There is not a character who is not
witty, and neither is there one who has not bartered conscience for
cleverness. The elegance of the whole is but a mask of immorality. These
stories of feeling in which there is no feeling make a strange and
painful impression upon me.
December 4, 1876.--I have been thinking a great deal of Victor
Cherbuliez. Perhaps his novels make up the most disputable part of his
work--they are so much wanting in simplicity, feeling, reality. And yet
what knowledge, style, wit, and subtlety--how much thought everywhere,
and what mastery of language! He astonishes one; I cannot but admire
him.
Cherbuliez's mind is of immense range, clear-sighted, keen, full of
resource; he is an Alexandrian exquisite, substituting for the feeling
which makes men earnest the irony which leaves them free. Pascal would
say of him--"He has never risen from the order of thought to the order
of charity." But we must not be ungrateful. A Lucian is not worth an
Augustine, but still he is Lucian. Those who enfranchise the mind render
service to man as well as those who persuade the heart. After the
leaders come the liberators, and the negative and critical minds have
their place and function beside the men of affirmation, the convinced
and inspired souls. The positive element in Victor Cherbuliez's work is
beauty, not goodness, not moral or religious life.
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