Thine ever.
TO LAURENT PICHAT
(Director of the Revue de Paris.)
Croisset, Thursday evening, 1856.
My dear friend: I have just received the Bovary, and I feel that I must thank you immediately (for if I am somewhat churlish, I am not an ingrate). You have rendered me a great service in accepting this work, such as it is, and I shall not forget it.
Confess that you have found me, and that you still find me (more than ever, perhaps) possessed of a ridiculous amount of vehemence. I should like to own some day that you are right; I promise that when that time comes I will make you the most abject excuses! But understand, dear friend, that it was only an experiment I attempted, and I hope the workmanship is not too crude.
Will you believe me when I tell you that the ignoble realism you find in my story, the reproduction of which disgusts you, revolts me quite as much? If you knew me better, you would know that I hold commonplace existence in execration. I always seclude myself from it as much as possible. But, for æsthetic purposes, I wished this time—and only this time—to exploit it from its very foundation. So I have undertaken the matter in a heroic way; I listened to the minutest details; I accepted all, said all, painted all,—an ambitious attempt.
I explain myself badly, but it is enough that you comprehend the reason for my resistance of your criticisms, judicious as they were. You will make another book for me! You struck at the poetic foundation whence springs the type (as a philosopher would say) from which the work was conceived. In short, I should have failed in what I owe to myself, and also in what I owe to you, if I had yielded as an act of deference and not of conviction.
Art demands neither complaisance nor politeness,—nothing but faith—faith and liberty! And on that point we may join hands!
Under an unfruitful tree, whose branches are always green, I am