The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII.

do not intend in these pages to put in a plea for this little novel. On the contrary, the ideas I shall try to set forth will rather involve a criticism of the class of psychological analysis which I have undertaken in Pierre et Jean . I propose to treat of novels in general. I am not the only writer who finds himself taken to task in the same terms each time he brings out a new book. Among many laudatory phrases, I invariably meet with this observation, penned by the same critics: "The greatest fault of this book is that it is not, strictly speaking, a novel." The same form might be adopted in reply: "The greatest fault of the writer who does me the honor to review me is that he is not a critic." For what are, in fact, the essential characteristics of a critic? It is necessary that, without preconceived notions, prejudices of "School," or partisanship for any class of artists, he should appreciate, distinguish, and explain the most antagonistic tendencies and the most dissimilar temperaments, recognizing and accepting the most varied efforts of art. Now the Critic who, after reading Manon Lescaut , Paul and Virginia , Don Quixote , Les Liaisons dangereuses , Werther , Elective Affinities ( Wahlverwandschaften ), Clarissa Harlowe , Émile , Candide , Cinq-Mars , René , Les Trois Mousquetaires , Mauprat , Le Père Goriot , La Cousine Bette , Colomba , Le Rouge et le Noir , Mademoiselle de Maupin , Notre-Dame de Paris , Salammbo , Madame Bovary , Adolphe , M. de Camors , l'Assommoir , Sapho , etc., still can be so bold as to write "This or that is, or is not, a novel," seems to me to be gifted with a perspicacity strangely akin to incompetence. Such a critic commonly understands by a novel a more or less improbable narrative of adventure, elaborated after the fashion of a piece for the stage, in three acts, of which the first contains the exposition, the second the action, and the third the catastrophe or dénouement . And this method of construction is perfectly admissible, but on condition that all others are accepted on equal terms. Are there any rules for the making of a novel, which, if we neglect, the tale must be called by another name? If Don Quixote is a novel, then is…