1886-08-10 to Frans Netscher

Autograph letter signed, Letterkundig Museum, 377 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

The Green, Southwick. Near Brighton

[Tuesday, 10 August 1886]

Dear Sir

Your sketch was not sufficient to enable me to judge of your novel Dina, but I think your idea of writing a novel about the sufferings of the fishermen in the North Sea excellent. I envy you the notion.

What you say about describing trades in your present books causes me a little uneasiness, not because I think the description of a trade misplaced in a novel but because you seem to me to believe in those ridiculous theories which my great friend Émile Zola has written so much about.

You surely do not believe in the naturalistic school? You surely do not believe in a scientific art — I love art because it is not nature.

But waive all this. The great thing to do, it seems to me, is to create men and women as Shakespeare and as Balzac did, and this Zola cannot do — but of his numerous books all that remains to me is Gervaise Coupeau et quelques silhouettes. Balzac was infinitely greater than any other novelist because he knew how to alternate realism with romanticism.

Of course I know that I made Cecilia speak in her last interview with Alice as no girl could speak; but it was necessary to do so — her hatred of life was a lyrical subject and demanded to be treated lyrically.

I envy you your novel the North Sea because it is at once realistic and lyric — in treating it I should alternate the humblest with the sublimest images. I should like to hear what you have to say on this subject.

Miss Mabel Robinson’s address is 20 Earls Terrace, Kensington, London. I hope you like her book; for my part, I think it very wonderful. Un peu vague peinture — le milieu, n’est pas assez déterminé. In reading I do not know when I am in the town and when I am in the country.

What do you think of the end of ADM — I like the end very much — am I right?

Yours very truly

George Moore

Why does not the man who translated AMW translate ADM?