TO THE AMAZON
When you accepted the dedication of this strange story, Amazon, you did not ask me what I had meant by it. This did not at all surprise me, for you often know my intentions better than I do, and you are ever ready to attribute the most favorable and ingenious ones to me. Ah, my friend, I am not always the man of intentions, plans and projects; I like to obey whatever the gods suggest and to place my trust, so far as execution is concerned, in that logic which dwells deep in my brain and which reassures me about the sequence of any of my rambling stories. Though the chain of causes necessitated a lapse of several years between the writing of the first letters and the others, and though the latter were produced at irregular intervals,—beside the fact that my mind, in the course of this novel, experienced certain modifications—I have sought to have them conserve a sufficiently apparent unity of tone in their ensemble. Yet I fear, though this will be quite transitory, lest any one feel a little of the weariness, towards the end, which the monotonous psychology of my horned character gave me. Nothing is more difficult than the study of an elementary creature whose naiveté puts to rout our sham or civilized habits, who advances as a matter of course into the frankest of vices, who is not even astonished at our astonishment.
What most amuses us in our pleasant games is that they are forbidden. Now, that is a quality of pleasure he cannot relish. He cannot grasp the idea of a person not naturally attracted to whatever is pleasurable to him, though he too enjoys, like others, the charm of obstacles surmounted and difficulties vanquished. What amused me, in writing this story, was to take the side of the instinctive creature against the creature of reason, whose reason is so transitory a thing; but whatever may have been my sympathy for the brazen-faced satyr, I could not procure for him the contentment of living in a strait-laced society whose finesses he would have had to learn before accommodating himself to them. He lacks too many things ever to succeed in cutting much of a figure in this world. What sort of being is he, ignorant of the value of money and, first of all, possessing none? I even doubt whether he will extract deep satisfactions from a more fastidious, delicate world he may later chance to frequent. Just behold the simplicity of his heart! He falls in love with a worthless woman, and he is not in the least ashamed, understanding nothing of her trade: but even if he did understand it, I do not know whether or not he would blush with shame. He has not yet shown his fullest capacities. He would need a vaster theatre. Antiphilos might go far in the world of the unconscious.
Do not believe, moreover, that in making him relate the beginning of his human adventures, I had any deep satirical intentions. To criticize the manners of men:—that would need more naiveté than I possess. To tell the truth, I find that they do well when following their pleasures; they alone are not dupes of our extraordinary moral organization. But let us not judge men, and still less women, after ourselves. Most people are very well satisfied with their slavery, to the point where their virtue suffers at the wretched state of all who have liberated themselves. They do everything in their power to recapture the emancipated, to fasten collars on their necks: “You do not know happiness, our happiness. Come and we will share it with you.” There are unfortunate souls who let themselves be taken in with this sort of talk. Others are seized by force, when that is possible.
The police, or some of those charitable persons of whom there are too many, once found a nest of felicity in a hovel of the Saint-Sulpice section. An extremely young pair of hand-to-mouth tatterdemalions lived there. The boy might have been fifteen years old,—even less if I remember correctly—and the girl was twelve. No one knew on what they lived—doubtless on pickings, refuse and water. When their roamings in search of food exhausted them, they returned to their garret and fell asleep in each other’s arms, for they were in love. Their naive love consoled them for having, too often, to go hungry, and those who discovered them found them happy in their animal-like innocence. It created a terrible scandal, still discussed, perhaps, by devout persons and others of the neighborhood. Naturally they were separated, although they cried hard; the boy was sent to a home, while the girl had to follow the skirts of some good nun. And everybody thought this was as it should be. I, too. I was compelled, so as not to be treated with contempt, and you would have done likewise, my friend,—would you not? to preserve the esteem of respectable people. Is it right, in fact, that children should begin to live in a state of nature, here in Paris, in a decent section, several steps away from a church, the Luxembourg Gardens and the Senate? The matter of the pickings might have been passed by, but the love! Is it not true that such perversity, manifested so precociously, is disconcerting? Antiphilos would have been affected by this story, but Antiphilos is very much suspected and he is at home only in natural ethics. He practices it without knowing its theory.
You do not know, Amazon, how grateful I am that you loved this uncertain little book and that you did not reprove its tendencies! I am grateful to the point of being tempted to say that you have loved it more than it deserved. Besides, is this not what I think of nearly all of my writings? There is hardly one which has wholly satisfied me. That is why I decided never to correct them when they were being printed or reprinted, for I am always tempted to throw them into the printing press and have their dried ink replaced by new ink. This you know well, you who have wrested one of my books from my hands. I am haunted by the technique of the unknown masterpiece. But I practice too well the philosophy of detachment even to yield to such naivetés of conceit, and I resign myself to the displeasure which my writings cause me, while dreaming of the marvelous books I shall never write. Ah! how I envy those authors who admire themselves in their works and who do not see the approaching oblivion into which their works will sink with them. I envy them, but I smile with a touch of irony, perhaps, for all this has really little importance. Yet one must love, and to do so it is necessary to hold firmly to some support, along the stream which sweeps everything forward, like the castaways that we are. The feeling that you please those very persons whom you would have chosen to please, and the feeling that you displease others whom you would have willingly designated for this service, sometimes suffices to keep you in balance, to fortify heart and hands. One of these comforts only affects the pride and has but negative effects on the pleasure of living; but the other, which stirs every fibre of sympathy, can alone confer the joy that is complete. Why, through what cowardice place these necessary terms in the plural? A beautiful tenderness has achieved its end. Amazon, I really believe that without you I should no more love myself very much; I no longer would have a deep confidence in life or in myself. So again I thank you for having taken Antiphilos under your protection. Of his destiny among humans I am reassured, since you have smiled upon him, dear friend.
Remy de Gourmont.