houts!
Recalls! All of the signs of success--and note that the public on this
evening of rehearsal with the exception of a small and insignificant
contingent, will be the public of the first performance the next night.
It is "certain to go," I tell you! Certain! Absolutely certain!

On this next night the piece is presented. It falls flat! Well, then?

If the author knows what he is doing, if he is the master of his
method, explain to me then why, after having written twenty good pieces,
he writes a bad one?

And don't tell me that failure proves nothing--you would pain me, my
friend.

I do not intend to deny, you must understand, the value of talent and
skill and experience. They are, philosophically speaking, important
elements. But in what proportions do they contribute to the result?
That's what, let me repeat, nobody knows, the author as little as
anybody else.

The author in travail with a play is an unconscious being, whatever he
may think about himself; and his piece is the product of instinct rather
than of intention.

Believe me, my dear Dreyfus, in this as in everything, the cleverest of
us does what he can, and if he succeeds, he says that he has done
exactly what he tried to do. That's the truth. In reality an author
knows sometimes what he has tried to do, rarely what he has done;--and
as to knowing how he did it, I defy him!

Then if it is good, let him try again! I cannot recede from this view.

In our craft, you see, there is an element of unrebeginnable which
makes it an art, something of genius which ennobles it, something of the
fatally uncertain which renders it both charming and redoubtable. To try
to pick the masterpiece to pieces, to unscrew the ideal, to pluck the
heart out of the mystery, after the fashion of the baby who looks for
the little insect in the watch, is to attempt a vain and puerile thing.

Ah! if I had the time--but I haven't the time. So it's just as well, or
better, that I stop. To talk too much about art is not a good sign in an
artist. It is like a lover's talking too much about love; if I were a
woman I should have my doubts.

Well, do you wish me to disengage the philosophy of this garrulity? It
is found whole and entire in an apolog of my son--he too a philosopher
without knowing it. He was then seven. As a result of learning fables he
was seized with the ambition of writing one, which he brought to me one
fine day. It is called the 'Donkey and the Canary.' The