Intentions

‘In France, though nothing so deliberately tedious as Robert Elsmere has been produced,things are not much better. M. Guy de Maupassant, with his keen mordant irony and hishard vivid style, strips life of the few poor rags that still cover her, and shows us foul soreand festering wound. He writes lurid little tragedies in which everybody is ridiculous;bitter comedies at which one cannot laugh for very tears. M. Zola, true to the loftyprinciple that he lays down in one of his pronunciamientos on literature, “L’homme degénie n’a jamais d’esprit,” is determined to show that, if he has not got genius, he can atleast be dull. And how well he succeeds! He is not without power.