FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71  
72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   >>   >|  
task the introduction of all sorts of elaborate, and in many cases extravagantly composed metres, and I had begun to feel that I was working in sand, I could make no progress, the house I was raising crumbled and fell away on every side. These stories had one merit: they were all, so far as I can remember, perfectly constructed. For the art of telling a story clearly and dramatically, _selon les procedes de M. Scribe_, I had thoroughly learnt from old M. Duval, the author of a hundred and sixty plays, written in collaboration with more than a hundred of the best writers of his day, including the master himself, Gautier. I frequently met M. Duval at breakfast at a neighbouring _cafe_, and our conversation turned on _l'exposition de la piece, preparer la situation, nous aurons des larmes_, etc. One day, as I sat waiting for him, I took up the _Voltaire_. It contained an article by M. Zola. _Naturalisme, la verite, la science_, were repeated some half-a-dozen times. Hardly able to believe my eyes, I read that you should write, with as little imagination as possible, that plot in a novel or in a play was illiterate and puerile, and that the art of M. Scribe was an art of strings and wires, etc. I rose up from breakfast, ordered my coffee, and stirred the sugar, a little dizzy, like one who has received a violent blow on the head. Echo-augury! Words heard in an unexpected quarter, but applying marvellously well to the besetting difficulty of the moment. The reader who has followed me so far will remember the instant effect the word "Shelley" had upon me in childhood, and how it called into existence a train of feeling that illuminated the vicissitudes and passions of many years, until it was finally assimilated and became part of my being; the reader will also remember how the mere mention, at a certain moment, of the word "France" awoke a vital impulse, even a sense of final ordination, and how the irrevocable message was obeyed, and how it led to the creation of a mental existence. And now for a third time I experienced the pain and joy of a sudden and inward light. Naturalism, truth, the new art, above all the phrase, "the new art," impressed me as with a sudden sense of light. I was dazzled, and I vaguely understood that my "Roses of Midnight" were sterile eccentricities, dead flowers that could not be galvanised into any semblance of life, passionless in all their passion. I had read a few chapters of the "Assommoir
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71  
72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

remember

 

moment

 
reader
 

Scribe

 
hundred
 

sudden

 

breakfast

 

existence

 

passions

 

Shelley


feeling

 

called

 

childhood

 

illuminated

 

vicissitudes

 

augury

 

received

 

violent

 

unexpected

 

quarter


stirred

 

difficulty

 

instant

 

coffee

 
finally
 
besetting
 

applying

 

marvellously

 

effect

 

understood


Midnight

 

sterile

 

eccentricities

 

vaguely

 
dazzled
 
Naturalism
 

phrase

 

impressed

 

flowers

 
passion

chapters
 

Assommoir

 
passionless
 
galvanised
 
semblance
 
France
 

impulse

 

mention

 

ordered

 
ordination