The Devil's Pool and Other Stories

Prefatory Note to The Devil’s Pool (1851)

c 181 Prefatory Note to The Devil’s Pool (1851) When I wrote The Devil’s Pool, which began a series of country novels that I intended to group together as Nights with the Hemp Dresser,1 I had no special plan or idea of doing anything revolutionary in literature. Nobody can bring about a revolution singlehanded ; especially in the arts, the human race sometimes does such things almost unwittingly, because everyone contributes to them. Anyhow, this has no relevance to the novel of rural life. That has always existed, through different ages and in different forms—sometimes grandiose, sometimes mannered, sometimes artless. I’ve said before, and I must now say again, that pastoral life has been the ideal of city dwellers and even court dwellers in every era. I’ve done nothing new; I’ve simply followed civilized man’s natural inclination to go back to the charms of primitive life. I have neither created nor tried to create any new language, nor have I striven for a new style, though a good number of literary magazines have made such claims about me.2 Still, I know the truth about my own intentions better than anyone else can, and I’m constantly amazed that critics should keep looking for something that isn’t there, when the simplest ideas and most commonplace incidents are all that inspire works of art. In the specific case of The Devil’s Pool, as I said in its introductory chapter , a Holbein engraving that had struck me and a scene that I saw in real life at the same time, while the crops were being sown, were the only things that prompted me to write that little story, and I set it in the humble surroundings of my own daily walks. If you ask me what I was trying to do, I’ll reply that I was trying to make something very touching and very simple—and that I didn’t 182 The Devil’s Pool and Other Stories entirely succeed to my own satisfaction. Certainly I’ve seen and felt the beauty of what is simple; but seeing it and depicting it are two different things! At best, an artist can only hope to incite those who have eyes to look for themselves. Look at the simple things, then, my dear city dwellers; look at the sky and the fields and the trees, and above all, at whatever is good and true in the country people themselves;3 you’ll see them a little in my book, you’ll see them much better in the natural world. ...