MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

“You have no children, be therefore a litterateur, an artist, a master; that is logical, that is your compensation, your happiness, and your strength. And do tell us that you are getting on, that seems to us the main thing in life.—And keep well, I think that these rehearsals which make you go to and fro are good for you.”

I am not reading all these horrid things that you feed on so as to sense better apparently the good things with which you sandwich them. I have stopped laughing at human folly, I flee it and try to forget it. As for admiration, I am always ready, it is the healthiest regime by far, and too, I am glad to know that I shall soon read Saint-Antoine again

“The existence of Cruchard is a beautiful poem, so much in keeping, that I don't know if it is a fictitious biography or the copy for a real article done in good faith. I had to laugh a bit after the departure of all the Viardots (except Viardot) and the big Muscovite, who was charming although very much indisposed from time to time.”

“When they forbade the playing of Mademoiselle La Quintinie, you were too stoical, dear master, or too indifferent. You should always protest against injustice and folly, you should bawl, froth at the mouth, and smash when you can.”

There was no more question of any work, of any literature at all, than if none of us had ever learned to read. The LOCAL POETS pursued me with books and bouquets. I pretended to be dead and was left in peace. I am square with them now that I am home, by sending a copy of something of mine, it doesn't matter what, in exchange.

As for me,I do not share your disdain,& I am absolutely ignorant of, as you say, "the pleasure of doing nothing." As soon as I no longer hold a book, or am not dreaming of writing one, A LAMENTABLE boredom seizes upon me.Life, in short seems tolerable to me only by legerdemain.Or else one must give oneself up to disordered pleasure …& even then!

“I am not like M. de Vigny,I do not like the "sound of the horn in the depth of the woods."For the last two hours now an imbecile stationed on the island in front of me has been murdering me with his instrument.That wretched creature spoils my sunlight and deprives me of the pleasure of enjoying the summer.For it is lovely weather,but I am bursting with anger.

So you are still working frantically? Unhappy one!you don't know the ineffable pleasure of doing nothing!& how good work will seem to me after it! I shall delay it however as long as possible.I am getting more and more of the opinion that nothing is worth the trouble of being said!
PS: Don't believe a word of that,do write lovely things,& love your old troubadour who always cherishes you.

Your two friends, Tourgueneff and Cruchard philosophized about that from Nohant to Chateauroux,very comfortably borne along in your carriage at a smart pace by two horses.Hurrah for the postillions of La Chatre!But the rest of the trip was horrid because of the company we had in our car.

I’m reading all sorts of books & I’m taking notes for my big book which will take 5-6 years to write,& I am thinking of 2-3 others. There will be dreams for a long time,which is the principal thing.
Art continues to be "in the marasmus," as M. Prudhomme says,& there is no longer any place in this world for people with taste.One must, like the rhinoceros, retire into solitude & await one's death.

I’m beginning to regain my equilibrium.What is it that I have had for the past 4 months?What trouble was going on in the depths of my being?I don't know.What is certain,is,that I was very ill in an indefinable way.But now I am better.Since the end of January,Madame Bovary & Salammbo have belonged to me & I can sell them.

If I am not at your house, it is the fault of the big Tourgueneff. I was getting ready to go to Nohant, when he said to me: "Wait, I'll go with you the first of April." That is two weeks off. I shall see him tomorrow at Madame Viardot's and I shall beg him to go earlier, as I am beginning to be impatient. I am feeling the NEED of seeing you, of embracing you, and of talking with you. That is the truth.

I’m not sure at all of writing good things,nor that the book of which I am dreaming now can be well done,which does not prevent me from undertaking it. I think that the idea of it is original,nothing more.& then,as I hope to spit into it the gall that is choking me,that is to say,to emit some truths,I hope by this means to PURGE MYSELF,& to be henceforward more Olympian,a quality that I lack entirely

If one does not address the crowd,it is right that the crowd should not pay one.It is political economy. But, I maintain that a work of art (worthy of that name and conscientiously done) is beyond appraisal, has no commercial value, cannot be paid for.Conclusion:if the artist has no income,he must starve!They think that the writer,because he no longer receives a pension from the great,is very much freer,& nobler.

“What a fine thing the censorship is! Let us be reassured, it will always exist, for it always has! Our friend Alexandre Dumas fils, to make an agreeable paradox, has boasted of its advantages in the preface to the Dame aux Camelias, hasn't he?”

Why publish then?Is it to be understood,applauded? But yourself,YOU, great George Sand,you confess your solitude.Is there at this time,I don't say, admiration or sympathy,but the appearance of a little attention to works of art?Who is the critic who reads the book that he has to criticise?In ten years they won't know, perhaps,how to make a pair of shoes, they are becoming so frightfully stupid!

“Why publish, in these abominable times? Is it to get money? What mockery! As if money were the recompense for work, or could be! That will be when one has destroyed speculation, till then, no! And then how measure work, how estimate the effort? The commercial value of the work remains. For that one would be obliged to suppress all intermediaries”

Every affection is known to me,the storms of the heart have "poured out their rain" on me.& then chance,force of circumstances,causes solitude to increase little by little around me,& now I am alone, absolutely alone.I have not sufficient income to take unto myself a wife,nor even to live in Paris for six months of the year:so it is impossible for me to change my way of living.

I expressed myself badly:I did not mean that I scorned "the feminine sentiment."But that woman, materially speaking,had never been one of my habits, which is quite different.I have LOVED more than anyone,a presumptuous phrase which means "quite like others,"& perhaps even more than average person.

“Don't worry any more about your old troubadour (who is becoming a silly animal, frankly), but I hope to recover. I have gone through, several times, melancholy periods, and I have come out all right. Everything wears out, boredom with the rest.”

“Is Saint-Antoine finished, that you are talking of a work of great scope? or is it Saint-Antoine that is going to spread its wings over the entire universe? It could, the subject is immense. I embrace you, shall I say again, my old troubadour, since you have resolved to turn into an old Benedictine? I shall remain a troubadour, naturally.”

“You have both, confound it! you have no right not to be happy.—Perhaps you ought to have had in your life the INCLUSION OF THE FEMININE SENTIMENT which you say you have defied.— I know that the feminine is worth nothing; but, perhaps, in order to be happy, one must have been unhappy.”

You are the only BLACK SPOT in my heart-life,because you are sad & don't want to look at the sun. As for those about whom I don't care,I don't care either about the evils or the follies they can commit against me or against themselves.They will pass as the rain passes.The eternal thing is the feeling of beauty in a good heart

“I am working like a madman, I am reading medicine, metaphysics, politics, everything. For I have undertaken a work of great scope, which will require a lot of time, a prospect that pleases me.

Ever since a month ago, I have been expecting Tourgueneff from week to week. The gout is delaying him still.”

As for living with a woman,marrying as you advise me to do that is a prospect that I find fantastic.Why? I don't know.But it is so.Explain the riddle.The feminine being has never been included in my life;& then,I am not rich enough,& then,& then—…I am too old,& too decent to inflict forever my person on another.There is in me an element of the ecclesiastical that people don't know

No, I don't think that HAPPINESS IS POSSIBLE,but certainly tranquillity.That is why I get away from what irritates me.The least conversation with anyone at all exasperates me because I find everyone idiotic.My feeling of justice is continually revolted.They talk ONLY of politics and in what a fashion!Where is there a sign of an idea?What can one get hold of?What shall one get excited about?

“What do I know? To live in oneself is bad. There is intellectual pleasure only in the possibility of returning to it when one has been out for a long time; but to live always in this Moi which is the most tyrannical, the most exacting, the most fantastic of companions, no, one must not.—I beg you, listen to me!”

Well,how about getting married?Being alone is odious,it is deadly,& it is cruel also for those who love you.All your letters are unhappy & grip my heart.Haven't you any woman whom you love or by whom you would be loved with pleasure?Take her to live with you.Isn't there anywhere a little urchin whose father you can believe you are? Bring him up.Make yourself his slave,forget yourself in him.

“I pity humanity, I wish it were good, because I cannot separate myself from it; because it is myself; because the evil it does strikes me to the heart; because its shame makes me blush; because its crimes gnaw at my vitals, because I cannot understand paradise in heaven nor on earth for myself alone.”

“I have experienced revolutions, and I have seen the principal actors near to; I have seen the depth of their souls, I should say the bottom of their bag: NO PRINCIPLES! and no real intelligence, no force, nor endurance. Nothing but means and a personal end”