A NIGHT IN THE LUXEMBOURG BY REMY DE GOURMONT WITH PREFACE AND APPENDIX BY ARTHUR RANSOME JOHN W. LUCE AND COMPANY BOSTON MCMXII CONTENTS TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. By Arthur Ransome A Night in the Luxembourg. By Remy de Gourmont Preface A Night in the Luxembourg Final Note APPENDIX: REMY de GOURMONT. By Arthur Ransome AUTOGRAPHS-- KOPH Reduced facsimile of the last page of M. Rose's Manuscript TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE A general, but necessarily inadequate, account of the personality and works of one of the finest intellects of his generation will be found in the Appendix. I am here concerned only with _Une Nuit au Luxembourg_, which, though it is widely read in almost every other European language, is now for the first time translated into English. This book, at once criticism and romance, is the best introduction to M. de Gourmont's very various works. It created a "sensation" in France. I think it may do as much in England, but I am anxious lest this "sensation" should be of a kind honourable neither to us nor to the author of a remarkable book. I do not wish a delicate and subtle artist, a very noble philosopher, noble even if smiling, nobler perhaps because he smiles, to be greeted with accusations of indecency and blasphemy. But I cannot help recognising that in England, as in many other countries, these accusations are often brought against such philosophers as discuss in a manner other than traditional the subjects of God and woman. These two subjects, with many others, are here the motives of a book no less delightful than profound. The duty of a translator is not comprised in mere fidelity. He must reproduce as nearly as he can the spirit and form of his original, and, since in a work of art spirit and form are one, his first care must be to preserve as accurately as possible the contours and the shading of his model. But he must remember (and beg his readers to remember) that the intellectual background on which the work will appear in its new language is different from that against which it was conceived. When the new background is as different from the old as English from French, he cannot but recognise that it disturbs the chiaroscuro of his work with a quite incalculable light. It gives the contours a new quality and the shadows a new texture. His own accuracy may thus give his work an atmosphere not that which its original author designed.