TO MADAME ROGER DES GENETTES.
1861.
A good subject for a romance is one that is embodied in one idea, springing up like a single jet of water. It is the “mother idea,” whence come all that follow. One is by no means free to write of such or such a thing; he does not choose his subject. This is something that the public and the critics do not comprehend, but the secret of all masterpieces lies in the concordance between the subject and the temperament of the author.
You are right; we must speak with respect of Lucrece; I can compare it only to Byron, and Byron had not his gravity, nor his sincerity, nor his sadness. The melancholy of the olden time seems to me more profound than that of our day, which implies, more or less, the idea of immortality beyond the grave. But to the ancients the grave was infinity; their dreams were conceived and enacted against a black and unchangeable background. No cries, no convulsions, nothing but the fixity of a thoughtful visage! The gods no longer existed, and the Christ had not yet come; and the ancients, from Cicero to Marcus Aurelius, lived at a unique epoch when man alone was all-powerful. I do not find anything like such grandeur as this; but that which renders Lucrece intolerable is its philosophy, which the author presents as positive. It is because he does not suspect that it is weak; he wishes to explain, to conclude! If he had resembled Epicurus only in mind and not in system, all parts of his work would have been immortal and radical. No matter! Our modern poets are weak and puny compared with such a man!