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I
mind-
BRUNETIERE 423
as George Sand pointed out to Flaubert, to write only for a
D initiates; even they do not always understand one,
and besides, they never admire one for the reasons one would
prefer.
In what way may we avoid this danger? Is it
possible to
point out several ways, or is there perhaps only one? In
any case, we can easily define and characterize' the one our
great writers have taken, although not always of their own
accord. They have understood, or have been made to understand,
that language, though a work of art, still continues to
be above all a medium for the communication of thoughts
and feelings, what may
be called their instrument o
change, their current coin; and that consequently perfect
art cannot be conceived or sought for apart from those attributes
which are the attributes of thought itself.
In French, as in English or German, and I presume also
in Chinese, both prose writers and poets have always tended
to make of their art
an image or expression of themselves.
It i> for this very reason that they are writers, because the
things that had been said did not satisfy them, or because
they wished to say them in another way, or else to say things
that had not been said.
Only in France, the court,
"
society,"
criticism, have reminded them that if
they wrote,
it was in
order to IK- understood. From Ronsard to Victor Hugo, they
had imposed upon them, as a rule, the twofold condi
tion to remain th< . and
at the same time to talk the
of everybody. The interest which they had inspired
in a whole people for the things of literature- turned in some
sort ,' -!icm. Having thems,-lve< invited all the culti
about them to become judges of art, they \\ere
not allowed, when the fancy came over them later, to arro-