100
PARTISAN REVIEW
are vanous: they are as unmoving as cliffs, stormy as the ocean,
leafy, green and murmuring as forests, sad as the desert, blue as the
sky. Homer, Rabelais, Michelangelo, Shakespeare and Goethe seem
to me
pitiless.
They are bottomless, infinite, multiple. Through smal1
openings we glimpse abysses whose dark depths make us giddy. And
yet over the whole there hovers an extraordinary gentleness. It is
like the brilliance of light, the smile of the sun, and it is calm, calm,
and strong....
How insignificant a crcation, for example, is Figaro, as against
Sancho! How one pictures Sancho on his donkey, eating raw onions,
urging the steed on, all the while talking with his master. How
vividly we see the roads of Spain, though nowhere are they described.
But Figarcr-where is he? At the Comedie-Franc;aise. Parlor literature.
January 13, 1854
As to when I shall be finished with
BovaTY,
I have already set
so many dates, and had to change them so often, that I refuse not
only to speak about it any more, but even to think about it. I can
only trust in God; it's beyond me. It will be finished when it is
finished, even though I die of boredom and impatience-as I might
very well do were it not for the fury that keeps me going. Till then
I will visit you every two months, as I promised.
Now, poor dear Louise, shall I tell you what I think-or rather
what you feel? I think that your love for me is wavering. Your
dis–
satisfactions, your sufferings on my account can have no other cause,
for as I am now I have always been. But now you see me more
clearly, and you judge me correctly, perhaps. I cannot tell. How–
ever, when we love completely we accept the loved one as he
is,
with his defects and his deformities; even festering sores seem ador–
able to us, we cherish a hunchback for his hump, and a foul breath
fills us with delight. It is the same with moral qualities. Now you
say I am twisted, infamous, selfish, etc. Do you know that I'm
going to end by being unbearably proud as a result of being so
constantly criticized? I do not think that there is a mortal on
earth less approved of than I am, but I will not change. I
will
not reform. I have already scratched out, amended, suppressed or
gagged so many things in myself that I am tired of doing it. Every-
