Omaha daily bee., 1909-08-29

some eighteen months in Florence study
ing, or rather delving, into the archives, and
probably there never was a worse novel Of
the Italian Renaissance written than that,
There you have the example at its worst.
THE use of the term inspiration usually
implies something allied to the supernatural
when It is employed by the average per-
son, There is nothing supernatural about a
method Of work of this sort. II is emil
nently natural, but l do not say that 1t is
not a miracle. The most natural thing in
the world may be that; for instance, is
there anything more miraculous than that
: you should wake up when you have gone
to sleep? l never lose my wonder and
amazement. / never forget to be grateful.
To think that we wake.
"AII that is necessary is to love enough
and you can write as you will. Your char
acters will be medieval people or they
will be modern as you determine by that
power of finding the natural method
through supreme affection.
1T is the same way swith a woman as
with the work. If you love her enough you
will be convinced and you will convince
the world of that love by marrying her.
not always OF course, but the analogy is
sufficient for the need OF the moment, for
IL you marry a woman for anything but
that overpowering love, the failure is toe
pitiably evident. You can't go wrong II
you love your work. You simply can't
must emphasize this truth.
Love and Hard Work.
But don't think that means that yoJ
nave to cut out hard work. quite tn,
contrary, or so 1t has been in my case.
was three years writing Tn Queens
Quhair.' ! nave labored, INCREASINGLY
particularly with the work in which
have been most keenly interested ! be
Iieve the deeper the love the more will
ingly and patintly you will toll.
Il do not write novels. l write poems
for the novel is distinguished from tn,
poem in this that the novel is concerned
with what happens, the poem with tn
way things happen After l have finishe'
a work / forget IL. l am sincere In sayini
that / doubt If ! could quote a paragraph
from any one Of my works, ! ~scarcel,
remember the characters. Think Of liy
ing with all the people one had created
l simply could not do it, my only safet.
Is in forgetting.
"Balzac did it. He was a genuine novel
list. as was Dumas. Thackeray shove,
that he kept his people by him, not TO III
extent Of the other two but enough {
/ prove that they were 70 him immortal.
when I read Balzac / am impresse
with the way he will take up a characte
= Of a previous story and let you see ths
ne is conscious in his mind OF all III
e things that happened 10 that man an
e woman that he never wrote about. II
has carried them about with him, an
S made them so personal that he knows e.
actly what they did between any tvs
g epochs portrayed. He will say 70 himsel
e He lived in 1900 and so he must have see
I. so and So or he will apparently thin
e She was in Lyons then, that was Il
/ time Of such and such an event, and
= all literature / doubt If YOU will con
e across an instance where you feel thl
1 each character was a distinct entity al
e lived to the author not merely in a
story, but after the story was complies
q and he had gone on and taken up 9TH
fiction. Trollope was like Balzac in hi
e too.
1t would seem that between the ira
Il ana the aneedots the novel Of today