Christophe was not content to apply these principles in music: he urged Olivier to set himself at the head of a similar movement in literature:
"The writers of to-day," he said, "waste their energy in describing human rarities, or cases that are common enough in the abnormal groups of men and women living on the fringe of the great society of active, healthy human beings. Since they themselves have shut themselves off from life, leave them and go where there are men. Show the life of every day to the men and women of every day: that life is deeper and more vast than the sea. The smallest among you bears the infinite in his soul. The infinite is in every man who is simple enough to be a man, in the lover, in the friend, in the woman who pays with her pangs for the radiant glory of the day of childbirth, in every man and every woman who lives in obscure self-sacrifice which will never be known to another soul: it is the very river of life, flowing from one to another, from one to another, and back again and round.... Write the simple life of one of these simple men, write the peaceful epic of the days and nights following, following one like to another, and yet all different, all sons of the same mother, from the dawning of the first day in the life of the world. Write it simply, as simple as its own unfolding. Waste no thought upon the word, and the letter, and the subtle vain researches in which the force of the artists of to-day is turned to nought. You are addressing all men: use the language of all men. There are no words noble or vulgar; there is no style chaste or impure: there are only words and styles which say or do not say exactly what they have to say. Be sound and thorough in all you do: think just what you think,--and feel just what you feel. Let the rhythm of your heart prevail in your writings! The style is the soul."
Olivier agreed with Christophe, but he replied rather ironically:
"Such a book would be fine: but it would never reach the people who would care to read it. The critics would strangle it on the way."
"There speaks my little French bourgeois!" replied Christophe. "Worrying his mind about what the critics will or will not think of his work!... The critics, my boy, are only there to register victory or defeat. The great thing is to be victor.... I have managed to get along without them! You must learn how to disregard them, too...."