A Living Lie

In the first place, you must let me thank you for having undertaken the task of introducing 'Mensonges' to the English-reading public; and also express the hope that this novel, which is no longer new, may not cause a recurrence of that misconception which too often arises when a work written in and for a Latin country is suddenly transplanted to Anglo-Saxon soil.
One of the most grievous results of such misconception, and one which French writers—I speak from experience—feel most keenly, is the reproach of immorality. Balzac spent a lifetime in defending himself against that charge; so it was with Flaubert; so it is with Emile Zola. I well remember how hurt I felt myself when, in the course of an action brought some ten years since against a publishing firm in London—who had, by the way, issued a translation of the work without my permission—'Un Crime d'Amour' was harshly spoken of by one of your judges. Not only then, but on many occasions, have I had an opportunity of remarking that the English regard the novelist's art from a standpoint differing entirely from that taken up by French writers. That difference is well worth dwelling upon here, for the problem it raises is neither more nor less than the problem of the whole art of novel-writing.
To French writers—and I refer more particularly to the great school which follows Balzac and Stendhal—the first quality of that art is analytical precision. Balzac called himself 'a doctor of social sciences.' Stendhal-Beyle, when asked his profession, used to reply, 'Observer of the human heart'; and upon the title-page of 'Rouge et Noir' he wrote as a motto the significant words, 'The truth, the ugly truth.' Every word of Flaubert's correspondence breathes forth the conviction that the novelist must always and before all else paint life as it is. These writers and their disciples do but follow, consciously or unconsciously, the scientific movement of the age. They are sociologists and psychologists who write in an imaginative form. The attitude they usually take up towards the object they are studying is explained by the fact that, as analysts, they are obliged to assume that absolute indifference to morality or immorality which should animate every savant whilst pursuing his investigations.