








A NIGHT IN THE LUXEMBOURG

BY

REMY DE GOURMONT

WITH PREFACE

AND APPENDIX

BY ARTHUR RANSOME

JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY

BOSTON  MCMXII




CONTENTS


TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. By Arthur Ransome

A Night in the Luxembourg. By Remy de Gourmont

Preface

A Night in the Luxembourg

Final Note

APPENDIX: REMY de GOURMONT. By Arthur Ransome

AUTOGRAPHS--

KOPH

Reduced facsimile of the last page of M. Rose's Manuscript




TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE


A general, but necessarily inadequate, account of the personality
and works of one of the finest intellects of his generation will be
found in the Appendix. I am here concerned only with _Une Nuit au
Luxembourg_, which, though it is widely read in almost every other
European language, is now for the first time translated into English.

This book, at once criticism and romance, is the best introduction
to M. de Gourmont's very various works. It created a "sensation" in
France. I think it may do as much in England, but I am anxious lest
this "sensation" should be of a kind honourable neither to us nor to
the author of a remarkable book. I do not wish a delicate and subtle
artist, a very noble philosopher, noble even if smiling, nobler
perhaps because he smiles, to be greeted with accusations of indecency
and blasphemy. But I cannot help recognising that in England, as in
many other countries, these accusations are often brought against such
philosophers as discuss in a manner other than traditional the subjects
of God and woman. These two subjects, with many others, are here the
motives of a book no less delightful than profound.

The duty of a translator is not comprised in mere fidelity. He must
reproduce as nearly as he can the spirit and form of his original, and,
since in a work of art spirit and form are one, his first care must be
to preserve as accurately as possible the contours and the shading of
his model. But he must remember (and beg his readers to remember) that
the intellectual background on which the work will appear in its new
language is different from that against which it was conceived. When
the new background is as different from the old as English from French,
he cannot but recognise that it disturbs the chiaroscuro of his work
with a quite incalculable light. It gives the contours a new quality
and the shadows a new texture. His own accuracy may thus give his work
an atmosphere not that which its original author designed.

I have been placed in such a dilemma in translating this book. Certain
phrases and descriptions were, in the French, no more than delightful
sporting of the intellect with the flesh that is its master. In the
English, for us, less accustomed to plain-speaking, and far less
accustomed to a playful attitude towards matters of which we never
speak unless with great solemnity, they became wilful parades of the
indecent. It is important to remember that they were not so in the
French, but were such things as might well be heard in a story told in
general conversation--if the talkers were Frenchmen of genius.

There is no ugliness in the frank acceptance of the flesh, that is a
motive, one among many, in this book, and perhaps more noticeable by us
than the author intended. No doubt it never occurred to M. de Gourmont
that he was writing for the English. We are only fortunate listeners
to a monologue, and must not presume upon our position to ask him to
remember we are there.

The character of that monologue is such, I think, as to justify me
in tampering very little with its design. Not only is _Une Nuit au
Luxembourg_ not a book for children or young persons--if it were,
the question would be altogether different--but it is not a book for
fools, or even for quite ordinary people. I think that no reader who
can enjoy the philosophical discussion that is its greater part will
quarrel with its Epicurean interludes. He will either forgive those
passages of which I am speaking as the pardonable idiosyncrasy of a
great man, or recognise that they are themselves illustrations of his
philosophy, essential to its exposition, and raised by that fact into
an intellectual light that justifies their retention.

The prurient minds who might otherwise peer at these passages, and
enjoy the caricatures that their own dark lanterns would throw on
the muddy wall of their comprehension, will, I think, be repelled by
the nobility of the book's philosophy. They will seek their truffles
elsewhere, and find plenty.

M. de Gourmont is perhaps more likely to be attacked for blasphemy, but
only by those who do not observe his piety towards the thing that he
most reverences, the purity and the clarity of thought. He worships in
a temple not easy to approach, a temple where the worshippers are few,
and the worship difficult. It is impossible not to respect a mind that,
in its consuming desire for liberty, strips away not fetters only but
supports. Fetters bind at first, but later it is hard to stand without
them.

His book is not a polemic against Christianity, in the same sense as
Nietzsche's _Anti-Christ_, though it does propose an ethic and an
ideal very different from those we have come to consider Christian.
When he smiles at the Acts of the Apostles as at a fairy tale, he adds
a sentence of incomparable praise and profound criticism: "These men
touch God with their hands." It may shock some people to find that the
principal speaker in the book is a god who claims to have inspired,
not Christ alone, but Pythagoras, Epicurus, Lucretius, St. Paul and
Spinoza with the most valuable of their doctrines. It will