The Immoralist — PREFACE

Chapter 1 of 14 · Review of The Immoralist

I give this book for what it is worth. It is a fruit full of bitter ash; it is like those desert colocynths that grow in scorched places and offer thirst nothing but a more atrocious burning, yet on the golden sand they are not without beauty.

If I had held up my hero as an example, it must be granted that I succeeded very badly; the few who were willing to take any interest in Michel's adventure did so in order to revile him with all the force of their goodness. Not in vain had I adorned Marceline with so many virtues; Michel was not forgiven for failing to prefer her to himself.

And if I had offered this book as an indictment of Michel, I should have succeeded hardly any better, for no one gave me credit for the indignation he felt against my hero; that indignation, it seemed, was felt in spite of me; from Michel it spilled over onto me; a little more and people would have confounded me with him.

But in this book I wished to draw up an indictment no more than a defence, and I have refrained from judging. Today the public no longer forgives an author who, after the action he depicts, does not declare himself for or against; more than that, in the very course of the drama they would have him take sides, pronounce himself plainly either for Alceste or for Philinte, for Hamlet or for Ophelia, for Faust or for Marguerite, for Adam or for Jehovah. I certainly do not claim that neutrality (I was going to say: indecision) is a sure sign of a great mind; but I believe that many great minds have felt a strong reluctance to… conclude — and that to state a problem well is not to suppose it solved in advance.

It is with reluctance that I use the word "problem" here. To tell the truth, in art there are no problems — of which the work of art is not the sufficient solution.

If by "problem" one means "drama", let me say that the one this book relates, though it is played out in the very soul of my hero, is nonetheless too general to remain confined within his singular adventure. I make no claim to have invented this "problem"; it existed before my book; whether Michel triumphs or goes under, the "problem" continues to be, and the author puts forward neither the triumph nor the defeat as settled.

And if certain distinguished minds have consented to see in this drama nothing but the exposition of an odd case, and in its hero nothing but a sick man; if they have failed to recognize that some very urgent ideas, of very general interest, may nevertheless inhabit it — the fault lies not with those ideas or with that drama, but with the author, and I mean: with his clumsiness — for all that he put into this book his whole passion, all his tears and all his care. But the real interest of a work and the interest a public of a single day takes in it are two very different things. One may, I think, without too much conceit, prefer running the risk of interesting no one on the first day, with things that are interesting — to thrilling, with no tomorrow, a public greedy for insipidities.

(To Monsieur D. R., President of the Council.)

Yes, you were quite right in thinking so: Michel has spoken to us, my dear brother. Here is the account he gave. You had asked for it; I had promised it to you; but at the moment of sending it, I hesitate still, and the more I read it over the more dreadful it seems to me. Ah! what are you going to think of our friend? And what, for that matter, do I think of him myself?… Shall we simply condemn him, denying that faculties which show themselves cruel can be turned to good? — But there is more than one man today, I fear, who would dare recognize himself in this account. Shall we know how to invent a use for so much intelligence and strength — or must we refuse the whole of it any right of citizenship?

In what way can Michel serve the State? I confess that I do not know… He must have an occupation. Will the high position your great merits have won you, the power you hold, make it possible to find him one? — Make haste. Michel is devoted: he is so still; soon he will be devoted only to himself.

I write to you beneath a flawless blue; in the twelve days that Denis, Daniel and I have been here, not a cloud, not a lessening of the sun. Michel says the sky has been pure for two months.

I am neither sad nor cheerful; the air here fills you with a very vague exaltation and brings you to know a state that seems as far from gaiety as from grief; perhaps it is happiness.

We are staying beside Michel; we do not wish to leave him; you will understand why if you will be so good as to read these pages; it is here, then, in his house, that we await your answer; do not delay.

You know what a school friendship, strong already but grown greater with every year, bound Michel to Denis, to Daniel, to me. Among the four of us a kind of pact was made: at the least call from one of us the other three were to answer. So when I received from Michel that mysterious cry of alarm, I warned Daniel and Denis at once, and all three of us, dropping everything, set out.

We had not seen Michel for three years. He had married, had taken his wife travelling, and, when he last passed through Paris, Denis was in Greece, Daniel in Russia, and I was kept, as you know, at the side of our sick father. We had not, however, been left without news; but what Silas and Will, who had seen him again, told us could only astonish us. A change was coming over him which we could not yet explain. He was no longer the deeply learned puritan of former days, whose gestures were awkward from sheer conviction, whose eyes were so clear that before them our too free talk often stopped short. He was… but why tell you already what his account is going to tell you?

So I send you this account, just as Denis, Daniel and I heard it: Michel told it on his terrace, where we lay beside him in the darkness and the light of the stars. At the end of the telling we saw the day rise over the plain. Michel's house overlooks it, and overlooks the village as well, from which it stands only a little way off. In this heat, with all the harvests cut, that plain looks like the desert.

Michel's house, poor and odd as it is, is charming. In winter one would suffer from the cold, for there is no glass in the windows; or rather no windows at all, but great holes in the walls. The weather is so fine that we sleep outside on mats.

Let me tell you too that we had a good journey. We arrived here in the evening, worn out by the heat, drunk with novelty, having barely stopped at Algiers, then at Constantine. From Constantine another train carried us as far as Sidi b. M., where a cart was waiting. The road stops a long way short of the village, which is perched on the top of a rock like certain towns of Umbria. We went up on foot; two mules had taken our bags. Coming by that path, Michel's house is the first in the village. A garden closed in by low walls, or rather a walled enclosure, surrounds it, where three misshapen pomegranate trees grow and a magnificent oleander. A Kabyle child was there, who fled as soon as we came near, scrambling over the wall without ceremony.

Michel received us without showing any joy; very simple in manner, he seemed to fear any display of tenderness; but on the threshold, first of all, he gravely embraced each of us three.

Until nightfall we did not exchange ten words. An almost entirely frugal dinner was ready in a drawing room whose sumptuous decorations astonished us, but which Michel's account will explain to you. Then he served us the coffee, which he took care to make himself. Then we went up onto the terrace, from which the view stretched away without end, and all three of us, like Job's three friends, waited, watching over the blazing plain the abrupt decline of the day.

When night had come, Michel said: