At the time I wrote Indiana they brought accusations of Saint-Simonism against everything. Later on they brought accusations of all sorts of other things. Some writers are still forbidden to open their mouths under pain of seeing certain journalist guardians of the law pounce on their work to bring it before the official police authorities. If a writer makes a workman express noble feelings, it is an attack against the bourgeoisie; if a girl who has strayed is rehabilitated after expiating her sin, it is an attack against virtuous women; if a scoundrel assumes titles of nobility, it is an attack against the aristocracy; if a bully behaves like a swashbuckling soldier, it is an insult to the army; if a woman is ill-treated by her husband, it is an argument for promiscuity. And so it is with everything. Worthy fellow writers, critics with pious and generous hearts! What a pity that no one is thinking of setting up a little inquisitorial literary tribunal in which you would be the torturers! Would you be satisfied with tearing the books to pieces and burning them in a slow fire or, at your own request, could you not be allowed to give a taste of torture to the writers who allow themselves to have other gods than yours?

Thank God, I have forgotten even the names of those who tried to discourage me on my first publication and who, unable to say that this humble beginning fell completely flat, tried to turn it into an inflammatory proclamation against the peace of society. I did not expect so much honour, and I think I owe these critics the thanks that the hare addressed to the frogs when, on seeing their alarm, he imagined he was entitled to think himself a warlike thunderbolt.

Nohant, May 1852

PREFACE TO THE 1832 EDITION

IF SOME pages of this book were to incur the serious reproach of a tendency towards new opinions, if strict judges were to think they have an imprudent, dangerous ring, one would have to reply to the criticism that they are doing too much honour to a work of no importance, that to tackle the great questions of social order, one must have great moral strength or lay claim to great talent, and that so much presumption does not enter into the scheme of a very simple story in which the writer has invented almost nothing. If, in the course of his task, he has happened to express cries of pain wrung from his characters by the social unease which affects them; if he has not been afraid to record their aspirations towards a better life, let society be blamed for its inequalities and fate for its whims. The writer is only a mirror which reflects them, a machine which traces their outline, and he has nothing for which to apologize if the impressions are correct and the reflection is faithful.

Consider, next, that the narrator has not taken as his text or slogan a few exclamations of suffering and anger scattered throughout the drama of human life. He makes no claim to hide a serious lesson beneath the guise of a tale; he has not come to give a helping hand to the structure which a problematic future is preparing for us, or a parting kick to that of the past which is crumbling away. He knows too well that we live in a time of moral decline, when human reason needs a curtain to soften the overbright light which dazzles it. If he had felt learned enough to write a really useful book, he would have softened the truth instead of presenting it with its crude colours and glaring effects. Such a book would have served the purpose of blue spectacles for faulty eyes.

He does not give up the idea of fulfilling that honourable, noble task some day, but, young as he is today, he tells you what he has seen without daring to draw conclusions about the great controversy between the future and the past, which perhaps no man of the present generation is very competent to decide. Too conscientious to conceal his doubts from you, but too timid to set them up as certainties, he relies on your reflections and refrains from weaving preconceived ideas and ready-made judgements into the web of his story. He performs punctiliously his job as a story-teller. He will tell you everything, even what is annoyingly true, but if you were to rig him out in the philosopher’s gown, you would find him very muddled, for he is only a simple story-teller whose task is to amuse and not to instruct you.

Even if he were more mature and more skilful, he still would not dare lay his hand on the great sores of dying civilization. One must be so sure of being able to cure them when one takes the risk of probing them! He would prefer to try to bring you back to past outworn beliefs, to old vanished forms of worship, rather than to use his talent, if he had any, to knock down overturned altars. He knows, however, that in the prevalent charitable spirit, a timid conscience is despised by public opinion as hypocritical reserve, just as, in the arts, a timid approach is mocked as a ridiculous attitude. But he also knows that in defending lost causes there is honour, if not profit.

On those who might misunderstand the spirit of this book, such a profession of faith would jar like an anachronism. The narrator hopes that, after listening to his tale to the end, few listeners will deny the morality that emerges from the facts and triumphs there as in all human affairs. It seemed to him, as he completed it, that his conscience was clear. In short, he flattered himself that he had written of social miseries without too much irritation and of human passions without too much passion. He has put a mute on his strings when they were making too loud a sound; he has tried to stifle certain notes of the soul that should remain unheard, certain voices of the heart that are not aroused without danger.

Perhaps you will do him justice if you agree that he has shown you the misery of the person who wants to free himself from legitimate restraint, the utter distress of the heart that rebels against its destiny’s decrees. If he has not shown in the best light the character who represents the law, if he has been even less favourable to another who represents public opinion, you will see a third who represents illusion and cruelly thwarts the vain hopes and crazy enterprises of passion. Finally, you will see that if he has not strewn roses on the ground where the law pens up our desires like sheep, he has cast nettles on the paths which lead us away from it.

That, it seems to me, is enough to guarantee this book against the reproach of immorality. But if you absolutely insist that a novel should end like a Marmontel* story, perhaps you will reproach me with the final pages. You will think it wrong that I have not cast into poverty and neglect the being who, for two volumes, transgressed mankind’s laws. To this, the author will reply that, before being moral, he wanted to be true. He will repeat that, feeling too inexperienced to compose a philosophical treatise on how to cope with life, he has limited himself to writing Indiana, a story of the human heart with its weaknesses, its violent feelings, its rights, its wrongs, its good, and its bad.

If you insist on an explanation of everything in the book, Indiana is a type. She is woman, the weak creature who is given the task of portraying passions, repressed, or if you prefer, suppressed by the law.