Neither his fellows, nor
his gods, nor his passions will leave a man alone. In virtue of these
allies and enemies, he holds his precarious dominion, he possesses his
fleeting significance; and it is this relation in all its manifestations,
great and little, superficial or profound, and this relation alone, that
is commented upon, interpreted, demonstrated by the art of the novelist
in the only possible way in which the task can be performed: by the
independent creation of circumstance and character, achieved against all
the difficulties of expression, in an imaginative effort finding its
inspiration from the reality of forms and sensations. That a sacrifice
must be made, that something has to be given up, is the truth engraved in
the innermost recesses of the fair temple built for our edification by
the masters of fiction. There is no other secret behind the curtain. All
adventure, all love, every success is resumed in the supreme energy of an
act of renunciation. It is the uttermost limit of our power; it is the
most potent and effective force at our disposal on which rest the labours
of a solitary man in his study, the rock on which have been built
commonwealths whose might casts a dwarfing shadow upon two oceans.
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