The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Inferno, by Henri Barbusse

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Title: The Inferno

Author: Henri Barbusse

Release Date: May 22, 2004 [EBook #12414]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE INFERNO ***

Produced by David S. Miller

THE INFERNO

BY HENRI BARBUSSE
AUTHOR OF "UNDER FIRE"

TRANSLATED FROM THE 100TH FRENCH EDITION WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
1918

INTRODUCTION

In introducing M. Barbusse's most important book to a public already
familiar with "Under Fire," it seems well to point out the relation of
the author's philosophy to his own time, and the kinship of his art to
that of certain other contemporary French and English novelists.

"L'Enfer" has been more widely read and discussed in France than any
other realistic study since the days of Zola. The French sales of the
volume, in 1917 alone, exceeded a hundred thousand copies, a popularity
all the more remarkable from the fact that its appeal is based as much
on its philosophical substance as on the story which it tells.

Although M. Barbusse is one of the most distinguished contemporary
French writers of short stories, he has found in the novel form the
most fitting literary medium for the expression of his philosophy, and
it is to realism rather than romanticism that he turns for the
exposition of his special imaginative point of view. And yet this
statement seems to need some qualification. In his introduction to
"Pointed Roofs," by Dorothy Richardson, Mr. J.D. Beresford points out
that a new objective literary method is becoming general in which the
writer's strict detachment from his objective subject matter is united
to a tendency, impersonal, to be sure, to immerse himself in the life
surrounding his characters. Miss May Sinclair points out that writers
are beginning to take the complete plunge for the first time, and
instances as examples, not only the novels of Dorothy Richardson, but
those of James Joyce.

Now it is perfectly true that Miss Richardson and Mr. Joyce have
introduced this method into English fiction, and that Mr. Frank
Swinnerton has carried the method a step further in