I had imagined in my simplicity that this novel might do without a preface. Being in the habit of saying aloud exactly what I think, of laying stress even upon the slightest details of what I write, I had hoped to have been understood and judged without any preliminary explanation. It appears that I was mistaken.

Criticism has received this book with a brutal and indignant outcry. Certain virtuous individuals, in newspapers equally virtuous, have made a grimace of disgust as they took it up with the tongs to pitch it into the fire. The little literary sheets themselves, those little sheets which chronicle every evening the news of alcoves and private supper-rooms at restaurants, have put their handkerchiefs to their noses and talked of filth and foul smells. I in nowise complain of this reception; on the contrary, I am charmed to observe that my brother journalists possess the sensitive nerves of young girls. It is quite evident that my work belongs to my judges, and that they may consider it a nauseous production without my having a right to protest. What I do complain of is that not one of the chaste journalists, who blushed on reading “Thérèse Raquin,” appears to me to have understood this novel. If they had understood it, perhaps they would have blushed still more, but I should at least at this moment have had the inmost satisfaction of seeing them disgusted with good cause. Nothing is more irritating than to hear worthy writers complaining of depravity, when one is intimately persuaded that they cry out without knowing their reason for doing so.

It becomes necessary, therefore, that I should myself introduce my work to my judges. I will do so in a few lines, solely with a view of avoiding all misunderstanding in the future.

In “Thérèse Raquin,” I have sought to study temperaments and not characters. In that lies the entire book. I have selected personages sovereignly dominated by their nerves and their blood, destitute of free will, led at each act of their life by the fatalities of their flesh. Thérèse and Laurent are human brutes, nothing more. I have sought to follow, step by step, throughout the career of these brutes, the secret working of their passions, the promptings of their instinct, the cerebral disorders following a nervous crisis. The amours of my hero and heroine are the satisfying of a necessity; the murder they commit is a consequence of their adultery, a consequence which they accept like wolves accept the slaughtering of sheep; finally, that which I have been obliged to term their remorse, consists in a simple organic disorder, in the rebellion of a nervous system strung to the point of breaking. The soul is entirely wanting; I admit this the more readily as I wished it to be so.

The reader begins, I hope, to understand that my aim has been, before all other, a scientific one. When my two personages, Thérèse and Laurent, were created, I took pleasure in stating certain problems to myself and in solving them; thus, I tried to explain the strange union which may be produced between two different temperaments; I showed the profound agitation of a sanguineous nature coming into contact with a nervous one. When one reads the novel carefully, one will observe that each chapter is the study of a curious case of physiology. In a word, I had but one desire: given a powerful man and an unsated woman, seek the animal within them, even see nothing but the animal, cast them into a violent drama, and scrupulously note the acts and sensations of these beings. I have simply undertaken on two living bodies the analytical work which surgeons perform on corpses.

Admit that it is hard, when one emerges from such a task, still enwrapt in the grave enjoyments of the search for truth, to hear people accuse you of having had for your sole object the painting of obscene pictures. I find myself in the same position as those painters who copy the nude, without the least desire being kindled within them, and who are profoundly surprised when a critic declares himself scandalized by the life-like flesh of their work. While engaged in writing “Thérèse Raquin,” I forgot the world, I became lost in the minute and exact copy of life, giving myself up entirely to the analysis of the human mechanism; and I can assure you that the cruel amours of Thérèse and Laurent had in them nothing immoral to my mind, nothing which could dispose one to evil passions. The humanity of the models disappeared the same as it vanishes in the eyes of the artist who has a naked woman sprawling before him, and who is solely thinking of representing this woman on his canvas in all the truthfulness of form and color. Therefore my surprise was great when I heard my work compared to a pool of blood and mire, to a sewer, to a mass of filth, and I know not what else. I know the pretty game of criticizing; I have played at it myself; but I admit that the uniformity of the attack rather disconcerted me. What! there was not one of my brother writers who would explain the book, if not defend it! Among the concert of voices exclaiming, “The author of ‘Thérèse Raquin’ is a wretched, hysterical being who delights in displaying obscenities,” I have vainly awaited a voice that replied, “Not at all! this writer is a mere analyst, who may have forgotten himself amidst human putrefaction, but who has forgotten himself there like the doctor forgets himself in the dissecting-room.”

Observe that I in no way ask for the sympathy of the press for a work which, as it says, is repugnant to its delicate senses. I am not so ambitious. I am merely astonished that my brother writers should have made me out a kind of literary scavenger—they, whose experienced eyes should discover in ten pages a novelist’s intentions; and I am content to humbly implore them to be good enough in future to see me as I am and to discuss me for what I am.

It was easy, though, to understand “Thérèse Raquin,” to place one’s self on the field of observation and analysis, to show me my real faults, without going and picking up a handful of mud and throwing it in my face in the name of morality. This required only a little intelligence and a few methodical ideas in real criticism. The reproach of immorality, in scientific matters, proves absolutely nothing. I do not know whether my novel is immoral; I admit that I never troubled myself to make it more or less chaste. What I do know is that I never for a moment thought of introducing into it the filth that these moral persons have discovered; that I wrote each scene, even the most passionate, with the sole curiosity of the man of science; that I defy my judges to find in it a single page really licentious, written for the readers of those little pink books, of those indiscreet chronicles of the boudoir and the stage, which are printed ten thousand copies at a time, and warmly recommended by the very newspapers which are so disgusted by the truths in “Thérèse Raquin.”

A few insults, a large amount of stupidity, is therefore all I have read up to the present respecting my work. I say so here quietly, the same as I would say it to a friend who should ask me privately what I think of the attitude which criticism has taken up towards me. A writer of great talent, to whom I complained of the little sympathy I have met with, made me this profound answer: “You have an immense fault which will close all doors against you: you cannot converse for two minutes with a fool without showing him that he is one.” It must be so; I can feel the harm I do myself as regards criticism by accusing it of a want of intelligence, and yet I cannot help showing the contempt I feel for its limited horizon and the judgments it delivers with its eyes shut, without the least attempt at method. I speak, be it understood, of current criticism, of that which judges with all the literary prejudices of fools, unable to place itself on the broad, human standpoint required to understand a human work. Never before have I met with such blundering. The few blows that the minor critics have dealt me with respect to “Thérèse Raquin” have landed, as usual, into space. They hit, essentially, in the wrong place, applauding the capers of a powdered actress, and then complaining of immorality with reference to a physiological study, understanding nothing, unwilling to understand anything, striking always straight before them, if their panic-stricken foolishness bids them strike. It is exasperating to be beaten for a fault one has not committed. At times, I regret not having written something obscene; it seems to me that I should delight in receiving a merited castigation, in the midst of this shower of blows falling so stupidly on my head, like a cartload of bricks, without my knowing why.

In our time there are scarcely more than two or three men capable of reading, understanding, and judging a book. From these I will consent to receive lessons, persuaded as I am that they will not speak without having penetrated my intentions and appreciated the result of my efforts. They would think twice before uttering those grand empty words, morality and literary modesty; they would allow me the right, in these days of liberty in art, of choosing my subjects wherever I thought best, requiring of me no more than conscientious work, aware that folly alone is prejudicial to the dignity of letters. One thing is certain, the scientific analysis which I have attempted to perform in “Thérèse Raquin” would not surprise them; they would see in it the modern method, the instrument of universal inquiry of which the century makes such feverish use to penetrate the future. Whatever their conclusion might be, they would admit my point of departure, the study of temperament and of the profound modifications of organism under the pressure of circumstances and situations. I should find myself in the presence of real judges, of men honestly seeking for truth, without puerility or false shame, and not thinking it necessary to show disgust at the sight of bare and living anatomical forms. Sincere study, like fire, purifies everything. No doubt to the tribunal I am pleased to picture at this moment my work would appear very humble; I would that it met with full severity from its critics, I would like to see it emerge black with corrections. But I should at least have the great joy of seeing myself criticized for that which I have attempted to do, and not for that which I have not done.

I can fancy I hear, even now, the sentence of high criticism, of that methodical and naturalistic criticism which has imbued science, history, and literature with new life: “‘Thérèse Raquin’ is the study of too exceptional a case; the drama of modern life is more supple, less wrapt up in horror and madness. Such cases should only occupy a secondary position in a work. The desire to lose no portion of his observations has led the author to give prominence to every detail, and this has added still more tension and harshness to the whole. On the other hand, the style does not possess the simplicity requisite in an analytical novel. It would be necessary, in short, that the writer, to enable him to construct a good novel, should see society with a wider glance, should paint it under its numerous and varied aspects, and should above all employ a plain and natural language.”

I had wished to reply in twenty lines to attacks rendered irritating by their ingenuous bad faith, and I perceive that I am chatting with myself, as always happens whenever I keep a pen too long in my hand. I therefore stop, knowing that readers do not care for that kind of thing. Had I had the will and the leisure to write a manifesto, perhaps I might have attempted to defend what a journalist, speaking of “Thérèse Raquin,” has termed, “putrid literature.” But where’s the use? The group of naturalistic writers to which I have the honor to belong possesses sufficient courage and activity to produce strong works, carrying their own defense within them. It requires all the blind obstinacy of a certain class of critics to force a novelist to write a preface. As, for the sake of light, I have committed the fault of writing one, I crave the pardon of those intelligent persons who have no need to have a lamp lighted at mid-day to enable them to see clearly.