The Arcades Project - Operi

scorn on gold? To secure this freedom acquired through gold, . . . you produce
your hooks in the same mercenary fashion as you produce vegetables and wine.
You will demand of your fa{ulties a double or a triple harvest; you will start to
market your early produce; the muse will no longer visit voluntarily, but will toil
night and day like a drudge . . . . And in the morning, you will cast before the
public a page scribbled over in the course of your nocturnal lucubrations; you will
not even bother rereading the rubbish that covers it, though you will certainly
have counted the number of lines it contains." Louis Veuillot, Pages choisies, ed.
Antoine Albalat (Lyons and Paris, 1906), pp. 28, 31-32. (Karl' sold flowers g"own
on his estate near Nice.) [dlOa,lJ
"In vain Sainte-Beuve allows himself, out of a deep-rooted antipathy, to fly into a
rage against the author of La Comedie humaine. But he is right to observe that "the
vogue for serial publication, which required, with each new chapter, that the
reader be struck a hearty blow, had driven the stylistie effects of the novel to an
extreme and desperate pitch. '" Cited in Fernand Baldensperger, ""Le Raffermissement
des techniques 1840," Revue de litterature
comparee, 15, no. 1 (January-March 1935), p. 82. [dlOa,2]
In reaction to the serial novel, there arose-around 1840-novellas
and regional novels «Barbey> d'Aurevilly).
(Meriroee)
[dlOa,3]
Eugene de Mirecourt, Les Vrais Miserables (Paris, 1862), recalls Lamartine's fIistoire
des Gi,'ondins and surmises that Hugo wanted to prepare his political career
with his novel as Lamartine had done with his popular history. [dlOaAJ
Apropos of Lamartine and Hugo: "Instead of fostering the notion . .. that people
should follow devotedly in the steps of these sincere souls, we should investigate
the underside of all sincerity. But bourgeois culture and democracy are too greatly
in need of this value! The democrat is a man who wears his heart on his sleeve; his
heart is an excuse, a testimonial, a subterfuge. He is professionally heartwarming,
so he can dispense with being truthful." N. Guterman and H. Lcfebvre, La Conscience
mystijiRe (Paris < 1936», p. 151 C'''Le Chantage et la sincerite"