Page:The Bet and Other Stories.djvu/88

76 patriotic to read Russian authors, but to tell the truth I'm not particularly disposed to them. Leaving out two or three old ones, all the modern literature doesn't seem to me to be literature but a unique home industry which exists only to be encouraged, but the goods are bought with reluctance. The best of these homemade goods can't be called remarkable and it's impossible to praise it sincerely without a saving "but"; and the same must be said of all the literary novelties I've read during the last ten or fifteen years. Not one remarkable, and you can't dispense with "but." They have cleverness, nobility, and no talent; talent, nobility, and no cleverness; or finally, talent, cleverness, but no nobility.

I would not say that French books have talent, cleverness, and nobility. Nor do they satisfy me. But they are not so boring as the Russian; and it is not rare to find in them the chief constituent of creative genius—the sense of personal freedom, which is lacking to Russian authors. I do not recall one single new book in which from the very first page the author did not try to tie himself up in all manner of conventions and contracts with his conscience. One is frightened to speak of the naked body, another is bound hand and foot by psychological analysis, a third must have "a kindly attitude to his fellow-men," the fourth heaps up whole pages with descriptions of nature on purpose to avoid any suspicion of a tendency. . . . One desires to be