Originally Published in 1907
Now in the Public Domain
*****
INTRODUCTION TO
MY AMERICAN READERS
I feel now, when my "Three Weeks" is to be launched in a new land,
where I have many sympathetic friends, that, owing to the
misunderstanding and misrepresentation it received from nearly the
entire press and a section of the public in England, I would like to
state my view of its meaning. (As I wrote it, I suppose it could be
believed I know something about that!) For me "the Lady" was a deep
study, the analysis of a strange Slav nature, who, from circumstances
and education and her general view of life, was beyond the ordinary
laws of morality. If I were making the study of a Tiger, I would not
give it the attributes of a spaniel, because the public, and I myself,
might prefer a spaniel! I would still seek to portray accurately
every minute instinct of that Tiger, to make a living picture. Thus,
as you read, I want you to think of her as such a study. A great
splendid nature, full of the passionate realisation of primitive
instincts, immensely cultivated, polished, blasé. You must see her at
Lucerne, obsessed with the knowledge of her horrible life with her
brutal, vicious husband, to whom she had been sacrificed for political
reasons when almost a child. She suddenly sees this young Englishman,
who comes as an echo of something straight and true in manhood which,
in outward appearance at all events, she has met in her youth in the
person of his Uncle Hubert. She perceives in him at once the Soul
sleeping there; and it produces in her a strong emotion. Then I want
you to understand the effect of Love on them both. In her it rose from
caprice to intense devotion, until the day at the Farm when it reached
the highest point--a desire to reproduce his likeness. How, with the
most passionate physical emotion, her mental influence upon Paul was
ever to raise him to vast aims and noble desires for future
greatness. In him love opened the windows of his Soul, so that he saw
the fine in everything.
The immense rush of passion in Venice came from her knowledge that
they soon must part. Notice the effect of the two griefs on Paul. The
first, with its undefined hope, making him do well in all things--even
his prowess as a hunter--to raise himself to be more worthy in her
eyes; the second and paralysing one of death, turning him into adamant
until his soul awakens again with the returning spring of her spirit
in his heart, and the consolation of the living essence of their love
in the child.