Complete Works

work of Maupassant’s hands is honest.  He thinks sufficiently to concrete his fearless conclusions in illuminative instances.  He renders them with that exact knowledge of the means and that absolute devotion to the aim of creating a true effect — which is art.  He is the most accomplished of narrators.
    It is evident that Maupassant looked upon his mankind in another spirit than those writers who make haste to submerge the difficulties of our holding-place in the universe under a flood of false and sentimental assumptions.  Maupassant was a true and dutiful lover of our earth.  He says himself in one of his descriptive passages: “Nous autres que séduit la terre . . .”  It was true.  The earth had for him a compelling charm.  He looks upon her august and furrowed face with the fierce insight of real passion.  His is the power of detecting the one immutable quality that matters in the changing aspects of nature and under the ever-shifting surface of life.  To say that he could not embrace in his glance all its magnificence and all its misery is only to say that he was human.  He lays claim to nothing that his matchless vision has not made his own.  This creative artist has the true imagination; he never condescends to invent anything; he sets up no empty pretences.  And he stoops to no littleness in his art — least of all to the miserable vanity of a catching phrase.
     

ANATOLE FRANCE — 1904
     
     

I. — ”CRAINQUEBILLE”
     
    The latest volume of M. Anatole France purports, by the declaration of its title-page, to contain several profitable narratives.  The story of Crainquebille’s encounter with human justice stands at the head of them; a tale of a well-bestowed charity closes the book with the touch of playful irony characteristic of the writer on whom the most distinguished amongst his literary countrymen have conferred the rank of Prince of Prose.
    Never has a dignity been better borne.  M. Anatole France is a good prince.  He knows nothing of tyranny but much of compassion.  The detachment of his mind from common errors and current superstitions befits the exalted rank he holds in the Commonwealth of Literature.  It is just to suppose that the clamour of the tribes in the forum had little to do with his elevation.  Their elect are of another stamp.  They are such as their need of precipitate action requires.  He is the Elect of the Senate — the Senate of Letters — whose Conscript Fathers have recognised him as primus inter pares ; a post of pure honour and of no privilege.
    It is a good choice.  First, because it is just, and next, because it is safe.  The dignity will suffer no diminution in M. Anatole France’s hands.  He is worthy of a great tradition, learned in the lessons of the past, concerned with the present, and as earnest as to the future as a good prince should be in his public action.  It is a Republican dignity.  And M. Anatole France, with his sceptical insight into an forms of government, is a good Republican.  He is indulgent to the weaknesses of the people, and perceives that political institutions, whether contrived by the wisdom of the few or the ignorance of the many, are incapable of securing the happiness of mankind.  He perceives this truth in the serenity of his soul and in the elevation of his mind.  He expresses his convictions with measure, restraint and harmony, which are indeed princely qualities.  He is a great analyst of illusions.  He searches and probes their innermost recesses as if they were realities made of an eternal substance.  And therein consists his humanity; this is the expression of his profound and unalterable compassion.  He will flatter no tribe no section in the forum or in the market-place.  His lucid thought is not beguiled into false pity or into the common weakness of affection.  He feels that men born in ignorance as in the house of an enemy, and condemned to struggle with error and passions through endless centuries, should be spared the supreme cruelty of a hope for ever deferred.  He knows that our best hopes are irrealisable; that it is the almost incredible misfortune of mankind, but also its highest privilege, to aspire towards the impossible; that men have never failed to defeat their highest aims by the very strength of their humanity which can conceive the most gigantic tasks but leaves them disarmed before their irremediable littleness.  He knows this well because he is an artist and a