[11] A comedy by Molière.
THE HANGING AT LA PIROCHE
BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, FILS
Alexandre Dumas, the Younger, son of Alexandre Dumas, was born at Paris in 1824, and died at Marly-le-Roi in 1895. His first great success came to him in 1848, with “La Dame aux Camélias,” the romantic story of a “woman with a past” reclaimed by love; afterward dramatized with such success that it decided his career. He still wrote novels and short stories, but without his father’s imagination. He was elected an Academician in 1874.
The younger Dumas inherited a strong, good nature, weak enough to share in a few human vices, strong enough to combat them; he was a lover of order, elegance, and amateur in all arts but his own. Aiming at social and moral reformation, he was bold, logical, spiritual. By reason of his depth of background and knowledge of form, he ranks among the foremost of the nineteenth century dramatists.
THE HANGING AT LA PIROCHE
BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, FILS
Do you know La Piroche? No. No more do I. So I shall not abuse my privilege as an author by giving you a description; especially since, between you and me be it said, they are very tiresome, those descriptions. Unless it be a question of the virgin forests of America, as in Cooper, or of Meschaccbé,[12] as in Chateaubriand, that is to say, countries that are not close at hand, and about which the imagination, to obtain a clear vision of the details, must be assisted by those poetical voyagers who have visited them, in general descriptions are not of much consequence except to be skipped by the reader. Literature has this advantage over painting, sculpture, and music; the threefold advantage of being able to paint by itself a picture in a single word, to carve a statue in one phrase, to mold a melody on one page; it must not abuse itself of that privilege, and one should leave to the special arts a little of their own prerogative. I own, then, for my part, and for lack of better advice, that when I find that I have to describe a country which every one has seen, or every one could see, if it be near, if it does not differ from our own, I prefer to leave to my reader the pleasure of recalling it if he has seen it, or of imagining it if he does not yet know it. The reader likes well enough to be left to do his share of the work he is reading. This flatters him and makes him believe that he is capable of doing the rest. Indeed, it is an excellent thing to flatter your reader. Moreover, the whole world in reality knows what the sea is like—a plain, a forest, a blue sky, an effect of sun, an effect of the moon, or an effect of storm. Of what use to dwell upon it? It would be far better to trace a landscape in one stroke of the brush like Rubens or Delacroix; this should be said without comparison and keep the whole value of your palette for the figures you wish to reanimate. When one blackens with descriptions page after page of paper, one doesn’t give the reader an impression equal to that experienced by the most artless bourgeois who walks through the Bois de Vincennes on a soft April day, or by an unlettered girl who strolls in June, on the arm of her fiancé, at eleven o’clock at night through the shady vistas of the woods of Romainville or the park of Enghien. We all have in our minds and hearts a gallery of landscapes made from memory, and which serves as background for all the stories of the world. There is but one word to use—day or night, winter or spring, calm or storm, wood or plain—to evoke at once a most finished landscape.