PAGES FROM A JOURNAL
49
gratuitous, the disinterested, anything that he cannot
use.
He can
only accept utilitarian art and literature and hates all that he cannot
raise himself high enough to understand.
*
*
*
Stendhal's great secret, his real cleverness, is, that he writes
im-
mediately.
His impetuous thought remains as living and as freshly
colored as the butterfly which has just spread its wings, and which
the collector has seized as it left the chtysalis. Add to that, a certain
quality of alertness and spontaneity, of the unconventional, of the
sudden and the naked, which always ravishes us anew in his style. One
might say that his thought does not even stop to put on its shoes be–
fore running. This should be a good ,example; or rather: I should
follow his good example more often. One is lostwhen one hesitates.
Translating, for that reason, does one's style no good. Since one is
dealing with an alien way of thinking, it is a matter of warming-over,
of dressing up, and one goes looking for the best words, the best turns
of
expression; one is sure that no matter what is to be said, there are
twenty
ways of saying it, and that there is one preferable to all others.
One adopts the bad habit of dissociating the form from the substance,
emotion and the expression of emotion from thought, which should
remain inseparable.
For example, I would like to say now that:
"If
others wrote less,
I should find greater pleasure
in
writing." ... Very well! It's done!
What better phrase could I find? It came to me first, it explains my
thought perfectly. But my mind turns around it, examines it, criticizes
it
and seeks to bring to bear against it that petty process of attrition
and destruction which it were better to leave to time, which looks
after such things. And in saying all this, I myself fall into the errors
for which I reproach others.
What more do I want to say? That this superabundance of writ–
~
of printed matter, stifles me, and that in Paris, where it is all
piled
up, overflowing from inadequate bookcases, on tables, chairs
and
even the floor and everywhere, my thoughts can no longer move
Cl'
breathe. I am like Pompeii under its deluge of ashes; and I do not
wish,
in
writing myself, to add to the pile. And sometimes when I do
open
one of these new books, it always seems to me that the little
which
is
true and new in it, would gain by being said more briefly–
• might not be said at all. So that, when the desire to write overtakes
me,
I hesitate and ask myself: is that really worth saying? Haven't
albers
said it before me? Haven't I said it already myself? And I am
llmt.
