He never wrote prose; rhymes were his natural dialect. He thought in rhymes, and he loved them so that he read all sorts with equal attention. When we love a thing we love every part of it. Play-goers love the green-room; gourmands love to smell cooking; mothers love to bathe their children. Disillusion is a sign of weakness. Beware of the fastidious, for they are usually powerless!
Art, he thought, was a serious thing, its aim being to create a vague exaltation; that alone being its morality. From a memorandum I take the following notes:
“In poetry, one need not consider whether the morals are good, but whether they adapt themselves to the person described; thus will it describe with equal indifference good and bad actions, without suggesting the latter as an example.”—Pierre Corneille.
“Art, in its creations, must strive to please only those who have the right to judge it; otherwise it will follow the wrong path.”—Goethe.
“All the intellectual beauties and details of a tale (if it is well written) are so many useful facts, and are perhaps more precious to the public mind than the main points that make up the subject.”—Buffon.
Therefore art, being its own motive, must not be considered an expedient. No matter how much genius we might use in the development of a story used as an example, another might prove the contrary. A climax is not a conclusion. We must not infer generalities from one particular case; those who think themselves progressive in doing so are working against modern science, which demands that we gather all the facts before proclaiming a law.
Bouilhet did not like that moralising art which teaches and corrects; he liked still less the frivolous art, which strives to divert the mind or stir the feelings; he did not follow democratic art, being convinced that, to be accessible to all, it must descend to the lowest level; as, at this civilised period, when we try to be artless we become silly. As to official art, he refused all its advantages, not wishing to defend causes that are so short-lived.
He avoided paradoxes, oddities, and all deviations; he followed a straight road; that is, the generous feelings, the immutable side of the human soul. As “thoughts are the foundation of language,” he tried to think well so as to write well. Although he wrote emotional dramas, he never said: “If Margot wept, the melodrama is good,” as he did not believe in replacing emotion by trickery. He hated the new maxim that says, “One must write as one speaks.” It is true, the old way of wasting time in making researches, the trouble taken when bringing out a book, would seem ridiculous nowadays; we are above all those things, we overflow with fluency and genius!
Not that he lacked genius, however; he often made corrections while a rehearsal was in progress. Inspiration, he held, cannot be made, but must come naturally. He followed Buffon’s advice, expressing each thought by an image, and made his conceptions as vivid as possible; but the bourgeois declared that “atmosphere” was too material a thing to express sentiment; and fearing their sound French judgment might be disturbed and carried beyond its limits, they exclaimed “too much metaphor”!—as if they had any to spare!
Few authors take such pains in choosing their words, in phrasing. He did not give the title of author to those who possess only certain elements of style. Many of the most praised would have been unable to combine analysis, description, and dialogue!