But should there perchance be any young man in danger of taking the Bohemian fever a trifle too seriously, we will refer him for treatment to a very satisfactory physician, a specialist, one may say, in the complaint—Murger himself. Properly read, and read through to the end, the “Scenes” should prove their own corrective; and if their full significance is not clear, the preface furnishes the needed commentary. It is but simple justice to Murger to say that he himself had no sympathy whatever with the indefinite ambitions and mawkish sentimentalism of a certain class of young men, who mistake the cravings of aspiration for the promptings of genius, and turn to art because they are fit for nothing else. Again and again does he insist upon the stern realities of the artist’s probation; again and again does he raise the voice of warning to those who would rashly decide to commit themselves to the artist’s career.
“Il en est dans les luttes de l’art à peu près comme à la guerre—toute la gloire conquise rejaillit sur le nom des chefs. L’armée se partage pour récompense les quelques lignes d’un ordre du jour. Quant aux soldats frappés dans le combat, on les enterre là où ils sont tombés, et une seule épitaphe suffit pour vingt mille morts.”[31]
“Les Derniers Buveurs d’Eau,” in “Dona Sirène.” Murger uses precisely the same words in the preface just referred to.
These are solemn and uncompromising words. And scarcely less solemn are the phrases in which he describes the life of Bohemia as “charming but terrible, having its conquerors and its martyrs”—a life upon which no one should enter “who is not prepared beforehand to submit to the inexorable law of _Væ Victis_!” Woe to the conquered indeed! In the brilliant pages of the world’s history, the name and fortune of the one who succeeds alone are inscribed; those of the nine hundred and ninety-nine who ignominiously and miserably fail pass into everlasting oblivion.
THE PRESSWORK ON THIS BOOK WAS DONE IN SAN FRANCISCO, AT THE PRINTING SHOP OF THE E. D. TAYLOR COMPANY, IN THE MONTH OF OCTOBER AND YEAR EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-SEVEN.
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Page 13, ‘sequested’ changed to ‘sequestered,’ “in the sequestered neighborhood”