I have done so because I have
come to fear that our decreasing capacity for illusion might be
unfavourably affected by intermissions during which the spectator
would have time to reflect and to get