Inner Workings of the Novel: Studying a Genre

Also by Allan H. Pasco

Novel Configurations: A Study of French Fiction—Stendhal, Balzac, Zola, Gide, Huysmans, Proust, Robbe-Grillet, and Others, 1987 Balzacian Montage: Configuring La Comédie humaine, 1991 Allusion: A Literary Graft, 1994 Co-Editor, with John T. Booker. The Play of Terror in Nineteenth-Century France, 1996 Sick Heroes: French Society and Literature in the Romantic Age, 1750–1850, 1997 Nouvelles françaises du XIXe siècle, 2006 Revolutionary Love in Eighteenth- and Early Nineteenth-Century France, 2009

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The Color-Keys to À la recherche du temps perdu, 1976

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Inner Workings of the Novel Studying a Genre Allan H. Pasco

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INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL

Copyright © Allan H. Pasco, 2010.

First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States - a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the World, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10698–7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pasco, Allan H. Inner workings of the novel : studying a genre / Allan H. Pasco. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–230–10698–7 (alk. paper) 1. French fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. French fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 3. Fiction—Technique. I. Title. PQ653.P37 2010 843 .709—dc22 2010014508 Design by Integra Software Services First edition: December 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

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All rights reserved.

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For Dallas

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Preface

ix

1 The Long and Short of the Novel

1

2 Making Short Long: Short Story Cycles

33

3 Remaking the Novel

63

4 Trinitarian Unity

89

5 Proust’s Reader

117

6 Conclusion

155

Notes

165

Index

197

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Contents

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Theory which does not seek ultimately to explain the form of novels, as organic wholes, is pointless. —Philip Stevick

Novelists as diverse as the French Nouveaux Romanciers, Oulipo (most notably Queneau and Perec), and the “extreme” novel insist that their novels are in essence different from those of the past. The claim is a longstanding commonplace of novelists’ prefaces and essays. Nonetheless, they and others are generally content to insist on what they do not do: they do not depend on plot, character, chronology, causality, and so on.1 And, curiously, while Vladimir Propp, Claude Levi-Strauss, A. J. Greimas, Tzvetan Todorov, Claude Bremond,2 and others have done considerable important work in describing the structure of narration, it might be valuable to attempt to reevaluate the standard view of novels in the light of both recent and former traditions. If the genre has in fact changed, the conceptions that illuminate or support the related critical work should be revised. Those definitions of the novel that appear in recent criticism show little or no evolution. Some stress intention,3 some subject matter,4 some the creation of a character confronting a universe,5 some length,6 some the action or plot,7 but whatever the emphasis, all, or almost all, novels are easily recognized as novels. I want to propose a simple definition of the novel, one that allows for radical experimentation within the confines of what we normally have in mind when we use the word. When I say or write the term, I mean a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary. The novel may use popular tales, mythology, a recent scientific or historical discovery, or the latest newspaper, but it integrates its materials into a fiction that exists only as the reader creates it from the words he or she confronts. It is then neither history nor essay, though it may make use of either or other generic forms within the confines of its fictional creation. It may be a hundred or several thousand pages long, and it may use a choice of techniques, whether dialogue, monologue, description, punctuation (or a lack of it),

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Preface

PREFACE

allusion, symbolism, letters, or whatever, but it is on some level coherent and unified. And not only is its final form artistic, it is prose. That is, it is not verse, however close it may come to verse in the hands of a Dylan Thomas or a Nabokov. Nor is it theater, though to a greater or lesser extent novelists, like Flaubert, may use some of the devices and forms of the stage. Because the novel is a genre, it has delineating parameters. Nonetheless, enormous variation of emphasis and interest is possible within its form. In this volume, I want to test some of the outer edges. I have been struck by the number of times great novelists have developed techniques that make the novel seem absolutely new and different from previous incarnations. I suggest that its true innovations are in the realm of technique, not subject matter, which is superficial, however much the topic may for a very short time make the particular example seem new. When a startling device appears, other novelists will doubtless come along and exploit it, at least until it is worn out and loses its ability to create interest. Then students of the genre will await another surprising device or strategy. I think, for example, of autobiographical or epistolary novels. Such reorganizations, and the accompanying approaches and techniques, generally take place within the limits of the genre. Sometimes, the rearrangement or device is so subtle that its power remains effective for a long time. I give examples that, though continuing to be explored by other authors, still challenge readers over one hundred years after their invention. Such is the case with A rebours and La tentation de saint Antoine. A new device does not change the genre significantly, but it makes the work seem new. While I am not sure that Maupassant’s encroachment on the short story cycle in Bel ami (1885), for example, is particularly interesting, the reverse, when short story writers invade the domain of the novel, has important lessons worth considering. Though I do not go into detail about novel cycles, which differ in little but length from short story cycles, the short story cycles I analyze here make use of the basic conceptual structures of image and sequence. Though these structures have been used effectively in the novel, the existence of such forms is not discretely limited to any particular genre. Still, just as a trip to the center of the labyrinth creates resonance in our deepest beings, so too the sudden perception of a unified whole. The subject may be love at first sight, or it may be a sense of eureka, an aesthetic or theatrical experience, but the resulting, integrative illumination or epiphany can be all consuming. Such a powerful effect may be caused by any art form, whether by one of Baudelaire’s exquisite sonnets or Proust’s masterpiece or a superb performance of Ionesco’s Les chaises. It depends on the arrangement imposed by the artist on his or her materials and on our ability to perceive and conceive the writer’s creation.

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Gide is particularly well known for his experimentation with “open” structures that result in the sense of an overriding story that will continue to unfold after the novel has reached an end. Bertolt Brecht tried to make his audiences understand that the events they behold in the performance are actively and continuously impinging on their very real lives outside the theater. Other writers have exploited rhetorical devices with descriptions and narrations. I have been particularly struck by asyndeton, where the rupture dividing parts can serve many functions, as when George Sand’s Indiana of 1831 stands ready to leap to her death on one page and, without explanation, on the next is happily ensconced with her cousin-cum-lover in their jungle home, thus, suggesting an earthly paradise. In Sur Catherine de Médicis (1830–42), Balzac turns to similar ruptures in his attempt to show the continuation across the ages of lethal philosophies that have killed so many fellow human beings. Writers cast their nets wide in search of methods and devices that will bring their fictions to life. Among the most audacious, Proust and Balzac exploit a kind of negative structure and many powerful intensifiers. Huysmans turned to symbolism to rise above the physical and suggested that the human spirit had considerably more importance than mere flesh. This, then, constitutes the subject of my book: I want to propose a reasonable and useful definition of the novel. I also shall wonder what makes exemplars novel, since novelty has been important in advancing variations in the genre. In addition, I hope to show how several difficult masterpieces function, in the hope of casting new light on the genre itself. After considering both image and sequential structures in short story cycles by Camus and Barbey, and how they are distinct from the majority of novels, I shall turn to Flaubert’s theatrical, labyrinthine novel La tentation de saint Antoine and then to the analogical world of Huysmans’s À rebours. Only with such preparation, it seems to me, can we appreciate the genius that Proust displayed at the apex of the nineteenth-century novel À la recherche du temps perdu. I propose, then, several adventures in reading. The following pages represent the abiding interests that have guided my studies since the beginning. They would not have been possible without the help of the many friends and acquaintances that shared them, were willing to talk about them, and had the knowledge to affect my understanding. I also remember the group that long met weekly at Jimmy’s, a popular gathering spot near the University of Chicago. Raging, though good-natured, arguments between the Marxist philologist Paolo Cherchi, the neo-Aristotelian David Lee Rubin, the Genevan critics Umberto Robles and Arnaud Tripet, and New Critics, Structuralists, and Formalists of several stripes that passed through, sent me home weekly with new ideas and references. I dedicate the resulting book to my wife and partner, who has

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PREFACE

PREFACE

read and reread every word of what follows with intelligence, discernment, and kind intent. To them and the many others like them who shared an intense interest in literature and art, some of whom I only met in my study as I read their work, I am inexpressibly grateful. Of course, I am responsible for the result, including the translations, which unless otherwise credited are my own. I am also very grateful to The Hall Family Foundation for the continuing support in funds and time that they have provided since I came to the University of Kansas in 1989. Finally, early texts of portions of chapters 2, 4, and 5 were previously published as, “Kaleidescopic Reading in Barbey’s Les Diaboliques,” Kaleidescope: Essays on Nineteenth Century French Literature in Honor of Thomas H. Goetz, ed. G. Falconer and M. Donaldson-Evans, Coll. À la recherche du XIX e siècle (Toronto: U of Toronto, Dept. of French, Centre d’Études du dix-neuvième siècle français Joseph Sablé, 1996) 99–110; “Trinitarian Unity in La tentation de saint-Antoine,” French Studies 56.4 (2002): 457–70, by permission of Oxford UP; “Reading the Age of Names in À la recherche du temps perdu,” Comparative Literature 46 (1994): 267–87; and “Proust and the Paramorphic Novel,” Novel Configurations: A Study of French Fiction, 2nd ed. (Birmingham, AL: SUMMA, 1994) 151–72, 215–19. I am grateful for the permission to reprint revised versions.

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The Long and Short of the Novel

The Question of Novelty The novel genre is appropriately named. Novelty rejuvenates it. As Grossvogel pointed out, however, “[T]he need for renewal is . . . constant.”1 When a technique has been exploited so often that readers expect whatever it is and does, it loses its lively novelty. It is true that worn-out devices can be effectively exploited because they are no longer able to work their old magic. Gide, for example, gave new birth to previously over-used methods of realism to enhance the sense of artificiality in La porte étroite (1909), a novel that, like L’immoraliste (1902), plays on the conflict of reality and fantasy that the author felt essential to the novel.2 Surprisingly, while “stories” that imitate the chronologically and causally ordered life were long out of fashion, there seems to be a recent change in, if not a reversion to, former practices. William Cloonan’s title announces, for instance, “The Return of the Story (Maybe): The Novel in 2006.”3 He goes on to explain that his “point in focusing on the importance of stories . . . is that it appears that the fiction published in 2006 was less fixated on the self as an isolated entity, on obsessions so deeply personal that the broader world seems to be shut out” (64). In coming to this conclusion, Cloonan is looking over his shoulder toward authors of the past who were able to exploit extraordinarily complex patterns while telling a “good story.” Of the reasons for claiming novelty or originality in literature, one of the more common makes a great deal of the subject matter. Ralph Schoolcraft points to such material found in the recent, “extreme novel”: “Sadomasochism, Castration and Rape.” I would not want to argue that the topics are novel, for they are not new. Nor do I believe that topical newness has importance, at least as far as the novel as a genre is concerned. It seems

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INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

to me that the work’s subject matter is most often neither generically discrete nor even, over time, important, and I shall consequently have little to say about it. Flaubert, for example, made a masterpiece of the most banal of stories in Madame Bovary (1857). A particular subject can, in fact, serve in almost any literary genre. Great works of art use illusion, romance, violence, gentleness, financial success or failure, ad infinitum and almost at random while exploiting the appropriate medium and other techniques and devices to strike at the heart of their various genres. In so doing, they effectively reorganize their component parts. Often novel subject matter is nothing but a mere change of emphasis or interest, even when conceived or promoted as cutting-edge (extreme) and contrary to prior works.4 The presence of realistic or fantastic material no longer helps differentiate between novel and romance, for example, as Margaret Anne Doody has argued.5 As a result, I have no difficulty including the recent “extreme novel” in the inclusive heading of “novel genre,” despite its emphasis on subject matter like the act of creation or on techniques like minimalism and apparently unresolved endings (though usually only superficially so). When a writer treats such a topic as the act of creation, it is merely a subject like circuses, interplanetary travel, love, or war.6 Whatever the subject, it will of course be illustrated within the text, without changing the pattern of the genre. All literary works have something even more important and central than a topic to which everything else is subordinated. Henry James called that dominant element the subject. It might, on the one hand, be a character like Saint Antoine in Flaubert’s La tentation de saint Antoine. Or it might, on the other, be the plot, a theme, a setting, states of being or consciousness, the solutions to the mathematical puzzles of Beckett’s Watt (1953), or the shape of the paradigm in Borges’s “La loteria en Babilonia” (1944). The list could go on and on. What matters, however, is the material the author wants to communicate and the form of a given set of definitive traits that he exploits. It is axiomatic in modern criticism that artistic definitions do not depend on the particular subject matter that the artist chooses to exploit. Few critics care to argue that the definition of either art or a particular genre depends on the material that the artist fashions aesthetically. One could pick one of Sade’s novels and argue that it is obscene and unfit for certain readers, or, from a different point of view, one could maintain that it is unsuccessful, but one cannot suggest that because of its obscenity or aesthetic failure it is not a novel. Likewise, one might claim that Flaubert’s “La légende de St. Julien l’hospitalier” (1877) fails as a work of art (though I would not), but one does not thereby put legends beyond the pale of the short story.

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Most “avant-garde” novels of recent vintage have notably led a concerted attack on worn-out conceptions of plot and character. Maurice Blanchot said, for example, “The novel . . . can exist without most of the elements which tradition ascribes to it—plot, characters, orderly narration.”7 Oulipo, a group of modern-day rhétoriqueurs8 most notably represented by Georges Perec and Raymond Queneau, skillfully attempted to rid the novel of such devices, while setting off their efforts to undermine convention by pushing style to the limits. Perec, for example, managed La disparition (1969), a three hundred-some page lipogram, from which the letter e is entirely absent (except for the cover). On a larger scale, as Warren Motte points out, Christian Oster elided chapter 13 in Le Picquenique (1997). It seems, however, safe to say that such rhetorical games failed to establish vital relationships with nonprofessional readers, except for those enamored of puzzles and wordplay, since we hear very little from or, even, about them these days. Were it not for the reality of fine fiction, the polemics of authors and their professorial sidemen might even have made one believe that they had expunged the devices of “realistic” plot, character, narration, descriptive detail, and unambiguous narrators, which was and is not the case. Definitions of character and plot have expanded, for the concepts no longer require what Ricardou mockingly termed an imaginary “everyday being of flesh and blood which could . . . serve as a referent,”9 or, with respect to plot, the prosaic sequence or, perhaps even, to use Peter Brooks’s term, the “dynamic” of pseudo-real events. During the last century, literary art has, however, been pushed to the extreme edge of its possibilities, either by advancing toward other forms of literature or by impelling readers to react, whether through awareness of social problems and political revolt, as Bertolt Brecht hoped, or through acceptance of Proust’s challenge to create their own art from the material his work provides. The rare novel capable of successfully stimulating further art or some other form of reaction in the real world is still well within the bounds of the novel,10 for its “innovations” are merely exploitations of nascent characteristics that have long rested within the generic form. The basic pattern of the novel, for example, has not changed much, if at all. Authors have merely recognized the potential of certain seeds and sown them in the fertile ground of the novel. Indeed, the “Greek” pastoral, chivalric, picaresque, idealist, anti-idealist, or gothic novels that Thomas Pavel catalogs differ fundamentally in little but subject matter and the ways characters and themes are presented.11 Frank Kermode put it bluntly: “None of these new things was outside the scope of the long narrative of the past” (Kermode 156). “Character” is frequently highlighted when critics and authors claim that a very different, modern novel has arrived on the scene. Once again,

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THE LONG AND SHORT OF THE NOVEL

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

it is a matter of definition. A character may be either the “actor,” the personage or consciousness involved in the changes of the plot, or the “receptor,” the consciousness that records stimuli, without necessarily effecting change. There need be no physical incarnation and, as Bakhtin pointed out, the consciousness itself might be the object of the text’s representation. Such actors are never more than sketched, though authors use various codes. Sometimes the descriptive detail remains very skimpy indeed. When Jacques Barzun called for a “Bovariectomy,” he wished to get rid of “the central character; or, more generally, to drop characterization as the chief lure of fiction.”12 Should such an operation occur, it would nonetheless hardly be new. Of Mlle de Chartres, soon to be the Princess de Clèves in the novel of 1678, for example, we are told only that she is a great beauty and that she has very white skin and blond hair. From that point on, her actions and the stories told to her are hung from little but her name, to which readers of good will attach significant traits as they follow her adventures. Readers, I suppose, fill in the “flesh and blood” in whatever idiosyncratic, and often insignificant, manner they choose, but what has undoubted importance is the psychological identity being brought to bear on the name as though it were a person. Slowly, through the course of the novel, attentive readers build the psychological profile of a woman who might well make the decisions necessary to withdraw from society. Or, for another example, Balzac’s first- and third-person narrators, while generally clearly delineated, are not for the most part incarnated or named, while his other characters are thoroughly described, as though they have real existence and the narrator is describing what he has actually seen. Even more ambiguously, the French New Novel often leaves the reader with neither name nor any physical characteristics whatsoever. John Barth’s widely cited essay, “The Literature of Exhaustion,” mentions some of this sort of text. The character reports the more or less well-organized sensations he, she, or it experiences, and the reader is invited to appreciate what Virginia Woolf called the “flickerings of that innermost flame.”13 Such characters have been well prepared by the nineteenth-century third-person, objective, but fleshless narrator who remains only a voice in the background while telling a story. The nuclear concepts of both plot and character, then, persist in a variety of guises in fiction and, in effect, have remained useful from at least the time of Aristotle. Even if the various authors and schools had successfully expunged standard devices, Virginia Woolf should give us pause when she writes that “[a]ny method is right, every method is right, that expresses what we wish to express, if we are writers” (“Modern Fiction” 192). Few would accept the proposition that aesthetic excellence is assured by what Woolf calls a method but what most would call a convention or device. As

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most experimental writers themselves are willing to admit in their calmer moments, artistic excellence lies elsewhere: in the coherence of texts and in their ability to sustain vital relationships with readers. Nonetheless, the emphasis has been on the features distinguishing recent fiction from that of the nineteenth century. This stress has led some recent novelists and their adherents to unjust condemnation of past masters like such as Balzac, Flaubert, or Proust and to unjustifiable self-puffery. Denigrating earlier works and authors is but a first step toward the claim that an enlightened reader of “today” finds the corpus of earlier prose fiction desiccated, dead, devoid of rejuvenating artistic waters. Needless to say, this step has been taken over and over again.

Genre and the Generic The problem, of course, is that genre is a form that restricts artistic options, though only if the artist chooses to exploit a particular generic arrangement. Tatarkiewicz has advanced five understandings of form: it may be the equivalent of the arrangement and its constituent elements, or the form as opposed to its content, or the boundary or outline of an object, or the conceptual essence that Aristotle called “entelechy,” or it may be the Kantian a priori, mental sense of form that is imposed on the object.14 Leonard Orr adds another meaning: form may be the set of commonly accepted rules or practice.15 It seems to me that form might also be conceived as what remains after all meaning is subtracted from the works in question, a variation on the above “form as opposed to its content,” rather like mentally subtracting the specific events to uncover what I have elsewhere called the plot armature. The intellectual exercise of differentiation becomes more difficult when we attempt to find those patterns at the heart of all works of a particular variety. Still, when a reader considers texts with care, it seems perfectly possible to distinguish concepts from each other: truth from fiction, prose from poetry, long from short, and artistic from utilitarian. It should then be possible to distinguish form from content. A work of art, unlike a cake, can be divided and devoured, without in the process affecting the beauty of the conceptual whole. In so doing, I suspect, the novel genre is revealed in its glory as the creation of realities and, perhaps, as well, in its shame as artifice. Likewise, it is possible to consider relationships, images, order, structure, balance, symmetry, and forms without paying more than a modicum of attention to the content. At first glance, modern novels seem very different from those of the past; yet both may do well at sustaining the interest of today’s readers. When they do not, they may be flawed or may simply have gone out of

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THE LONG AND SHORT OF THE NOVEL

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

style, to be resuscitated at some time in the future. Proust’s masterpiece (1913–27) went through a long period when French people, at least, were indifferent to its beauties. More recently, appreciation of Gide’s fiction has significantly diminished in preference to his autobiography. And my students—alas!—read Rousseau’s La nouvelle Héloïse (1761) with great difficulty. Such variance in reception can be explained by linguistic changes, fashion, exhausted devices, education, or changing interests due to current events like war or peace. Indeed, changes in the social fabric may render some works incomprehensible. Often, however, fashions change again, devices are renewed, and particular subjects are reinvigorated. Considering those novels of the past that repeatedly arouse readers’ attention generally reveals common traits, structures, patterns, or paradigms of elements that highlight similarities and link them to the genre.

The Novel as Genre J. Paul Hunter takes a contrary position and argues that “[m]aking all prose fiction, from all ages and places, into the novel is not a serious way of dealing with either formal or historical issues.”16 He would prefer to describe those factors that make the novel different in diverse climates and periods and lists a number of features that are pertinent to a discussion of the mid-eighteenth-century novel: contemporaneity, credibility, familiarity, nontraditional plots, tradition-free language, and individualism, among others (Hunter 23–25). Still, it seems to me that focusing on minor, impermanent subcategories—whether parts, traits, or devices—that for a time are more or less brilliantly highlighted within a genre encourages one to take publicity-hungry writers claiming novelty too seriously. It seems better, more useful, and more interesting to attempt to perceive those factors, elements, and forms that identify the novel wherever and whenever it appears. A definition that includes major traits or component parts enables readers to have appropriate expectations and evaluate real novelty, whether or not innovations disappoint or delight them. Individual readers may or may not care, but as long as novels are created in the culture, their expectations will be influenced by the prevailing definitions. Early in the twentieth century, realism was on the downward slope but still very much in fashion, though Gide was determined to bring it into question, so as to set off his ideas about the artificiality of literature. Reality or “true life” or its poor relative, “realism,” is, in fact, no more and no less than a topic or subject of literature and a manner of presentation. Two particularly important schools of thought on the novel diverge on this issue. Ian Watt’s seminal The Rise of the Novel argues that the “modern” novel

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grew out of the eighteenth century’s focus on realism and the aborning middle class. Such a chronological development of the events becomes difficult to sustain on remembering that the novelist Rabelais wrote long before, in the sixteenth century, while Cervantes dates from the early 1600s, and Mme de Lafayette’s La princesse de Clèves from 1678, to name but three outstanding proponents of realism that predate the eighteenth century. Not only are these undoubted masterpieces, they are excellent examples of novels. Margaret Anne Doody, a specialist in the eighteenth-century novel, demonstrates forcefully in her The True Story of the Novel that the novel took root in antiquity. Approaches like realism or naturalism, or topics like capitalism, morality, love, and the behavior of lower, middle, and upper classes go in and out of style, varied occasionally by a new companion subject or mode, whether psychological, sociological, or historical. Definitions of genre should not be grounded in the minor devices, techniques, or even procedures that artists marshal to make their works. The fact is, of course, that most definitions of genre do indeed turn on such insignificant features. Lynn A. Higgens encapsulates the matter well when she formulates the practice of many new and old artists: “[N]ew means oppositional.” As Harold Bloom demonstrates in The Anxiety of Influence (New York, Oxford University Press, 1973), with major exceptions like Shakespeare, Milton, Goethe, and other giants who simply absorb the past and create the future, most authors of moment establish themselves by opposing their immediate ancestors and rejecting one stratagem for another in the paradigm of literary tools. To depend on such minor revolts against preceding authors, or, in Bloom’s terms, against the “father,” is to limit generic definitions to minor adjustments or changes, so that they are of little help in understanding major literary events and accomplishments.17 I prefer to insist on the most salient parts of form, that is, on the major, generic features that do not change and that incorporate those devices and structures of the past, however much the constituent elements may periodically vary. Genre, by being fairly stable in its most central patterns, will draw attention to alterations arising within the form. It does not matter that a novel like Huysmans’s À rebours (1884) recalls a collection of essays on art or flowers, while Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) uses techniques from the diary and the memoir to flirt with autobiography and with sociological studies of the death of a class. Nor does the resemblance of Malraux’s La condition humaine (1933) to a polyphonic epic poem change the structure of the novel genre. By recognizing that all are novels, one can more easily understand how the genre serves to highlight the significant variations of topic or device. Subject matter, characterization, and technique have at various points had crucial significance for some

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readers, though, as I have said, all are susceptible to change and none have significant importance to the major components of the novel genre. To the contrary, the genre serves to draw attention to the variations that have taken place within the development of the overriding, generic form. Rather like building codes requiring lead pipes, which became an impediment to good building when the much cheaper and more adaptable PVC pipe came into general use (lawmakers had codified the material rather than addressing the issues of strength, durability, and capacity), definitions depending on arrangements that imitate oral presentation, or on the primary importance of narration, or on simplicity, or on numbers of characters, or on narrative voice, or even on features as significant as plot or a causally and chronologically based conception of “story” are wrong-headed and have not survived. Definitions of the novel that turned on devices like “telling” and “showing” crumbled when artists rolled out legions of sequences that are not “told,” but rather simply are, and go nowhere, that feature not a character but a condition, and that exemplify what Victor Shklovsky called “estrangement” or what Joseph Frank has termed “spatial form” (and which I call “image structure,” since it insists on the constituent elements whether oppositional, parallel, or iterative that make the whole). Of course, if plot is nothing but change from one state to another (as Todorov suggests), almost all novels, short stories, essays, plays, and memoirs have plot. It is then not a definitive, discrete characteristic. Indeed, not only do many novels subordinate plot to description, with increasing frequency narration occurs in works where the description of a condition or an attitude carries the fiction’s meaning and dominates plot.18 The action does no more than illustrate or clarify the overriding description. Another claim for modern art has reappeared regularly since the 1950s. The novel’s supposed lack of resolution or its open endings touches on aesthetic concerns. Generally, the claims arise when text suggests that the story will continue after the last page, however much the shape of the continuation has been made clear. Readers may shuffle the pages of Marc Saporta’s Composition no. 1 (1962) as often as they wish, for example, without changing the rigorously organized life of the delusional narrator. Similarly, the sequence of Gide’s Les faux-monnayeurs (1925), Cortàzar’s Rayuela (1963), or Claude Simon’s La route des Flandres (1960), each in a different way, may continue after the close of the text, but the pattern of the continuation has been well established (Pasco, Novel Configurations 175–81). Rather than “inconclusive endings . . . [that] can be seen as directly challenging views of the novel” (Higgins 82), such novels generally insist on the main characters’ pathetic lack of imagination, for they are condemned like rats to dreary treadmills repeating the well-established patterns of their lives. In truth, critics have simply been lured into accepting devices like

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Coherence and Unity While many artists have attempted to exploit Picasso’s vision of a picture as “a sum of destructions”20 (which, of course, implies unity) in order to reproduce a fragmented, dispersive world, they generally hold tenaciously to some sort of unifying system, though perhaps on a subliminal level. Such balance and stability, though reviled by certain writers, is crucial, since, as David Richter points out, the successful representation of chaos is not chaos, but rather meaninglessness.21 Without a conscious or unconscious sense that everything in a text fits together into a unity, editorial staffs will seldom publish a work. The limited numbers that slip through into print, either because of timeliness or the general interest of the topics covered (whether prurience or religion or recent events) or because of a subvention, will not live long except on the dusty shelves of major libraries. Readers of sensitivity, knowledge, and skill will be able to make sense even of works that initially appear to lack coherence. I think, for example, of the film Weekend by Jean-Luc Godard, which makes no sense at all until the spectator recognizes that it is organized around a concept based on the theme of chaotic disintegration and disorder, which, as Robin Wood points out, becomes a force of integration.22 Unity and coherence, about which I will have more to say in the next chapter, are of course quite different. Unity has to do with the high degree of relationship of the parts, whatever their arrangement. The wholeness or oneness created has to do with position, though that arrangement may not necessarily be sequential. What matters is the resultant harmony (however disharmonious or dystrophic . . . I think of À rebours (discussed in Chapter 4) of the whole and the oneness that is created. A is thus related to Z, though not necessarily in an immediately apparent way to B or Y. Coherence depends on the relationship between contiguous parts, where A is indeed related to B, as Y to Z, though not necessarily A to C or X to Z. The chain of syntagmatic relationships cannot be broken if coherence is to be maintained. The very fact of language suggests a strong, if banal, element of coherence, and novelists will ordinarily seek further afield for the relationships that will tie A to B to C without a serial break to Z. Successful novels are both coherent and unified, though either quality may become the object of experimentation. How incoherent may a novel be? How disunited may a novel be? In either case, when on the edge between one and

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“open endings” as defining elements of the whole work. However “open” the ending, the textual resolution is nonetheless clear. Readers require, expect, and need closure and will likely supply it, even when the author is content to leave it inexplicit.19

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the other, an aesthetic judgment must be made to distinguish a novel from some other form. Coming to terms with the concept of completion is perhaps more difficult. Frank Kermode says categorically that “[n]o novel can avoid being in some sense what Aristotle calls ‘a completed action.’ ”23 Because physical “action” has become increasingly problematic as writers have exploited the mental process of consciousness, it seems more accurate to say that no novelist consciously avoids offering a sense of completion, though the resolution may not always depend on plot. Increasing numbers of novels that center on coherent description or image do not bring the action to completion, as authors play with “openness,” except to the degree that the action takes its subordinate role within the overall creation. Nonetheless, some sense of completion is essential, whether of image or action. Precisely because we expect every element to serve some function, the author has the power to mislead readers. The limited or unreliable narrator, who cannot see the whole truth and thus often leads the reader astray, as in Claude Simon’s La route des Flandres and, more generally, in surprise endings that depend on miscues, has become increasingly common in modern novels and definitely occurs in short stories; one thinks of Anatole France’s “Le procureur de Judée” (1891) or Maupassant’s “La parure” (1884) or Jean Echenoz’s Un an (1997). Multiplicity of detail is more tolerable in a full-length novel, because of a reader’s expectations raised by past experience with the genre, though, of course, it must be subject to the particular work’s economies and motivations. One could go on without ever completing a catalogue of all the potential techniques permitted by length and authorial innovations, though a sensible person would not even wish to try. Some of literature’s glories are found in its authors’ apparently unending ability to devise new ways of presenting their reality. The point I am attempting to make, however, should be clear from the very range of the means available to authors. Particular devices, techniques, allusions, settings, subject matter, and procedures are minor, and when one or the other is the central focus of a generic definition, the definition goes out of date with such rapidity that understanding of the genre is impeded.

The “Archetypal” Novel A genre has a central, identifiable set of characteristics that each epoch and each author deploys in different ways and with different variables. The result is generically recognizable, allowing for parallel and oppositional play, but specific to the author, age, and culture. There are those that

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talk of the “sci-fi genre,” the “supernatural genre,” the “mystery genre,” and so on. The word “genre” allows such usage. It is more helpful, however, to reserve the term for major categories like comedy, tragedy, epic, lyric, essay, short story, or novel, and then to consider carefully what might seem extreme or even bizarre examples in the attempt to understand the common ground for the particular kind of literature.24 Genres may be conceptualized rather like archetypes. The general pattern continues through the centuries, though each period exploits it in a different way. The work of defining a genre succeeds when the definition corresponds to general practice, when it includes the samples usually included and excludes those normally left out, when its categories do not erroneously focus on elements that cause misapprehensions. While no one element will ever serve as a discretionary touchstone, one hopes that the various traits together will provide a means of discrimination. The fact that both insects and snakes are cold-blooded, for example, does not prevent us from using “cold-blooded” in definitions of both. There will be problem cases that present intentional or unintentional difficulties, but until such exceptions become commonplace, they should be appreciated for the significance raised by their very deviations. They should not be allowed to negate existing definitions and certainly not the possibility of arriving at a workable accord. E. D. Hirsch Jr. has pointed to what is perhaps the most significant obstacle to defining genre: “Aristotle was wrong to suppose that human productions can be classified in a definitive way like biological species. . . . [A] true class requires a set of distinguishing features which are inclusive within the class and exclusive outside it; it requires a differentia specifica. That, according to Aristotle, is the key to definition and to essence. But, in fact, nobody has ever so defined literature or any important genre within it.”25 Several issues are raised by Hirsch’s position. Most important, despite an all too indiscriminate admiration of science and the scientific, which pervades humanistic studies, biological typology does not benefit from a differentia specifica. The distinctive features are distinctive only in their plural congruence, when they function successfully to isolate—more or less and for the most part—a locus. As any good biologist knows, biological typology is not neatly defined, but rather is rife with inconsistencies; every class has its own variety of the duck-billed platypus.

Essential Definitions The problems that cause difficulty in arriving at definitions of human creations should not cause us to join Leon Roudiez in concluding, “[T]he

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concept of genre is not as useful as it was in the past.”26 Acceptable definitions are especially needed these days, since most, though not all, of the generically controversial works (I think in particular of some of the more innovative creations by Godard and Sollers) were meant to disrupt categories. To deny the existence of the novel genre, for example, is to deprive the young Sollers of the opportunity to attack bourgeois society by undermining one of its conceptual categories. Surely, part of the enjoyment of works that fall on the edge or between well-established generic boundaries comes from their problematic nature as genre.27 That said, I do suspect aesthetic genres are more problematic than biological species. In the latter case, only the definition is of human invention. The external referent may shift this way or that, but the alteration is very slow. In aesthetics, however, both the classification and the objects under study come from the creative hearth of man and are subject to constant, sometimes revolutionary, change. Moreover, since creativity, by definition, implies the devising of something new, no aesthetic definition can be anything but retrospective, and it must be revised and updated to accommodate innovations, without, for all that, losing the distinctive characteristics of the object in question. In short, no generic definition of science or literature can hope to do more than draw attention to the dominant aspects of the pattern or form or structure that will inevitably include some of the elements found elsewhere. As Tynjanov explains with particular reference to literature, “Since a system is not an equal interaction of all elements but places a group of elements—the ‘dominant’—in the foreground and thus involves the deformation of the remaining elements, a work enters into literature and takes on its own literary function through this dominant. Thus we correlate poems with the verse category, not with the prose category, not on the basis of all their characteristics, but only of some of them.”28 A multiple set of traits is essential. One trait does not suffice. A number of significant changes in our understanding of the novel have occurred in the last fifty years. Perhaps most important, we have turned away from the unhelpful posture that generic distinctions are useless, if not pernicious, a position that dominated criticism growing out of the Nouvelle Critique and post-structuralism. Rather than struggling to show that we cannot truly know any external object, that prose fiction may be referred to only as récit (tale), or narrative, or fiction, and that rare exceptions invalidate any generic rule, most professional readers have accepted the widespread belief that there is such a thing as genre and that delineating the various manifestations helps to understand what creative writers are about. As Todorov succinctly summarized the matter, “Just because a work disobeys the expectations of its genre does not make the latter non-existent.

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One is rather tempted to say: to the contrary. . . . because the transgression needs a law that can be precisely transgressed, in order to exist as such.”29 There comes a time when human cleverness, on the one hand, and stubborn ineptitude, on the other, must be reckoned with. It may be impossible to define a genre, but readers do it all the time, and, whether consciously or unconsciously, they use their definitions as guides. As Richard Pearce put it, “[N]o one reads without at least an implicit set of assumptions about the nature of language and literature.”30 That such readers are consequently led astray on occasion does not impede their behavior in the slightest. A reader may not know a lesson of the ancients and of modern psychology: we see only what we are prepared for, and we understand only what is within our ken. However unconsciously, readers look for what they know. History is replete with the disasters caused by those whose expectations did not correspond with their experience and who nonetheless clung to their misconceptions. As just one example we might remember the bizarre readings that several centuries of readers, who did not know the story of Job, accorded Boccaccio’s tenth tale of the tenth day about Griselda.31 Perhaps such misprision is unimportant. Perhaps. I would rather conclude that there is wisdom in laying groundwork that aids perception and understanding. Not only do good definitions lead to communication, thus civilization rather than the jungle, in art they can lead to enjoyment of great beauty. The hope of contriving a definition of the novel that will be discrete and remain useful until the end of time will be possible only when the novel dies as a genre.32 Although that has happened with the epic poem, it has not reached that point with the novel, and I shall be content to point to common ground in molding an adequate definition. The indistinct, exceptionally problematic outer edges of a particular genre may be safely left for individual exploration. As said above, generic definitions based on minor devices, techniques, subject matter, that is, on the novel’s paradigm of interchangeable parts, have historically limited life and usefulness. Almost always, they challenge the past by excluding the preceding generation’s creations, though the next generation takes revenge by rejecting recently preferred strategies for others. Most recent attempts at circumscribing an appropriate definition have, however, succeeded in minimizing emphasis on the constituent elements or devices to center on the essential, core characteristics. Before I turn to some of the more extreme forms of the novel, let me repeat the definition I proposed in the preface: I suggest that a novel is simply a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary. Of course, coming up with a definition is easy. Understanding each of these terms, whether length, or prose, or fiction, or organization, or art, raises

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numerous difficulties, however, especially since each element in the definition must be viewed in the context of other incorporated, discriminatory properties. A definition that proves acceptable when compared to the usage of tradition and, as well, to that of today raises even more formidable obstacles, since such lexical terms are not susceptible to legislation. A generation of post-structuralists tried and, despite the weight of prestigious addresses and vigorous arguments, failed to negate genres. Vividly recalling one vociferous proponent who used to spatter his interlocutors with spittle as he tried to do away with generic distinctions, I suggest with fewer manifestations but with equal sincerity that the above definition makes sense and, moreover, describes the perhaps vague understanding that most readers have of the novel. Lexicographers are basically collectors. After gathering as many samples of usage as possible, or practical, and discarding the deviations, they compose a definition that comes as close to standard usage as possible. Problems of shifting designation occur regularly. As Northrop Frye observed, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War was once history, though we now read it for aesthetic pleasure.33 If the norm changes, adaptations or completely new critical formulations must be devised. Definitions are not God-carved and imposed from above. Rather, they reflect communal agreement. It may be regrettable that this accord is subject to change, has exceptions, and is seldom more than approximate, but it is a wellunderstood and accepted fact of linguistics. It should not keep us from reaching the agreement necessary for comprehending almost any individual and all social activity. Such accord is certainly a sine qua non of reading. On remembering Heinreich Wölfflin’s magnificent effort, one might draw comfort from the realization that even topological failures may be helpful in gaining a useful conception of art. Though Wölfflin did not succeed in his intention to categorize all art, he went far toward delineating “classical” and “baroque.”34 To Be Long Although I would prefer to avoid the dangers of black ice in this chapter, I find myself skating around the thinning edge when I turn toward the crucial element of length. Just how long must novels be to qualify as adequate? Should one follow E. M. Forster and separate short stories from novels at 50,000 words? (Forster 5–6). It is easy to quibble with that figure, for it would include as short stories such works as L’immoralist, L’étranger, and many others usually considered novels. Still, as said before, inclusion or exclusion from a genre does not affect the quality of a work, although it may encourage readers to read with inappropriate expectations.

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Arbitrariness is not in itself wrong. Even in the physical realm, at some point distinctions must be made. While everyone would agree that red is the color produced by rather long light waves (33,000 could be fitted into an inch), it is not easy to tell exactly where red becomes orange and orange yellow. The gradations are infinite, though perhaps not as numerous as might be perceived when examining literature through a generic lens. Whatever categories be established, they should at least seem reasonable, and Forster’s 50,000 words is simply too long for most short stories and too short for most novels. Certainly such material considerations are important in any genre. Who cannot understand the dismay of an editor like Maxwell Perkins when the brilliant but prolix Thomas Wolfe filled a truck with the book manuscript of Look Homeward, Angel (1929)? The need for serious cutting was obvious (though that editorial decision has recently been challenged). How long must a novel be? 30,000 words? or 50,000? or more? Likewise, for a while, tragedies had to be in verse, have five acts, and take no more than several hours to perform. Such a distinction does not mean that the quintessentially tragic passion play at Oberammergau cannot last for a much longer time. Likewise, while the exploitation of brevity is essential in distinguishing short stories from novels, at the other end, novels need not be limited in length. Despite the many pages of War and Peace (1863–69), for example, it is a novel, which can and should be clearly differentiated from such novel cycles as Jules Romains’ Les hommes de bonne volonté (1932–46). As in the case of short stories and short story cycles, the subject of Chapter 2, the cycles and novels are demarcated on the basis of the extent and depth of the integration. Poe’s celebrated insistence that a short story must make a single impression imparted during one sitting no longer carries weight, though it is no more or less unreasonable than other strictures. As William Carlos Williams put it, “The principal feature re. the short story is that it is short.”35 Likewise, the principal feature of a novel is that it is long. If it is not at least relatively long, it is quite simply not a novel. I am not sure that extreme length affects generic definitions, though it may certainly discourage some readers. Length, of course, is not enough. As said before, it must be artistic. It must also be fictive, and it must be in prose. The question, however, remains. How long is a novel? Most readers will accept the decision of the author or publisher. If the volume is announced as a collection of short stories, the reader’s expectations will be oriented by the billing. There may be creations that fall somewhere between novels and short stories, so much so that discrimination becomes impossible. Surely little or no damage will occur, however, if a reader categorizes such generically indistinct cases, as long as the reader is able to give the author’s devices the understanding required for comprehension of the whole. One might

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even resuscitate one of the terms of the Neo-Aristotelians, “mixed genre,” and apply it to those instances where differentiation is uncomfortably difficult, if not impossible. In prose fiction, however, such intermediate works can be gathered comfortably under the common designation of novella, by which we mean too long to be a short story and not long enough to be a novel. Novels vs. Short Stories Still, neither mixed genres nor novellas are my subject. I leave those problems of gradation for another time, so as to concentrate for the moment on the short story, which establishes a useful contrast to the novel. For insight into the short story, it is important to remember that no one has found a precise number of words that unfailingly distinguishes it from the novel. “Carmen” is a short story, though it may seem lengthy at 21,000 words. L’immoraliste, on the other hand, is a novel, despite its rather limited 41,000 words, which is brief in comparison with most novels, and despite Gide’s decision to term it a récit (an account or narrative) eight years after labeling it a novel on the cover. The best distinctions are immanent, that is, within the creation. Most obviously, while short story writers must assume that readers will remember every detail, novelists know that readers will forget. For the former, redundancy often seems a clumsy flaw; for the latter it is essential. The best novels and short stories exploit the traits that make them what they are. I want to attack the issue from a different angle and pose a question that grows from a seminal article on the short story by Paul Zumthor. He points out that “[b]revity is never aleatory, but rather it constitutes a formalizing model.”36 He goes on to suggest particular forms that brevity imposes. While stimulated by his overall conclusion that the fact of being short imposes certain forms, I have some reservations about the universality of the specific effects he cites. For him, brief texts are oriented toward the present and the quality of presentness. That would suggest that longer forms are oriented ipso facto toward history and the past, which is, of course, not necessarily so. In addition, he also feels that short stories tend to neglect process and development in favor of a reality given “at the beginning, empirically, sensorially, as a global certitude whose eventual consequences are deduced in the course of the brief reading or brief audition” (6). In effect, Zumthor wants to suggest that short stories are particularly suited for what might be called image (or descriptive or spatial) structure, that is, a work designed to produce not progressive understanding, based on a change from one state to another, which can be termed sequential (or narrative or process) structure, but an instantaneous grasp,

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where the reader suddenly perceives the whole as an integrated image. With respect to Zumthor, certain problems arise on noting that while short stories often, but not always, exploit image structure, image structure is also rather widespread in lengthy forms like novels. Neither image nor sequential process structures are unique to any of the forms of narration. To limit any particular art form to the creation of sequences, and then to use them to generically define the genre, is questionable. The simple fact is that most genres continue to exploit process patterns, most often linear narrations that depend on chronology and causality, whether in plot or story. Conversely, some masterful novels may bring us to follow the process of change taking place in order to experience the fullness of an epiphany.37 À la recherche du temps perdu, for example, was designed to produce such an experience in a reader. Image structures, like process structures, are strategies and are in no way limited to any genre. Both, moreover, occur regularly in short and long stories, and some narrations, like Proust’s, manage to exploit both sequence and image, occasionally pitting one against the other.38 Zumthor’s point is nonetheless important. Just as “[b]revity is never aleatory [in works of art],” so length is never accidental. Length in fiction always has a function and serves a goal. Most obviously, as in such considerations of complex personages as Balzac’s Catherine de Medicis in Sur Catherine de Médicis (1830–42), it is a matter of being complete, and a short story could never have provided a thorough understanding of this incredibly complex character whose influence extended for centuries. Until Stendhal made the experience of war come alive in a very few pages in La Chartreuse de Parme, many thought that war could not be treated adequately in the shorter genres. Were it not for such short story masterpieces as Hemingway’s “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” or Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” or Maupassant’s “La parure,” one might believe that bildungsromans, love affairs, or life in the midst of significant change of fortune, were uniquely for long narrations. Baudelaire’s consideration of the generic differences between the short story and the novel makes a nice point of clarity, though he brings other issues to the fore: “The novel, which holds such an important place next to poems and history, is a bastard genre whose domain is truly limitless. As with many other bastards, it is fortune’s spoiled child for whom everything succeeds. It suffers no drawback and knows no danger other than its infinite freedom. The short story, more compressed, more condensed, enjoys the eternal benefits of constraint: its effects are more intense.”39 The most important aspect of this freedom is that novels and short stories are free to ignore the boundaries separating them from each other and from other genres, to interact with many forms. Chapter 2 goes on to consider short

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story cycles, and while they are not novels, comparisons to what one might expect in the novel can be helpful.

Novels regularly infringe on other genres. À rebours (1884) has, for example, confused numerous readers because of its resemblance to the essay. Similarly, La tentation de saint Antoine (1874) is perhaps more dramatic than novelistic, and La cathédrale (1898) is dominated by description, rather than narrative. Novelists often challenge other genres by taking the latters’ most effective techniques and using them more effectively, rather as Molière pushed Le misanthrope (1666) and Dom Juan (1665) so close to tragedy that he risked falling over the edge into an incomprehensible muddle. The meandering, superficial peacefulness of, say, Little Women (1868) remains impossible for the short story, though a number of novels have embraced it. Critics of Alcott stress the extraordinary concision that occurs beneath the story line, thus in a sense reversing the apparent prolixity, though the length in itself suggests that brevity, the most important device of short stories, is by definition closed to novels. Even when a brief tale focuses on tranquility, the spotlight shines so brightly on the quality that it almost quivers with energy. Where novelists have to take into consideration and prepare for the reality of readers’ sloth, inattention, or ignorance, short story writers have but limited possibilities because of restrictions of length. Because of the brevity of their genre, practitioners of the short story must recognize that the reader may note and remember not just the salient features but all aspects of the work. Consequently, emphasis that depends on amplification and repetition seldom occurs in abbreviated genres. In a passage I shall return to further on in Chapter 5, Proust talked of “setting” an important image much as a jeweler sets a stone, and surely all authors do this in every variety of literature. In the short story, however, authors depend more commonly on arrangement than on repetition or development, on hints rather than on gross lighting. A work like À la recherché du temps perdu, which is purposefully long, throws some of the issues just discussed into sharp relief. One of the most important devices of Proust’s masterpiece, for instance, is repetition. All social circles visited by Swann and later by the protagonist repeat and reflect each other in significant ways, as do their loves. What seems obvious after a number of readings is anything but so on first acquaintance. The patterns that produce important echoes and echoes of echoes are recognized most often unconsciously, if at all, on a first reading, for the repetitions are muted and tend to become lost in the 3,000 pages of Proust’s novel. No matter how attentive the reader may be, he or she will not, indeed

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cannot, notice every significant element. Proust knew it, and he counted on it. There is too much for anyone to grasp and retain everything. Readers may be similarly irretentive, or even inattentive, while perusing short stories, but authors cannot plan with that in mind. Of the criticisms leveled against Proust’s novel, the most frequent is that it lacks economy (Michael Wood calls it an “interminable work”40 ). Several critics have felt that during the war years, because publication was impossible, Proust was led to expand his work to such a degree that it was seriously damaged. Such readers would find it hard to believe that the author discarded folio after folio of early manuscripts, though I have seen hundreds of such examples. As I have argued elsewhere, economy depends on the goals of the work. If Proust wished only to paint the death of a class and a narrator’s gradual recognition of the appropriateness of personal experience as a subject for creation, then one can scarcely fail to recognize that his novel is extraordinarily redundant, even verbose. Roger Shattuck has made the point that the length can be partially explained by the need to assure the reader’s forgetfulness, since only in forgetting can we resurrect those lost paradises for which we long and about which Proust wrote.41 Proust left no doubt that one must have forgotten in order to resurrect the past in a moment bienheureux (a “blessed moment”), a reality more vivid and more real than the present. If, as I shall argue further on, Proust wished to provide such a moment for his reader, his novel would then be an admirable example of economy, for the definition of economy is determined by its function. Unquestionably, careful readers with good memories become impatient when they discover excessive repetition. “Excessive” here is of course a relative term. What appears overly “frequent” or “noticeable” or “unnecessary” in a short story may be essential in longer genres or for very limited effects in the shorter genres. If the reader has noticed and marked the element the repetition stresses, further repetition seems unmotivated, thus distracting. Because readers typically remember recently narrated events better than more distant ones, the whole of a short story is more vivid than that of more lengthy novels. Length sufficient to cause readers’ forgetfulness, however, is impossible for the short story. By definition, a short story can never be so long that an author dare count on readers being irretentive. Of course, the author of a short story may be right or wrong with respect to a particular reader’s recollection, but the basic, formative assumption is unavoidable: authors of brief works have no choice but to assume that readers not only forget nothing, they also perceive, conceive, and remember everything. I stress the point again, because it is important, perhaps the most significant factor in the choices authors make between short stories and novels. Short stories exploit brevity; novels exploit length.

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Novels welcome skilful use of devices that require longer text, like amplification, redundancy, and repetition. As a result, they can maximize the enjoyment readers gain from learning about foreign, historical, religious, cultural realities that are for the most part outside the scope of the short story. Every work of art must educate the reader to a degree (Umberto Eco says that the text forms the reader), especially when the reader is exposed to new or interestingly juxtaposed elements, but there can be no question about the particular conventions that govern the understanding communicated through the reading. The limited span of the short story makes it virtually impossible to introduce new or strange worlds to the reader. In the same way, the lengthy War and Peace (1862–69) introduces us to an epoch, À la recherché du temps perdu to a class, and Émile Zola’s Au bonheur des dames or, with all due respect for qualitative differences, Arthur Hailey’s Airport (1968) to institutions. The sweep required to pursue such an educative function is simply not available in the short story. Strange and unfamiliar material is not necessarily inappropriate, but the main thrust cannot depend on making it possible for a domestic reader to grasp the alien environment. Of course, some knowledge or understanding is always expected of readers whether for the short story or the novel. Just as the veritable horror of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” escapes readers with no knowledge of postpartum psychosis,42 so Le roi des aulnes (1970) would have been impenetrable if Michel Tournier had not been able to count on the reader’s knowledge of the Nazi mindset and atrocities. Although the authors of short stories cannot pause to instruct in detail and are consequently forced to assume adequate background on the part of their readers, a background that may or may not be present in a particular individual at a specific time, novels are amply provided with the opportunity to explain, teach, and illustrate. Writers like Flannery O’Connor or Jean Giono do set their fiction in milieus far removed from most of us, but the exoticism is described and sufficiently explained to allow us to enter and enjoy their worlds. In their novels they make it possible for even the uninitiated to experience the attitudes and realities of a particular region. It then seems reasonable to argue that length and the way length serves the author’s intentions are discrete qualities separating short stories from novels. The same characteristics are also helpful in distinguishing the lyric from the epic. Brevity and length are formative. Separating genres by stylistic or rhetorical devices is even more problematic, since authors are extraordinarily inventive in borrowing from other genres and finding new ways to emphasize, or muffle, that is, to communicate. While the novel is by definition long and thus commonly exploits amplification and elaborate patterns of repetition and opposition,

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the short story shuns painstaking development in favor of ellipsis, inference, and the under- and unstated. Repetition is in one form or another fundamental to all literature, though, as I say, the short story’s tolerance for the device is limited. For similar reasons, one seldom finds a short story considering the same event from several points of view, as was the case of D. H. Lawrence’s paratactic novel Women in Love (1920). While fairly common in novels or cycles, in short stories such repetitions are too immediate and thus run the risk of striking attentive readers as intolerably insistent and, thus, clumsy. I do not suggest that there will be no repetition, only that it is generally done with great discretion to avoid setting up the kinds of rhythms that turn prose into poetry, on the one hand, or, on the other, stylistic effects that appear excessively obvious and thus pedestrian. In addition, the short story is usually single rather than multivalent. Early in the twentieth century, Gide believed multiplicity was enough to distinguish the novel from the short story: “The novel, as I recognize or imagine it, consists of a diversity of viewpoints, submitted to the diversity of characters that [the author] puts on stage.”43 And elsewhere Gide announced that a novel was “an intersection—a meeting of problems.”44 To his mind, the most important novelistic crux was between realism and the imaginary, life and art, since for Gide the novel struggled between these two opposing impulsions (O.C. 3.399–409). Terry Eagleton calls this the “realist quandary”: “The reader must not be told that the book is fiction, since this might undermine its power. But if readers genuinely take it to be real, this might in turn diminish its exemplary force.”45 Benno von Wiese, for a different example, insists that the short story represents only a single action.46 Of course, both doppelgänger and subplot do occur in brief narratives, though in nowhere near the frequency of longer fiction. Short stories have a marked tendency toward organic unity, however fragmented, demented, or depressive that unity might be and is in much postmodern work. Complexity comes more frequently from depth or implication than from obvious repetition or multiplicity. Even where doubling occurs, there is a particular directness and simplicity about it that distinguishes the short story from the novel. The novel, on the other hand, exemplifies conflict between the individual and the world, the private and the public (or the collective), the subjective and the objective or the subjective and the social (Hawthorn 28–30). To explore these oppositions especially in the crises that arise as they intersect, the novel requires considerable length. Although some have raised these tendencies in the short story and the novel to the level of law, neither complexity nor repetition can serve to define the novel, since there are too many imperceptible shadings from generic inclusion to exclusion. Nonetheless, short stories tend toward the general, because of the need for brevity. Even when detail is limited, readers expect the vocabulary to

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bear more than its overt significance. Short stories are, I suspect, more prone than the novel to universalize, for only with enlarging symbolization and allusion can the genre deal with the grander themes. Because authors are forced to assume that readers will perceive each word, image, rhythm in a short story, they tend to place extraordinary weight on every element. Readers expect to generalize, to read in depth and between the lines. Tournier’s “Lucie ou la femme sans ombre” [Lucie or the Woman Without a Shadow] (1991), for example, offers access to the story’s interwoven pattern of theme and imagery to readers who know that “Lucie” derives from “light” and that those who have sold their souls to the devil are said to lack a shadow. While Hegel claimed that the “owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk,” Tournier’s white owl takes flight in bright sunlight, an event of extraordinary significance. Robbe-Grillet complained that readers seem stubbornly determined to ascribe symbolic value whether or not the author willed or encouraged it.47 Although this is perhaps less true of the novel than of the short story, since the former tends to explain at length, symbols can be as essential to an understanding of a text as the flowers in À rebours or the terminal bees in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening (1899). Nor would one suspect auctorial capriciousness in Marguerite de Navarre’s “Second Story” of L’heptaméron (1588) on reading that the valet takes a phallic knife and stabs the master’s faithful wife to death when she refuses to submit to him. In summary, because of its compactness, the short story remains as foreign to loosely motivated detail as it does to amplification. Just as people grow restless when even a good lecture drags on beyond its allotted time, so readers begin to fidget when a “short” story seems overly prolonged. Chekhov’s famous dictum that a revolver or shotgun introduced in the early part of a work must go off before the end also refers particularly to the briefer genres.

Prose To say that novels are prose seems at first glance the least contentious claim possible. Of all the assumptions prevalent in critical theory, this is surely the most common, and, indeed, the medium is important. Novels must be in prose, and unlike the speech of Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme, they must be written, which allows readers to peek at the conclusion before they have even begun or to flip back and forth (Ricardou’s La prise/prose de Constantinople encourages returning to previous passages that assume increased significance because of the intervening text); in this respect, unlike film, music, and perhaps e-books, novels are regularly experienced nonsequentially. Several novelists have, moreover, attempted to

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broach the line and push into other fields. I think, for example, of long narratives in verse like Pushkin’s Eugen Onegin (1833). (Verse is simply written language organized primarily by meter, which makes prose that written language in which metrical rhythm exists only incidentally.) Do we really wish our definition to include the prose epics, those long popular tales of the late Middle Ages, while excluding the versified epic of the eleventh century from the novel? Of course, in an age that prides itself on its tolerance, it is difficult to approve of any exclusivity. Unlike the color line in a Birmingham bus depot, however, no harm comes from refusing verse epics the status of novel. To the contrary, it does considerable good, for it emphasizes an essential but neglected characteristic. In the original versions (as opposed to prose translations), one perceives how important the rhythm is to these medieval creations. Without their poetry, they are much impoverished. The question is not whether the text contains a marked rhythm, for many fine novels and short stories do, but whether that rhythm constitutes a dominant element. As Victor Erlich explains in regard to the Russian Formalists, “[T]he differentia of verse [is] not in the mere presence of an element—in this case, a regular or semi-regular ordering of the soundpattern—but in its status. In ‘practical’ language, it was argued, in ordinary speech or in scientific discourse, rhythm is a secondary phenomenon—a physiological expedient or a by-product of syntax; in poetry it is a primary and ‘self-valuable’ quality.”48 As with the other issues I have discussed, there will be cases where judicious application of the touchstone remains difficult, though I think not impossible. I remember Dylan Thomas’s “stories” or “fictions,” or whatever, whose lush and rhythmical verbal palate “was not easily confined to literary categories and prescribed lengths,” as stated in an anonymous “Note” to Adventures in the Skin Trade, and Other Stories.49 But the matter is open to disagreement. As previously said, definitions in aesthetic matters are never definitive; they are approximate guidelines or filters or, even, baffles that may at any point be abandoned by a consensus of readers or by the writers.

Fiction The concept of fiction, is also crucial to a definition of the novel. In general, it is an unquestioned part of the genre, though I have found one experimental novelist, B. S. Johnson, who challenged the very necessity of the quality. For him, “The two terms novel and fiction are not . . . synonymous, as many seem to suppose. . . . The novel is a form in the same sense that the sonnet is a form; within that form, one may write truth or fiction.”50

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Most, however, are agreed to include “fiction” as an essential function of the novel. How one defines the fiction is a good deal more difficult, because the concept normally contains more than a modicum of truth. Distinguishing between fiction and fact has challenged our best minds and elicited volumes of commentary, perhaps justifying a certain wary caution in dealing with it. Virginia Woolf discusses her own method, without making the issue any clearer: “Fiction here is likely to contain more truth than fact. Therefore. . . . [l]ies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them.”51 For the purposes of discrimination, I pay particular attention to the work’s linguistic referent. Though fiction may be propositionally true, it “deals in untrue specificities, untrue facts,” as Thomas J. Roberts would have it,52 and either explicitly or implicitly it warns the reader of this state of affairs. Consequently, the primary creation of fiction cannot be verified externally—be it pattern, plot, or world. The Russian Formalists initially proposed the point, but it has been helpfully developed in Dorrit Cohn’s The Distinction of Fiction and in the second volume of Paul Ricœur’s Temps et récit. The primary feature of the writings of scientists, sociologists, and historians is that they can be replicated and verified; however well organized and abstract they may be, they are open to the control of objective validation, both in totality and in detail. Of course, current or historical events or verisimilar settings or attitudes may be present in fiction without changing its primary thrust of creating an unverifiable complex in a reader’s mind. Likewise, the occurrence of a lie, for example in Rousseau’s erroneous arithmetic on counting his children in Les confessions (1781, 1788), does not fiction make, for Rousseau clearly intended his work to present the general, rather than specific, truth of his character. Conversely, the Parable of the Prodigal Son exists only in that focused image created by the words of the Bible. Its truth is fiction, though a matter of doctrine. There will, of course, be extremely problematic instances. One famous example is the Lettres de la religieuse portugaise (1669). “Are they authentic?” asks Philippe van Tieghem. “It seems that we cannot doubt it.”53 In fact, of course, many scholars have doubted their authenticity. Are they indeed actual love letters from the nun, Maria Alcoforado, or do we owe them to the literary skill of someone like Guilleragues? They seem just too well done, their haunting lyricism being too flawless for nonfiction. But in truth, we do not know. Furthermore, the potential problem of illusion in conflict with reality does not seriously afflict the novel. Balzac, for example, liberally sprinkled his works with real people. It is a matter of emphasis. Any references to reality are subsumed by the focus on artistic presentation. Most of us would agree that the novel genre regularly incorporates factual history incidentally, without changing its overall nature; it continues to be fiction.

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The term “fiction” does, however, cover a difficulty of considerable magnitude. Most considerations of the novel insist upon the “story” or “narration,” for the causally and chronologically constructed tale is generally viewed as central. I have argued at some length elsewhere that Balzac, in story and novel, subordinated narration to description, that he was interested in painting the portrait of an age and a civilization, rather than telling the events in the life of a Cousin Bette or a Father Goriot. Fiction’s tendency toward the dominance of image is anything but rare after the early nineteenth century. It appears in an emphasis on “image structure,” or on what others call tone, or mood, or focus, or theme (as with Frank O’Connor’s “loneliness”).54 Whoever thinks that the events leading up to the moment when the narrator attends the gathering at the home of the new Princess de Guermantes in Le temps retrouvé (1927) are the main thrust of Proust’ novel has missed the point and been drawn to the negligible plot rather than to the central focus on time and creation. Likewise for the plot that leads to Father Goriot’s funeral, the appalling conclusion of the pathetic man’s life, and for dozens of other novels by Balzac. For these and an increasing number of novels in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, plot—whether Todorov’s single change in state or Prince’s three or more conjoined events55 —has only the limited importance that it has in Annie Ernaux’s La place (1983), where we understand that the anonymous student of the end does no more than reflect the feckless, lackluster, anguished class between bourgeois and laborer that has been the focus of the entire volume. Where Ernaux says, “My mother had to . . . become history,”56 it is likewise true for the site of La place. Of course, for many novels, plot dominates. Hundreds of examples could be cited, from the actions of the sadistic libertines in Justine to the progressive discovery of the motives of mystery novels. “Fiction” may cover stories that are predominantly narration or description. Of course, many readers, rightly or wrongly, read for plot. After Zumthor’s insightfulness regarding the formative nature of brevity and, by implication, length, he goes on to make an unexceptionable generalization. “[T]he cohesion of a text of some length is perceived progressively as the reading proceeds: a moment comes when the indications of this cohesiveness appears, then is organized in the reader’s imagination as an ideal system of rules of combination, an interpretive hypothesis, confirmed or invalidated by what follows” (“Brièveté” 4). This is true of long and short forms, though the need for short stories and novellas to build rapidly to the effect sought may make them appear to overpower the narration; the sequence, whether chronological or causal, has less impact than the unit of perception or meaning that one grasps as a whole. In prose, the

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short story, in particular, has a noticeable affinity for the epigrammatic, the formulistic, the epitome, the essential truth or idea or image that rises above time and negates whatever chronological progression the work possesses. Even in a novel where change is of the essence, say, for example, in Tournier’s Le roi des aulnes (1970), one remembers the ogre’s willingness to share the little Jewish boy’s fate in the final scene that magnificently brings the novel to a summative conclusion. In a work like Maupassant’s “Le horla” (1887), however, it is the crescendo of fear rather than the fear itself that draws us, or, for one more example, in Camus’ La chute (1956), we center on the increasingly domineering interlocutor as he attempts to seduce the other (whether his only implicitly vocal counterpart or the reader).

The Art of It All An important quality required by novels, and other forms of art, concerns whether or not they are artistically designed. The aesthetic or literary factor requires critical discernment and, as said before, may change in the way it is manifested and perceived in different periods. The utilitarian may come to be seen as artistic. As Flaubert proved with Madame Bovary (1857) and Trois contes (1877), artistic creation has nothing to do with the subject matter or the genre. As argued previously, the key in this regard is neither whether or not a myth, legend, or popular story is recounted or alluded to, nor whether the subject is romance, or fantasy, or history, or the act of creation, nor whether it exploits a particular rhetorical, symbolic, or allusive device, nor whether it is organized as sequence or image; it depends on its artistry. According to Blanchot, artistry is both essential and the most important characteristic.57 Certainly, great works of art manifest their aesthetic mastery at every level. Unfortunately, not all novels reach this height, but while some may not view beauty as the most important quality, the signs of a minimal attempt to achieve it must be present or, at least, believed to be present. This is as true of a Harlequin romance as of À la recherche. It is a sine qua non. Any sensible historian writes to please his audience, however specialized, and thus worries to some degree about artistry or literariness, but the willingness to change the textual matter in order to enhance aesthetics is (or should be) out of the question since it would impinge on factual truth. In essays, whether oriented toward the historical, the sociological, or the psychological, the most important quality is correspondence with external reality, or objective truth, whereas novelists pursue the creation of a world that cannot be validated objectively but that has some relationship to beauty.

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When I earlier suggested that a novel is a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary, by “literary” I meant only that the creation must be artistically fashioned, with the apparent intention of making something beautiful. How one determines the existence of such an intention is, of course, debatable, especially in specific instances. For our purposes here, defining beauty or reliably locating it is less important than establishing that there must be artistry for the novel to exist, since it constitutes a given of any definition of aesthetic genres. Of course, “art,” as a touchstone leaves much to be desired, for one thinks of the poor or even failed “art” that graces certain popular magazines. Still, even such regrettable examples show a desire to touch or at least please readers aesthetically. One might include certain popular stories churned out for, say, Woman’s World, though one would doubtless exclude most how-to books. Artistry is a broad brush. It does not require success, only the attempt, which may in fact be unconscious. Still, the novel is not a “child left behind,” thus determined by failed exemplars, which will nonetheless squeak under the bar; its basic definition must subscribe to the best models. It must be an artistic fiction. While the problem is not often posed in aesthetic terms, criticism of the novel genre makes it clear that the story’s implicit aesthetic goal is, though perhaps unstated, universally accepted. Certainly, the particular cast of the creation has been an important consideration for many interested in prescriptive theory. Ludwig Tieck emphasizes the importance of the narrative crux, that moment where things change, as does Ruth J. Kilchenmann, though she makes a much bigger point of the plot rising to and falling from that crisis.58 Others, like Ellery Sedgwick, stress the importance of the ending—“A story is like a horse race. It is the start and finish that count most”—while for Chekhov, neither beginning nor end really matters; he is primarily interested in the vital essence of the character or situation at the heart of his stories.59 Some insist on a highly developed character, others on a unique, unilinear plot, others on one device or another. I would rather say simply that the preferred devices and vehicles change through the ages without changing the novel from its primary thrust—whether real, admitted, or merely perceived—of making an aesthetic unit. Almost any device can be exploited by the novel, but none is able to continue to touch readers for all time, because people finally become blasé and stop accepting it as realistic or beautiful. This is true of streamof-consciousness, interior monologue; objective, omniscient, limited, or unreliable narrators; elliptical, chronological, or retrospective narration; one or more points of view; or any of a number of strategies. All of these features occur within the framework of the novel and all are periodic, that is, they are particularly important in certain periods and not (or less so) in

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others. Nor does the genre change depending on whether the discourse is a monologue or a dialogue, whether it is a particular variety of narrative voice—first or third or shifting60 person, objective or subjective narration, trustworthy or untrustworthy, or an imitation of the narrator’s idiosyncratic speech (skaz)—or whether it is influenced by another genre to be more dramatic, for example, or more painterly. Such devices, techniques, and procedures go in and out of style. The epistolary novel provides a good example. It satisfied writers and readers for well over a hundred years as a means of revealing the innermost workings of characters, but by the early nineteenth century, it seemed, and consequently was, outmoded, dull, and ineffective. When French New Novelists revolted against the essaylike quality that dominated novels between the two world wars of the twentieth century, as numerous authors committed themselves to saving civilization from another devastating war, aesthetically obsessed writers attempted to find another way of exploiting plot and character, announced they had cast off the old ways, and railed against didacticism. In fact, of course, they had merely reoriented and reworked time-honored devices and refused to focus on flesh and blood, turning instead to the portrayal of consciousness and psychological sequences rather than to the narration of characters’ actions. As always, the sequence being represented had to arouse and sustain the interest of readers. Take Robbe-Grillet’s La jalousie (1957). While it may at first seem to be a punctiliously detailed description of a tropical banana plantation, eventually readers realize that there is a firmly established series of images that point to the narrator’s obsessive attempt to understand the affair his wife may have had with a neighbor. When the conclusion of the novel suggests “openness,” it merely means that the jealous narrator will incessantly focus on the sequence of obsessive images that assail him. Aesthetic canons change to some degree from one individual text to another and to a large degree from age to age and culture to culture. The Renaissance novel, for example, as practiced by Rabelais, focused on several characters and made little attempt to string the major parts together. Madame de Lafayette centered all the episodes on her narratee, the Princess de Clèves, for whose benefit all the stories are recounted, thus helping us understand the Princess’s ultimate withdrawal from society. Lesage hung numerous stories on the perambulations of Gil Blas, a character of similar but changing manifestations, while Abbé Prévost’s Manon Lescaut and Laclos’s Les liaisons dangereuses use expert narration that seems almost modern and presents recent readers with few difficulties. Rousseau focused his Emile on his concept of education and displayed considerably less interest in his main character. Various foci can serve to produce excellent novels. When a work exploits a situation, by elaborating circumstances leading

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to its resolution, the aesthetic value often resides less in the devices and effects than in the skill in revealing the subtleties as they play one against the other. Nonetheless, in all periods, though the values may change with the concept of artistry, the effort to create a work of art is discernible. Neglecting the specific aesthetic criteria of a specific age for the purposes of conceptualizing the genre as a whole does not, of course, prevent one from concentrating on a particular period and its values or, from another point of view, from doing a history of the genre where changing values and techniques are stressed. As René Wellek pointed out, relating an individual reality like a novel to a general value as it has impact on its generic history does not necessarily degrade the particular example to a mere specimen of a general concept. Establishing the novel’s connection to the genre may in fact give significance to the work in question, by providing a backdrop that adds depth of meaning to the work.61

In Summary I could continue discussing the ways various devices, types of characters, or length, whether short or long, mark and indeed form prose fiction without exhausting the subject. Authors’ inventiveness seems unlimited. The point, however, is not to enumerate all of the particular procedures and devices, but to suggest the importance of the qualities that distinguish novels from mere prose fiction. I would suggest that length constitutes the most significant trait separating the particular genres of short story and novel. In large measure, it determines the devices used and the effects achieved. While short stories have only a brief venue to make a lasting impression, novels may lose their readers before having done so. Both length and brevity constitute limitations and challenges. For a short story to succeed, the author must overcome the restraints of limited length and communicate not a segment, a tattered fragment, but a world. Likewise, remembering Poe’s belief that a reader must be able to consume a short story in one sitting, for a novel to succeed, it must communicate a whole by linking numerous strands or images despite several sittings. In suggesting, as I did above, that one should view the novel as a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary, and in discussing each of the component parts (I shall deal at more length with the concepts of unity and coherence in the next chapter), I have hoped to help readers gain the most out of their reading. While definitions may prove a useful touchstone, it is rather the discussion of such a definition that is most helpful, for it highlights the essential elements of the genre. The consideration of the constituent elements of a novel, while falling far short of a measure that

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THE LONG AND SHORT OF THE NOVEL

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

is good in all cases and for all time, nonetheless provides a workable tool to help readers have productive rather than destructive expectations when they pick up a representative example. However impressed one might be by those who would avoid the problem of literary genres by denying them, it is indisputable that while most readers may or may not be firmly conscious of genre, they use their preconception of genre to guide their reading. The more adequate that preconception, the more chance there is of a satisfactory reading that recognizes the true significance of the story, whether it be in line with or in revolt against the particular cluster of traits that I have treated here and that most of us recognize as a novel. Of course, an adequate reading depends on an adequate reader, the power of whom has been emphasized by post-structuralism. Readers who are not sufficiently interested in what the author has to say are fully capable of ignoring common definitions, systems of relevant symbols or images, meaningful patterns of whatever kind. Such readers can turn any work into something quite different from its intention, while competent reading requires both good will and the knowledge necessary to understand. Likewise, it takes a reader who is willing to accept the implicit definitions as formulated in the work. Works of literature indicate with surprising explicitness the kind of reader targeted. Sometimes it is helpful to have broad cultural literacy to know more than the work indicates explicitly. I think for example of allusions, where literature, myth, and history resonate within the text or, for a specific example, of the growth of the Christian Church, to which Zola alluded in order to suggest the power and menace of an expanding socialism that may become clear in Germinal (1885). The meaning of such an allusion may only rise to the surface for those who have learned the lessons of Zola’s manuscripts. Unquestionably, super-readers must control their knowledge. I remember those who were overly influenced by the knowledge that one of Camus’ versions of La chute brings Jean-Baptiste’s listener to submission. It is surely no accident that the author decided against such a conclusion. Similarly, although the outrage over the fictional Delphine’s suicide brought Mme de Staël to rewrite the conclusion of her popular novel, critics should not ignore the fact that the author did not publish this revision despite several opportunities to do so. As long as Mme de Staël lived, Delphine continued to die by her own hand. In all cases, with all genres, good reading depends on readers of good faith and an adequate understanding of the generic form. Within the parameters of the definition proposed, innovations become extremely interesting. The basic difference separating sequence from image structure, for instance, though very old, continues even today to seem extremely new when exploited by nineteenth-century writers. Of perhaps more interest is conflicting negative and positive structuring. Although

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originated over a 100 years ago, and easily incorporated into the standard conception of the novel as defined here, it seems marvelously innovative, fully capable of making particular exemplars seem avant-garde. Such oppositions are even more exciting when they work together in a novel like À la recherche du temps perdu. Before turning to one of the most outstanding masterpieces of the Western world, however, it seems worth considering short story cycles as they attempt to exploit what makes novels so powerful. They provide good ground for making comparisons, so as to understand what the novel accomplishes.

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THE LONG AND SHORT OF THE NOVEL

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Making Short Long: Short Story Cycles

The Question of Stature It is easy to assume that the history of fiction begins in the earliest days of civilization. Human beings tell stories, after all. That is how we reiterate our meaning, how we understand reality, and how we amuse ourselves, though I admit that I am guessing that fiction has a long history. We really do not know, since so few stories remain from the earliest days, and validating ancient stories remains problematic. Why did early fictional tales not achieve the long life of epic poems, tragedies, and comedies? Is it possibly because most were short, and brevity brings with it the suspicion of a lack of substance and importance? Only recently have literati been willing to readily admit that the authors of short stories may be genuine artists and that the genre is an appropriate vehicle for art. Previously that was not the case. Balzac, for example, though a master of long and short fiction, made it very clear in Illusions perdues and La muse du département that the briefer form had very little importance for him. He believed that short stories were on the whole drafted as filler for newspapers to entertain readers and to produce a few francs for the mercenaries who produced them. Subsequently, however, because of a series of masterful examples of the genre, our perceptions changed. Flaubert, Chekov, Maupassant, Hawthorne, Faulkner, Joyce, and others, after all, gave the short story genre legitimacy. One no longer needed to apologize for practicing it. Prior to the nineteenth century, although writers produced brief fiction, it had a short life expectancy. The fact that we have so few prose tales from earlier times is in itself an indication of how little lasting importance

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they were granted. The exceptions are interesting, for they almost always have other attributes that may explain their durability. I think of fabliaux. Dating from the last half of the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, these minor but often funny little tales, meant to briefly amuse an audience, were frequently rendered in verse. While verse’s mnemonic advantages can to some degree explain the versification, for it made it easier for performers to remember, the poetry may explain their preservation. Verse had more prestige than prose. Perhaps as a result, at least 150 fabliaux have been conserved. Their predecessors, whether oriental, Latin, or oral folk tales, have for the most part disappeared. Most of the ancient tales remaining to us were put into a lengthier context, either that of a longer book, such as the biblical Daniel, Susanna, and the old men, or Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were also preserved in sermons, remembering saints’ lives and exemplary tales, or in one of the numerous frame tales or Rahmenerzählungen that have survived. Perhaps the increased length of their context was sufficient to earn respect for these tales. Somewhere between A.D. 300 and 500, for example, the Panchatantra’s Sanskrit fables were wrought into a cycle of numerous frame tales that tells of a king who despairs of educating his wastrel sons. He finally discovers a Brahmin who teaches wisdom through the very fables that were then enclosed within the frame of the Panchatantra. Such cycles make their own context, gaining significance by the number of works included and by the suggestion that the lengthy whole is greater, and more meaningful, than the constituent parts. Of course the coherence, not to mention unity, of many of these frame tales is often questionable, the frame doing little but provide an excuse for what is otherwise a random collection of fiction. The psychological depth of Chaucer’s characters and the complexity of their relationships with each other go far in explaining the widely sensed unity of his Canterbury Tales. Marguerite de Navarre’s personages are equally well delineated, although it seems to me that the unity of the work is more pronounced, since each of the tales not only offers depth of characterization but also casts increasing light on the frame’s multifaceted and progressively clear-cut vision of love. For the moment, my interest here is not the taxonomic endeavor of distinguishing such creations from poetry, on one hand, or from the novel, on the other. Nor is my purpose to discuss frame tales, but rather to consider the larger, inclusive category of short story cycles where the whole exists not merely because the stories have been gathered together under the aegis of one or more storytellers but because in the gathering they gain additional semantic or aesthetic meaning through the larger context created by the whole. Such cycles allow useful comparisons with the novel.1

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The following pages consider two examples of short story cycles, each of which exemplifies a particular kind of organization: Camus’ L’exil et le royaume [Exile and Kingdom] (1957) represents works where antithetical themes are developed sequentially across the volume. The opposition between the natives and foreigners, heat and cold, hatred and love, interdependence and egotism, stone and flesh establish a context where characters await “something” and struggle, like Janine, whose eyes sought the “pure line” where earth and sky join, to find unity in antitheses.2 Camus did not emphasize the sequential nature of his cycle. In an insertion meant for the published volume, he insisted only on the thematic unity of L’exil et le royaume: “[K]ingdom . . . coincides with a certain kind of free, unadorned life that we need to find once again to be finally reborn. Exile, in its own way, shows us the ways there, as long as we know how to refuse slavery and possession simultaneously” (2030). Maria Rosa Baldi is one of the very few critics who took the author with utmost seriousness: “[T]he title suggests that a unity is to be sought in the [stories’] metaphors of exile and kingdom, two opposing poles that are furthermore central to Camus’s entire production . . . a painful sense of separation from an original harmony [now] lost and desired, the drama of the human condition.”3 The cycle’s thematic content increases in intensity, and as each of the various aspects of kingdom and exile is explored by subsequent stories, the reader’s understanding grows. True, the book differs from traditional cycles in that there is no frame uniting the various stories with common storytellers or any explanation of why all the stories were told. Despite similarities, no character is repeated, no story continues into another creation, the settings vary, and both point of view and style are quite different. Orville Prescott even maintained that “[a]ny reader can interpret [these stories] to suit himself.”4 Yet, as Yosei Matsumoto recognizes, certain similarities tie the main characters tightly together. Just as each hero lacks the kind of supportive background that can make success a foregone conclusion, none has a significant past or history or tradition, none a homeland or a religion, and Daraste, the only character who comes from a notable family, acts as though success has no importance.5 While it is not surprising to find critics advancing many differing interpretations of these stories, most of the differences can be resolved on paying close attention to detail and on recognizing that each story depends on the whole cycle for a portion of its meaning. Camus’ stories are viscerally integrated into the whole cycle, and although every one of the incorporated stories works quite well in isolation, each remains somewhat ambiguous until reintegrated back into the

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Short Story Cycles

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

cycle.6 The relationship of each, for example, to “exile” and “kingdom” remains enigmatic until it is viewed as a part of the entire work. While novels ordinarily achieve unity by establishing substantial coherence of such devices as plot, character, narrative voice, chronology, and style, without by any means neglecting setting, theme, and imagery, Camus’ cycle derives its basic continuity and unity from thematic development, though the additional, related set of images recurs throughout the volume and adds additional unity. As said above, there is little more than similarity of plot, character, and setting. Even the style varies. One or two important nexuses do not a novel make, however, not even a paratactic novel. Despite the increasing clarity of its thematic unity, there are major breaks between the stories, and thus major breaks in the volume’s coherence. The cycle is unified though the incorporated stories are significantly lacking in contiguous links. Although critical interest in Camus’ work has to some degree faded, it is perhaps time to reevaluate the contribution of such works as L’exil. In contrast to Camus’ thematically sequential organization, Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les diaboliques [She-Devils] (1874) provides an example of what I call image structure. Barbey’s stories are organized so that each provides one or more portions of the central idea, while stressing the more important elements by repetition. Rather than a sequential progression such as L’exil et le royaume, Les diaboliques offers variations on a set of images and themes—fire, blood, stones, women, the Mass, hell, the devil7 —where the order of the stories has much less importance. Coste’s insightful consideration of fire imagery insists on Barbey’s originality in concretizing his symbols. In fact, of course, Barbey is simply following in the wake of Baudelaire, where many of the symbols—whether pillows, cracked bells, beggars, or hair—serve on one level as simple details to enhance realism and on another bear the weight of several dimensions of significance. Unlike many “collections” of miscellaneous short stories, which are little more than receptacles for gathering and remarketing previously published works, both of these cycles are so thoroughly, firmly integrated that they have some of the qualities of both novels and short stories. Furthermore, they help circumscribe and illustrate the concept of “short story” and the ways that authors avoid the genre’s limitation of brevity. By opposition, they illuminate the substance of novels. While immeasurable damage would be done to Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) if Un amour de Swann were removed, deleting any one of the stories of L’exil or Les diaboliques would be a loss, and regrettable, though hardly ruinous. We may then consider Proust’s work a novel and Camus’ and Barbey’s creations cycles of short stories. Short story cycles are collections of brief fictions that could stand alone but that gain significantly from being read together. The distinctions between novels and short

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story cycles are relative. No objective measure allows us to state definitely that Maupassant’s Bel ami (1885) is a novel, for example, rather than a cycle of short stories. I would place it in the former category because the various chapters, given the relatively well-connected activities of the main characters and their chronological and causal placement, make the whole more important than the parts, though it is a close thing. Novels and short story cycles have long been intertwined in readers’ minds. When Victor Shklovsky, for example, claims that the novel descends from short story cycles, he quickly points out that he will do no more than affirm a causal relationship, while noting a chronological fact.8 In truth, of course, one would be hard put to establish either a chronological or a causal relationship. Neither Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (ca. 1387), nor the Arabian Nights (which took their present form somewhere around A . D.1450) predate such novels as Chariton’s Chaeras and Callirhoe (ca. A . D. 50). Were it not for “King Cheops and the Magicians,” an Egyptian cycle of stories that probably dates from Dynasty 12 (1991–1786 B.C.) and for the fact that aesthetic “innovations” are often reinventions (perspective, for instance, was known to the Chinese, the Greeks, and the Romans long before fifteenth-century Masaccio, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Leone Battista Alberti), one might even argue, however wrongly, that novels are merely lengthened versions of popular tales, while short story cycles constitute a late development of considerable sophistication. Conclusions, still less pronouncements as to provenance, are neither possible nor terribly convincing; it is preferable rather to understand short story cycles somewhat better. The following examples are particularly interesting, for they are characterized on the one hand by hypotaxis, the absence of conjunctions joining complete elements that are nonetheless arranged in a sequence, and on the other by parataxis, similarly lacking in connectives but where the elements are relatively equal in value. I prefer to call these two basic structures of consciousness and art “sequential” and “image structure.” Although breaks in theme and image development are significant and common, they are generally not accorded the importance of plot disarticulation. Authors’ failure or refusal to link a character’s actions in one episode to those in the next is, of course, far from uncommon. It occurs in early French novels like Rabelais’ magnificent creation (1532–52), Beroalde de Verville’s Le moyen de parvenir (ca. 1599), or more recently in Robert Pinget’s Clope au dossier (1961). Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu has such obvious disarticulation that it has brought acerbic reactions from numerous critics, among whom one might cite Melvin Maddocks: “Proust,” he says, “simply could not finish things. When he finally did assemble his masterpiece, it was the same way he assembled himself as a man. He put all the uneven bits and pieces together and let

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them stand.”9 Although there is much to discuss about the specific problem of Proust’s structure,10 for the moment, suffice it to say that Proust apparently used the fragmentation in the plot of À la recherche to force the reader to look elsewhere for unity. Parataxis may serve other ends as well. When such disarticulation is extreme and repeated, it may be used to distinguish a cyclical work from novels. One nexus does not suffice to bring the various units of a novel together, however. It takes many. From Submission to Freedom “La femme adultère” [The Adulterous Woman], the first story of L’exil et le royaume, opens the volume to tell of a former beach girl who has reluctantly agreed to forsake her comfortable, urban apartment in order to accompany her husband, Marcel, on a sales trip to a high plateau region of a country very much like Algeria. She thinks often of her adolescence, and she misses the freedom on the beaches, which she gave up out of fear of a lonely old age to marry Marcel. “She used to dream of straight and flexible palm trees and of the girl she had been” (1563). Little by little she has withdrawn from the world to her husband’s shop, where he sells cloth, and to the small apartment above it. Though she needs to be needed (1570), true enjoyment of her present reality has apparently ceased as the years have gone by. “They had not had any children. The years had passed in the shadowy light with the shutters half-closed. The summer, the beach, walks, even the sky was distant” (1560). Janine calls the reader’s attention to her name: “ ‘Janine!’ . . . She thought again of how ridiculous the name was for someone as big and strong as she was” (1558). Her name provides an important key to the story. It derives from Janus, the Roman god whose two faces turn toward the past and the future and who was thus thought to have a knowledge both of what had happened and of what was to come. The god’s constant attention to what had already occurred and what would eventually happen, however, impeded his ability to function in the present.11 The same thing is of course true of Janine. Until the marvelous few moments she passes on the terrace, high above the desert, she lives isolated from the world around her. This trip with Marcel is a major change, if not an opportunity. Unfortunately, she is unable to take advantage of it. Finally, at the end of the day, Marcel accompanies her to the terrace of the local fort. There “it seemed to Janine that the entire sky reverberated with a single, brief, but brilliant note whose echoes little by little filled the space above her, then fell suddenly silent, leaving her still before the limitless expanse” (1567). The sound may be a call to salvation.12 Later on that evening, after her husband has gone to sleep, she slips out to return to the terrace. In a moment that the author configures as a sexual climax, 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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she opens herself to nature and experiences this strange kingdom of stones and night. On returning to the place of her first experience, she learns that the previous “fleeting instant” need not be the last. She invites “this kingdom of stones” (1567) to become a part of her and experiences a sense of fulfillment similar to what she previously had on the beach. On returning to her room, she slides stealthily into bed, just before Marcel rises to get a drink of water. He “turned on the light which slapped her full in the face” (1573). Turning back to the bed, he sees her in tears. “ ‘It’s nothing, dear,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing’ ” (1573). Without referring to the other stories of the cycle, the conclusion is puzzling. Why does the light “slap” (gifla) her, for example? The image would suggest that she has done something wrong in abandoning her husband for the solitary pleasures of the night. There, pressed against the parapet, she surrendered to the physical world in a way that could only with the greatest difficulty be shared with another, even if she were willing to try. The final events show that despite her sudden insight into a way of living that she had given up years ago, she will not or cannot communicate what she has discovered. When, however, she then denies those moments of incredible resolution by claiming that it is nothing, she herself leaves no doubt of her decision to return to the stultifying safety of the small, closed world she had accepted. She consequently pronounces her own condemnation. Her moment at the top of the old fort has been nothing but a brief affair, an instant of self-centered gratification to be recalled much as she had dreamily remembered the days on the beach. It will go no further. In the next story, “Le renégat ou un esprit confus” [The Renegade or a Confused Mind], the significance of the night and silence to Janine’s experience becomes somewhat clearer. A former Catholic missionary, now the slave-acolyte of the fetish in Taghâsa, narrates his yearning for “night, with its fresh stars and obscure fountains,” since that alone could “save me, finally lift me above the mean spirited gods of men” (1586). On the following page, the same image of freshness is associated with death: “I wanted to get up, I fell back, happy, desperately happy to finally die, [since] death is also fresh and its shadow shields no god.” This reminder of the traditional symbolism that associates night and death would then add more weight to the negative connotations of the light slapping Janine’s face. Her inability to communicate with her neighbors, and her husband, emphasizes the need reach out to join with others in a communal meal13 and to bear each other’s burdens. Where Janine has submitted to marital authority in order to gain security, the renegade submits with the expectation of being able to exercise his master’s authority. His first conversion was from Protestantism to Catholicism. He believes that through the Catholic Church he will live in the sun: “[C]atholicism is the sun” (1578), he says, the sun, of course, 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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being an age-old symbol of power.14 Then, he goes off to work his will on African natives: “I would like to be recognized by the very butchers themselves, to throw them to their knees and make them say: ‘Lord, here is your victory,’ to reign in short by the word alone over an army of the wicked” (1580). The shocking absence of love and gentleness in his words combines with the ambiguous identity of the “Lord” whom the Africans would be addressing, whether it would be God or His apostate interpreter, through whom they would be doing obeisance to divinity (1578). On discovering that the natives of Taghâsa do not fall immediately to their knees when he announces the Christian God, he decides that the fetish must be stronger. So he becomes an apostate for the second time—“[T]hey are the ones who are lords!” (1581)—and his hope now centers on the fetish. When, to the renegade’s dismay in the last few lines of the story, he sees the sorcerer’s bleeding mouth and learns that the soldiers were stronger than the fetish, he wants to play the turncoat once again. “Take off this hate-filled visage, be good now, we were wrong, we will begin again, we will remake the city of compassion and mercy” (1591), he says after his third apostasy, this time back to Christianity. The sorcerer doubtless shows good sense when he extends his hand, not in love but to fill the renegade’s mouth with salt, for, given the latter’s system, the renegade’s reconversion means that the sorcerer would be expected to bow before his former slave in obeisance to the apostate’s more powerful god. After killing the new missionary to prevent him from speaking, in a perversion of the Passion, the renegade slave is “crucified,” laughs instead of forgives, and thinks: “[O]h, Fetish, why have you abandoned me? Everything is finished, I am thirsty” (1591). In a striking reprise of the theme of communication that was highlighted in the first story by Janine’s incapacities, the renegade himself speaks only silently, for he has had his tongue cut out by the savages who greeted him with silent contempt and beatings. Henceforth he is limited to the sounds, “râ râ,” which both mark his powerlessness and punctuate his silent ravings with the name of the Egyptian sun god, Râ, the sovereign lord of the sky.15 The tongue, an important human tool of communication, fellowship, and brotherly love, has been stilled. Despite his mental garrulousness, he cannot actually speak the Word of love. Appropriately enough, the next story bears the title “Les muets.” It highlights the opposition between silence and speech.

Toward Communion In “Les muets” [The Mutes], the mute workers feel that the shop’s owner has relegated them to silence when he says, “I don’t want to restart the

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discussions that are now finished” (1602). As Yvars16 understands, “they weren’t sulking, . . . they had been shut up” (1603–04). Focused on the good relations Yvars and his wife have and on the communion meal that Yvars is able to share with Saïd, the story by opposition insists on the terrible, oppressive silence that continues even though the workers would like to comfort the owner M. Lassalle when his daughter falls sick. As the critic Baldi understood, their silence no longer has “any connotation of defiance. It is only a sign of powerlessness, of a failure of understanding before a reality that is too complicated” (105). The owner is not cruel, but he is paternalistic, and Yvars’s inability to take control is symbolized by his desire, and inability, to go abroad. Growing older and more bitter as the years go by, he is condemned to repeat the sad pattern of his life. Though somewhat more sophisticated than the Arab of “L’hôte,” the next story in the cycle, his limitations clearly prepare those of his successor. “L’hôte,” the most frequently anthologized of the cycle’s stories, thus doubtless the most popular, has elicited the lion’s share of published criticism. At first glance, the story seems amazingly simple. Daru, a country schoolteacher in the high plateau area of Algeria, is alone in a brutal land surrounded by Arabs who are beginning to agitate for freedom. The title “L’hôte” means either host or guest and may refer to the teacher’s situation in Algeria. He is a “guest” in a foreign land, and he “hosts” an Arab guest. Having been snowed in for three days, the students to whom he regularly distributes grain have not come to the school and probably missed the food (1610), but it does not occur to him that he could take the grain to them. He waits for the local people to come. Daru “lived almost like a monk in this lost school, content . . . with the little that he had and with this rough life. He felt like a lord” (1610). Though he is certainly less objectionable, we remember the heartless “lords” de Taghâsa (1581). For Daru, the storm has passed and travel once again is possible, since Balducci, a policeman friend, arrives with an Arab prisoner who has killed his own cousin. Balducci wants Daru to take the Arab to the prison at Tinguit, some twenty kilometers away, where the murderer will be incarcerated. The thought of performing a policeman’s role offends Daru’s sensibilities, and he in turn offends Balducci by sharing his disgust with him. He does, however, allow the Arab to stay. Doubtless because of Daru’s kindness, the prisoner asks him, “You are coming with us?” Then, a few lines farther on: “ ‘Come with us,’ he said” (1617). But the teacher resists the shallow brotherhood that grows from nothing more than a shared meal and proximity (1618). Besides, the stupidity of the murder angers him. When morning comes, Daru leads the Arab away from the school, until, at a distance of several hours’ walk, he points to the path leading to Tinguit and prison, on the one hand, and, on the other, to the south where, at a

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INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

day’s march, the Arab will find nomads who will take him in. Jail or freedom, Daru thrusts the decision on the Arab. The latter tries to talk, but Daru will not allow it. Daru returns to his school to find, “written with chalk by a clumsy hand . . . : ‘You turned in our brother. You will pay.’ . . . In this vast country that he had loved so much, he was alone” (1621). Maurice Roelens remembers that a teacher and his wife were the first victims of the Algerian insurrection of All Saints’ Day in 1954.17 He also points out that it was surely not accidental that, in this drought-stricken land, the threat was scribbled across the remains of one of Daru’s lessons, a map showing four rivers of France (Roelens 13). Though a tentative interpretation of the story can grow from noting the repeated reference to the Arab’s ignorance and lack of understanding (e.g., 1620)—Yvonne Guers-Villate calls him “primitive”18 —the widely varying conclusions produced by different critics suggests that O. J. Miller is correct to state, “Lacking textual indications, these interpretations are no more than hypotheses” (49n29). One can operate, however, from a much surer base on recalling that the cycle as a whole provides a context, that the story is thematically related to the preceding and following works. The clearest parallel with “Les muets” occurs when the “[t]he Arab had now turned toward Daru and a sort of panic rose in his face: ‘Listen,’ he said. Daru shook his head. ‘No, shut up. Now I’m leaving you.’ He turned his back to him” (1621). We remember how M. Lassalle “had shut the workers up” (1603) and how they were incapable of breaking out of the stupefying prison of silence. Had M. Lassalle made the same effort, with the same understanding, that Yvars made with his Arab coworker, Saïd, the barrel makers would have undoubtedly been able to respond and begin to form a brotherly relationship. It is not wrong for the sophisticated to help the less fortunate. Aid must, however, be proffered with wisdom and love. In “L’hôte,” though the Arab may seem “uneasy” (1611) or affected by “a sort of uneasiness” (1613), or even appear “afraid” (1619) or be panicked (1621), he reacts positively to Daru’s kindness. Why else would he ask for his company? And when Daru wants him to set out, he does not move until the teacher assures him, “I am coming” (1620). Had Daru been willing to accompany him all the way, there is little doubt that he would have chosen to go to the nomads and freedom. Alone, fear of the unknown prevents him from going. As John K. Simon has put it, “Daru hopes for a miracle: that the Arab, without having been taught anything about liberty, will somehow choose it naturally and successfully and thus avoid complications. . . . Camus makes it quite plain by countless indications—his desperate glances, his dread of being left alone, his lack of understanding even for his own crime, his refusal to act himself—that the Arab is fully dependent upon the schoolteacher for

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a decision. . . . The money and two days’ food that Daru gives the Arab constitute no decision. . . . [W]ith no education or independence, the Arab can follow only the negative dictate of inertia and passivity. He goes to prison.”19 The chances are excellent that the Arab has never before been away from his village or been without the company of family and friends. It is, in fact, inconceivable that he would choose to go alone to join some unknown, desert nomads. Because he is familiar with policemen, because Daru was kind to him, prison would reasonably seem to such an untutored man the lesser of two evils. “Jonas ou l’artiste au travail” [Jonah or the Artist at Work] approaches the now well-established theme of brotherhood from another angle. Here, Camus allows his sardonic humor free reign and portrays the protagonistpainter as so much the “thing” of others that he loses his identity, which results in artistic and personal sterility. There seems little doubt that in addition to Jonas’s vocation as a painter, he was “called” to take an active part in the political and social controversies of his time. Camus was explicit on the obligations of artists in his lecture “L’artiste et son temps” [The Artist and His Times], which he gave at the University of Uppsala shortly after receiving the Nobel Prize: “[T]he writer can no longer hope to stay off to the side so as to pursue the thoughts and images that are dear to him.”20 Such public demands are difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill, and, little by little, Jonas’s work slows. When the inevitable, negative reviews come in, he “became thoughtful. He thought of painting, of his vocation, instead of painting” (1645). In short, he substitutes nugatory thought for action. In this infecundity, he begins to drink and womanize, soon making friends with others who have had no success, to form a brotherhood of failure. Jonas modestly attributes success and subsequent ruin to neither philosophy nor effort nor “merit,” but rather to his “star” and “luck” (1627). That his paintings grew from love of his art rather than work, reflection, or philosophical mission seems scarcely disturbing, until he begins to show the signs of declining inspiration. Is he one of the legions of young artists who have but a limited storehouse of ideas and who quickly disappear from the horizon? While readers can clearly understand his artistic demise as the result of pressures from his public responsibilities, his growing family, his demanding friends, and, of course, on the related lack of time and space, he himself attributes the decline to the disappearance of his star.21 He seems unaware of his decreasing commitment to “work” (passim), his meditation “instead of painting” (1645, 1646), and his fondness for alcohol and philandering. Despite the remonstrances of his friend Rateau, he long does not feel responsible. Finally, he builds a sort of loft in the “large cubage of air” above their living area and withdraws to reflect and, eventually, to paint an ambiguous word.

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MAKING SHORT LONG

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

While the conclusions of all the stories to this point are somewhat equivocal, “Jonas” is particularly so. Putting brush to canvas would be encouraging, were it not that he has apparently not grasped his friend’s repeated lesson. After days and nights of concentration, Jonas turns the canvas to the wall. “Exhausted, he waited, sitting down, his hands open on his knees. He was saying that now he would never work again, he was happy” (1651–52; my emphasis). The clear pattern of allusion to the biblical Jonah would suggest that Jonas will not remain passive or “seated.” The prophet Jonah, after all, was vomited out only after agreeing to accept his calling and go to work proclaiming the truth to the Ninevites. Similarly, when Jonas falls from the loft, the doctor concludes that, although he suffers from overwork, “[i]n a week, he would be on his feet” (1652; my emphasis). Neither his star that he thinks may have returned nor his vow “that now he would never work again” will stand him up, as the doctor promises. Although the point is by no means pellucid, it seems that his healing will come only from brush and canvas: he must paint and he must accept his responsibilities.

The Summative Story Although “Jonas” appears to indicate that an artist is expected to be in the world and yet to create, to interpret the single word, whether solitaire or solidaire, on Jonas’s canvas with assurance requires an analysis of the final story, “La pierre qui pousse” [The Growing Stone]. Elsewhere, certainly, Camus left no doubt of his position. Today’s artist must hew out his role in love, while maintaining his aesthetic individuality and his commitment to his brother human beings. He must be both solitaire and solidaire. As he said in Actuelles II, “the time for seated artists is over” (Essais 804). “La pierre qui pousse” broadens the thrust of the dual theme by introducing an engineer, d’Arrast, who arrives in Brazil with a somewhat mysterious past.22 We learn what little we know about him piecemeal. Just before coming to this foreign land, he was to blame for someone’s impending death. We are not told whether that person was actually killed, though his response when the ship’s cook, le coq, later accuses him of pride may give some insight: “I was proud, now I am alone” (1670). In addition, we know that his grandfather was an aristocrat. Ordinarily, one would assume that d’Arrast is, as well, but he explains: “Now, there are no more lords in our countries” (1667). Critics have widely sensed a structural imbalance in this story, caused by the lengthy introduction. In fact, however, it represents a real difficulty only when “La pierre qui pousse” is considered in isolation from the other tales. If the story remains in its place, the long

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introductory passage is completely in balance and, indeed, essential to the cycle as a whole. It indicates the point at which the themes of all the stories come together and provide a solution to previously un- or barely resolved problematic approaches to life. Careful, reflective reading would even suggest that the introduction to “La pierre qui pousse” is so well integrated into L’exil et le royaume that one could rightly call it a “long night’s passage into day.” From the failure so evident in preceding stories, from night, cold, silence, and solitude, from exile, we move to the success of brotherhood and kingdom. On every level, d’Arrast must mediate. Of course, he is singularly well prepared for this role, for, as he says himself, he builds “bridges, roads” (1668), that is, means for men to move from one point to another and to join with one another. He has the skill to protect the people from the river, the tact to guard the foolish chief of police from his thirst for societal retribution, and, finally, the strength and understanding necessary to help the coq [cook] fulfill the promise he made to “the Good Jesus.” Nonetheless, d’Arrast remains an outsider, until the moment when he successfully helps the coq. Then, “panting as an obscure, unidentifiable flood of joy rose in him,” he listens as the coq and his brother and family arrive. They observe the stone half-buried in the ashes and sit down in a silent circle around the hearth. The only sound is “the rumbling of the river.” “The [coq’s] brother pointed him to the empty place, ‘Sit down with us,’ ” he said (1683–84). Little disagreement occurs in regard to the general meaning of “La Pierre qui pousse.” In carrying the stone, d’Arrast committed an apparently useless act that does, however, show love and comprehension of the coq, a representative of the natives. D’Arrast’s sense of fulfillment, his joy in his strength and in life itself, extends itself to fellowship, not just with stones, as in Janine’s sterile, quasi-sexual experience, but with human beings. L’exil et le royaume clearly calls for a kind of brotherhood that rises above class, race, sectarianism of all kinds and that will preserve the dignity of each individual person. The most important function of “La pierre qui pousse” consists of the way it brings the themes of L’exil et le royaume to a conclusion. Images related to fire and water have great importance to the story.23 They are of particular significance when considered in the light of preceding stories: the terrible, “irresistible sun” (1583) of “Le renégat” reverberates, for example, as does the sun that takes away the life-giving moisture as the snow melts in “L’hôte” (1620). The “massive sun” of “La pierre qui pousse” (1678, 1680) recalls and perhaps incorporates the preceding mentions. On paying close attention to other imagery in the latter story, the picture of an overwhelmingly powerful nature comes into focus, a nature that looms

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MAKING SHORT LONG

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

constantly on the verge of going out of control and that occasionally does so. This is a world where the forest looms so near that it seemingly begins “without transition” (1666) and where it joins with the river to make threatening noises in the background: “The forest growled, very close. The noise of the river grew” (1676). Heat, sun, sea, river, fog, rain, humidity, stone, sand, night, stars . . . in one way or another nature is an omnipresent force. The temptation is to join with nature, to succumb to it, and, thus, to become a part of “the human flood” (1680). This, of course, is Janine’s answer. Not even d’Arrast succeeds in remaining completely aloof. During the ritualistic dance, though not taking an obvious part, he feels “exhausted, his muscles tight from his long immobile dance” (1674). Still, he breaks free from the temptation to sink to the level of nature: “Over there, in Europe, there was shame and anger. Here, exile and solitude, in the middle of languid, throbbing fools who danced in order to die” (1676). Here, however, d’Arrast is free of the intellectualism that has led so many of his contemporaries into one sterile ideology or another. Socrate, d’Arrast’s chauffeur who bears a philosopher’s name, represents this temptation. The critic Carina Gadourek takes Socrate very seriously. She emphasizes the fact that the chauffeur introduces the engineer to the Garden of the Fountain, where the growing stone is housed, and to the coq. In effect, he directs d’Arrast “toward the event that will liberate him” (Gadourek 220), that is, toward the procession where he will take up and carry the stone. Conversely, Peter Cryle is struck by the comic attributes of Socrate, which are very real. Socrate’s amusing explanations, which all too often explain nothing, his laughable way of rolling his eyes, and his “cataclysmic sneezes,” while in no way affecting the friendship between him and d’Arrast, render him an improbable bearer of meaning (Bilan 189). I wonder whether Socrate’s comic traits do not in fact constitute an important part of the character’s meaning and reason for his name. As mentioned before, Camus felt that philosophy was too often removed from life. Our century struck him as proof positive that intellection, which has not been richly fertilized with real life, ends in blind adherence to parties and cults that kill people. It seems no accident that Socrate is the character who, as d’Arrast carries the stone beyond the church, appears “in front of him, rolling his alarm-filled eyes, talking disconnectedly and pointing behind him toward the church. ‘To the church, to the church,’ was what Socrate and the crowd cried” (1683). The engineer’s answer to civilized human beings’ quest for meaning, and Camus’, was neither sectarianism nor humanism, but humanity. D’Arrast carries the stone to the hearth of his friend.

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On considering L’exil et le royaume as a whole, it would be difficult indeed to confuse it with a novel, for while the stories have strong thematic continuity and intimately connected images, the volume as a whole most notably lacks unity of plot, character, and setting. Four of the stories are set in northern Africa, probably in Algeria, one is about a painter in Paris, and the other tells of an engineer in Brazil. Each major character is distinct from those of other stories. In fact, the main characters have very little in common. One is a woman, and the rest are men who come from the full range of social classes. Though they are all to one degree or another conscious of their unhappiness, the solutions they stumble upon or consciously work out differ significantly. As for the style Camus used, the volume amply demonstrates the author’s admirable technical breadth, by ranging from dramatic monologue to symbolic description and omniscient narration.24 The most powerful device unifying the volume is found in the progression of themes that provides the volume with strong thematic continuity. While the imagery remains rather constant, the themes of humanism, selffulfillment, joy, work, and the brotherhood of man progress from story to story, filling in, providing context, giving examples and contrasts, creating a set of tapestries that work together to create understanding. For those who have considered the whole cycle, there exists little disagreement in regard to the general meaning of L’exil et le royaume. In such discussions, “La pierre qui pousse” is frequently cited. By carrying the stone, d’Arrast committed an apparently senseless act that does, however, show love and comprehension, or brotherhood, a fellowship that gives d’Arrast a sense of completion and joy in his strength and in life itself. D’Arrast has moved beyond Janine’s relationship with the physical world to the communion of human beings. When he sits down with the coq and his family, he achieves the fellowship that seems forever beyond Janine, as it was beyond the nameless renegade, Jonas, and Daru, and largely closed to Yvars. Perhaps unlike Jonas, d’Arrast remains willing to work to fulfill his calling. L’exil et le royaume clearly demands a kind of brotherhood that rises above class, race, and sectarianism of all kinds, while preserving the dignity of each individual person. There is, in addition, remarkable unity of imagery. Images related to sun and sea have great importance to the volume, for example. Readers who pay close attention to other imagery in “La pierre qui pousse” will become aware of an overwhelmingly powerful nature that looms near and large. One would find it difficult to show any development in the images from story to story, though the pattern of imagery and symbolism is discrete

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Pushing the Envelope

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

in each and does not require knowledge of others for basic understanding. In a few instances, however, a particular image, like that of the “night” in “La femme adultère” and “Le renégat,” gains further depth of meaning through repetition in a subsequent story. Given critical attentiveness, the images can be interpreted with little difficulty in each tale, for each can be viewed as an independent creation. In addition, certain motifs do recur. Janine, the renegade, Yvars, and d’Arrast, all of whom wait, come to mind, although only one of them leaves in search of fulfillment. And “voyage” or “quest” provides an important part of the framework for all, as do meals, whether communal or “anti-communal,” to use English Showalter’s vocabulary (Exiles 60–61). When the stories are returned to their place in the volume, an extra dimension is added. Not only are whatever questions one may have on attempting to interpret various images and symbols answered, but in addition one sees how each character’s confrontation with life illuminates the others. Each of the characters has a history of failed dreams. Each is picked up during a new moment of crisis and an acute sense of personal solitude. We follow them as they make various compromises concerning their relationships to others, which demonstrate their willingness to reject facile excuses and live life to the fullest. Denuded of their detail, and compared solely on the basis of their plot armatures, the narratives seem remarkably similar. The principal character is introduced and confronted with a particular problem that might offer an opportunity. The resultant response determines whether the character is left with a worse, similar, or better situation. Because of the allusion to the scriptural Jonah, Jonas hints at a better future, since the biblical prophet proceeded to answer his call after being expelled from the great fish, but only d’Arrast is allowed to enjoy a sense of completion that promises a good future. Janine’s pathetic yearning for the seaside experiences of her youth culminates in nothing but one more lonely moment where she opens, not to people, but to a nocturnal nature. She will not go to the beach where she, like Yvars, could find fulfilment; both settle into their dreary, suffocating lives. The love and understanding between her and Marcel remain little more than the shallow barracks-fraternity of proximity that Daru rejects. The renegade, at least, recognizes the importance of his fellow men, though the master-slave relationship, the only one he understands, can hardly be termed fellowship. On arriving at “Les muets,” the reader discovers brotherhood in action. It does not succeed in crossing over class lines, for the workers fail to comfort their distraught employer whose daughter has just fallen seriously ill, and while their sense of kingdom as they break bread together is very real, it is also very limited. The kingdom of “L’hôte” is, I think, illusory. As Peter Cryle puts it, “Daru seems to have succeeded in

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creating a kingdom, however poor and sterile it may be, at the heart of exile. Still, he made a mistake. He thought he could keep men at a distance, by only accepting whatever social responsibility he wanted” (Bilan 233). Perhaps more important, Daru lacks the ability to help the ignorant and helpless Arab. Jonas, of course, opens himself to everyone and everything, so much so that he loses all his individuality and thus his impact. The other main characters have been too solitaire, and he is too solidaire, too bound up with others. As Gadourek says, “Each of the short stories marks a progression in relation to the preceding one on the path that leads from exile to kingdom” (Innocents 223). Each marks the series of unsatisfactory answers to the problems of life that intensify the final story’s power. The reader, prepared for the concluding reversal of thematic development, watches d’Arrast succeed in attaining brotherhood. There is, of course, no assurance that this fraternity will last. It seems rather a moment of happiness that rewards d’Arrast for accepting the intolerable but essential tension between the solitude necessary for individual creation and the fraternal demands made by human beings in our world. Still, however ephemeral, the fellowship definitely exists as a desirable and attainable reality. His subsequent joy at completing his task and depositing the stone in the hearth derives from overcoming, by his own force, the sun, the heat, the very power of nature itself.25 If I am correct in concluding that the conjunction of opposites put forward in “Jonas”—solitaire or self-centered individualism vs. solidaire or selfless commitment to our human brothers—represents the most important point of L’exil et le royaume, then it should also be noted that the form of the collection is admirably appropriate to the message. Just as human beings must both resist the temptation to so thoroughly join with others as to lose their individuality, thus becoming indistinguishable from the rest of the group, so also must they maintain a desire and an ability to reach out in moments of need to become one with others, thus accepting brotherhood with other humans that rises above their individual, selfish desires in order to attain a greater good. Nonetheless, each story of L’exil et le royaume must be evaluated in and for itself before being considered as a part of the cycle, at which point the significance of the component parts increases through the illumination of the whole. There are important links that bind these stories together, and each story is far more powerful in conjunction than in isolation. Nonetheless, every story easily withstands abstraction from the whole. Each can then be solitaire, while the collection must remain solidiare for maximum impact. While L’exil et le royaume relies on a strong complex of images and a few thematic threads to link the stories, novels ordinarily achieve unity by establishing substantial coherence in point of view, narrative voice,

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Sequence and Image The categorical difference between Camus’ cycle and Barbey’s Les diaboliques [The She-Devils] is signaled by Barbey’s change of title. In 1850, when the latter published the first story of what was to become Les diaboliques of 1874, he titled it “Ricochets de conversation, I, Le dessous de cartes d’une partie de whist” [Ricochets of Conversation, 1, the Underside of the Cards in a Game of Whist].26 He told his close friend Trebutien that he planned a volume that would take the same title, Ricochets de conversation. Some years later, this original title fell away to assume in 1866 or 1867 the general title that it bears today. The change in title was a stroke of genius, since it attracted those interests that eventually caused the public prosecutor to order its confiscation and charge Barbey with immorality, thus placing the little volume of stories in such select company as Les fleurs du mal and Madame Bovary and making it Barbey’s best-known work. Barbey was terrified, however, and of an age (he was 66) when people seldom enjoy being at the center of controversy. Even after an acquittal, he did not republish the volume until years later, in 1882. Planned and actual titles have considerably more than historical importance. As Jacques Petit suggests, Barbey first does indeed emphasize the importance of technique to the stories (2.1274). The author changed the title, I believe, not because technique became less important, but rather because what he had previously settled on became inadequate. Ricochet is the generally forward, glancing motion that an object makes when it rebounds one or more times after hitting a surface. While at first the concept of a ricochet had the advantage of suggesting directed development in these stories toward a revelation, the volume’s progression did not remain so important. The forward movement maintains some significance, but the variations on the major theme were increasingly emphasized. Now, the volume could be said to resemble a tangerine, where any of the segments may be removed without overly damaging the whole. Certainly, the suggestion of a “ricochet” leaves aside far too much of the stories’ sophisticated complexity. Other titles that Barbey considered—“Sonates de conversation” [Sonatas of Conversation] and “Sonates à quatre mains” [Four-Hand Sonatas]27 —are more evocative of the multifaceted texture of

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imagery, symbols, style, and especially of plot, chronology, and character. As Ingram has shown, although there are cycles that bring the same characters back in each of the episodes, the continuity is weak. Camus’ cycle has a continuous development of major themes and antitheses across the sequence of the whole.

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the narrations. Consequently, without ignoring the gradual accumulation of thematic power as it increases from the beginning to the end of the volume, this analysis will not follow the order of the stories as was the case for the consideration of L’exil et le royaume. It will rather emphasize the filaments tying all the stories together around the theme of evil, something like the center of a poisonous spider’s web. Each story manifests the theme and image of evil, as does, consequently, the whole. Nonetheless, despite identical patterns of narrative voice, similar characters, and identical themes, major breaks disrupt the metonymic syntagm. There are no firm links tying one story sequentially to the next. The stories all open by introducing a narratee28 who becomes a narrator, before presenting another narrator, who is also a witness and often a participant as well. Each story then proceeds to the account of a sin or crime and the revelation of a she-devil, a diabolique, and her impact. With the introduction of the important characters and, later, with each revelation, the perspectives change, rather as a kaleidoscope takes the same pieces of glass and makes a different image. The discoveries open a new view of the preceding events and radically change their implications. When the reader finally understands how each diabolique has served Satan, how, as Barbey put it in his preface to the first edition, each serves as a “means,” every infernal girl or woman then reveals Satan in that she exemplifies his “use of the simplest means” (2.1291). Barbey’s world reveals a vitally active devil. There are many examples. In one instance, he points out, “[I]n Paris, when God plants a pretty woman, the devil responds immediately by planting a fool to support her” (2.233). Although this remark might well be considered the flippant formula of a worldly cynic, it joins so many others and so many references to hell and the diabolical that the devil’s substance gains consistency.29 As Barbey signals in his preface, he “believes in the Devil and in his influence on the world, and doesn’t laugh about it” (2.1290–91). The devil rises to the surface of the reader’s perceptions only after psychology reveals its inadequacy to explain such wickedness, and Les diaboliques leaves us with no doubt that each of the heroines has been responsible for knowingly or unknowingly, brazenly or innocently leading other people toward the pit. The difficulties and frustrations posed by Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les diaboliques have been regularly cited in the secondary literature. Anne Giard mentions, for example, that readers commonly feel irritation when confronted with the collection.30 There are many explanations for this annoyance. Perhaps most obviously, some of the stories do not fit in any obvious way. If the volume is organized around rhythms of conversation and a hidden reality, as Jacques Petit suggests, “La vengeance d’une femme” [A Woman’s Vengeance] is different (2.1277). And if the theme of the

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diabolical should be dominant, the heroine of “Le rideau cramoisi” [The Crimson Curtain], the teenager of “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan,” and Rosalba “are not diabolical, but rather sick,”31 and, indeed, the heroine of “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan” [Don Juan’s Most Beautiful Love] “is, to the contrary, very pure” (2.1279). Julien Gracq believes that the collection title is scarcely appropriate for the six stories.32 While we are moreover left in the dark concerning the motives of most of these devilish women, none could be more explicit than those of the Duchess de Sierra-Leone. And, finally, Petit considers four of the six stories downright inconclusive.33 Without any question, however, the enigmatic justification for the inclusion of “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan” in Les diaboliques has been the most difficult to grasp. Philippe Berthier reminds us that “people have occasionally asked what it was doing there.”34 In fact, as Petit points out in his edition of Barbey d’Aurevilly, this is the story “which has bothered critics the most; the girl is not a diabolical person, quite to the contrary” (2.1307). Gisèle Corbière-Gille mentions that it is one of the most frequently translated because it is one of the “least shocking” (CorbièreGille 114). B. G. Rogers simply terms it “a lightweight piece” (112), while Bornecque finds it “unpleasant [and] lacking [stylistic] embellishments, absolutely absurd” (Diaboliques c). In short, as Berthier put it, “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan” is “decidedly the least well understood of the six stories.”35 To explain how these stories are intimately and viscerally related to each other under an exquisitely appropriate title, we have to go to the heart of Barbey’s creation.

Access to the Labyrinth While not the introductory story, “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan” provides a good point of entry. The frame narrator seems the same as in the other stories. Though he often begins his account as in “Le rideau cramoisi” with a description of the setting where he himself heard the story, here he immediately starts by telling the story to someone else. He is never named, but he has all the marks of a wealthy aristocrat, a worldly man about town who frequents brothels and cathedrals, as well as provincial and Parisian salons where the arts of conversation and storytelling are welcome and practiced. The narrator is the fictional character who heard the various stories and who controls their retelling in the fashionable salons that grace Les diaboliques. But he is only one of the narrators, each of whom prepares the ground in which the following story will be embedded. In all, “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan” contains five embedded stories, each opening onto another. The first narrator heard the story from the Count

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de Ravila de Ravilès, the recent reincarnation of Don Juan, who heard the story from one of his mistresses, who heard it from her daughter’s confessor, before getting the details from the daughter herself. At each level the revelations provide a perspective on the audience or on one of the characters and on the enigma posed by the story’s title. We are going to learn of Don Juan’s “most beautiful love affair.” The tale begins in the salon of the old, pious Marquise Guy de Ruy. The hostess is to some degree contaminated, as the celebrated Carte de tendre [Map of Tenderness] would indicate, because permitting the lover to utter endearments constitutes permission to continue on the path toward love, if not all the way to the Terres inconnues on the other side of the Mer dangereuse. It also permits the auteur to tell of “this old rascal,” Don Juan (2.59). It has the further task of highlighting Catholicism, which is essential to the story. Nonetheless, despite a few pro forma objections, for example: “[P]lease don’t tell me about dinners with your loose women,” says the Marquise Guy de Ruy, an aggressively bigoted hostess (2.60), curiosity is aroused. She begins to daydream of Don Juan (women always find him irresistible, and, after all, she is a woman). The narrator is encouraged to continue. Twelve of the infamous lover’s former “victims” have offered Don Juan a dinner in the Countess de Chiffrevas’s boudoir, “the theatre of his glory, there where memories flower rather than orange blossoms” (2.60). The mention that oranges, which symbolize fecundity, have been replaced by memories raises the possibility that the celebration (“to celebrate . . . what? they did not say”—2.61) may have been called to commemorate his former powers and mark his current impotence. “Ordinarily people have dinners because of their joy, to amuse themselves, but here, it was memory, it was regret, it was almost despair” (2.62). The suspicion gains substance when the auteur tells us that this is “Don Juan in the fifth act,” a fifty-year-old Alcibiades (2.63) (that is, a great general past his prime). Despite his pact with the devil, God is getting his own back: “the tiger claws of life beginning to line the divine forehead” (2.62). Alluding to Molière’s Dom Juan, we learn that there is nothing left for Don Juan but the vengeful commander of white marble and the “hell of old age, while waiting for the other one” (2.62). There is no doubt about the significance of this festival when the text twice mentions Sardanapalos’s death and reminds readers of Delacroix’s great painting, La mort de Sardanapale, for this work stands as one of the most explicit representations ever of impotence.36 Des Esseintes would term a similar gathering “[t]he good-bye dinner for virility that for the moment was dead.”37 With but a slight shift of perspective, the scene becomes a parody of the Last Supper, not in a dining room but in a boudoir, with Don Juan taking the place of Jesus in the center. At his right is the Duchess de ∗ ∗ ∗ “as

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though one of the righteous at God’s right hand” (2.66). As Berthier recognizes on considering the passage, the twelve female disciples constitute the “Ladies of Perpetual Adoration” (2.60), and Don Juan modestly accepts their worship. He is “the god of this feast” (2.66) “whose divine forehead is crowned with the roses of so many lips” (2.62). Seated at a round table, the women feast their eyes on the celebrated lover across from them: “[T]hey ate and drank him with their eyes” (2.67), for he has become a satanic god, offering himself as wine and bread in a transubstantiated Black Mass. He will soon say explicitly that although the woman with whom he was involved when he experienced his “most beautiful love” had earlier had a platonic love, it was rather like the practice masses that young priests say without the true elements. Don Juan glances around at his charming hostesses, “who inhaled the words of this old snake” (2.68) and offers himself as the real thing. “I am the one who was the true mass, and she said mass with all the requisite, sumptuous ceremony, like a cardinal” (2.69). Although Berthier summarizes, “Ravila’s [or Don Juan’s] body becomes an altar, on which the erotic liturgy celebrates the mystery of an incarnation that is no longer supernatural,” in fact Barbey meant us to understand that it is indeed supernatural, that it is another example of Satan at work in the world.38 Twelve worldly, cynical, overblown women drinking in Don Juan’s story establish a contrast and set off the artless innocence of the marquise. The latter did not understand very much about either her daughter or Don Juan—“She was in love but she lacked the art of love” (2.70). When the marquise had the “imprudence” (2.75) to tell him what had happened with her daughter, she clearly does not grasp the implications. As for Don Juan’s audience, “the faces of the cherubim before God’s throne” (2.75), “[t]hey were thoughtful . . . Had they understood?” (2.79). When the duchess muses about the seemingly sterile outcome, “If it weren’t for that! . . . ” it is clear that she understands no better. The marquise was not jealous of her daughter and did not see her as competition. Her only fear was that the girl would make her life difficult because Don Juan occupied her attentions. “Her instinct told her that they were taking a portion from the love for her mother” (2.73). Certainly the daughter gave every indication of detesting Don Juan, though the reader soon understands that the very same evidence could just as easily be cited as proof of a shy, young adolescent’s love. At thirteen, the girl only knew that Don Juan could not be interested in her, especially next to her beautiful mother, for she doubtless thought herself basically uninteresting, without a woman’s body, with nothing to offer. Then came the day that she thought herself pregnant by Don Juan, thus through the strength of her faith establishing him as a satanic god. When the last details were dragged from her,

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only the most naive would have laughed, which is, of course, what her mother eventually did on telling the story. “Mother, I had the misfortune of going to sit down near him in this armchair that he had left. Oh, Mama! It is as though I had fallen in the fire. I wanted to get up, I couldn’t . . . my heart failed me! And I felt . . . that’s it, Mama . . . that what was wrong with me was that I was pregnant” (2.78). Don Juan’s audience believes that the mother was foolish to tell the story (though it is worth noting that she does not do so until after her daughter’s death, when she can no longer be a rival), for such a powerful love might have tempted Don Juan to pursue the girl. After all, as the story’s epigraph puts it, “The devil’s best treat is innocence” (2.59). Michel Crouzet puts it even more clearly: “[T]he piety and innocence of the ‘little minx’ [“petite masque”] is in every way guaranteed, but she has also shown herself the most capable of love, moreover, the most expert in pleasure.”39 In this, he shares the duchess’s belief that Don Juan would have pursued and consummated her love. In fact, however, the temptation is quite different. The temptation is spiritual, like the greatest of temptations and sins, and Barbey’s works are distinct from those of other writers like Pétrus Borel, Monk Lewis, or Hoffmann, who regale the reader with horrible events by focusing not on the characters’ souls but rather on what they do. With Barbey, one always seeks the spiritual context, the hidden corners of characters, and the mysterious reality that exists behind the deeds and persons of the stories. Barbey may have been interested in evil deeds, but he was far more interested in the indescribable quality of evil. We are told early on that Don Juan is “a harsh spiritualist” (2.64) and that he feeds on the blood of souls (2.60). Despite his commitment to love, it is not the physical sensations that draw him. He is looking for something else, something superior to the body, something spiritual if not divine. For this reason, Barbey maintained in the proceedings against his volume, “This story is the most spiritual that I’ve written.”40 When, early in the story, Don Juan’s hostesses are referred to as “Les Amphitryonnes,” one might easily not notice that amphitryonne, with the meaning of hostess, should not be capitalized. The capital A that Barbey provided reminds us of the story of Amphitryon, the legendary king whose appearance Zeus donned to seduce his wife Alcmene. Once one remembers this divine seduction, however, another, far more well-known account comes to mind. Julia Przybos offers a capital insight into parallels between Barbey’s adolescent and the Virgin Mary, who according to tradition was also thirteen.41 The story Barbey alludes to is heard every Christmas by anyone like Barbey who attended mass regularly. The angel Gabriel was sent to Mary to explain what was about to happen to her: “Fear not, Mary; for thou has found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in

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thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. . . . Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered, and said unto her. The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Matt. 30–31, 34–35). And Mary conceived and bore a son.

The Heart of Evil It is essential to remember that Barbey’s point of departure for Les diaboliques is his militant Catholicism. In truth, as Jacques Petit says, “Outside of the Christian tradition, it makes no sense at all” (2.1324). Petit is discussing the story “A un dîner d’athées” [At an Atheist’s Dinner], but it is true of each of Les diaboliques. Don Juan has sensed and has apparently succumbed to the ultimate temptation. His sin is to see himself as God. This, of course, was the sin that was responsible for Satan’s expulsion from heaven: “Thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit” (Isaiah 14:15). Of course, where God is a creator, and in the Manichean world that Barbey mentions in the preface (2.1291), the devil is his negative—“Hell is the hollow part of heaven” (2.155)—one is not surprised that Don Juan’s seduction produces no fruit. Herod serves as an excellent example of God’s way of dealing with such rebellion: “Upon a set day Herod arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them. And the people gave a shout, ‘It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.’ And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost” (Acts 14: 21–23). God is, even more than the marquise, a jealous God; He will brook no competition. Instead of accepting the adulation of his twelve female disciples, instead of reveling in the euphoria of his imitation of God’s spiritual impregnation of the little girl, Don Juan should have refused it. He should have said, “I could not possibly impregnate the child as the Holy Spirit did.” His failure to do so brought him into condemnation. He reveled in his power over the girl, comparing it to that of God. In fact, Don Juan has had the traditional roles reversed. From hunter, he becomes prey; he succumbs to the temptation. Another, similar episode occurs in the last story of the cycle, “La vengeance d’une femme.” When the Duchess de SierraLeone was adored “like a Madonna in her golden niche” (2.250), when she

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allows Esteban to be “at my feet, before me, as though before the Virgin Mary” (2.251), the love of her life will shortly be murdered, his heart eaten by dogs, and the duchess committed to vengeance, thus to perdition (Mark 11: 25–26). There are several lessons to be learned from “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan.” The first is a response to the hordes of critics who have claimed with apparent impatience that the girl (who is not named, though I would wager that at some point Barbey called her Mary) is not diabolical, but rather innocent and pure, and that nothing happens. To the contrary, Barbey presented her as a diabolique because she serves as a means for Satan to drag others into the holocaust of Hell. Each of the heroines acts in precisely the same way. Just as the thirteen-year-old girl seduces Don Juan, so Alberte seduces Brassard in “Le Rideau cramoisi.” Hauteclaire de Stassin completely dominates Serlon in “Le Bonheur dans le crime.” Not only is the latter diabolically superior in the male sport of fencing, she poisons Mme de Savigny, thus encouraging Serlon, the countess, and Dr. Torty to act as accessories to murder. All three are then guilty both before God, for breaking one of the Ten Commandments, and before the civil law of capital crimes. “Le dessous de cartes d’une partie de whist” ends with three people, Madame the countess du Tremblay de Stassville, her daughter, Herminie, and Marmor de Karkoël in a series of murders, perhaps a suicide as well. Then the narrator is implicated because he covers up what facts he knows. Because of La Pudica, Mésnil commits fornication with the woman of one of his colleagues, then murder, and finally he desecrates the heart of a child that might be his son. In “La vengeance d’une femme,” Robert de Tessignies joins knowingly with the Duchess de Sierra-Leone in fornication, but unknowingly in adultery until he is in the midst of the act. Tressignies “had just surprised her at the moment when she was the most like a panther . . . distracted from him and lost in the absorbing contemplation of a bracelet she had on her arm and on which Tressignies suddenly made out the portrait of a man” (2.241). The man is her husband. We do not know in every case the punishment meted out to those ensnared by the diaboliques. For all Brassard’s courage in battle, he becomes an ineffective pretty boy, and Tressignies, who was once delightfully filled with joie de vivre, becomes “somber” (2.261). “From somber, he passed to suffering. His complexion turned leaden” (2.261). Don Juan is kept alive by order of God himself (as was the legendary Wandering Jew), perhaps as punishment for his many sins now that he is reduced to remembering former conquests rather than engaging in new ones. Elsewhere Barbey quotes Saint Theresa: “I die from not being able to die!” (2.250). Ménilgrand loses his zest for life, and like Brassard gives up his military career. We have

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no knowledge about Hauteclaire, Serlon, or Torty in “Le bonheur dans le crime,” or about Marmor de Karkoël. Nor do we know how the diaboliques Hauteclaire and La Pudica ended their adventures. The number of enigmas left after reading Les diaboliques has caused a certain amount of annoyance among Barbey’s critics. Andrew McKeon goes so far as to mention “[t]he lack of completion that marks the end of each of the Diaboliques.”42 Like many other scholars, he lists vexing questions left unanswered (105). They range from the general—“Where in all that is the diabolical”43 —to the particular: Why did Alberte seduce Brassard? What happened when Alberte’s parents found her mutilated body? Whose child was found in the planter? Who loved Marmor the most? Did he poison both mother and daughter? Did the mother poison the daughter, only to have him or her poison her in revenge? Or did the mother kill herself from despair? What is going on between Mme de Mascranny and her daughter? Why is the Countess de Damnaglia so affected? Who is the father of La Pudica’s child? Did the Duke de Sierra-Leone ever find out how he had been dishonored and thus how he had suffered symbolic death?44 There is nothing wrong with posing such questions. In fact, one can go further than other critics have. It seems worth noting, for example, that Mme de Stasseville gives every indication of gloating when she passes the ring that had been filled with poison to her companions so that they may inspect the stone. Given her ways with Karkoël—“she fired words at him that whistled and pierced”—readers are forced to ask with the narrator, “Why, if she loved Karkoel and if he loved her, did she hide her affection beneath the ridicule that she heaped on him from time to time, in the guise of turncoat, impious apostate jokes that degrade the adored idol . . . the greatest sacrileges in the matter of love” (2.153)? It is difficult to believe that she still loves him. Judging from the floral anthropophagism as she chews several stems of the perfumed reseda while staring at her lover “with a savage, idolatrous expression” (2.164, 168), she may be involved in vengeance. Did she kill her daughter’s infant in a fit of fury on learning that Karkoël had shifted his affections? Did Karkoël prepare the poison for the daughter’s use, only to have the truth come out in one of those long, debilitating sessions between mother and daughter, and the ring captured and used on the daughter? Or did Karkoël take revenge by dipping again into the small, black bottle with the poison? Given that the poison is deadly no matter how it is administered, even if inhaled (2.161), did the countess make a mistake in finishing off Herminie and accidentally poison herself as well? In fact, as with the questions posed by the Chevalier de Tharsis, “Where did this child come from . . . Whose was it? Was it dead of natural causes? Did someone kill it? If so, who killed it?” (2.169). The story does not provide

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clear answers to these questions with certainty, though I have attempted to solve several of the mysteries elsewhere.45

In beginning such an interrogatory, however, one enters into the twentyfirst-century activity of writing one’s own text, which gives some indication of the modernity of Barbey’s works. As several critics have pointed out, there are gaps in “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan,” as there are in each of the tales.46 Still, any answers we concoct to these enigmas are from our own creative hearth. The text offers no substantial insight. It seems more productive to wonder whether there are different types of questions that are raised by the text and whether some types have answers while others may not. Readers do not always know the outcomes or the psychological motivations of the diaboliques or of the audience; we are often not made privy to the conversations leading up to the horrendous conclusions. Despite Brassard’s concluding statement in “Le rideau cramoisi”—“[T]here is no afterwards”—we know that other important and related events probably followed the formal endings of the stories and we do not know what they were. We are left in the dark. And while it is true that the stories are related to each other by techniques of narrative retardation, litotes, ellipsis, and by their familiar, conversational style,47 that seems scarcely enough to justify putting the tales between the same covers. Finally, there is no obvious progression in the sequence of the tales, except for what Rogers calls a “mounting crescendo” in individual tales (Rogers 108). The question raised by the text and answered, however, is how each diabolique has led others into crime and sin. Of the theories that flicker in the reader’s mind only that of the diabolique as a tool produces a satisfying thematic focus for each of the stories. With that in mind, it becomes a simple matter to point to other elements that strengthen the analogical structuring that gives the volume such cohesion. Sequences of themes and images shift in position and emphasis in various stories but by their repetition strengthen the whole. The breezy worldliness of the narrator remains constant, and each of the stories turns on a triangular relationship. Parents, diabolique, lover in “Le rideau cramoisi”; mother, diabolique, lover in “Don Juan”; wife, diabolique, lover in “Le bonheur dans le crime”; daughter/infant, diabolique, lover in “Le dessous de cartes”; infant, diabolique, lovers in “A un dîner d’athées”; and husband, diabolique, lovers in “La vengeance d’une femme.” Sex is essential to each. In the first four stories, a woman dies. Children die in half of them. Poison is used in two of the stories.

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In two, a lover involved with the mother becomes involved with the daughter. There are two profaned hearts. In both the first and last of the tales, dishonor stands as the major theme. And so on. The list can easily be extended. If one factors in Barbey’s orientation toward his church and his faith, most of the problems with Les diaboliques fall away, and we are left with a magnificently unified volume of stories. Unlike the traditional novel, each story of a cycle is, to a large degree, self-sufficient and self-contained, because its action is a complete unity. No part of the traditional novel, however, is a truly discrete, self-contained unit, but an integral part of some larger action. To say that Les diaboliques is unified does not imply that it is sequential, or coherent, however. Novels encourage readers to follow the sequence, as do films (though in the latter case, spectators who go to the theater must rely on their memory to reinvestigate a sequence or to turn back to previous images or scenes). With books, it is only a matter of turning pages, and readers do it all the time, perhaps most commonly to read the conclusion early in the experience of the text, but the reader is encouraged to accept the textual order of events and words. To the contrary, short story cycles facilitate removing parts to be read in isolation or in a different order. I think there is no doubt that both L’exil et le royaume and Les diaboliques have been organized in the best way to enhance the power and comprehension of the thematic development and that they should preferably be read from beginning to end. To the attentive reader, the experience of reading Camus’ cycle can be likened to that of that of reading a novel. Such is not the case with Barbey’s Les diaboliques, where the progression is especially and significantly an increasing intensification of evil as each treatment of a diabolique repeats and thus intensifies the infernal experience. Still, because it so clearly lacks continuity of plot and character, it is no more a novel than L’exil et le royaume. It remains firmly attached to the category of short story cycles. Otherwise, although each of the stories could be removed from either Camus’ or Barbey’s cycles, the result would be a diminution of the intensity of the whole. Considered from a different angle, however, both cycles convey a sense of completion that would make additions superfluous, indeed, a disturbing imbalance. Novelists of recent vintage have been especially vehement in denying that plot has a dominant role in novels and have turned their attention instead to the development, or mere repetition, of motifs and themes. The result has not infrequently been to call the novel into question once again. When Forrest L. Ingram investigates the devices authors exploit to unify their prose fiction in his fine study of short story cycles, he distinguishes between the two in the following fashion:

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The unity of a short story cycle, then, is the unity of discrete pieces juxtaposed in such an order that the significances of each story deepen and expand as the reader moves from story to story, in a particular order. The full significance of the cycle is realized only after the final story has been read. . . . Each story of a cycle is, to some degree, self-sufficient, self-contained, because its action is a complete unity.48

It is a matter of degree. While one may safely say that no part of the traditional novel is a truly discrete, self-contained unit, but rather an integral part of some larger image or action, professors regularly separate Combray from Un amour de Swann in survey courses of the French novel. The instructors may then accept the task of making Combray meaningful, when, in fact, separated from the inclusive À la recherche du temps perdu it makes little sense. For Un amour de Swann, the matter is far more serious. In context, as a part of Proust’s masterpiece, this portion is incalculably brilliant, setting up the rest of what follows. Alone, it is no more satisfying than hundreds of other nineteenth-century novels. The parts of novels resist isolation. Those of short story cycles come close to encouraging it. But, to repeat, it is a matter of degree. All one may state with any assurance is that the stories of a short story cycle seem relatively more discrete than the chapters of a novel. And just as the parts of novels are in general more dependent on the whole than stories in cycles, so the collective whole of novels is less capable of standing without all of its constituent parts. No reader comes to a literary creation with a blank mind. He or she comes with information, attitudes and a manner or method of reading. Without a reasonably correct understanding of what genre a text belongs to, and thus with a sense of the way it works and what one should expect, it is uncommonly easy to pass over significant passages, to misinterpret, and to distort the entire thrust. “To read a text as literature is not to make one’s mind a tabula rasa and approach it without preconceptions; one must bring to it an implicit understanding of the operations of literary discourse which tells one what to look for,” as Jonathan Culler writes.49 The novel consists of a number of conventions that govern how it is written and, more important, I think, how it is read. Adequate understanding of particular works of literature depends on insightful, inquisitive reading and on adequate preconceptions.

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MAKING SHORT LONG

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Remaking the Novel

Natural Variation To define the novel as a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary is by no means to set the genre in concrete, for the novel, though not living, is a changing form and cannot be immobilized. There are many ways in which exemplars of the genre can vary their constituent parts within its encompassing form, without changing its generic essence. Playing on the Darwinian “natural selection,” one might say that it changes through “natural variation.” The novel is not transmuted into a new species when one or the other of its latent but essential inherent traits is changed or emphasized, though it may seem new. Just as Molière pushed several of his comedies to the edge of tragedy, without making a muddle, so novels frequently play on the conventions of essays, poetry, theater, and, indeed, the short story. Considerable variance is possible even when novelists limit their creativity to concentrated work on a sequence of plot and character—what Aristotle called narration. It is not unusual for novelists to invent a device or attribute or arrangement that, for a while, makes their work look very different from other novels. One might remember the epistolary novel that was so popular in the eighteenth century. I also think of the experimental efforts of Nouveaux Romanciers and Oulipo that were so startling from the 1950s through the 1970s and yet seem so tame today. Narrative armatures that recount the sequences of birth to death or crisis to resolution, childhood to maturity, mystery to revelation, rags to riches, solitude to love, departure to arrival, or that, in one way or another, take a problem to resolution are probably the most common arrangements, but in numerous cases the order of the plot could easily be radically changed. Father Goriot could have been healed during a period when young Rastignac applied himself and became a successful lawyer. Francis Macomber could have become old and senile, while

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INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

the immoral Michel could have turned into a goal-oriented world-beater. Although possible plots are few in number, according to Vladimir Propp and Claude Bremond, those basic structures can be ordered causally or temporally or otherwise, making use of different details to create something that seems quite alien to novels arranged in other fashions. As the Russian Formalists pointed out, plots need not be arranged with the cause placed first and the effect at the end. The French New Novelists demonstrated conclusively that many other arrangements are possible. For a work to be considered a masterpiece, it must appear well written, or effectively arranged, in conformity with whatever the period believes to signal expert writing, but there is another requirement: outstanding works of art must deal with ideas that seem significant in a way that seems new. Novelty is important, especially with the novel. “Roses are red,/Violets are blue,/Sugar is sweet,/And so are you” may be a poem; it may even be art, but it fails because it is formally and aesthetically impoverished. No widely read “informant” would clamor for the public to recognize that it is great art. Likewise, in the midst of activity by characters sufficiently complex to draw and hold our attention, without the work seeming preachy, at least by today’s standards, it must turn around important matters. Writers often raise the intellectual level of their works by the expedient of exploiting the potential of another level of meaning. The colors in the descriptions of À la recherche du temps perdu (1913–27) work well as simple, descriptive details, for example, but Proust, by repeating them in significant contexts, makes them take on symbolic import. Similarly, the actions of the characters in Anthony Burgess’s Clockwork Orange (1962) parallel the cruelty of mature adults and seem even more appallingly evil against our deepseated Rousseauistic belief that children are innocent. And, likewise, the empty lives recounted in Julio Cortázar’s Rayuela (1963) reflect those of many people; and the characters in Balzac’s Gobseck (1835) seem typical of the July Monarchy, if not of all time, and so on. In every case, the basic story must attract and keep readers, but the value of the book resides in the symbolic, philosophical, sociological, historical, and, in the end, aesthetic level of meaning that expert readers recognize. And it must be presented in a way that seems innovative and interesting, even gripping. It is, of course, not enough for a writer like Flaubert to want his story to carry the burden of more or deeper meaning than can be perceived in the simple plotline of adultery in Madame Bovary. Somehow, Flaubert had to go beyond stylistic excellence and realistic portrayal and make the reader understand that he had the middle class in his sights. Indeed, he was forced to make the beggar so striking that the abhorrent mendicant’s repeated appearances assume and communicate his importance and his significance to the novel as a whole.1 The personification of the mine in Zola’s Germinal

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and the repeated allusions to its character as an anthropophagic monster, like the village fiend, Jeanlin, who in the same novel murders the soldier and tortures the innocent rabbit, Pologne, point to a full range of horror. The brutal death of the rabbit stirs the terrorist Souvarine to action, and the reader remembers how “civilized” Europe had sliced and diced Poland. Étienne (Stephen) goes off at the end as an apostle bearing an anti-bourgeois gospel of death and destruction.2 In every case, the context of particular episodes communicates the possibility of a particular, conceptual meaning that gains substance with the repetition of the signifying element(s) in the subsequent story. Joris-Karl Huysmans’s À rebours [Backwards (or) Against the Grain] brilliantly illuminates “decadence.” Beyond the widespread agreement on the subject matter, however, the work remains an enigma. Both praised and condemned by critics, scholars, and writers from the time of its original publication in 1884, it is laden with problems of interpretation. Still, it continues to be an important historical example of a “decadent” text. Almost without exception, scholarly considerations of decadence refer to the novel, however briefly. The main character, des Esseintes, has been immortalized as a type, like Arnolphe, Candide, René, and Charlus, whose meaningful lives extend beyond the pages of their original creations. This is an especially astonishing fact since, according to Michael Issacharoff, the book sold very few copies.3 Shortly after its publication, Émile Zola expressed what has become the prevalent critical reservation. The master of Médan points to what he calls À rebours’s “confusion.”4 The word has reverberated through the comments of those who have pronounced on the book and its flawed quality, echoes that have continued even to recent years. Without quoting all those who insist on the lack of structure of À rebours, one might mention a few examples: William York Tindall feels the problem so acutely that he suggests À rebours’s “lack of form” may mean that it is not really a novel.5 H. Brunner and J. L. de Coninck refer to the chapters on flowers and precious stones as “accessories” that are not well integrated into the whole.6 Marc Fumaroli simply mentions that it is totally without plot.7 Charles Bernheimer concludes unequivocally that the order of the chapters could be “changed without appreciably affecting the story.”8 Ruth Plaut Weinreb goes further: “Indeed, it is evident that no unified pattern emerges and no development occurs in the analyses of aesthetic problems and experiments. And, it is a matter of indifference which des Esseintes does first: bejewel a tortoise, create his mouth-organ of liquors, collect monstrous flowers or create a landscape of scents,” though she admits that “the hero’s decline develops within ordinary time-space limits in which the contingency of events is respected.”9 David Mickelsen cites Weinreb repeatedly in order to insist on the novel’s

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REMAKING THE NOVEL

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

“lack of sequence” and poorly filled-out main character, further confused by asyndeton in which “the connections between episodes are perfunctory or entirely ignored.”10 Not everyone would agree. Laurence M. Porter’s psychological reading, for example, infers a progression in the midst of a circular movement (“Psychodynamics” 51–65). Of course, Huysmans’s very own description of the work as “bottles arranged in the compartment of À rebours” or “some specialties arranged in the display windows of À rebours,” while insisting on the importance of the frame and without denying a certain order, has not encouraged readers to find a high level of coherence, unless they remember that twenty years separated the creation from the author’s subsequent judgment.11 All the more reason to recall Valéry’s warning: “When the work has appeared the author’s interpretation has no more value than anyone else’s.”12 What is astonishing in the face of general, if not monolithic, agreement about À rebours’s “confusion” is the number and quality of Huysmans’s admirers that Cevasco considers at length: Arthur Symons, Oscar Wilde, Paul Valéry, Stéphane Mallarmé, not to mention William Butler Yeats and George Moore,13 though Valéry’s reaction is perhaps the most provocative. He wrote, for example, to Pierre Louÿs, who did not share his enthusiasm: “I just . . . reread À rebours for the fifth time, and I think of nothing but to read it again. Don’t disdain me too much, but it is my book.”14 In a similar vein, Valéry wrote late in 1889 to Albert Dugrip: “I am still rereading À rebours ; it is my Bible and my bedtime reading. Nothing better has been written in the last twenty years.”15 Some time later, he summarizes: Without suspecting as much, Huysmans prepared the transmutation into symbolism, the fatal consequence of style pushed to the extreme, of a sort of systematic overemphasis on expression. When one obstinately tries to render the real, one unavoidably abuses the values and contrasts of words. Ultra-picturesque rhetoric, stronger and stronger or more and more distant epithets, increasingly dense and exact images, all of which finally transform insanely pursued ‘truth’ and substitutes poetic excitement for it. . . . I mean that the brilliance and the very play of language become the principal interest of the work, at the expense of the things represented. It isn’t very far from this manner of writing to the one that Mallarmé conceived.16

While one could cite other devotees, it seems appropriate to wonder whether Valéry, or indeed Mallarmé, Wilde, Yeats, and Moore, perceived something that less enthusiastic readers have not grasped. For most critics, the problem seems to be that the novel lacks a storyline. And as was clear from the chapter on short story cycles, it is essential that something more than theme or imagery tie the various parts together.

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It may be a particular setting that evolves; it may be a character that develops or is filled in and rounded out; it may indeed be a narrative armature, which is surely the most common of the ligatures that unify novels. However fascinating a character who refuses the standards of society in a kaleidoscope of chapters, readers still find it disturbing if there is no discernable plot in the tangle of luxuriant description. Gisèle Séginger accepts the common view by suggesting that des Esseintes exists in a novel that has neither narration nor a commanding syntagm.17 And while I disagree when she suggests that the main character does not rise out of a strong narration, I agree that “the signified and not the signifying remains dominant” (Séginger, “Lévitation du sens” 480). I would, moreover, take her insight one step further and invert the signified; that is, I would understand what des Esseintes sees and does as an indication of his inner life.

The Intaglio One of Huysmans’s most important tactics is what might be called “negative narration,” using the image-oriented vocabulary of photography and of sculpture. As has been suggested in relation to En rade (1887), Huysmans creates a mold, leaving the reader to make the casting.18 The surface “projection” of the text makes little or no sense until the negative is held up to the light and its reverse image revealed, thus coalescing into meaning. When the apparent fragments seem disconnected in À rebours and En rade and, thus, perhaps senseless, readers should be encouraged to suspect that one might be confronted by an intaglio, a negative surface that must be filled and cast off in order to reveal the true figure at the center of the narration. It seems appropriate to remember the peculiar hollows archaeologists found in and around Pompeii. The empty spaces only made sense when someone thought to fill the hollows with plaster of Paris and then remove the shell of hardened lava. The forms of dogs and people writhing in the agony of death by burns were then revealed. What we read in the various chapters—from house to turtle, to paintings and literature—represents what is happening as des Esseintes’s body and conscious and unconscious mind (the text calls the latter his soul) slowly degenerate. In the process, as William Berg argues, the book creates des Esseintes’s character.19 The “story” unfolds by means of knowing use of conventional symbols in pulsations, building repeatedly from experience to exhilaration to exhaustion, before the personage pulls back briefly, but then lurches forward toward his complete collapse and the danger of expiration. As each of des Esseintes’s senses is brought to excruciating intensity, it is carried in the general movement of physical, mental, and spiritual destruction. While there is little of

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REMAKING THE NOVEL

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

the physical “action” that one expects in a narration, when read appropriately, there is undoubted progression. In short, without the necessary background in the symbology that was so prevalent as the symbolists came to the fore at the end of the nineteenth century, the novel, indeed, seems to have no plot. With the necessary knowledge, however, there is definite progression and, indeed, a narrative. Still, des Esseintes’s disintegration is only one of the novel’s major thrusts. As Huysmans’s hero pursues his determined attempt to contravene and remake nature, regularly undermined by the text (Berg 161), the author has his own agenda, which I take to be the desire to change the basic form, if not the essence, of the novel that he viewed as “worn out by repetitions, without interest, moribund” (“Préface,” À rebours 62). This kind of “negative” or “intaglio” narration was picked up again, perhaps unknowingly, and exploited in such Nouveaux Romans as, for example, Robbe-Grillet’s La jalousie (1957). In addition, Séginger suggests that des Esseintes’s “perception has become an art of metaphoric writing.” She goes on to argue that the novel’s metaphors function to resolve the apparent antitheses in oxymora.20 Other critics make the very helpful suggestion that the novel is systematically organized analogically, in one case around the theme of dream and dreaming and, in another, on the theme of religion.21 This is, of course, the implicit recognition of the influence of symbolism. As Valéry said, “Symbolism (ours -) is simply the use, the clever use of the plurality of a word’s meanings and associations” (Cahiers 8.215–16). À rebours’s major significance is communicated through the connotations of language or, more precisely, through Huysmans’s very conscious use of traditional symbols—pace his denials in the “Préface” to À rebours. The symbolic referents then create an analogical framework or, better, an analogical armature. Readers have continued to seek a sequence of episodes that carries the main character from beginning to end. In failing to perceive the way Huysmans created plot and the way he used it, his major innovation has been little understood. While Proust laid such failure of perception at the door of lazy readers, like Swann and Charlus, the lack of success of those who have come to À rebours can to some degree be traced to the author himself. For whatever reason, in 1903, twenty years after writing À rebours and four years before his death of a long, painful bout with cancer of the mouth, he proclaimed that he neither knew nor used symbols in À rebours. Critics have in general accepted this denial. As a result, the rigorous framework of the novel has largely escaped them. How can Huysmans’s confusing and, I think, erroneous statements be understood? Perhaps the cultural connotations of language had become so much a part of Huysmans’s understanding that he only recognized the most esoteric

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meanings as “symbolic.” Perhaps he had simply forgotten the chronology and depth of his education in black magic, cabbalism, and alchemy, not to mention what he learned from his symbolist acquaintances gathering at Mallarmé’s home on the rue de Rome. Perhaps, compared with his later purposeful pursuit of the application of symbolic language and logic, he dismissed his earlier À rebours as the shallow understanding common to cultured aesthetes of his period. Perhaps, he was simply sick, exhausted, and doubtful about the value of his work.

Symbolism Certainly, by the time of En rade, Huysmans’s knowledge of traditional symbols can no longer be questioned, and his knowledge at the time of À rebours is equally quite certain. The explicit, prefatory denial of having exploited the significance of flowers, for example, is simply erroneous. It is certainly not an accident that the lotus mentioned in the text made des Esseintes wonder whether it had “this phallic significance that the primordial cults of India lent to it,” or “did it announce to old Herod an oblation of virginity, an exchange of blood, a solicited, imperfect wound offered under the express condition of murder, or did it represent the allegory of fecundity, the Hindu myth of life, an existence held between a woman’s fingers, ripped, pressed by the palpitating hands of a man invaded by insanity, led astray by a crisis of the flesh?” (À rebours 126–27). Rose Fortassier has been sensitive to this possibility and points out that the “florescence” and “scent” of Jean Floressas des Esseintes is highly suggestive, as well (Fortassier 31, 306n2). Nor is it likely that À rebours’s “terrible” sixth chapter on sadism was written “without preconceived intentions,” as the author claims (“Préface,” À rebours 58), referring to the sixth biblical commandment against lust. While there is no doubt that many in this period of symbolists like Gustave Moreau might have accumulated information on the lotus, few would share Huysmans’s knowledge revealed in the novel that “the pumpkin [is] a symbol of fecundity” (À rebours 108). Such details suggest that the author’s prefatory remarks, twenty years after the fact, are at odds with what appears in the text. It is likely that Huysmans was at home with various symbolic traditions at the time of À rebours’s composition, for the text mentions the Cabbala, Jacob Sprenger’s Malleus maleficarum, the Bible, Migne’s Patrologies, and a florilegium of others, including contemporary symbolist poets and painters. The question is, of course, not whether he understood traditional symbols, but whether he made significant use of them to build consistent patterns of meaning within his novel. Enthusiastic readers like Stéphan

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Mallarmé, Paul Valéry, Arthur Symons, Oscar Wilde, all of whom were well versed in symbolism, apparently saw something that recent critics have for the most part missed. While I cannot cite Huysmans’s sources with any exactitude—possibilities are legion—I am able to draw attention to the symbolic connotations traditionally associated with particular objects and show how they are appropriate to the context where the objects appear.22 Context is the supremely important factor. When the resultant interpretation is consistent, not just in the individual passage, but with the remainder of the text, I can have confidence in the reading. In this instance, by opening the explication to traditional symbols, À rebours casts important light on Huysmans’s attempts to reform the novel. Psychological critics have not missed the importance of À rebours’s “Notice,” where readers are introduced to des Esseinte’s brutish, aristocratic ancestors, who after persistent incest drained the family of vigor.23 As an anemic, frail child, des Esseintes was dispatched to the Jesuits to receive a classical education, though he was seemingly unable to progress beyond Latin to Greek. He remembers his normally absent father and his pale, silent mother dying of apparent exhaustion. With the death of his father of an unspecified illness, des Esseintes reached his seventeenth year. On coming of age, he left the Jesuits and devoted himself to the unfocused life of a wealthy man about town. Indifferent to his relatives and not very interested in his young friends, indeed eventually satiated with debauchery, he soon settled into a life of misanthropy. He began to dream of a retreat, a Thebaid, a solitary haven from the unceasing flood of human stupidity (À rebours 72). Everything was available to the wealthy, young duke, though nothing attracted him. He was bored despite his extravagant life. After a series of increasingly deviant sexual encounters, he had become impotent, and, horrified by the little that remained of his fortune, he seriously began to prepare to withdraw. Getting rid of all encumbrances, he disappeared from Paris, though, as we know, he only went as far as Fontenay-aux-Roses.

The House The formal novel begins with a description of the house that des Esseintes has chosen and refurbished for his attempt to extract himself from the natural world and contravene nature. Houses symbolize the physical and psychological entity of an individual, the outside indicating the body’s appearance and the inside the person’s psyche.24 The fact that Huysmans took advantage of this potential becomes clearer and clearer through the course of the novel. The house is a feminine symbol of refuge, which encourages the critic Robert Ziegler to suggest that des Esseintes is searching for his

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mother, with whom he would like to assuage his most basic needs.25 It is also worth mentioning that the levels of a house traditionally stand for the levels of consciousness. In À rebours there is no mention of the basement, perhaps because of des Esseintes’s impotence, since the lower level would normally represent a person’s natural, libidinal forces. There are only two floors, and des Esseintes carefully arranges for the servants to live and work above his head on the top level, in the area that usually represents the reasoning, conscious mind of man, if not a controlling divinity. He has, thus, prepared for his adventure by thoroughly programming his servants to take care of his physical needs, thus freeing him to subordinate his mind and body to his unconscious. Breakfast will be at five in the evening, dinner at eleven, and a light meal just before he retires at five in the morning. He will live at night (78), the time of darkness, exploring dreams, and plumbing the unconscious. Although the servants are instructed to stay out of sight and hearing, he has the woman dress like a béguine, so that if he should see her shadow, he will have the impression of being in a convent. After all, he views this as a “spiritual” quest, though of a special kind. In addition to the quiet Belgian towns where Beguins were seen in the author’s time, it is at least possible that he had in mind the late thirteenth-early fourteenthcentury heretical offshoot of the Franciscan order known as the Béguins of southern France, also known as the “spiritual Franciscans.” As des Esseintes moves into his haven, one of his first tasks is to choose the colors that would appropriately create a comfortable retreat for his own personal pleasure (À rebours 78). What Jung calls “introversion,” or turning toward one’s self rather than toward others, has begun. Shortly, there is no doubt of des Esseintes’s command of the language of colors (which is also that of Huysmans). After holding a wake dominated by black for his virility, the sensual pink that had enhanced numerous pleasures in his previous boudoir has become inappropriate. He experiments with the way candlelight enhances various colors. As Angela Nuccitelli points out, he is seeking equilibrium.26 “To all [colors], he preferred orange . . . a harmony . . . between sensual nature [that is, red] and the color [yellow] that his eyes saw in a more special and keener way” (À rebours 79). He also chooses blue to caress “[t]hose who dream of the ideal” (79). Unfortunately for the eyes of weakened, highly nervous people, the passionate red of the color orange may gain dominance (80), a disequilibrium that will eventually cause him anguish. For the moment, however, the colors help situate des Esseintes at the outset of a “voyage,” a last desperate attempt to find peace. Cirlot quotes a passage from Abraham the Jew that highlights des Esseintes’s situation: “A man and a woman coloured orange and seen against the background of a field coloured sky blue signifies that they must not place their hopes in this world, for orange denotes desperation and the

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blue background is a sign of hope in heaven” (54). In a place of honor in des Esseintes’s orange and blue study, he has situated his tripartite church canon holding three Baudelaire poems. It is only one of a number of images that are to be found en abyme in À rebours. The poems, like the colors, emphasize desperation. On the left, Baudelaire uses a sonnet in alexandrines to consider both the ravages of his youth and of time, the enemy that consumes his life. The poet wonders whether “L’ennemi” will still allow the new, dreamed-of flowers to find the essential, mystical food in the washed-out soil of his garden. On the right, there is a decasyllabic sonnet, “La mort des amants” [The Death of Lovers], where lovers flame like two vast torches to produce a unique flash before fading away, leaving the poet nonetheless with the hope of renewal. And in the center, Baudelaire’s prose poem recognizes life as a hospital where every sick person is possessed with the wish to change beds, whether to Lisbon or Holland, or Batavia, or Finland, and he encourages himself to go to the very edge of death, bathing in shadows and amused by the occasional, infernal spray of northern lights. Like Baudelaire, des Esseintes has tried everything else, and now his soul explodes with the desire to go “Anywhere Out of the World.”27 The dining room is fitted out like the cabin of a ship. Though the window behind one porthole has been blocked, the other lets in light through an aquarium filled with mechanical fish that change colors depending on reflections from the samovar’s embers and dyes added to the water. Stimulated by engravings of steamers, the odor of tar, navigational tools, and Baudelaire’s beautifully bound and printed translation of Poe’s strange tale of the adventurer Arthur Gordon Pym’s disappearance, perhaps in the center of the earth, des Esseintes’s imagination can take him off on marvelous voyages. As Bachelard understood, “[t]his adventure which, in appearance, unfolds on two oceans, is in reality an adventure of the unconscious which moves in the night of the soul.”28 Des Esseintes believes he is in control of his voyage: “It is all a matter of knowing how to go about it, of knowing how to concentrate one’s mind, of knowing how to distance oneself sufficiently to bring on hallucination and to be able to substitute the dream of reality for reality itself ” (À rebours 89). He glories in the control he has gained over his imagination. Although readers can scarcely fail to notice À rebours’s insistence on des Esseintes’s withdrawal from society, other themes are more subtle. Perhaps only after finishing a first reading and recognizing that the hero has abused taste, sight, smell, and hearing does one wonder about the dearth of attention paid to a fifth sense, that of touch. Recalling Condillac’s Traité des sensations (1754) provides a cultural backdrop and makes À rebours more understandable. Condillac, a philosophe of importance who

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wrote a number of highly regarded, primarily Lockean essays, was the acknowledged head of the sensualist school and had the stature to provide Huysmans with a foil to set off des Esseintes’s decline.29 The philosophe imagines a statue for his consideration of perception, to which he progressively adds the senses of touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing, in order to discuss the way sensory experience teaches human beings to pay attention, to recognize, to remember, to compare, to judge, and to imagine. For Condillac, touch is connected intimately with movement; it is the sense that teaches (Traité 273, 313), and it governs the four other functions of perception (311). The philosophe insists on the significance of the tactile sense, for it directly encourages movement, thus allowing the statue to learn of what philosophers call “exteriority” (175–94). The statue “will discover, following its own movements, that it has a body and that there are others like it out there” (Condillac 255). When limited to one sense, the statue is for the most part internally oriented. The addition of another sense allows more sophisticated differentiation. The philosophe explains at some length that a new sensation added to tactility brings “the habit . . . of comparing and judging” (Condillac 258). With two senses and the possibility of comparison, the statue gains rudimentary judgment, memory, and even imagination.

Sensory Abuse The situation in À rebours is the opposite, for the senses are being put one by one under intense pressure through isolation and magnification of stimulus. Although all of des Esseintes’s sensory functions seem to work satisfactorily at the outset of the book, his move to Fontenay-aux-Roses is but the commencement of his withdrawal from the world and from reality. Then he suppresses movement and touch: “movement seemed . . . useless to him,” since he thought imagination easily able to substitute for the vulgar reality of facts (88). With minor, brief exceptions when he can no longer take the pressure and escapes for a moment, des Esseintes subsequently eliminates exteriority, turning increasingly to the world within himself. He is then ready to begin his voyage in reverse, and the reader is introduced to des Esseintes’s dining room. Outfitted like the cabin of a boat, everything is arranged to stimulate his senses and his imagination. Readers may recall that there are two archetypal boats: there is the one that is under a captain’s control and directed, but there is also its converse, das Narrenschiff, that drifts aimlessly, that is limited and confined to itself, in short, that floats foolishly without direction (Cirlot 280–82). Bachelard makes it clear that all boats have a strong connection with death and, when represented

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in darkness, with the subconscious (Eau 97–109). Having begun with the converse of Condillac’s touch/movement by isolating himself, des Esseintes proceeds systematically to the remaining senses. The result, of course, will be quite the contrary of his expectations, and his senses will shortly react violently. Once the statue has received the basic sensation of touch (and related movement), Condillac appears indifferent to the order of the addition of the other senses. He organizes them variously in successive discussions (175–94, 224, 240–51, 310, 311). Although beginning with the same, tactile sensation, des Esseintes, who wishes to suppress not only movement but also reason, judgment, and reflection, will subject each of the four senses to isolation and intensification through frenetic pursuit of excess. He arranges his sensory experiences from the least to the most common. As a result, his body will first begin to fail, followed by his mind and his spirit (âme). The description of des Esseintes’s house having been completed, the narration turns to the Thebaid’s study, which serves as a transition, for des Esseintes now begins his program. I shall follow des Esseintes’s progress step by step, since such a chronological presentation allows me to argue that À rebours is a sequential novel, organized chronologically and causally. On one level, the character merely pursues a personal interest, and while not everyone would or could review the Latin decadence with the same, rather eccentric orientation, in itself the activity does not yet prove anything. After establishing a base in what he considers Rome’s generally uninteresting “great century,” he flips through Virgil, Catullus, Ovid, Horace, Cicero showing little interest, but doling out judgments and insults before turning to the Latin decadence. There he delights in Lucan and Petronius, and he discerns strange comparisons and curious analogies in the vices of a decrepit civilization (101). There is, however, a second story. As des Esseintes revels in the new ideas and words, unusual constructions, unknown verbs, convoluted adjectives, rare, abstract words, he enjoys the progressive “deliquescence” of the language until it is completely rotten: “[I]t hung, losing its members, spilling its pus, scarcely keeping even a few firm parts in the total corruption of its body” (105–06). His interest is unquestionably in the putrification taking place “in the old carcass of the Latin language” (107). Of course, the decay of language is directly related to inherent social decadence. Although des Esseintes’s senses still seem to be functioning normally, the review of Latin literature foreshadows his own decline, which will follow the same slope. The pet turtle offers another, more focused prefiguration than that offered by the Latin decadence. It is a mise en abyme of des Esseintes’s fate. Traditionally, the deliberate, tumescent, humble tortoise symbolizes

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involuted movement,30 the prima materia of alchemy (Fortassier 13) and basic material for art. It is matter and in no sense transcendent. Perhaps this explains why des Esseintes is encouraged to elevate the elemental turtle and use it to enhance his study. He has the creature gilded. Gold is related to the sun, according to Dom Pernety, and according to Jung, alchemists believed it “signifies intellect, the principal ‘informator’ [formative agent].”31 Des Esseintes’s satisfaction lasts but a short time, however, and he decides to have the shell incrusted with precious stones configured like flowers. Without getting into the specific symbolism of individual stones, the context of the bejeweled turtle makes it possible that the author settled on gems because jewels are like fish in that they symbolize the unknown riches of the unconscious, “spiritual truths [and] . . . superior knowledge.”32 In an obvious attempt to control his unconscious, des Esseintes has placed mechanical fish in his aquarium. The character will exploit ephemeral flowers in later experiments. Unable to support its unnatural exaltation, the fundamental tortoise dies (À rebours 122), and readers may justifiably suspect that des Esseintes will likewise not be able to bear the extreme emphasis that he is placing on his mind and soul. Huysmans’s hero then turns to the “mouth organ [orgue-à-bouche]” and the sense of taste. He is still at peace: “He felt perfectly happy” (À rebours 117), but barriers between the senses are breaking down, and as he touches the buttons of his “mouth organ” and tastes the liqueurs, he experiences synesthesia. His jaded senses seeking to experience ever greater stimulation are leading to physical exhaustion and immobility on the verge of extinction. “[E]ach liqueur corresponded, according to him, as taste to the sound of an instrument” (118). As Condillac indicates, taste and touch are connected to and indeed enhance memory; they also encourage the statue to make an effort to remember. Des Esseintes no longer needs to make any particular effort of recollection, however; he barely has the strength to control the memories of his past. The similar scents of Irish whiskey and phenol recall his loss of a tooth. The taste “made his mouth stink” (120). Given that teeth are symbolic weapons, to lose a tooth is to lose one’s aggressive force, youth, and ability to defend oneself. Losing a tooth signifies frustration, castration, collapse. It is the loss of vital energy.33 Des Esseintes physically struggles to his feet to break the horrible charm of the vision (À rebours 122), only to discover the death of the turtle, with its implications about des Esseintes’s own somatic being. By this time, the decadent is virtually incapacitated as well. Earlier he had congratulated himself on his ability to focus and thus stimulate hallucinations that would replace reality with dream (À rebours 89–90). Now, no longer able to concentrate his mind, he retains little control. “ ‘Phew!’ he said, saddened by the assault of these memories” (À rebours 122).

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Now that taste is unpleasantly out of control, he seeks stimulation through his eyes: “He had wanted, for the gratification of his mind and the joy of his eyes, a few suggestive works throwing him into an unknown world . . . shaking his nervous system by erudite hysteria, complicated nightmares, indifferent and atrocious visions” (À rebours 123). “[A] subtle, exquisite painting, bathing in an ancient dream, in the corruption of antiquity” (À rebours 123) would be perfect. He takes a tour through his house, starting with Gustave Moreau’s two paintings of Salome and the decollation that leave the dancer “accessible only to minds made unsound, sharpened, as though made visionaries by neurosis” (125). Then he passes by Jan Luyken’s “works full of abominable imaginations, stinking of burned meat, filled with cries of horror and anathema, giving the suffocated . . . des Esseintes goose bumps” (131), Bresdin’s demons in a valley of bones (132–33), Odilon Redon’s portraits of insane primitives (133), and, for the decadent’s personal delectation while lying comfortably in his bed, a sinister, tormented El Greco Christ (134). Having rejected the type of sensual alcove suitable for his comparatively virile, former life, he has created “a place of solitude and rest . . . a sort of oratory” (134–35). For his current pleasures, the bedroom has been fashioned into a luxurious, monastic cell “which had the air of truth and was . . . not” (135). The floor is red, as though suggesting his domination over passion and his former physicality, and the purplish red woodwork signifies nostalgia and memory. The walls are saffron (an orangey yellow), as is appropriate for this desperate man committed to intellectualizing every aspect of his life. Yellow, with the already mentioned emphasis on the mind, may when mixed with red symbolize repressed sexuality and intellectual anguish and desperation.34 The ceiling is white, which symbolizes what the hero erroneously thought of as the unlimited potential of his solitary adventure (Jung, Mysterium 132, 229, 287; Alchemy 220–21). Other rooms are also interesting and revealing. The entrance connecting with outside reality, for example, is painted with the red of blood, passion, and physical life (Teillard 58). Later, when his illness approaches the critical stage, and he is physically incapacitated, he feels compelled to avoid it. Hallucinations Almost incapable of movement, he toasts his feet on the andirons. While enjoying the tactile sensation of heat, “he started dreaming deliciously, catapulted . . . by the recollection of a name which moreover arose without any motive in his memory” (À rebours 139). This recollection is rather pleasant, for it brings back his success in encouraging his friend d’Aigurande to arrange his life so as to destroy his marriage. But then “he took off at

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full velocity in his dreams” (140). The memory of Auguste Langlois, whom he attempted to debauch and turn into a murderer, is less pleasant since his sadistic attempt failed. Once again, to stop the “melancholy memory” (147), he manages to engage his physical body and gets up, walking around the room several times (145). Remembering Auguste Langlois represents a turning point. Des Esseintes’s visual senses are so irritated that he can no longer bear reading. Physically lethargic, like a hibernating animal, he finds disciplined thought impossible. “He lived on himself, nourishing himself with his own substance . . . solitude had acted on his mind. . . . After having first made him tense and enervated, it brought a torpor haunted by vague dreaming; it annihilated his plans, broke his willed decisions, guided a parade of dreams that he underwent passively without even trying to get away” (À rebours 147). For the moment, he returns to his Latin studies in a seeming attempt to reestablish control of his errant memories. As his physical capabilities have declined (À rebours 147–48), so too his reason. His mind begins to wander. “[H]e let himself go” (148), and he turns “instinctively to religion” and the spiritual world (149). Although only a brief interlude, this episode foreshadows the next major movement in des Esseintes’s pilgrimage. Troubled, “his soul in an indescribable state” (149), memories of religion and his childhood flood his mind. He is no longer the absolute master of himself (150). “[H]e was completely dominated” (152) by “newly arrived nervous disorders” (156). Unable to eat, anemic, he tries to resuscitate his body. He stops drinking alcohol and coffee and forces himself to walk and to exercise. He also stops reading a second time (157). In short, he pulls back briefly, before thrusting himself more fully into his increasingly spiritual adventure. “No longer able to intoxicate himself again with the magic of style,” he decides that hothouse flowers will distract and “rest his mind” (À rebours 157–58). Tradition reminds us that flowers represent passivity and the ephemeral.35 Here they analogically but dramatically emphasize des Esseintes’s physical and mental debilitation. At first the flowers that fill the Thebaid’s red entryway connecting des Esseintes to the outside world, thus with reality, are artificial. He subsequently turns to nature’s monstrously extravagant creations whose outlandish forms make them seem artificial. Most of them, “as though gnawed by syphilis and leprosy, extending livid flesh” (À rebours 163), give des Esseintes cause to exult. Indications of his increasingly serious deterioration nonetheless continue. “He was unable to detach his eyes from this unrealistic orchid. . . . Des Esseintes looked at it, aghast” (165). He concludes, “There is nothing but syphilis” (167). Stifled by the odors of the plants, he escapes to his bed, a symbol of extreme, prostrating passivity. “[S]oon he rolled in the dark madness

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of a nightmare” (168). A sexless figure with the face of a bulldog accompanies him. Terrified, he recognizes her as “the great Pox” (169). He tries to flee, but she catches up with him. She replaces her lost teeth with clay pipe stems, thrusting them up into her gums. The monstrous creations of his mind are loose. “He collapsed weakly, refusing to struggle, to flee; he closed his eyes so as not to see the awful look of Syphilis that weighed on him” (170). He identifies the horrible, florescent virus of the disease in front of him. Unable to stop himself, he approaches and is embraced and elevated, about to be engulfed in “the plant’s hideous wound” when he awakens. “ ‘Ah! thank God,’ he says, ‘it’s only a dream’ ” (173). The progressive deterioration of his mind and body continues implacably. Nightmares recur insistently, to the point that he fears going to sleep (À rebours 175). He is attacked even more acutely by neurosis. “[H]e was suffocating under the bedding, and he had pins and needles all over his body, hot flashes, bedbug bites along his legs. . . . His uneasiness grew. Unfortunately, he lacked the means to bring the inexorable sickness under control” (175). But then des Esseintes loses interest in the flowers, and the plants die (176). Amusements that should have offered calm do the opposite. Dickens’s chaste heroines infuriate him, for example. “[S]olitude acts again on his unsettled nerves” (178). More memories assail him. Miss Urania, the androgynous woman who takes him to the verge of homosexual pleasure returns, and he remembers how he and she seemed momentarily to exchange sexes (179). For good reason, her name suggests uranisme, a word that in nineteenth-century France referred to hereditary homosexuality. As prose and poetry merge in prose poems, as various senses come together in synesthesia, so do the sexes in androgyny and the homosexuality of his fantasies. Then among the long list of his mistresses, he remembers the most monstrous of them all, a small, dark, female ventriloquist (181) who reenacts Flaubert’s dialogue between the Sphinx and the Chimera.36 A Sphinx is often taken to represent the inhuman mother, the enigma of the universe, and the Chimera has the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a serpent, thus symbolizing complex evil. Des Esseintes’s mind replays the progressively perverse, sexual encounters and growing impotence that afflicted his relationships with the ventriloquist. “[H]e came out of this reverie, annihilated, broken, almost moribund” (À rebours 185). And he turns on lights, flooding himself with light, in the futile attempt to grasp the reason it symbolizes. Despite the light, “olfactory hallucinations occur” (À rebours 187). Des Esseintes’s bedroom is filled with the odor of frangipani, symbol of hidden essences (Chevalier 22–23). “[N]eurosis recurred once again, in the guise of a new sensory illusion” (187). Unable to learn from the unfortunate outcome of what had happened when he pursued more and more esoteric

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forms of sex in the unsuccessful attempt to reinvigorate his fading virility, des Esseintes pursues exotic perfumes until he realizes that the odor of frangipani is the product of his own sick mind. Then, rather than turning to restorative reality, he intensifies the pursuit of heightened stimulation and plunges more fully into the world of exotic scents in his green-walled bathroom, the color of which might suggest nature and a natural life.37 We remember that before beginning his adventure, “[l]ike a hermit, he was ready for isolation, harassed by life, expecting nothing further from it” (137). The crabs on the ceiling symbolize the destruction of transitory nature and the dangers of the imagination.38 And once again, he goes too far. “A false and charming nature, very paradoxical, brought the tropical spices together . . . with the most opposing fragrances, creating a generalized perfume in the melting and the conflict of all these tones. . . . Suddenly a sharp pain pierced him; it seemed to him that a drill was boring into his temples” (194). “[W]ith difficulty,” he drags himself to his feet, then to the window (194). “[T]orn from his reflections by the failure of his entire body,” he escapes to his study, where he flings open a window to the outside world (198). A mixture of odors dominated by frangipani assail him, “plunging him into such prostration that he collapsed in a faint, almost dying, on the windowsill” (198).

Breakdown The terrified servants call a local doctor who is bewildered by the debilitating symptoms, though des Esseintes astonishes the domestics by getting better. He reverses the earlier voyage to isolation by opening to the outer world. First he looks out the windows; then he plans a trip to England. The servants pack his bags and he leaves for Paris. While awaiting further transportation, he visits a bodéga and subsequently a tavern, both of which remind him of his destination. In the process, he reveals remarkable selfperception: “[T]his solitude so ardently desired and finally achieved had ended in terrible distress. The silence . . . pressed down on him now with unsustainable weight” (À rebours 201). Nonetheless, after several drinks, he returns exhausted to his Thebaid, as one would from “a long, perilous voyage” (216). Even though his foray toward England is aborted, the hero benefits because he has successfully moved outside his house and broken his isolation. Like Condillac’s statue, by once again adding movement and the concomitant sense of touch, he begins to relearn to live in the world outside himself, and thus finds temporary relief. The trip toward England represents a pause in the inexorable deterioration of des Esseintes’s body and mind. Like comic scenes in Shakespeare or Hugo, it offers both reader

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and hero a respite in the virtually relentless degradation of his senses, body, and mind, before once again returning to the intense pressure that is destroying the decadent. This kind of release in the tension of crescendo plotting need not, of course, be comic. Nelson terms it “distancing.”39 It was and has remained common in the novel. I think of the wedding in L’assommoir (1877), the outing in Les dieux ont soif (1912), the trip to Hankou in La condition humaine (1933), and the trip to the sea in La peste (1947), among others. Des Esseintes decides to put his books in order, as though continuing his restoration by arranging his own life. Once again, however, the temptations are too strong. Particularly drawn to contemporary decadence, he delights in the beautiful printing and binding that he had chosen for the more exquisite selections of his collection. Having abused his mind and the sensations of taste, sight, and smell to such a degree that his body is brought to the point of collapse and his mind to rending hallucinations, he devotes his brief respite to the inventory of his favorites. It is at this point that des Esseintes begins the final stage in his voyage. He looks especially to Baudelaire, a bellwether, who entices him into the depths of his psyche, beyond the surface of the soul and the sins categorized by the church. There, Baudelaire reveals “the October of his sensations . . . and the symptoms of souls in the grip of grief ” (À rebours 220). In the unknown or forgotten galleries of the inexhaustible mine of the soul, des Esseintes discovers “the monstrous vegetation of thought” (À rebours 220). By touching and rearranging his books, des Esseintes moves on into his soul and the fervent passion of conservative religious belief, enjoying the oratory of Bossuet and Bourdaloue and savoring the severe, stylistic strength of Nicole and Pascal’s contrition, which is far removed from Rousseau’s. With considerably less satisfaction he seeks further insight in a series of lesserknown Christian writers, before turning from a style that had become stultified and impersonal (225) with but rare examples of the smoldering passion that pleases him (225–26). Secular writers like Falloux and Veuillot cause him to pause, but his attention is not really engaged until he dips into Ozanam’s oratory, beneath which seethes scarcely camouflaged violence (228). In these cases of religious passion he discovers delightful bits of encouragement. Still, all these books are shortly relegated to obscure corners of his library. Hello and Léon Bloy catch his attention, but only momentarily, since he “was only especially interested in sick works, undermined and irritated by fever” (234). Mysticism brings him to Barbey d’Aurévilly, in whose creations he finds “these internal discords where the soul, exalted by unceasing struggle . . . finally abandons and prostitutes itself to whichever of the two opponents [whether God or the Devil] whose pursuit was the most tenacious” (234–35). In the midst of Barbey

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d’Aurévilly’s nervous style and the morbid taste of overripe meat (238), it is only a step to sadism, satyriasis, sacrilege, and “a moral rebellion, a spiritual debauchery, an aberration entirely idealistic and entirely Christian” (202). Sadism, where all pleasure is transferred to Satan, turns all Catholic precepts and observances “à rebours” [backwards] (202), and des Esseintes rejoices in infernal liturgies. Though once again sequestered, he cannot completely escape outside forces. After storms and fog, the hot weather returns, and the half-naked des Esseintes suffers in his dining room, his debilitated body weakening further with the heat and perspiration. The sight of meat makes him want to vomit. He is not able to get anything but hard-boiled eggs and a little wine down, which soon light a fire in his stomach. “A complete collapse laid him against the table. . . . Never had he felt so uneasy, so broken down, so ill at ease; to add to all that, his eyes weren’t working right” (À rebours 240). He sees double, and although he tells himself that he is the victim of sensory delusion, he is incapable of arresting the aberrations and returning to normalcy. As though the boat of his cabin dining room were pitching, his nausea increases. He staggers to a bottle of Benedictine and gains some relief, though soon the fire in his stomach reignites, and he takes refuge in his garden beneath a shade tree. The sight of some disgustingly squalid children fighting over a filthy piece of bread momentarily raises his own hunger and stimulates hysterical ranting against a world that would allow such brats to be “whelped.” Given that they are destined for misery and crime, “if ever procreation were to be abolished, it was now” (246). Staggering, he makes his way back into the house and is unable to eat anything. Even laudanum is so irritating that he cannot rest. Tortured with cramps, he is wasting away. His senses, especially those of vision and touch (or movement), are increasingly out of order. Remedies no longer work, since his ills have become “real” (248). Having seriously harmed his mind and his body, he turns to his soul, which brings further mental and physical distress, sicknesses that will complete des Esseintes’s collapse. In short, the monsters are about to take over. There is some improvement from a broth diet. His neurosis stabilizes but without really improving, and any effort exhausts him. Nonetheless the disorder of his books calls him, and he has his old servant help organize his library. A new pulsation begins again to build the tension. His collection of contemporary works is limited. He insists that each one contain the sort of Byzantine flora of the mind demanded by Poe, which, when complicated by linguistic deliquescences, produce a certain vagueness and encourage reverie. Since leaving Paris, he has moved further and further from reality. He now prefers the mystical despondency of a very few works by Flaubert, Goncourt, and Zola who could take him beyond this world and into the

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infinite spaces of the soul (254). His taste runs increasingly to Verlaine, Corbière, Hannon, and Mallarmé, however, and he absorbs them in this dying society (258–59). He continues to be attracted to Baudelaire, who exhibits the irresistible impulsions and cerebral pathology working on the will to paralyze sensibility. It is on this “lethargy of the will” (À rebours 266) that des Esseintes has focused, but “now that his neurosis had gotten worse, there were days when reading these works broke him, days when he remained with trembling hands, listening, feeling, as though . . . invaded by unreasoning agony, by a dull fright” (267). He is no longer able to bear the taste of his marvelous elixirs, visit his red vestibule, or seek the excitement of Odilon Redon’s shadows and the tortures of Jan Luyken. Entranced by Villiers de l’IsleAdam, however, he dismisses his servant and settles down with Mallarmé and a variety of prose poems. Far more rapidly than Latin, the French language has arrived at its deathbed, he notes comfortably (246). Then, his dyspepsia reawakens, and the broth irritates his digestion. His nervous malady returns, though with new symptoms: “After the nightmares, hallucinations of smell, troubled eyesight, a dry cough,” various other physical symptoms increase. His delirious mind carries him off on musical waves. Mystical whirlwinds from his childhood increase, bringing more olfactory and visual hallucinations and various other symptoms (277). He dreams of medieval plain chant, of Berlioz and Wagner, of Schubert and Schumann, but he is simply incapable of joining the throngs gathered to hear such performances, so he sings the exquisite, funereal plaints, and the music rings in “his empty head” (285). “Like a death knell, this desperate chant haunted him, now that he was lying down, exhausted by fever and agitated by anxiety that was all the more unappeasable now that he could no longer identify the cause. He finally let himself go with the current, tossed by the torrent of anguish that this music spilled . . . into his head. It seemed to him that his bruised temples were being beaten by the ringing of bells” (284). The text increasingly insists on his debilitation. One morning he looks at himself in a mirror and scarcely recognizes the person who stares back at him. His weakness, accompanied by uncontrollable vomiting that rejected all attempts at nourishment, is magnified. “He thought he was lost” (284). “[H]e fell into a langorous sleep that was crossed by incoherent dreams, in a sort of faint broken by unconscious awakenings” (À rebours 285–86). He sends for a doctor specializing in nervous maladies. To des Esseintes’s delight, the doctor uses enemas to feed him, reversing the process by which he became ill. “[N]ourishment absorbed in this manner was unquestionably the last deviation that could be committed” (286). Slowly, the aesthete begins the process of restoration. Then his doctor banishes him from

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Fontenay’s solitude. He must return to Paris and begin to live like others. It is a question of life or death, of health or madness. Although the healing will shortly be complicated by tubercles, the doctor has no doubt about the successful outcome of his prescribed regime: Muttering imprecations against the whole of society, des Esseintes prepares to leave his retreat. There will be no other havens. The end of the novel, where the previous movement from oral to anal ingestion has been reversed, once again stresses that the entire novel must be read à rebours by interpreting the facts and images as indications of the main character’s physical, mental, and spiritual reality. In themselves, the objects and colors have no importance. The recounted “events” are but intaglios that must be filled and cast off to reveal the actual progress of disintegration, a negative that must be projected. The textual “negative” must be held up to the light, so that the reader no longer focuses on the almost nonexistent physical action that normally provides the framework for novels. He or she must ignore or “cast off ” the first level meanings of the flowers and paintings in order to read the symbolic progress and comprehend that the analogical plot follows the physical, mental, and spiritual disintegration of the main character. From the first, des Esseintes progressively focuses inwardly, refusing external movement with rare, desperate exceptions and gradually abusing his body. His senses of touch, taste, sight, smell, and hearing react by producing increasingly horrendous nightmares, neuropathy, and physical debilitation. With several pauses, when the decadent stops the abuse, leaves his retreat, and momentarily tames the monsters, the movement of the book moves inexorably from eccentric health to absolute physical, then mental, and finally spiritual collapse. Perhaps because of the influence of Condillac, Huysmans clearly felt that the concerted stimuli rousing the senses should begin with the body’s movement that the philosophe linked to the sense of touch. Thereafter, the transposition from the physical sensations of taste, sight, smell, and hearing to the related hallucinations, and ultimately to the anguish of spiritual turmoil, is well prepared for those who read carefully. If plot is simply the syntagmatic “sequence of episodes,” without the necessity of a character’s physical activity, a rudimentary understanding of symbolism renders the order of the episodes unexceptionably clear. The events simply take place on the level of connotation or analogy. By exploiting another level of language, Huysmans was not doing away with sequence and coherence, another literary experiment that he would attempt in La Cathédrale (1898). He merely wished to de-emphasize des Esseintes’s physical activity on the road to his own personally designed hell in order to emphasize the character’s emotional progress toward total destruction. Looking at the novelistic genre as a whole, readers with broad

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background discover a variety of perfectly acceptable, though perhaps unusual, sequences. Huysmans was neither the first nor the last to seek other methods of linking episodes. Nodier’s Histoire du roi de Bohême et de ses sept châteaux [The History of the King of Bohemia and of his Seven Chateaux] (1830) provides one example, and Balzac’s “Un Prince de Bohème” (1840–46) another.40 Giono in such works as Noé [Noah] (1947) and New Novelists like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor created highly structured, thoroughly integrated works without “action.” This does not by any means imply that they used no principle of metonymic coherence. Michel Butor experimented with a dictionary (Mobile 1962) and volume of water flow (6 810 000 litres par seconde [6,810,000 Liters per Second] 1965). One could also conceivably use gradations of color, from yellow to orange to red and beyond, or any of a number of established series or progressions. The organizing principle is not only there, it is rigorously applied to the sequence. Taking this renewed look at the novel makes it easy to understand why Valéry was so enamored of À rebours. The novel approaches poetry, as he understood it: It is a “complete system of relationships in which beings, things, events, and acts . . . resemble each other individually and, as well, those making up the world. . . . Consequently, in a way, these known objects and beings change their value. They call to each other, they are associated with each other differently than under ordinary conditions. They are . . . musicalized, having become commensurate, resonant with each other” (Variété 1.1363). As do many of Valéry’s poems, Huysmans’s novel has a plot, but it is a plot that is rather an analogical progression. We recall the consciousness in Le cimetière marin, which on awakening moves slowly toward the terminal cry “I have to try to live!” The attitude projected by À rebours is very different, although like Valéry, Huysmans restores “an abundance of poetic emotion that. . . is produced spontaneously by means of the artifices of language, such is the poet’s design, and such is the idea attached to the name of poetry” (Variété 1.1362). By using many poetic devices, Huysmans constrains his hero to surrender. Where the consciousness of Le cimetière marin chooses to turn toward life like a flower toward the sun, des Esseintes has no choice. He is torn from his Thebaid and forcibly returned to life. As in the novels that Valéry’s “Durtal” discusses (Variété 1.742–56), À rebours is a poem or, better, “a sum of poems” (1.756).

The Several Faces of Realism Huysmans’s revolt against the nineteenth-century novel had begun as early as À vau-l’eau [Down the Drain] (1882), a long short story of convoluted, 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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energized description organized around a plot so trivial that it is difficult to pay it any serious attention, thus easy to disregard. M. Folantin trails through dozens of restaurants in the amusing but unsuccessful attempt to find palatable food and drink. Similarly, the episodes of the “plot” of his En rade [Stranded] are limited to little more than the alterations taking place in the hero’s character. Otherwise, nothing significant happens. As in En rade, where the only significant “events” are that Jacques and Louise arrive at the Château de Lourps before subsequently leaving, in À rebours des Esseintes does little but come to Fontenay and then leave. The real adventure has to be read on a level that has almost nothing to do with the usual conception of “narration” that depends on the progression of the physical activity of a primary character. Huysmans decided in À rebours and En rade to write “spiritual” biographies and reject traditional sequences of action or plot, though he chose to establish his succession according to connotational indications of changes in the physical, neurological, mental, and spiritual entity of the hero. Although Huysmans’s knowledge of traditional symbolism was far more sophisticated by the time of En rade, À rebours makes use of the basic elements of symbolic connotations that were common in the poetry of the day and that would have been in the intellectual baggage of any cultured person, especially, of any aesthete. It was not until the publication of Là-bas (1891) that Huysmans explained his intention and practice at more length. While he wished to retain documentary truth, precision of detail, and both the lexical depth and complexity of realism, he also wanted to explore the spirit or “soul” of man, though without limiting his investigations to pathological illnesses. He felt that novels could and should be divided into two connected parts: the one concerned with physical reality and the other with the spirit. “It would be necessary, in a word, to follow the wide road that Zola so profoundly established, but we would also have to trace a parallel path, another route, so as to reach what was on the other side and afterwards, to create, in a word, a spiritualistic naturalism” (Là-bas 1.10–11). The explanation holds for Là-bas, but also for À rebours. Huysmans remembers telling Zola that he wanted to “suppress the traditional plot, truly even suppress passion, women, concentrating on a single character with a light brush; at any price, he yearned to do something new” (“Préface,” À rebours 62), which succinctly summarizes what he did in À vau-l’eau. As for À rebours, he denies having had any such program: “I had no fixed plan and . . . À rebours is a perfectly unconscious work, imagined without preconceived ideas, without intentions reserved for the future, without anything at all” (“Préface,” À rebours 54). Even for those who find À rebours confusing, few would take Huysmans’s claimed lack of consciousness seriously, for the power of the prose cannot be denied. 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

However disconnected the chapters may seem to some, each chapter shows a master writer at work. On closer consideration, taking into account the conventional symbols that were well known at the time, the intricacy of purposeful progression through the hero’s adventures gives the lie to Huysmans’s postdated prefatory remarks and reinforces Zola’s recognition that Huysmans had slipped away from the naturalist camp. I suspect, in fact, that Huysmans had elected to target far bigger game than naturalism: he had the novel genre itself in his sights. Despite Huysmans’s denial of intent, with À rebours he turned his back on wellestablished aesthetic traditions. He later explained that while a member of the naturalist group, he felt a “need . . . to open the windows, to flee a milieu where I was being stifled; then the desire took hold of me to shake off prejudices, to break the limits of the novel . . . not to use it any more, in short, except as a form like a frame in which to insert more serious work. It was especially that which occupied me in that period, to suppress traditional plot” (“Préface,” À rebours 62). Of course, Huysmans did not suppress plot. With proper knowledge of traditional symbols and a willingness to understand the projection recounted as the reflection of des Esseintes’s inner, gradual disintegration, the sequence of episodes is perfectly clear. It might help to read the novel as a biography, a spiritual biography, along the lines of what one finds in saints’ lives. Certainly, it is not a normal biography. It does not begin with the birth of the hero, or end with his death, as do most biographies and many novels. After an introduction that gives us some indication of des Esseintes’s adolescence and subsequent life, the formal novel begins when he decides to withdraw to his Thebaid and tells in detail of the physical, mental, and spiritual voyage he experiences. Were it the story of Saint Teresa of Lisieux, readers might leave the volume edified. Instead it reverses (à rebours) the normal path followed by particularly spiritual saints and follows the disintegration of the hero. It is not a biography. The text demonstrates too artistic a use of parallels and oppositions of imagery, as well as the symbolic depth of such objects as flowers and paintings; indeed the entire book is subsumed to a textual contrast pitting the mother’s passivity against the son’s determined struggle to control his life. Such aesthetic devices, especially in such quantity, are uncommon in nonfiction. Coherent and unified, À rebours is a novel. In the end, one should recognize that À rebours offers one example of the literary experimentation that was rife from the 1880s through the beginning of World War I. As the sway of realism and naturalism weakened insofar as being capable of touching and inspiring France’s artists and readers, symbolism not only formed a school, it influenced the most important writers of the first half of the twentieth century. Many of these trendsetters

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gathered regularly on the rue de Rome to sit at the feet of the superb poetic innovator Mallarmé. Perhaps unfortunately, relatively few of the symbolist poets are read today. Although innovators have enormous importance in the history of genres, new devices eventually lose their luster or shock value and may finally stigmatize those works that depend on them. Most are quickly dated. I think of the autobiographical novel, so incredibly popular in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s with such writers as André Gide and Michel Leiris, and yet it was a phenomenon that flagged rather rapidly thereafter. Unlike poetry, where insightful readers are encouraged to seek and understand the poetic creativity of mold-breaking masters—especially like Mallarmé, but also like Valéry, Breton, Péguy, and Claudel—the extraordinary revolts against traditional prose initiated by Huysmans, Gide, and Proust did not fare so well. Probably because of the hecatomb of World War I, the latter novelists had few talented followers. Huysmans became the captive of eccentric readers, Gide entranced his audience with autobiographical lures, and Proust was scarcely read in France before 1950. Their aggressive innovations drew little attention, while subsequent novelists turned to preaching philosophical solutions to world troubles in aesthetically well-behaved works that were easily grasped by a paying public. The New Novelists, Giono, Camus, Oulipo, and a few others, eventually renewed the spirit of novelistic innovation that had been so vibrant at the turn of the century and brought new life to the arrested form of the genre. Among all these innovative novelists, Huysmans plays a prominent role. Given that many view Mallarmé as the prime poetic innovator of the fin de siècle, perhaps it is time to recognize Huysmans as the Mallarmé of the novel. Curiously, though the nineteenth-century novel is known for its “realism,” for its attempt to reproduce the reality of a fast-changing, confusing, disturbing society and was taken to task by later twentieth- and twentyfirst century theorists like Nathalie Sarraute, Jean Ricardou, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, who had lost interest in this particular brand of mimesis, earlier novelists frequently left the mimetic representations of plot and character to create analogical patterns of considerable power. However much nineteenth-century novelists may have infringed on other genres, by exploiting the essay, theater (or spectacle), and lyric, they were attempting to surpass the Aristotelian categories of plot and character to argue on the level of theme, allusion, analogy, symbolism for a deeper understanding of reality that could not be expressed in simple terms. When Proust’s protagonist wanted to express his joy at being free to walk in the midst of a glorious nature, for example, he found language incapable of expressing his feelings and was reduced to “My, my, my, my [Zut, zut, zut, zut]. But at the same time,” the narrator goes on to say, “I felt that my duty would

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have been to stop using these opaque words and to try to see my delight more clearly.”41 Like his predecessors who struggled mightily to find a way of expressing truth that went well beyond palpable reality, in later volumes the narrator learned to put language in contexts that would allow it to be far more communicative than usual. À rebours’s thematic continuity and progression serves as the novel’s central sequence, a sort of plot, as it rises above and with increasing focus provides the main strand of meaning that unifies the novel. However analogical, it is the novel’s major conveyance of meaning. The protagonist’s activity adds to the significant thematic movement to distinguish the novel from a short story cycle, for the novel’s coherence depends on more than theme and imagery. À rebours clearly exemplifies some of the ways that novelists illustrate and vivify their conveyances. Huysmans brings a series of intensifiers, a panorama of symbols, and other kinds of references and analogies that provide a context of such richness that des Esseintes’s pathetic history stands out as a sovereign vision of art in the fin de siècle. As Balzac, Zola, Barbey, Flaubert, and many others put language under pressure, surrounding their major conveyances with analogical intensifiers that create contextual patterns, we catch a vivid vision of what it must be like to experience the inexpressible.

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Trinitarian Unity

A Muddle of Understanding To say that the popular and critical reception of Flaubert’s La tentation de saint Antoine (1874) was mixed, as its appreciation continues to be, is to be generous. One has to wonder about the real stature of Flaubert, if, as many have believed, this novel resulting from a lifetime of work by a great writer is a failure, “a nineteenth-century literary curiosity,”1 a mere collection of disorganized notes remaining from an amateur historian’s interest in the third and fourth centuries. It is particularly hard to imagine a failure of such magnitude when we recall Flaubert as the artist who with Madame Bovary forever established the novel as an art form rather than a pastime for idlers. Flaubert was a technical innovator of great importance. Among other devices, he is thought to be the first to master and to use free indirect discourse consciously. Without question, he was one of the finest novelists of the nineteenth century. Indeed, few writers do anything as successful as any one of Flaubert’s other completed novels and short stories, even without considering Madame Bovary. Nonetheless, La tentation raises troubling issues. Judging from the secondary literature that focuses on La tentation de saint Antoine, Flaubert simply could not get the novel right, despite a quarter century of effort. Perhaps even more important than the very negative judgments, it is positively amazing to note the number of general studies of Flaubert that, somehow, pass by La tentation with minimal or no commentary. Considered in the context of Flaubert’s life, leaving the criticism aside for the moment, if ever a book manuscript was an obsession, La tentation de saint Antoine fulfills all the requirements. “It is the work of my entire life,” he told Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie on June 5, 1872. It was, however, not Flaubert’s first creative work, for he began writing quite young. By the time he set himself to the first version of La tentation, he had already

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written the first version of L’éducation sentimentale and other small pieces. But La tentation was the first book that absorbed him as completely as his later masterpieces. While hundreds of pages have been devoted to the novel by devotees and critics of Flaubert, we still cannot be sure that we understand it. The author himself provides few clues to how readers should approach the work, much less how to analyze and make sense of it. Most of Flaubert’s comments about the novel in his correspondence concern his background reading and the difficulty of providing his creation with an overriding structure, a framework that would tie it all together. Thanks to Flaubert’s notes and the work of such major critics as Jean Seznec, we know a considerable amount about the novel’s genesis and the sources of the images and passages that give La tentation such vivid hues.2 Still, the novel remains a puzzle. As isolated units, several of the seven major parts of La tentation seem clear-cut and pose few problems. Part ii deals successively with the seven deadly sins, part iv with a myriad of heresies, and part vi with legions of monsters. Still, how those fit together with the rest of the novel remains problematic. Flaubert was himself long unable to see how the parts could be assembled and make a whole. Repeatedly in his letters, he mentions in reference to the first two versions that he has lost the thread,3 though Sherrington has shown that on the narrative level Flaubert’s final version logically prepares successive passages. In a text Sherrington cites, Flaubert recognizes the importance of a logical sequence: “I finally discovered a link, paltry perhaps, but still a link for a possible sequence. The character Saint Antoine is going to be expanded with one or two monologues that will fatally bring on the temptations” (letter of June 1, 1856, to Bouilhet). Scholars are aware that the complexities of La tentation de saint Antoine are mired in and drawn out of the spiritual world from which Christianity arose, and we have excellent studies of various aspects of the work. Still, a grasp of the aesthetic whole continues to elude us. Few critics have the courage to suggest how Flaubert created a unity for what he called his “extravagant”4 novel. Michel Butor chooses to look to the text’s sequence to suggest that La tentation gains its structure by exploiting a rhetorical rather than a narrative chain having little or nothing to do with chronology. One image, episode, heresy, or idol follows another with no necessary, chronological relation to its contiguous passages, though with rigorous metonymic connections. Butor then goes on to propose that the défilé (procession or parade) that we first find with the seven deadly sins in part ii organizes the entire book. He believes that the order in which the capital sins appear provides the arrangement for the remainder of the work, allowing Flaubert to communicate a progression that gives the sense of a Spirale (Butor italicizes and capitalizes Spirale [395], since Flaubert had planned

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a work with this title).5 Unfortunately, Butor does not describe how this spiral is constructed in the text. While there is indeed a procession of the seven deadly sins, of heresiarchs, idols, and monsters, and while it is often easy to see the metonymic reasons that brought Flaubert to have a particular item follow another, it is difficult to fathom the particular conceptual framework that brings such simple sequences into the whole—how, to use Jakobson’s famous simile, “the poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection onto the axis of combination” (220). One has to wonder why the various sequences stop their progression and how the various “parades” are related to each other. Although there is no question of the importance of Flaubert’s narrative sequence, the paradigm or overriding metaphoric structure remains puzzling.6 Several writers have suggested that the book’s overall, structural conundrum is resolved by duality rather than by a rhetorical chain. Dominique Cardin emphasizes such oppositions as matter and spirit, sexuality and the sacred, and Robert Griffin concludes that there is no resolution to these antitheses. “The Tentation deals most fundamentally with the metaphysical problem of dualism, the derivation of multiplicity from unity, and the regression toward prima materia” (“Matter” 18).7 The result of these problems results in “Flaubert’s closural ambiguity” (18). R. B. Leal goes beyond the claim of unresolved variance to argue that the novel turns around an “ideal . . . of an integrated existence” and is unified by the alternating attraction and resistance to integration, leading to a terminal “thrust towards the reconciliation of opposites, a stress on the unity and continuity of nature, and on the integration of the individual” (“Unity,” 335, 333). Mary Orr seeks a coherent reading in two ways. While on the macro level, she believes that Flaubert is making an ironic commentary on Western Christendom, within the text itself she focuses on character and Antoine’s desire “to impart, to be in partnership with a fellow creature, to join, to be in unity with another of like mind or spirit.”8 Elsewhere she points out that the saint’s final speech reveals an understanding of “his unity and centeredness, when he is all of his characters and therefore no one of them.”9 The suggestion that Antoine is involved in a quest for unity constitutes a major contribution toward understanding the work and provides, I suggest, the overall “strategic thought” that Valéry believed lost (“Tentation” 619). Nonetheless, it is difficult to see beyond Leal’s and Orr’s general overview and discern the horns of the central antithesis and the precise character of the final unification. How did Flaubert actually achieve this unity in the detail and in the whole?10 In the following pages, I want to take another step toward understanding the novel by recognizing the network of references to the Trinity, that is, to the Christian belief that the single triune God is manifested in the three

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INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

distinct incarnations of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I dispute the emphasis neither on the sequence nor on duality, for both are important, but I do argue that the concept of trinity subsumes both the linear narration (or syntagm) and the various antitheses and brings La tentation de saint Antoine to a very satisfactory, unambiguous conclusion. This trinitarian unity governs the text from the beginning, achieving aesthetic unity as the saint construes the whole of his mental and physical world as a teleological whole. Antoine himself discovers trinity not just in divinity but also in the humblest cell. The novel follows the procession of the saint rebelling against God and, in consequence, losing his sense of integration until, in the conclusion, it is reconfigured in his final peace. In the course of his rebellion, he emphasizes one after another of the isolated elements that will eventually coalesce to form the terminal Trinity. None of the three in isolation can or does bring him satisfaction. Trinitarian structure was a late addition to Flaubert’s Tentation that required considerable rearrangement, revision, and, indeed, new text. It only exists in the last, definitive version. Consequently, because the first two (or three) versions of the novel lack the unity provided by the text’s emphasis on trinity, I limit my analysis to the final published text, the version that Flaubert chose to offer the reading public, and the version that has attracted the greatest number of readers.11 While most of the studies by critics and scholars have concentrated on understanding and comparing the various versions, aesthetic evaluations of the definitive publication are generally negative. Valéry provides a good example. Though he confesses to “a weakness for La tentation,” the work remains for him “a diversity of moments and fragments” lacking unity.12 Certainly, the difference in tones and colors can be confusing, and Flaubert’s display of erudition is daunting, challenging the most knowledgeable reader. Nonetheless, given rather specialized background in the culture of the third and fourth centuries and the patience to consider the various episodes as finely linked parts of a whole, one could argue that La tentation is truly an outstanding, though perhaps curious, work of art. Furthermore, it is extremely competent intellectual history of the fourth century, and, in addition, a surprisingly verisimilar, historical account of the past, despite some historical inaccuracy (Antoine, for example, almost certainly did not study under Didymus and was neither the fool Flaubert made him out to be in the first version nor the intellectually impressive saint of the published novel). As early as 1849, Flaubert finished a first version of La tentation that he read to Louis Bouilhet and Maxime du Camp. His two friends were firmly committed to the new emphasis on realism, and they did their best to exorcise the aborning novelist’s regrettable Romanticism. They suggested that

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he learn to control his exuberance by writing something down-to-earth, like the story of a doctor’s wife who, after indulging in a series of foolish love affairs, poisons herself. Flaubert followed their advice, without allowing Madame Bovary to diminish his passion for writing about the fourth-century saint. We can tell from his manuscripts and letters that he revised the Tentation in 1856. But he was again not satisfied, perhaps because the fragments he tried out on the public were greeted unfavorably. Whatever the case, he left the as-yet unpublished Tentation to return to another idea, L’éducation sentimentale. Then, or at least so Laurence M. Porter argues, he worked up another version of La tentation in 1869, before publishing the final reworking of the manuscript in 1874.13 One wonders why Flaubert chose Saint Anthony for the subject of a novel. It is clear that the author personally suffered from and even encouraged hallucinations. Was the subject a way to come to terms with himself? Did Flaubert, the “hermit of Croisset,” see himself in the fourth-century recluse? The novel includes many autobiographical elements, though there are, of course, many differences. Flaubert, for example, was a gruff and lonely bachelor, while Saint Anthony was a rabble-rousing extremist when he was not living as a hermit in the desert. If Flaubert was a Catholic, as he declared in a letter of December 14, 1853, his Catholicism was decidedly of his own creation. His anti-clericalism was firmly established, for example, and he viewed many aspects of the church with contempt. I suspect, however, that Flaubert was attracted to Saint Anthony by a number of factors. The existence of a relatively fixed tradition, within which Antoine lived, was surely an advantage. It provided an aesthetic keyboard that could be played upon with the assurance that major elements would not change their significance on the morrow. Perhaps very important, as well, was that the subject would allow him to indulge his love for flamboyance and the bizarre, and because he could exploit his enormous knowledge of the third and fourth centuries. In the end, these personal authorial proclivities became the novel’s major weaknesses. The enormous range of philosophical and theological thought is intimidating, since it requires knowledge well beyond that of even the erudite reader. Nonetheless, assuming a fund of rather specialized knowledge and the patience to consider the various episodes as integrated parts of a coherent whole, I believe that La tentation appears a superb work of art, the author’s efforts having finally resulted in an extraordinarily unified novel. La tentation de saint Antoine stands on the verge of the novel and thus challenges generic distinctions. Written in dialogue form, as though it were a play, it also includes long descriptions and monologues that make one think of a novel, but only if Baudelaire was correct to term the novel

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a “bastard genre.”14 La tentation signals that it joins those creations that have both the breadth and depth of significant innovation because of the expertly handled narrative disjunction, inconsistent characterization, and confusion between reality and illusion, in addition to the brazen alternations of dialogue, monologue, narrative commentary, and description. Of course, the signs of invention do not in themselves guarantee that the author succeeded in fabricating a successful work of art. Certainly, while most of the studies by critics and scholars have focused on the creative process revealed as Flaubert struggled to come to terms with the various versions, aesthetic evaluations of the definitive publication are decisively unenthusiastic. The Principal Actor The novel enhances its resemblance to a play by presenting descriptions (and “stage” directions) in smaller type than the spoken words, a technique that encourages the reader both to make and to maintain distinctions that recognize the traditional distance between performance and audience. It opens in part i to a vivid setting that introduces readers to Saint Antoine’s hut high on a cliff overlooking the Nile and the desert of the Thebaid, the area around Thebes some 400 miles southeast of Cairo. Through the doorless entrance can be seen a jug of water, bread, and a large open book. The saint is making mats in front near a cross. Finally, he speaks, but only to complain: “Another day! One more day gone.”15 The “fountain of grace” (4.40) that used to pour over him has gone dry, leaving him confused, bored, and lonely. He dwells on memories of leaving home when he was a young man to pursue sanctity, at first unsuccessfully in tombs (that were traditionally expected to keep the devout mindful of the mortality of the body, while freeing the ascetic for spiritual experience), then in a ruined citadel beneath soaring eagles (that kept the ideal always before his eyes, while the birds sharing his aerie tore at his flesh, making his physical limitations constantly evident), and finally by studying the Bible under Didymus the Blind, the fourth-century teacher who, despite some influence from the heretic Origen, provided strong support for Athanasius’s concept of the Trinity. Even with this preparation, the sectarians and heretics of Alexandria bothered Antoine: “[T]hat is disturbing,” he says (4.41). He leaves for Colzim, where he indulges in the extreme penitence that leads him to lose his fear of God, as he himself remarks. As a student of the Bible, he surely knew the warning in Proverbs (9.10): “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” Be that as it may, the text leaves no doubt that the younger Antoine had not satisfied his yearning; he had not achieved a balance of body, mind, and spirit.

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Antoine reviews the triumphs of his past. When a group of anchorites had gathered around him, he was able to establish a practical rule for the group that kept the body under firm control, while avoiding the spiritual excesses of the Gnostics, on the one hand, and the rationalistic extremes of the philosophers, on the other. This triune ideal insisting on body, soul, and spirit forms the conceptual and imagistic center of the book and will be repeated throughout part i, much of which is new to the final version, and then again in the conclusion that has so disturbed readers. When Antoine left his desert retreat for the city, he tells of watching a woman being whipped. She reminds him of Ammonaria, who loved him as a young man. The scene and its associations set up the later erotic feelings that assail him while he flogs himself. For the moment, however, Antoine remembers the help he gave Athanasius, the theologian who was important in defining the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. While the battles against Arius, who believed that Jesus did not come in the flesh and that only the spirit had importance, were very significant, Antoine dwells on the companionship provided by his disciple Hilarion, who is later said to represent science or reason. As the saint thinks back to this period after his studies with Didymus, he recognizes that he could have done things differently. He could have become a priest and offered a triune, pastoral ministry—that is, helping the poor, distributing the sacraments, and exercising authority over the families under his care (4.42). Or he could have gone with Ammon, who founded the monastery at Nitria and, together with Antoine, was a supporter of the trinitarian Athanasius. Or he could have taken a profession as grammarian or philosopher, soldier, or publican. There is no doubt that the saint has lost the peace that he previously enjoyed and is now bitterly unhappy. He tries unsuccessfully to pet a jackal. In the Egyptian tradition, jackals symbolize death or a restless spirit that does not enjoy the benefits of immortality.16 Antoine whines, “What loneliness! What boredom! . . . Oh! poor me! . . . But death would be better! I can’t go on! Enough! Enough!” (4.43). He flips open his Bible and receives no comfort (though the passages he reads insist on his selfish discontent and prepare the temptations to follow). Unquestionably, other of God’s prophets were given many signs of God’s blessings. He thinks of how Peter was offered a banquet, how the Jews under Ahasuerus had power over life and death, how Nebuchadnezzar fell prostrate before Daniel, how Hezekiah received great wealth, and how Solomon’s science as a magician allowed him to dominate the Queen of Sheba (4.44–45). Antoine does not find the scriptural examples edifying; they are rather temptations to indulge in envy. He wonders why he cannot have the food, power, authority, wealth, knowledge, all the wonderful attributes that God gave his other prophets? And he complains, cataloguing his virtues: he has served God

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in healing and deliverance and as a witness. He gave away everything he had. Why, then, did God abandon him to suffer in the desert? He remembers that Jesus was tempted: “The devil wanted to tempt Jesus! But Jesus triumphed because he was God” (4.45). Unlike Jesus, who was divine, or Solomon, who was wise (4.45), the saint has no abilities to ward off temptation. “My life is a continual martyrdom!” the saint whimpers. “Certainly, no one suffers such deep distress” (4.46). Antoine overflows with pity . . . for himself. When the shadows of the arms of his cross assume the shape of horns, we know the hallucinations have begun. Lusting after imagined meat, grapes, and women,17 Antoine dreams of wealth, of power and authority, and of the admiration of the masses that would feed his vanity. He even criticizes Athanasius. He imagines a group with a woman in the distant darkness and calls out to her, realizing suddenly that he has imagined his own temptation. “For shame! Oh! poor Antoine!” (4.47). Immediately he hears an echo whispering back, “Poor Antoine” (4.47). He listens to insinuating voices seductively offer him women, money, power (represented by “a sword that gleams,” 4.48), and the satisfaction of his pride. Flaubert obviously understood that Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness, to which Antoine refers (4.45), represent the three major classifications of all sin. The bread that Satan offers Jesus is generally taken to stand for the satisfaction of physical appetites. When Satan transports him to the high mountain and offers him “all the kingdoms of the world” (Luke 4.5), he offers the power and wealth that allows the satiation of greed, envy, even resentment. And then, finally, by encouraging Jesus to cast himself off the pinnacle of the temple to prove his divinity and thus presume on the love of God, Satan suggests submitting to vanity. The Bible insists on the central importance of these temptations that Jesus confronted in the desert: “Do not love the world or the things in the world,” summarizes John. “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 John 2.15–16). The three categories of sin—of the body, of the intelligence, and of the spirit—can be folded into the single temptation of the Garden of Eden: rebellion against God. Just as death came into the world because of Adam’s sin (Rom. 5.19; 1 Cor. 15.21), so Antoine chooses death rather than life by turning his back to God and yearning for satisfaction of the flesh. And the tottering saint’s old palm tree becomes a woman leaning over the abyss. Before his eyes passes a parade of vertiginous images representing the three basic temptations: food and other physical pleasures, power, and vanity, until he collapses on his mat.

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Part i, then, sets the scene and prepares what is to follow. The tripartite temptations of lust, greed, and vanity, which constitute major, generic categories, are then in part ii fragmented further into the traditional seven deadly sins warring within Antoine. Through it all, the source of his sin, the temptation is highlighted: he leans toward loving the world more than he loves God.18 The spiritually weak saint will be ready prey to sin and Satan in part ii, which opens with the devil carrying the seven deadly sins as he lounges against the hut, while the supine Antoine revels in his sloth (the ancients called this accidia). The mat becomes a bed, then a rowboat that floats through the countryside. He is furious when he awakens from the hallucination and discovers that the jackals have spilled his water and eaten most of his bread, since he has no more food and his only source of water is three hours away. Gluttony (gula) offers him the vision of an enormous banquet. Echoes of Jesus in the wilderness resound throughout this chapter. Jesus resisted his temptations by quoting Scripture: “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God’ ” (Luke 4.4). Antoine meets the temptations with little but his own, meager strength. He strikes out at the table with his foot and swells with self-congratulations: “Ah! the temptation was strong. But how I delivered myself was impressive” (4.50). Thereafter the temptations come one by one. First he is overtaken by greed (avaritia). Then, he finds himself not on top of a natural mountain but on the Paneum, an artificial height in the center of Alexandria. Subsequently, Antoine is somehow transported to the streets, where he joins with the Solitaires in a bloodbath as his enemies are tortured and slaughtered. Left happily breathing in the odor of blood and having reveled in the sin of anger (ira), he is soon called to the Emperor’s side. The distance he has fallen spiritually is highlighted as he enviously (invidia) revels in the degradation of major figures of the early church like the martyr Paphnutius, John the Egyptian, and Alexander. He even lords it over the members of the Nicene Council, who condemned Arianism and established the doctrine of the Trinity. “Here he has become one of the court’s powerful people, the Emperor’s confident, prime minister! Constantine takes his diadem and places it on Antoine’s forehead. Antoine keeps it, finding this honor his due” (4.56). Overcome by pride (superbia), he becomes Nebuchadnezzar, and his degradation is so complete that, falling to his hands and knees, he bellows like a bull (4.56). Although he resisted gluttony by kicking at the table, Antoine has given in to all the other temptations imagined to this point. Even when he is so filled with self-disgust that he begins to lacerate himself, he finds sexual pleasure in the pain. The eroticism prepares

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Sin and Satan

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the arrival of the Queen of Sheba (luxuria), who offers him the wealth of nations and the indescribable pleasures of her bed. Only by crossing himself does he find deliverance, thus sending her on her way. The three in one that has such importance in part i has broken into an illustrative seven in part ii. With the arrival of his satanic Virgil in part iii, the enfeebled Antoine has been prepared to be guided through parts iv, v, and vi, where he will make the acquaintance of the unrighteous antipodes of the manifestations of the triune God, in whom the Father represents the mode of idea or reason, Jesus the fleshly incarnation of the Word, and the Holy Spirit, the active arm of the Father. Hilarion, the most important incarnation of the devil, arrives in person in part iii. At first he appears as a dwarfish but sturdy child, and he adopts the subversive role of logic and science, visibly incarnating the temptations and doubts of a rationalistic mind. Not surprisingly, he makes an appeal to Antoine’s pride. “The seven deadly sins came, but their sorry pitfalls failed with a saint like you” (4.64). Shortly, Hilarion reduces the confused Antoine’s knowledge of doctrine and the Bible to shreds. Then he encourages him to criticize the intelligence of Athanasius, a giant of the church and the author of a life of Saint Antoine. As Antoine listens and thus distances himself from God, Hilarion grows in stature, speaks more loudly, and points out that if the Word of God is confirmed by miracles, there is a problem when patently pagan Egyptian sorcerers are equally capable of miraculous works. Hilarion moreover wonders whether mortification of the flesh is really useful for sanctity? If so, why not accept the extremes of the Montanists? Does it do any good to deny oneself the pleasures of the flesh if one hypocritically welcomes imaginary indulgences as Antoine does? When Scripture is unclear, who or what does one believe? If exegetic problems are solved by going to ecclesiastical authority, does that mean that the Bible is useless? Hilarion raises issues that trinitarians had attempted to resolve: If Jesus was omniscient, for example, thus open to the all-knowing Spirit of God, why was he not aware that it was the hemorrhaging woman who touched him? If, after his resurrection, he had the body of a human being, how could he pass through walls as though he were uniquely spirit? Why did Jesus need baptism, which was designed for purification of the flesh, if he was the Word, the pure manifestation of the Spirit? How could he be tempted by Satan, if he was God, who according to the Bible is Spirit? Antoine equivocates, mumbling helplessly, “Actually . . . actually” (4.69), unable to silence his former disciple but soon ready to accept Hilarion’s invitation to explore esoteric doctrines. This, of course, is Satan’s oldest temptation. Having broken down the walls of Antoine’s faith, Hilarion invites the saint to eat, as it were, fruit from the tree of knowledge. The former disciple takes authority in the midst of a shambles of reason, flesh, and

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spirit and offers to serve as the master’s guide. The three major categories of sin are then established in parts i–iii.

Part iv, La tentation’s longest section, reveals Antoine tempted by the belief that only the spirit has importance. Appropriately, given that Gnosticism was one of the fourth century’s most important movements, it is devoted primarily to the Gnostic heresies. As Flaubert defines “esprit” (spirit, soul) in his manuscripts, it is “intellectual love, the eternal, inevitable relationship of the being with his thought” (4.308). More common definitions, which are also apparent in the text, turn particularly around the respiration, breath of life, and movement emphasized by Pierre Larousse’s contemporary Grand Dictionnaire (7.919). At the outset, Hilarion tempts the stumbling saint to seek secret, illuminating knowledge (gnosis in Greek) that was said to bring salvation, as though he were one of the Gnostic sect’s visionaries. This information is scientia rather than the theologically acceptable sapientia. To believe that one can approach God only by means of esoteric knowledge is contrary to Christian doctrine, thus heretical. Knowledge of God comes uniquely through the grace of God and is free to all who come to him in faith and humility. Hilarion’s inveigling question prepares the route: “But outside of doctrine, we are completely free to pursue all knowledge. Do you want to know the hierarchy of Angels, the virtue of Numbers, the explanation of germination and metamorphosis?” (4.70). Once again, of course, students of the Bible recognize the temptation of the Garden of Eden. Hilarion’s insidious voice assures the saint, “The secret that you would like to know is guarded by the wise men. . . . You will listen to them and the face of the Unknown will reveal himself!” (4.70). By eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, Adam and Eve hoped to “be as gods” (Gen. 3.5). Instead, as mentioned before, they opened themselves to death. Hilarion exposes the hermit to many Gnostic beliefs: that the JudeoChristian Creator is not the true God, rather an angel, above whom is the real God; that Jesus and Satan are equal; that the man Jesus is not God (only the divine Christ was); and, furthermore, that Christ was not really crucified. His passion and resurrection were mere simulations. Like the rest of the book, part iv has to be read with four disparate points of view firmly in mind: (1) there is Antoine’s understanding; (2) there is the more or less objective observer/narrator (whom Bem calls “the VOICE,” 246) who describes scenic elements, be they reality or illusion, with occasional insights into Antoine’s character and motivations; (3) there is the

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The Spiritual Temptation

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psychologically realistic order of the hallucinations, as though Antoine himself were the source of his torments; and (4) there is an evil, supernatural force organizing the temptations to bring Antoine’s reeling faith into doubt and finally to destroy it. To Antoine the heresies seem a sequence of absolute confusion, while the text lets us know that they are in fact carefully arranged both psychologically and spiritually. Seznec admires Flaubert’s ability in the final version to present the various heresiarchs with a few words that encapsulate their theological positions (Nouvelles études 20). Considering them in some detail as they appear reveals both the section’s metonymic organization and the “psychological gradation” that Flaubert emphasizes in the manuscript (4.336). Mani appears before the hallucinating saint. Originator of the Gnostic Manichaean heresy, he lays out the basic tenets of his faith: there is an impassive divinity that resides above the Son of Man and the opposing but equal Prince of Darkness. This deity has poured out a portion of his essence, sparks of which are encapsulated in the bodies of certain “spiritual” individuals. These chosen few are called to free themselves from base matter and rise through the planetary regions until they are reunited with God. It all makes Antoine begin to laugh, though he stops when a man arrives whom Hilarion identifies in whispers as the great Origen. Antoine, perhaps intimidated, falls silent. The job confronting human beings, Mani continues, is “the deliverance of the celestial rays enclosed in matter” (4.73). Through secret knowledge offered only to the elect, man learns all secrets, like the necessity of avoiding meat and women. Mani feels that even onanism is preferable to inseminating a woman. “Ah! abomination!” (4.73) exclaims Antoine. Hilarion declares that marriage is turpitude. Saturninus comes to insist that the God of the Jews was a mere angel, and, certainly, insists Marcion, not the true God. Bardesanes, the Herbians, the Priscillianists all appear on stage to underline the secret truths of the Gnostics. Valentine even claims, “The world is the work of a delirious God” (4.75). Antoine no longer laughs. “How is that?” (4.75), he asks, hanging his head. Valentine, one of the great Gnostic teachers, continues to expound, until Origin, Basilides, and the Elkhasaites make it clear that not only is the cross unnecessary, “one may deny the inferior Christ, Jesus the man” (4.77). The Carpocratians, Nicolaitans, Marcosians, Helvidians, Messalians, and others all pass by to share varying aspects of the general, heretical belief that as long as the spirit is pure, the flesh can indulge in any apostasy or orgiastic excess whatsoever. The Paternians proclaim: “The lower parts of the body, made by the devil, belong to him. Let us drink, eat, and fornicate” (4.78). Then comes the turn of a panoply of Gnostics who believe that only by annihilating the body through ascetic practice can

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the celestial spirit imprisoned in the flesh be freed. The claim that the spirit alone matters is manifested in two contrary but related ways: on the one hand, by fleshly excesses and, on the other, by spiritual aberrations. Tertullian curses the body. Preceded by several followers, Montanus, who was known for his enthusiastic emphasis on the Holy Spirit, comes back to life to demonstrate the extremes of mutilation on his own body. Tertullian agrees with Montanus. Likewise, the Valesians encourage self-mutilation, and the Archontics and Tatianians pass before Antoine in hair shirts. Asceticism was a major problem for the early church. As Flaubert’s parade of heretics shows, there were those who believed that fasting, self-flagellation, and mutilation were acceptable ways to overcome the temptations of the flesh. Likewise, as Daniélou says, “Martyrdom, being a victory over Satan, conforms to the passion of Christ” (125). Tertullian cries, “Break the images! put veils on the virgins! Pray, fast, weep, mortify yourself! No philosophy! No books! After Jesus, science is useless” (4.79). Because of this theological position, Flaubert (and Hilarion) rank Tertullian among the ascetic Gnostics. While the historical Antoine had sympathy for the extremes of Tertullian and the Montanists, many believed in the more extreme position that saints should not only confront martyrdom with tranquility but that they should seek it out, a belief that Augustine condemned in his early fifth-century City of God. Each passer-by parades extreme spiritual practices and beliefs, claiming the authority of texts that were rejected by most of Christianity. On the one hand, the passing heretics tell Antoine that Jesus was only a man and, on the other, that he was pure spirit. Depending on who is talking, Jesus is or is not co-eternal with the Father; he is or is not of the same substance. Cain, Sodom, and Judas are praised, since without them death and redemption would not have come. Antoine laughs at the absurdity (4.72), equivocates (4.73), throws himself back away in horror (4.75), weeps (4.86), fulminates (4.86), and, on finding himself in a service of Ophites worshipping the python who was said to carry the spirit of God, faints with horror (4.91). Given Montanus’s emphasis on the power of the Holy Spirit (4.81–82), it is surely not an accident that, when Antoine suddenly finds himself in a prison filled with fearful Christians awaiting martyrdom, only a Phrygian Montanist (perhaps Montanus himself) has the strength to face the trial with equanimity. Antoine closes his eyes as the lions come. He opens them to find himself among the tombs of martyrs watching a group of Christians mourn their dead while sharing bread and wine before indulging in an orgy. Antoine soon sees a Brahman gymnosophist whose “disgust” (4.97) and “fatigue” (4.97) echo Antoine’s. He differs from many supposedly Christian Gnostics only in that he is about to kill himself rather than seek a martyr’s death at the hands of the heathen. He has come to doubt the

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existence of all reality, a temptation that also attracts the saint. “I have become disgusted with form, disgusted with perception, disgusted with knowledge itself—because thought does not survive the fleeting occurrence that causes it, and spirit is nothing but an illusion like the rest” (4.97). He lights his pyre and prepares to destroy himself, body, soul, and spirit. By this time, Antoine’s visions are directly attacking the divinity of Christ. The saint himself begins to doubt all reality (4.97). Simon the Magician and his visionary servant arrive. Simon claims to work miracles, assuring that he has already died and risen on the third day. He leaves only when Antoine wishes for Holy Water (sprinkling it was a standard way of routing Satan and his servants). Apollonius, the Pythagorean sorcerer, then tempts Antoine to trust in his own works as a means of achieving spiritual purification. His resemblance to Jesus shakes Antoine’s faith, since not only is Apollonius similar to Jesus physically, but he claims to have duplicated many of Christ’s miracles. Flaubert said in a manuscript notation: “Apollonius de Tyrane, epitomizing, going beyond all heresies and all religions” (4.303). The extended segment where Apollonius goads Antoine repeatedly balances the long passage at the end of part ii where the Queen of Sheba tempts the saint. Apollonius leaves only when Antoine cries out to Jesus and throws himself to the foot of the cross (4.116). Apollonius and his disciple rise heavenward and repeat the miracle of the Ascension. In short, the section demonstrates how spirit unlimited by form or substance changes, divides, and multiplies without restraint, producing apparently endless mutations. Earlier, Antoine had proclaimed, “Man, being spirit, must withdraw from mortal things” (4.66). The long exploration of spiritual temptations in part iv makes the folly of such a position clear. It is, however, but one more example of the saint’s pride. As R. B. Leal says, “All the temptations that pass through Antoine’s mind may in fact be seen as invitations to assert himself by dominating others physically, intellectually, or morally.”19 And so it is that this section most clearly indicates Antoine’s temptation, since Gnosticism encourages followers to believe that they can gain spiritual knowledge and power not at the will and by the grace of God but through their own efforts.

The Temptation of Things Part v opens with Antoine pensively considering the impressive Apollonius. “His manner of speaking of the Gods inspires a desire to get to know them” (4.117). Antoine remembers the animals bearing scepters, playing lyres, men with serpent’s bodies, women with fish heads prostrated before ithyphallic gods that he had seen in the temple of Heliopolis. Then he sees

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bizarre animals and dropsical dwarfs passing in front of him. On realizing that they are gods, he explodes with laughter. Hilarion, who has grown into a colossus, joins in his laughter, and they agree that “[y]ou have to be dumb to worship that!” (4.118). Together, they are amused by a procession of “idols from all nations and from all ages, made out of wood, metal, granite, feathers, sewn skins” (4.118). But Antoine’s amusement is replaced by annoyance as the passing gods increasingly resemble men and as they increasingly demand human sacrifices. Antoine is horrified, which gives Hilarion the opportunity to say that the saint’s God has done likewise. In this chapter, Hilarion will offer Antoine the temptation of things, that is, of matter or the flesh. By matter, Flaubert clearly had a philosophic definition in mind. It is the “indeterminate basis of being that is organized by form” (Robert). At first it seems that Antoine is now safe. Why would he be tempted by things? After all, they lack an essential element. “For matter to have so much power, it must contain spirit. The soul of the Gods is attached to its images . . . ” (4.118). But Hilarion is there to point out that the saint’s God shares many traits with these gods. God not only demanded sacrifices, he too is fragmented into three parts. The foolish shepherd who attempts with incantations to coerce rain from the ruler of the sky is not all that different from a priest who exorcises demons. Likewise, where the strange Brahman divinity has three faces, Hilarion reminds him that “Father, Son, and Holy spirit are similarly only a single person” (4.119). Antoine no longer laughs as he watches various gods mutate, taking on a multitude of forms. Hilarion explains that because life runs down, forms wear out and make metamorphosis necessary. Then Antoine sees a naked man who claims to be a god come to save the world. After passing through a number of tests he became the Buddha, who claims he came to know “the essence of things, the illusion of forms” (4.122). Most importantly, he understands that all things will pass away. Then the gods begin to go into convulsions and die. For different reasons, there is no more permanence with material gods than with various ideas about the spirit. More gods come. Oannes claims to have “sprung from the abyss to harden matter, to define forms” (4.124). Stars and planets of Babylon, gods fashioned like sexual organs, gods requiring that their worshippers become prostitutes, others that demand emasculation, gods shaped like men and women, gods with bizarre mutations, divine creations from the near East, gods of Egypt, gods of Greece and Rome. Antoine is afraid, but “an inexpressible curiosity carries him on” (4.126). He watches these mortal, material gods die. Diana of Ephesis comes and attempts to stimulate life, but each of her many breasts is dry. Then Cybele, who in effect is a meteorite, and her priests the Galli pass by, indulging in self-flagellation

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and mutilation. Atys, Cybele’s errant lover, emasculates himself. Although Hilarion does not point out that God took other forms, he makes no comments when Antoine confuses Christ with the lamb the Archigallus was sacrificing. “Don’t slit the lamb’s throat!” he cries (4.130). The point is not lost on the reader. Hilarion mixes up the gods by insisting that the Virgin is reflected in Proserpina and Jesus in Adonis and, later, in Aristeas. As Atys unmans himself, so Osiris is unable to find the member that would make Isis fecund. All these gods lead to nothing but fountains of blood and, ultimately, death. Antoine sadly thinks of the souls lost by such material gods, while Hilarion wants him to believe that these divinities represent a truth that lies behind the saint’s God (4.135). Having passed through the temptation of the spirit and almost through that of the flesh, Antoine has an answer to Hilarion’s suggestion: “It’s one of the devil’s tricks to do a more effective job of seducing the faithful. He attacks the strong by means of the spirit, others are led astray by the flesh” (4.135). Antoine, disgusted by the blood and perversion of these bestial gods (4.135), resists Hilarion’s continuing insistence on the heathen resemblances to Antoine’s faith. There is even a trinity in the mysteries of Samothracea, he says, a baptism in the religion of Isis, redemption in Mithra, the martyrdom of a god in Bacchus’s festival. To escape the crushing presence of these material deities, Antoine desperately recites a garbled, abbreviated version of the Nicene Creed. Myriads of gods parade by. Increasingly they resemble human beings, though they tumble one after another into a black pit. Suddenly a voice claiming to be the Hebrew Lord of Hosts comes from the darkness, but it too falls silent. All have vanished but Hilarion, transfigured as an archangel who says he is really Science. Antoine recognizes him as the devil and is repulsed. Still, curious to see Satan as he really is, he cannot tear his gaze away. And the cloven-hoofed devil throws him on his horns and carries him off. Neither spirit nor matter has any permanence. Each of their multiple variations seems more bestial, if not more bizarre and disgusting, than the other. As Juno pointed out, “Eagle, bull, swan, a shower of gold, cloud and fire, you took all forms” (4.139). Nonetheless, “our domination, our existence dissolved” (4.139). Despite their many metamorphoses, nothing remains but decomposition (4.140) and a few ashes (4.195).

The Temptation of Idea Part vi introduces the temptation of idea or reason—that is, what exists in thought, in the imagination, in understanding, though it is not physically real (Larousse 9.545)—completing the unholy trinity of spiritual

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heresiarchs, monstrous, material idols, and philosophic thought and idea. The devil carries Antoine off into space dominated by idea,20 where there is neither form nor end. Antoine wonders about the mountains behind which the sun sets, only to be informed that the sun never sets. The sun represents authority, thought, illumination; in this unearthly space, where the sun never goes down, idea reigns. Antoine is delighted that he feels weightless and no longer suffers, though, inexorably, Satan frightens him with evidence of an inhumane God and the predominance of illusion in human experience. Plato, Aristotle, Philolaus, the Jews, Pythagoras were all wrong (4.152). We learn in the next section that Xenophanes, Heraclitus, Melissus, and Anaxagoras taught the impossibility of gaining any knowledge (4.157). There is nothing but infinite space, at least, according to the devil. “Yes . . . yes!” says Antoine, “my intelligence takes it in!” (4.152). Like a philosophical confidence man, Satan encourages him in his selfaggrandizement to believe that his “intelligence” (4.152), his “thought” (4.153), his “reason” (4.155) are able to grasp the idea of this limitless expanse. “Like the firmament that rises the more you climb, it will grow as your thought ascends;—and you will feel your joy growing from this discovery of the world, this expansion of the infinite” (4.152–53). Of course, the contrary is true. When fear pricks the saint’s ballooning vanity, the devil emphasizes all the more Antoine’s absolute incapacity. Previously Satan has ordered: “[H]umble yourself!” (4.151). Largely thanks to the devil’s skills, Antoine is indeed humbled, though he continues to resist the satanic attacks. If God is “idea,” the satanic philosopher points out, the universe has no goal. Such a God neither experiences nor acts. To do so would be to reveal weakness. Furthermore, God’s will and his essence are indivisible. Were he to divide and become two, he would not be the same, thus in one form or another he would be imperfect. Perfection must be unified and indivisible, the devil points out. Because God has neither shape nor finitude, the realm of thought that surrounds Antoine now is merely an extension of matter. Antoine begins to weep, for this is a God who is beyond him, who cannot be moved, who can neither hear nor answer prayer. The devil chastises him. “You want God not to be God” (4.155). Satan goads Antoine’s fear and helplessness, while the saint struggles against the devil’s observations that question the omnipotence of God the Father. Go as far up as you wish, you will never reach the top, the devil insists. “[T]here is no bottom, no top, neither high, nor low, no end” (4.154). The thought terrifies Antoine. He cannot grasp such infinity. The devil agrees, “You can never know the full extent of the universe; consequently, you can never grasp its cause or have a just notion of God” (4.156). The abject Antoine is overwhelmed by this distended nothingness. God is beyond his reach. Consequently, Satan suggests

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that Antoine worship him and curse the “ghost” that he calls God. But the saint raises his eyes in an implicit prayer, and the devil loses his grip on him.

In the concluding part vii, Antoine takes stock and identifies his root sin, the same sin that theologians discern in Satan’s revolt and in Adam and Eve’s disobedience, the temptation, in short, that explains all temptation and all sin as opposition to God’s will. Just as the book’s terminal image shows that all the forms of God are united in the Trinity, so all variations of sin are unified in the rejection of God. As mentioned previously, the first man and woman ate the forbidden fruit because they wanted to “be as gods” (Gen. 3.5). Antoine has gone further; he wanted not just to be like God but to be one with Him: “I thought I could join with God!” (4.157). Unlike what happens at the end of the section, this is an act of revolt, for he wishes to choose not to accept his condition but to rise to the Godhead.21 The result of his rebellious attitude and overweening desire, he realizes at the beginning of part vii, is that “[m]y heart is dryer than a rock! It used to spill over with love” (4.157). Discouraged, Antoine considers killing himself. An old woman appears before him to encourage his suicide, to “do something that makes you equal with God. Think about it! He made you. You are going to destroy his work” (4.159). Another woman, this one young and beautiful, invites him to a life overflowing with the pleasure of lust, wealth, sloth. Slowly the women change and reveal their identities; the old woman increasingly resembles the skeleton of Death, while the young one’s robe splits and reveals the manifest body of Lust. Antoine tries to run but finally just watches them as a debate ensues and as they offer him endless pleasures. In the end their voices swell until he falls back, away. The women give place to a new hallucination, a monster undulating like a worm and combining the major attributes of Death and Lust: “It is a death’s head, with a crown of roses, above a pearly white, woman’s torso” (4.162). Antoine understands that these are the two forms of the devil’s invitation: the spirit of fornication and that of destruction, both of which lead to death (4.162). Repelled, he chooses life. The graphic configuration of death and lust fades away, and Antoine wonders about other combinations. If there is only one substance, he muses, why are there various forms? He has experience with the varied, absurd, creations of an unrestrained spirit, as he has experienced the empty forms of matter, and the infinite expanse of formless thought. None of these are satisfying. Spirit requires the discipline of thought, and both thought and spirit need form. In isolation, each—whether matter, idea,

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or spirit—is either ridiculous or fearsome. Antoine yearns to discover primordial figures that would allow him to understand the relationship between body (or matter or form) and spirit or image and idea or thought, “in which Being consists” (4.162). He continues his search for an explanation of reality and life, while Spinoza and early Christian thought merge in the conception of unity of substance that thinks and is manifested in numerous forms. The next hallucination introduces the Sphinx and the Chimera, archetypes that have a long, complicated history, which Flaubert radically simplified. The figures’ importance in this text is particularly in their opposition. While there is no doubt that the author was attracted to the imagoes because of their mysterious origins, his usage confounds the complex meanings that both Greek and Egyptian traditions would suggest. Flaubert appears to have meant, as he said in one of his manuscripts, “The Chimera is the appearance, the Sphinx, the substance” (4.363). As Flaubert presented the antithetical monsters, the Sphinx represents stolid matter and melancholic boredom. The enormous creature keeps his secret, and he thinks, but the combination of thought (idea) and form (matter) is insufficient, for it lacks the spirit of life (rûwach). The Chimera differs by combining imagination or fantasy with thought. This combination is likewise inadequate, for she is incapable of creating anything durable; she has no form. As Mrosovsky puts it, “The most important contrast between the two is also the most obvious, the contrast between rapid movement and absorbed immobility. The Sphinx is rigid, not with reasonable thoughts but through some sort of self-hypnotic condition. . . . Each suffers, the Sphinx from the aridity of its stillness, the Chimera from the emptiness of its innovations.”22 In attempting and failing to couple, the Sphinx and Chimera indicate that spirit cannot in itself form a permanent unity with matter. Consequently, these creations are incapable of creating life. Antoine thinks that “[D]eath is only an illusion, a veil, in places masking the continuity of life. But given that Substance is one, why are Forms diverse? Somewhere, there must be primordial figures whose bodies are nothing but their images. If we could see them, we would discover the relationship between matter and thought, in which Being consists! . . . I myself have occasionally perceived what seem like spiritual forms in the sky. Those who cross the desert meet animals that defy belief . . . ” (4.162–63). The passage prepares the rest of the section. Antoine, will continue his search for unity by following those monsters that display unusual combinations of mind, body, and spirit. As the author has Antoine say in a late manuscript: “There are then nothing but forms, appearances. Life, however, Being persist. But how and where can it be grasped?” (4.315). He is determined to find life.

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Seznec has tracked down the sources of these monsters and concludes that Flaubert’s imagination is not responsible for their creation. He even wonders whether Flaubert either could not or did not dare invent (Nouvelles études 62). In fact, of course, there was nothing wrong with Flaubert’s imagination. Here, if one follows the progression of the novel, La tentation has in the preceding three chapters covered the incredible creations that result in part iv from fantasy run amok when heresiarchs imagine religions of the Spirit, when in part v people form new gods from the material world around them, and when in part vi philosophers ratiocinate and propose far-fetched conceptions of God. The results of isolating spirit, matter, and idea one from another render life impossible. Isolated as they are in parts iv, v, and vi, they are patently unreal with little relationship to life, or they are mere things lacking life and thought. Death ensues from such fragmentation, while the saint yearns for life-giving unity. The monsters of part vii were grotesque combinations that were thought to be living, breathing reality. Flaubert does not invent them. He takes them rather from various bestiaries that in centuries past were believed factual and that Antoine would have believed real. Flaubert adds the museum’s “real monsters that caused him to daydream” (letter of February 19, 1872, to George Sand). The text’s subsequent “chain of being” is then “realistic,” since it is created from the creatures that for Saint Antoine would have been real and that he follows from one to the other along the sequence. He then traces the “real” and teratological but—most important—living combinations of body/spirit/mind in the attempt to find the absolute source of life. As several scholars have pointed out, this “chain” goes from humanoid creatures (“like appearances of human bodies,” 242) to very primitive plant and animal life.23 Finally, Antoine arrives at the least complex and most basic of all, a simple cell. (Of course, that the cell is “simple” is a nineteenth-century idea. We now know it to be highly organized and complex beyond even our current understanding.) The importance of this cell and the conclusion of the book were prefigured early in part vii. Antoine was remembering a past moment when, abounding in love, he joined “all beings and all things” (4.157) in adoring the Lord as he and Ammon went looking for a suitably lonely place for a monastery. As the sun set, “the two shadows of our bodies lengthened like two obelisks that never stopped growing and that seemed to walk before us. With pieces of our sticks, here and there we planted crosses to mark the emplacements of cells” (4.158). Traditionally, as Cirlot points out, an obelisk symbolizes “the sun-ray, by virtue of its shape. Because of its substance, it is bound up with the general symbolism of stone. It is further related to the myths of solar ascension and of light as the ‘penetrating spirit,’ in consequence of its upright position and the pyramidal

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point in which it terminates.”24 The obelisk’s triune significance of matter, sun or idea, and spirit is clear, as are the crosses that signal the future cells of monks. Cross, Trinity, and cell, though of a different kind, all reappear in the novel’s concluding passage. When, on coming to the end of the chain of monsters and plants, the humbled saint, flat on his stomach, is finally able to observe a single cell, he is filled with joy. The book’s description of what he sees is very suggestive: “small globular masses, no bigger than pinheads and garnished with cilia all around. A vibration sets them quivering” (4.170). Even without going into Spinoza’s argument that substance thinks, Flaubert suggests that the globular matter includes thought by using a strikingly strange image that I have been unable to find in contemporary descriptions of cells. He refers to “pinheads” (têtes d’épingles). This matter/thought is given form by the surrounding hairs. When the spirit of life arrives, the hairs begin to move. And with this revelation comes incredible joy, for as Antoine recognizes, “I saw the birth of life, I saw movement begin” (4.171). As mentioned earlier, Antoine claimed at one point to be primarily spirit. Now that he has a better idea of reality and understands that in living creatures, what the early fathers of the church such as Tertullian would call substance includes body, mind, and spirit, or word, reason, and power. Antoine would like to join with all forms of life, for despite the many variations in the forms of creation, all life has the three manifestations. Because Jesus was manifested in the flesh, Antoine is willing to accept himself as he is likewise manifested as flesh. The Bible says, “[Jesus] made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2.7–8). Flaubert, of course, knew the Bible well. Not only does he mention his acquaintance in his correspondence,25 but La tentation itself has many apt references to Scripture. Living man, like the cell, has the three manifestations of life. Although he is body, he is also mind and spirit. He is three manifestations in one, as is God. Freed of his pride, the saint is willing to imitate Jesus and become like the second person of the Godhead, who was incarnated as a mere human. In wanting to be matter, he, like the Christ, does not disdain becoming a man; he is simply accepting his role. No longer wishing to be spirit that rises above the earth, he submits to his God and wills to take on a human form and role. He has just learned that with God’s help matter and mind will be infused with the spirit of life. This, of course, is the meaning of the strange quotation found in the Goncourt diary entry of October 18, 1871: “Flaubert confides to me that the Saint’s defeat is due to the cell, the scientific cell. What is curious about that is that he seems to be

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astonished at my astonishment.” With the addition of spirit to any of the many forms of matter comes life. Unlike his early attempts to surprise or overtake God, Antoine merely accepts himself both as a man and as one of God’s creatures.26 Thus Antoine’s statement “I would like . . . to be matter” (4.171) is not a temptation, but rather an affirmation of submission.27 Early in part vii, Antoine remembers how wonderful it was when “all beings and all things gathered together in the same silence worshipped the Lord with me” (4.157). Several pages later, in the conclusion of part vii, with his surrender and his decision to turn from his self-centered rebellion, suddenly, the sun that disappeared in the introduction to part i returns “like tabernacle curtains that are being raised, golden clouds rolling up like large scrolls that uncover the sky. Right in the middle, and in the very disk of the sun radiates the face of Jesus Christ” (4.171). As Victor Brombert said, this “is one of the most difficult passages in all of Flaubert. And on it, because of its strategic placement in the final version, hinges the entire meaning of the book” (Novels of Flaubert 201). Curiously, when Flaubert was considering this image as the way to wrap up his novel, he wondered in a letter to Madame Roger des Genettes of May 3, 1873, whether “that is less ordinary [commun]?” He added that he thought it was clearer than his earlier ideas. He was well aware that “I need something very clear and short.” Unfortunately, for his readers, although the passage is short, the vision seems at best to have been ambiguous (e.g., Séginger, “Fiction” 142). It has been the crux of most of the muddle. There are several reasons for the perplexity. First of all, as Griffin writes, the image of a face in the sun is very widespread in different traditions and with different meanings. The passage, he believes, is then anything but clear.28 In addition, one has to ask both how an image of Jesus suddenly appears at the end of the book and what it has to do with the sun and with the entirety of the preceding novel? As Brombert indicates, the passage is undoubtedly responsible for the confusion. The imbroglio is, however, resolved when readers perceive the image as the representation of a triune God. If Seznec was correct to identify the source of the image as Didron’s Iconographie chrétienne: Histoire de Dieu, Seznec did not go on to explain that in Flaubert, in Didron, and in standard Christian texts of the fourth century, the radiating countenance of Jesus in the sun was considered to represent the Trinity and is, thus, heavy with significance (cf. Nouvelles études 26n4, 89). Given Flaubert’s enormous fund of knowledge from history and theology, he cannot have failed to know that the sun represents God the Father, the face of Jesus his earthly incarnation, and the rays radiating (rayonnant) from Jesus’s countenance the Holy Spirit. Take, for example, a passage in Tertullian’s Apology that Flaubert lists in his bibliography (9.527—in the following quotation, the “Word” should

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God made this universe by his word, reason and power. Your philosophers also agree that the maker of the universe seems to be Logos. . . . This Word, we have learnt, was produced from God, and was generated by being produced, and therefore is called the Son of God, and God from unity of Substance with God. For God too is spirit. When a ray is projected from the sun it is a portion of the whole sun; but the sun will be in the ray because it is a ray of the sun; the substance is not separated but extended.29

The three manifestations or persons of the divine hypostasis may be manifested in many different ways, though each manifestation is a part of the whole. The nimbus is simply the power of God’s Spirit emanating from the Godhead. It is as though Flaubert was acting like an archeologist and laying the rare shards of what was once a pot in a sequence across the first six parts that would suggest an order that facilitated their assembly into their former glory. In the concluding part vii, however, Flaubert brought the shards together to create a splendorous work of art, a work full of color and texture, able to bear significant aesthetic meaning. The novel’s sequence changes then and is subordinated to the image of the Trinity that concludes, indeed recreates, the entire volume of La tentation de saint Antoine. Flaubert’s Temptation At the end of La tentation, with his new understanding that creation is in the image of God, thus with body, soul, and spirit, Antoine joyously recognizes the pervasive presence of God in all things, including matter. He then humbly accepts his role not in elevated manifestations as spirit, or as reason, but as earthly matter. He knows that just as Jesus accepted his role as a fleshly incarnation, so Antoine must accept his own humanity. In rejecting sin, the saint turns from what is not God to God himself. Sin, whether in three or in seven manifestations, is always the result of choosing oneself over God. When, with the help of Hilarion or the devil, Antoine investigates a perverted trinity of broken pieces, each fragment, each shard is isolated from the others. As Antoine has finally understood, God is one. There is consequently only one temptation, which subsumes all others. As said before, it is the temptation to disobey God and thus turn from Him in rebellion. The saint finally rejects what is not God. Rewarded with a vision of the triune God, he crosses himself and “begins again to pray”

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be understood as Jesus, “reason/sun” as the Father, and “power/ray” as the Holy Spirit):

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(4.171). Readers of spiritual autobiographies will remember that prayer is only possible as a manifestation of God’s grace. It is important to recognize that Flaubert is no more suggesting the truth of Jesus here than he was at the end of “Saint Julien.” Despite the many critics who have sought philosophical or theological messages in La tentation de saint Antoine,30 one should recognize that Flaubert was primarily involved in crafting a work of art. As with Loulou in “Un Coeur simple,” which has served as the source of confusion separating those who believe the author was mocking Christianity from those who try to show that the parrot is merely a carefully crafted, signifying element in a very sophisticated work of art,31 too many critics have struggled ineffectually to find non-aesthetic meaning at the end of La tentation. Of course, there is no question that readers must understand the theological and philosophical ideas that Flaubert used. Otherwise it is impossible to grasp the way they function in the novel. Likewise, the cell is no more ironic than the parrot qua Holy Spirit of “Un cœur simple.” Flaubert is simply bringing his work to a conclusion that will complete the book’s movement and create a unified whole. As he said in a letter of June 11, 1871, to Madame Régnier with particular reference to La tentation, “More than ever one must think about making Art for oneself, for oneself alone.” With the necessary background, cell, matter, and a radiating Jesus in the sun are uncomplicated, clear ways of providing a “holy” image to serve as a mirror for the reverse image of “unholy” incarnations that Antoine had pursued in his revolt. When he finally turns away from both his own attempts and the ministrations of the devil, he submits to God, he accepts what God has made and himself as God’s creation, and he is rewarded with a vision of the triune God. As Butor and Ginsburg have argued, La tentation is indeed unified on the level of the narrative sequence. Saint Antoine is central to every episode, and Hilarion to parts iii through vi. Antoine and to a lesser degree Hilarion are, then, extremely important as conveyances that bring coherence to the whole. Likewise, as Leal and Orr maintain, there is from start to finish a series of intensifying opposites like that separating God and the devil. Unfortunately, however important, neither the syntagm nor a reconciliation of antitheses suffices to bring this ungainly novel together. On a higher level, the novel emphasizes triads or trinities that successfully bring the entire, “extravagant” work together into a series of holy and unholy, triune unities and thus indicate a work of art. Although novels are not paintings,32 Flaubert like many other writers attempted to subordinate the narration to something resembling a painting, though he was neither the first nor the only novelist to attempt to rise above both time and the linear narrative to produce an image if not an epiphany in the reader. Balzac regularly tried to expand his novels in this way, so much so that in reading and rereading

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his works one comes to expect the individual stories to be subordinated to some overriding image: of society in Le père Goriot, or of antithetical religions in Eugénie Grandet, or of love and art in Le chef d’œuvre inconnu, or of political power in Sur Catherine de Médicis, or of the Eternal in Le livre mystique. La tentation de saint Antoine differs in the way Flaubert repeats the shift from process to image structures. In the first part, where the reader makes the acquaintance of the saint, we are successively confronted with his thoroughly unpleasant, all too human vanity, greed, and lust. If it were merely a matter of one of Giotto’s symbolic figures, readers could nod wisely and pass on, but the text brings numerous examples of the generic sins to the fore. This multiplication is important for the novel, given that “all who do unrighteously are an abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deut. 25:16), for we know that however many sins are involved, each and every one represents rebellion against God. No doubt remains of Antoine’s weakness and of his preparation for Satan’s temptations. In part ii, the major sin of turning away from God fragments into the seven deadly sins, to which Antoine succumbs with scarcely any hesitation. The saint’s faith and will are left in tatters, opening him even more to Hilarion’s concerted attack. Much as part i presented Antoine to the reader, part iii introduces Hilarion. In the guise of a dwarfish but sturdy child, Hilarion announces that he represents logic and science, though we shortly learn that he is truly the devil. Flattering the saint’s vanity, Hilarion encourages Antoine to believe that he had resisted Satan in part ii and was justified in turning his intelligence against other saints of God, especially against the great trinitarian Athanasius. Puffed up with Hilarion’s praise, Antoine is only too happy to oblige, thus further distancing himself from God, magnifying Hilarion, and allowing him to grow in stature. The next three chapters present an orderly tour through the worldly versions of the Trinity. In part iv, Hilarion thoroughly investigates the spiritual heresies in the Gnostic movements of the fourth century A.D., as he drags the increasingly bewildered Antoine through them. Together, they see a myriad of varieties covering the possibilities from extreme asceticism to physical indulgence, since neither has special importance. After all, if only the spirit exists and if only the spirit can touch God, then neither flesh nor mind matters. When the seemingly apostate Antoine embraces the spirit and begins to doubt the very existence of all reality, he is ready in part v to ridicule both form and the temptation of matter and form. He laughs hilariously as he watches the bizarre forms that have been worshipped by generations of people. As one mutates into another, he recognizes that not even matter has the stability that one expects of God. It remains to try the world of idea, and when the devil carries the befuddled saint into limitless

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space, where nothing begins and nothing ends, everything seems more confusing and hopeless. The devil invites the saint to worship him. Antoine lifts his eyes, which is apparently enough to free him from the demonic snares and deposit him back onto the precipice where his hallucinations began. Finally, in the concluding part vii, after he more forcefully resists the temptations of lust, wealth, and a destruction of God’s creation through suicide, he marvels as the Chimera, a creation of the mind, fails to mate with the Sphinx, a purely material being. They then fail to create life, because they lack the spirit of life. Consequently, he draws comfort from his meditation on a single cell. While Flaubert clearly wanted to represent the three parts of this “simple” cell, this desire may not become clear until we join Antoine and watch the vision of the triune God. All life requires three parts: matter, mind, and spirit. The saint has seen the many different and often absurd creations of an unrestrained spirit, just as he has witnessed the empty forms of matter and the infinite expanse of unrestrained thought. None of these three in isolation are satisfying. Spirit must have the limits of reality and of thought, just as both spirit and thought require structure. In isolation, matter, idea, or spirit is either absurd or frightening. The trinity—unholy in parts i through vi and holy in the terminal passages— brings the work to a conclusion that incorporates all of Antoine’s sin in opposition to the triune God. Antoine had yearned to join with God, but he now understands that he must be separate from the God who will reward him spiritually for his faith. I am left, however, with the question of whether Flaubert had any right to demand such rarefied knowledge from his reader. The previously quoted passage from Goncourt is important, not because it indicates the saint’s defeat in confrontation with the cell, but rather because it shows Goncourt’s lack of comprehension and Flaubert’s astonishment that his colleague did not understand. Flaubert had knowingly or unknowingly made unreasonable demands and left Goncourt and most of his other readers behind. Flaubert asked a great deal of his audience. Not only by requiring considerable esoteric knowledge, but also by playing on the structure of theatre, he forced readers to read the novel visually and orally. Such reading is certainly not impossible, but it has the disadvantage of raising issues that have little to do with the fictional reality represented. The medium of La tentation differs from that of theater. Characters speaking and gesturing constitute the latter’s medium. While it is true that the novel may be read aloud, as it was with Flaubert himself, and could to some degree be performed, its medium is in fact the written language. There are many differences. While plays are generally written, their only

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significant manifestation is through the actors’ performance. Only directors can stop the production and force the actors to replay a scene. Every performance is different, and only by means of film and a recording is it subject to study. In contrast, a novel may be read and reread in part or in the whole, and the various readings of other readers may be compared with one’s own. Spectators seldom leave in the middle of a performance, while readers frequently set novels down unfinished, for continuation at another time. Musset’s “armchair theatre” offers an important, multifaceted example. Though written after Musset had given up on successful productions of his plays, they were created for a reader’s enjoyment, despite the fact that they were eventually produced as plays. In reaching the stage, they change character. Despite such an example that calls the importance of media into question, it requires but a moment’s reflection to recognize how different the two genres are. Likewise, by making the work incomprehensible to readers who lack either the patience to look up all of his esoteric references or who have no background in spiritual autobiographies of the fourth century, Flaubert has pushed the novel to the very edge of its capacities. One almost has to be one of the “illuminati” to appreciate it. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the work is the way that the sequences of each of the parts are subsumed into a global image of the Trinity. The sequential structures are subordinated to a brilliant imago that unifies the entire work. Satan opposes God, in the detail and in the trinitarian whole. Still, once one has acquired the requisite portion of the author’s recondite scholarship and thus becomes sensitive to his most important images, La tentation de saint Antoine becomes a wild, flamboyant, many-splendored masterpiece of enormous interest, a novel that constitutes an irresistible temptation for certain kinds of readers.

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Proust’s Reader

In the Beginning There are several things besides the pleasure of experiencing a masterpiece that should be noted on reading Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu. Most obviously, there is the asyndeton or absence of connectives, which is so pronounced that it takes considerable good will to believe that the work actually tells a story, despite the reappearance of the first-person pronoun “I.” On an initial reading, À la recherche seems rather like a skeleton that lacks many of its ligaments, however hidden by an entrancing style. Indeed, the novel overall has such an obvious lack of articulation, rather like a cursorily organized box of bones, that it has brought caustic remarks from numerous critics, among which is Melvin Maddocks’s already quoted pronouncement that Proust could not finish things and that his vaunted “unity” was nothing but dissimilar fragments.1 The more noticeable breaks in temporal and causal sequences that occur at the end of Combray, just before Un amour de Swann [Swann in Love], then, again, just before, Noms de pays: Le nom [Place Names: The Name], are particularly bewildering. Questions can scarcely fail to arise: why did Swann marry Odette, for example? Having finished a long, apparently meandering story in Combray about a somnolent old man who used to be a momma’s boy (if indeed we dare make the connection), how do we justify the next segment of several hundred pages telling the story of Swann’s affair with Odette? Likewise, surely it is disturbing to close Un amour de Swann with Swann’s ringing announcement that Odette was not his type. On flipping back through Combray, we learn that Swann was married to a woman of poor reputation, but she is not identified as the Odette of Un amour de Swann until well into the last part of Du côté de chez Swann. Swann’s marriage and the identity of his bride become abundantly clear in Noms de pays: Le nom and give all the more reason for being astonished

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5

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

at Swann’s condemnation of Odette that ends Un amour de Swann. Not only might one wish to know why the confirmed bachelor married, but it is even more pertinent to ask why he married Odette? Fathering an illegitimate child can scarcely have been a major problem for a worldly man of the day, especially since the difficulties engendered by such an unsuitable marriage would have been apparent well before going to the altar. Although it is true that readers eventually divine Swann’s craving for an heir, it seems unlikely, given his wealth, that he could not have arranged something more appropriate. These unexplained voids are as troubling as the hole in time and causation prior and subsequent to the nursing home where the protagonist has mysteriously been transported many years and thousands of pages farther on (4.432). If one focuses on passages that develop the story of the protagonist’s “vocation,”2 relating “how a little boy becomes a writer,”3 as have a number of scholars, the results are likewise not very satisfying. The narrator’s long attempt at conquering, on the one hand, Albertine and, on the other, social success have left him with nothing. The subject for his future literary work comes late, having been seemingly forgotten throughout most of the novel. It is more gratifying, though finally inadequate, to consider À la recherche a traditional, process (or sequential) novel and to enjoy the twists and turns of the less-than-straightforward plot that leads to the end of Le temps retrouvé. Jean Rousset, who is by no means an unsympathetic reader, calls it a “meandering walk in the night.”4 In the conclusion, the novel suggests that the author’s life will go on. His future is so well established, however, that the final pages do little to distinguish them from an ordinary conclusion where all the threads are neatly tied. Still, if Proust’s novel were a simple Bildungsroman, it could have easily dispensed with several volumes of prose, without for all that losing anything in the tale of the quest for the grail of meaning or the description of the young hero’s metamorphosis into the mature narrator. The protagonist’s pursuit of an ideal, a goal, a task, anything capable of providing his life with significance is suddenly fulfilled when he discovers a subject for his future work of art. At that point the movement is reversed. With dogged determination, the protagonist begins to peel away the layers of the life he has lived. “When the second movement (the one which is oriented toward a search for the work) receives its object, it nullifies the first movement (the search for a Good from life), or rather it inverts the sense: from progressive, this movement becomes regressive—no longer the search for something to live, but the search for something lived; it is intermingled with the creation of the book.”5 The conclusion contains this new, reverse movement in brief, and virtually all the reader’s questions about the protagonist’s future are answered. The novel has arrived at the end. The curtain has dropped. A reader might still wonder, however,

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whether all of those other two thousand pages were really necessary, and whether there was a purpose for the numerous unexplained breaks in the narration. Individual segments of the novel are, nonetheless, admirably organized. Un amour de Swann, the second compartment of Proust’s masterpiece, would leave even the most conservative reader content. There are no breaks in the narrative. The action is exquisitely clear. Swann meets, courts, and successfully seduces Odette, before being overcome with jealousy, losing her, and then moving on to other interests. The characterization is likewise impeccable. We have no difficulty sorting out whether the “I” is a protagonist or a narrator. Told throughout by a traditional, third-person narrator, we observe and understand how a well-bred rake like Swann could fall in love with a woman “whom he didn’t like, who was not [his] type.” And the secondary characters are equally vivid, from walk-on figures like the pianist’s aunt, “[i]n black because she believed that it is the most distinguished color possible and that one is always well dressed when in black” (1.201), to major figures like Mme Verdurin, seated on her perch, whose clichéd thought, behavior, and language indelibly mark the little clan, to the lovers’ code words for sex (“make cattleya” 1.230). Without exception, Proust breathes life into every character, and the reader is encouraged to sit back and enjoy the marvelous comedy. If Un amour de Swann were all that is involved, there would be no problem. It is not, however, alone. However much it may resemble thousands of other novels, the fact that it is but a part of a much larger whole drives the reader to wonder why it is so poorly connected to what precedes and follows. On carefully considering À la recherche, we cannot fail to conclude that neither the characters nor the places to which the hero first looks for truth have ultimate significance to the novel. The only completely developed character is, in fact, the “I,” and the only completed action is his gradual absorption of sufficient experience to permit the final integration of everything he has lived and recorded into a whole.6 He does not become the narrator until that moment when he identifies himself with what he has seen and thought of Combray, Balbec, the aristocratic Faubourg SaintGermain, his mother, Gilberte, Charlus, and, in fact, the Swann of Un amour de Swann. All those fragmentary views of various characters and places come together in the protagonist’s view of himself. He is what he has seen and experienced. The cast is shucked off; we confront an identifiable intaglio, and we perceive the “I.” While this view of À la recherche as the negative representation of a central protagonist may be helpful, the asyndeton remains a problem. À la recherche is no more the first literary work to indulge in the device than was Barbey’s Les diaboliques. Short story cycles seldom bother with

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chronological or causal links between stories. They may or may not have reappearing characters or settings, although thematic consistency is essential. Marguerite de Navarre tied her Heptaméron together with the friends’ (devisants’) discussions about the sense of the tales. Other authors actually use the break separating one portion of the text from another. Balzac’s Illusions perdues’ final passages prepare the rebirth of the main characters in the following Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, where we learn that Lucien has prostituted himself in the interstices. Nonetheless, in both cases, the wordless separation of the two parts successfully conveys the mystery of renewal and renaissance. In both cases the main characters have indeed faced death and come back alive in a different form. It is inconceivable that Proust could not have made productive use of his breaks in the narration. It seems unlikely that a novelist seriously interested in describing the hero’s development would be so cavalier about providing the links. It would have been a simple matter to accomplish. Why did he not pick up the religious imagery used in the Madeleine sequence and say that Swann was a sort of heraldic John the Baptist to the messiah-narrator who would reveal the answers of life and art? He certainly hints at such a conclusion on numerous occasions. One might also wonder why there is so much emphasis on the moments bienheureux (“blessed” or “revelatory” moments, usually left untranslated) through the course of the novel. If À la recherche is the story of the birth of a novelist, why is the narration downplayed and, indeed, corrupted? Why is so much emphasis placed on those undoubtedly marvelous epiphanies? If the key to Proust’s novel does not lie in the story of a boy’s gradual education through the course of his life into old age, but rather in a wonderful image that can be expanded or explored in depth, which signals and leads the way to ultimate truth; if À la recherche like other image novels has subordinated narration to description, these fantastic moments from the “Madeleine” to the uneven paving stones need further consideration, even though they have drawn the attention of almost every critic who has considered À la recherche du temps perdu in any depth. In truth, as Leo Bersani has said, “[t]he passages that describe these experiences have been subjected to so many complicated exegeses that it is only too easy . . . to forget our original impression of them.”7 However much I admire the way Eméric Fisher encapsulated an explanation of a moment bienheureux as a “meeting-sensation-memory-by-analogy”8 ), the clearest analysis came without doubt from Proust’s own hand in the novel. If one thinks back over all the passages that describe, analyze, and illustrate the phenomenon, the occurrence seems rather straightforward, if not simple. A sensory event takes place in the protagonist. Consciously or unconsciously, he forms an image that his mind absorbs and stores

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as a complex of sensations. The preserved image is composed of many differing elements, with connotations that can potentially link the image to other images. Flowers, for example, may be linked to funerals or love and marriage or to dozens of other possibilities to form an analogical or metaphorical chain. Unless the protagonist has some reason to maintain the image at the front of his mind, it is forgotten. When, later on, he experiences a sensation that is identical to its predecessor in the previous moment, the contemporary sensation recalls the stored image that was tucked away in the past. It now appears new because it was once “lost.” Real effort must be expended to breathe new life into it, to grasp, understand, and identify the memory that metaphorically joins the more recent image to the old and thus creates another. With this new metaphorical creation, a marvelous feeling of oneness is created. While Proust’s multiple explanations of involuntary memory are admirably analyzed, they are so cerebral that they tend to diminish the drama. J.-F. Revel’s plaint strikes a responsive chord in many: “Yes, all that is true, all that happens to us, but, I must say, it has hardly any interest for anyone but ourselves. . . . We have our own [examples] from our own experience. It is not the general fact that is precious; it is the personal content, which only touches the one who lives it.”9 But if, as this same critic would prefer, one were to “put aside a few theoretical hors d’œuvres” (Revel 40), which are more than a few, an enormous part of Proust’s novel would end up in the waste basket. Though some of Proust’s readers would perhaps consider this a decided improvement,10 I suspect the power of À la recherche would be diminished. Readers cannot deny that Proust explains almost everything in considerable depth. By the time he finishes with a thought, there can be very little doubt about his position on the matter. This propensity seems particularly surprising in the light of his repeated disdain for intelligence (e.g., 3.458–59). The reason the “I” elevates music over literature is precisely because music does not err in this way: This music seemed somehow truer than all familiar books. There were moments when I thought it depended on the fact that because what we sense in life is not in the form of ideas, its literary—that is to say intellectual— translation takes it into account, explains it, analyzes it, but does not recompose it the way music does when sounds seem to take on the inflection of being, to reproduce that internal and extreme point of sensations which is the part that gives us this specific intoxication that we find from time to time and which, when we say: “What beautiful weather! What a beautiful sun!” we do not at all communicate to our neighbor, in whom the same sun and the same weather awaken completely different vibrations. (3.876)

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If Proust were truly committed to the belief that “the truths which the intelligence grasps directly and openly in the world of full light are somewhat less profound, less necessary than those which life has, in spite of our conscious efforts, communicated in an impression, material because it entered through our senses, but whose meaning we can discern” (3.457), why did he insist on including his punctilious analyses in the text? Why did he continually emphasize his unquestioned intelligence? Why did he serve up for our consumption those long sections of thoroughly masticated ideas? Such passages help explain the reason why many critics would maintain that À la recherche du temps perdu is about life, but it seems probable that Proust preferred Rivière’s opinion: “It is life itself!”11 This was precisely the quality he sought. For Proust “art recomposes life exactly” (4.476) and, like Berma’s performance of Phèdre, it is made up of “rich, complex elements . . . that the fascinated spectator took, not for one of the artist’s successes, but for one of life’s givens” (2.348). If readers are to become involved in a novel, they must discover more than an intellectual treatise about life’s meaning; they must discover life itself. Art offers experience, encourages conceptualizing, and, most important, incites creation. The difference between a book describing life and a work of art that has become a part of life has enormous importance for Proust. When it is only about life, it has failed. Conversely, when it is life, it has succeeded in reaching its primary pedagogical function: to teach. Either as a success or a failure, of course, it may have taught some valuable truths, but the types of instruction are at odds with each other, as is the proportionate success of the instruction. If À la recherche is nothing but about life, it has failed in doing more than transmitting dead, bookish, pedantic, descriptive knowledge; if it is life, the reader has been given the chance to experience and discover not just Proust and his world but his own personal reality directly. As Proust knew and said, however, the artist can use the intelligence as a tool to cut to the real heart of his work: “I felt, however, that these truths which the intelligence discerns directly from reality are not to be entirely disdained, because they may enshrine with material that is less pure but still penetrated with meaning these impressions that the essence common to past and present sensations bring us from outside of time” (4.477). It seems to me that this is the most important role of Proust’s analyses and explanations: they highlight, they prepare, and they encourage readers to discover the great lessons of À la recherche for themselves. The emphasis I place on Proust’s pedagogy is intentional. À la recherche du temps perdu is in the finest sense a didactic novel. In fact, the only overt justifications for art in Proust’s novel concern education (e.g., 1.83–85). The reason for this traditional claim that art has the central obligation to teach pleasurably lies for Proust in the way art permits us to enter another

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person’s mind: “Only by means of art may we go out of ourselves and know what another sees of this universe which is not the same as ours” (4.474). Boileau, who believed that the function of art was to teach in a pleasing fashion, would have applauded had Proust’s grasp gone no further. If Proust had stopped there, it would scarcely provide sufficient recommendation for modern art. Proust continues, however. After the moments of revelation at the Princess de Guermantes’s, the protagonist finally evolves to become an artist and, thus, realize the dream of his youth. The development occurs because he has forced himself to ask the suitable questions, to struggle, and to succeed in understanding the meaning and importance of his moments bienheureux. He, as narrator, perceives what most people, inundated by the confused and confusing fragments of life, do not. Through art, he will be able to allow others to read the truth of himself and, consequently, within themselves. They will thus find the great human truth (which is objective, but uniquely because it can be subjectively true for everyone): the most important unifying factor in the protagonist’s or any other individual’s life is his or her own person. The seeming denial of the importance of art in the narrator’s statement that “[t]he objective value of art is small in and for itself ” is deceptive. Art has, in fact, enormous importance, but in a subjective way, which in the end indicates its true usefulness and grandeur: “what it is a question of releasing, of bringing to light are our sentiments, our passions, that is to say the passions, the sentiments of everyone” (4.485). Art, to repeat his marvelous analogy, is a lens that encourages the reader to read within him- or herself (4.490, 610). The process remains subjective, and the objective truth that the artist knows depends on the way it is actualized by others. Still, the reality taught has little to do with the objective, physical world, which is unimportant (4.489). What matters is rather “our thought, our life, reality” (4.473).

Incentives Sadly, as Proust was very aware, there are people like Swann and Charlus, who are for one reason or another incapable of using their sensitivities and minds for deep reflection. Perhaps because of laziness, they suffer from “inertia of [the] will.”12 Charlus, after all, “did not do anything, did not write, did not paint, did not even read anything in a serious, deep way” (2.856). Such a person stands in desperate need of a doctor who is able to provide the necessary impulsion “until the day arrives when his varying organic will has been little by little reeducated” (CSB 178–79). Each of the analytical passages in À la recherche incorporates what might be termed “a truth which may be copied in a notebook” (CSB 183), and any one of them

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might begin the cure. It must nonetheless not be forgotten that they occur at the beginning of the reader’s discovery; they are only the first step. In all instances, such a truth “is less, to speak precisely, truth itself than its indication or proof, thus giving way to another truth that it announces or verifies and which is at all events an individual creation by [the reader’s] mind” (CSB 183). In the examination Proust administers to his reader, he may also include a little exercise as an aide to the reader’s development. He does not say, for example, that the three trees of Hudimesnil remind the protagonist of “Martinville’s three steeples,” but he mentions the steeples as the Hudimesnil episode opens (2.76–77). When the protagonist wonders what they remind him of, why they affect him, and then leaves the questions—as so many others—without a response, Proust has effectively asked the reader a question not much more difficult than Groucho Marx’s famous “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?” but which nonetheless must be answered. It is the second small step on the road toward the ultimate and essential discovery. The third step is a part of the meaning elicited by the characters, those marvelous creations that successfully manifest their own individual personalities, peculiarities, manners of speaking and acting— in short, their own distinct selves. Few authors have created so many fully individualized characters. And, indeed, in À la recherche it is important that each one be clearly differentiated from the others, that the protagonist’s mother not be confused with the grandmother, that Gilberte be neither Albertine nor Rachel, that Swann be separated from Bloch and Charlus from Saint-Loup. It is important because it enables the “I” to find and surprise the reader with analogous qualities that join the two or three characters in a metaphor. He tells us that Swann prefigures the protagonist (e.g., 1.190–91) and that the mother becomes the grandmother (3.165–66); he points out the resemblances between Gilberte and Albertine (e.g., 4.83– 84); he dwells repeatedly on the qualities shared by the Guermantes (e.g., 2.730–31); he remarks on Saint-Loup’s echoes of Charlus (e.g., 4.263); he mentions how Charlus’s and Saint-Loup’s beloved Morel resembles Robert’s former mistress, Rachel (4.261), and how Gilberte has some success at resembling her as well (4.280). For the protagonist, Rachel and Gilberte are almost interchangeable. Then, having prepared us with a quantity of similar models, Proust leaves it to us to discover other similarities—for example, those joining Charles Swann and Charlus, both of whom are obsessive, elegant, brilliant, learned, and talented, and, tragically, neither of whom realizes his potential—and to form other metaphors. It is left for us to see the resemblance of Bloch and the late Charles Swann, whose anxiety over his wife’s position in society undeniably highlights a similar insecurity in Bloch. Moreover, both are

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Jewish and both arrivistes (Swann in respect to his futile attempt to open society to his wife). In addition, however true it may be that a plethora of images and allusions exert considerable influence on the form Albertine finally takes in the reader’s mind, Proust leaves her, arguably his most magnificent creation, for the reader to assemble.13 Slowly the characters take shape in the ideal reader’s mind, much the same as they did in the mind of the “I.” Places repeat the same metaphoric associations in numerous passages (e.g., 3.339; 4.153–54). “Thus, the spaces of my memory little by little covered by names which, in being ordered, in being composed in connection with each other, in being tied together by more or less numerous relationships, imitated those finished works of art in which there is not a single touch that is isolated, where each part in turn receives from the others its justification just as it imposes its own on them” (2.826).

The Three Ages of the Protagonist The passage just quoted mentions names, which serves to introduce another of what Proust called “incentives” (CSB 176). The importance of names to À la recherche is attested by the subtitles “Place Names: The Name,” “Place Names: The Place” (which appeared in the published version), and “People’s Names: The Duchess of Guermantes” (which, though projected, did not reach print), by the numerous pages that detail the protagonist’s reverie inspired by names, and by names that expand meaningfully with the Combray priest’s and Brichot’s etymologies. Revel has reproached Proust for failing to recognize that the protagonist’s dreams cannot be shared by the reader: “Everything that a name can evoke in each one of us by its sonority alone is no more obligatory for someone else than are the states [of mind] that colors encourage in us.”14 This statement may remind readers that Proust no more explained the train of thought his protagonist followed in attaching certain colors to people and places than he did for the images elicited by names. Readers are confronted by nothing but a few vague references to history, guidebooks, and railway schedules, the reveries themselves, and the announcement that actual experience and accurate etymology dissipate the charm. Apparently the protagonist’s private associations, for which numerous scholars and critics have suggested explanations, create the dreams. It remains, however, to point out that Proust apparently chose names that would provoke (or incite) reverie, that would indeed charm his readers. Revel went too far. Some names have importance only in the context of À la recherche. I think, for example, of the green in the names Verdurin and Saint Euverte, which, as I have suggested elsewhere, highlights their obsessive idealization of society,15 or morelle, the

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feminine form of moreau or “black” in (Charlie) Morel(le). Proust, making use of a device he almost certainly learned from Balzac,16 saw to it that Mme de Cambremer’s significant distortions of names include “Moreau” in respect to Morel (3.481). Farther on we are told that he was “excessively black,” as well (4.283). Proust began his course of instruction very early on in Du côté de chez Swann, indeed very early on in the creation of his masterpiece. As is well known, he long thought that he could keep his novel within the bounds of three volumes. Although Pierre Clarac and André Ferré were able to produce such a triadic work by using low bulk paper and small type, the first Gallimard edition and more recently those by Jean Milly and JeanYves Tadié have stretched well beyond three reasonably sized volumes. It seems opportune to wonder whether the three-part format remains conceptually significant, whether the undeniable chronological current of the narration makes a tripartite metaphor, whether the syntagm becomes a triadic paradigm while retaining the story of the narrator’s search for a subject of the art he believes he is meant to write.17 In 1913, Proust continued to believe that a triadic format was possible. He asked Louis de Robert, “As a title would you like Gardens in a Cup of Tea, or The Age of Names for the first. The Age of Words for the second. The Age of Things for the third” (Robert 62–63). Of course, on the flyleaf of Du côté de chez Swann and in various letters, he proposed many other titles, most of which dropped away like those he suggested to Louis de Robert. As subtitles, however, one may still discover “Noms de pays: le nom” [Country Names: The Name] and “Noms de pays: le pays” [Country Names: The Country] in À la recherche, while, as said before, the projected “Noms de personnes; la duchesse de Guermantes” [People’s Names: The Duchess de Guermantes] has gone the way of most dreams.18 There is nonetheless something special about these particular stages in the chronicle of Proust’s hero. Jean-Jacques Nattiez’s remarkable Proust as Musician argues that À la recherche poses three levels of understanding music: (1) the confrontation of a nebula, (2) the recognition of an intellectual challenge, and (3) the understanding of a transcendent truth. Within a given aesthetic experience, these levels analogically complement the three stages through which the Proustian hero is compelled to move.19 Nattiez further argues that they constitute (1) the aesthetic response of Swann in confrontation with the Sonata, (2) the protagonist before the same piece of music, and (3) the protagonist before the Septet, each showing a decided increase in aesthetic sensitivity (Nattiez 34–77). The three ages of Proust’s hero are much more than vague, early intentions that never reached fruition, for despite the mastery of transitions that depend not on plot but on metaphor—the very possibility that there may

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be a “transition” might astonish early readers of Proust—one may still discover the viscerally triadic structure of À la recherche. Proust’s hero did indeed traverse three “ages.” His experience may conveniently be divided into the Age of Names, the Age of Words, and the Age of Things. In short, for the moment, I would like to bypass the syntagmatic linkage of the two Ways and what has been called the novel’s binary composition,20 the numerous incarnations of different characters, the successive social gatherings, the various churches, the bells, the colors, and so on (though I have no doubt of their importance). For the moment, I would like to ignore the extraordinarily important metaphoric chains that function to tie À la recherche together. Like the transepts that face into the heart of a cathedral, such components are significant, and they have been adequately, sometimes brilliantly, studied.21 Here, I want to consider the work as a whole, as a paradigm. Though I have in view the main part of Proust’s cathedral— the narthex, the nave, and the apse—I want to focus specifically on the narthex, the Age of Names: Du côté de chez Swann and À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs [Within a Budding Grove]. This portion of the novel serves as the base for the protagonist’s further development in the Age of Words and the Age of Things. It is moreover written to introduce readers to the novel and encourage them to share the hero’s onomastic adventures.22 The narrator carefully explains both the process involved in the associations that the young hero makes with names and the boy’s sources. More important, Proust chose names that might encourage the reader’s similar reverie. Careful choice is evident in the names of all the major characters and places of Proust’s masterpiece. Those of us who have read Proust’s correspondence and have served an apprenticeship working with his manuscripts in the French National Library are well aware of Proust’s vital interest in onomastics and the care with which he chose his various names. Vington became Vinteuil, and the Gracieuse became the Pinsonne and the Vivette, before becoming the familiar Vivonne and, thereby, stressing “life” through the play on vivre (to live). Early versions of Albertine appeared under the names of Maria and Mlle Floriot. Charlus first entered the fiction as Saint-Loup’s (or Montargis’s) uncle, the Baron de Fleurus. M. de Montfort was renamed M. de Norpois. Mlle de Stermaria was once Mlle de Quimperlé, before being transformed into Mlle de Silaria. And Brichot was previously the considerably less euphemistic Cruchot and Crochard. It is doubtless overly enthusiastic to claim with Roland Barthes that “[t]he (poetic) event that ‘lanced’ the Recherche was Names. Without question, as early as the Sainte-Beuve, Proust already disposed of certain names (Combray, Guermantes), but it was only between 1907 and 1909, it seems, that he put together the main elements of the Recherche’s onomastic system: once the system was found, the work was immediately written.”23 Still,

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there is no doubt that names are more than a suggestive backdrop for the movements of the novel. As both manuscripts and definitive text indicate, the names of À la recherche occupied the author to a considerable degree while he was writing his masterpiece; they are an extraordinarily important part of the protagonist’s progress; and it would be a mistake for readers to ignore them while experiencing Proust’s fictional world. When Barthes considered Proust and names, he posed the problem from the standpoint of the creative process: “Proust’s alleged motivations are of two sorts: natural and cultural,” he says. “The first come under symbolic phonics” (Barthes 154). Like the majority of critics and essayists who have followed him, he gives the “cultural” short shrift to concentrate on the “natural,” that is, on phonetic associations. There is no doubt whatsoever that Proust paid close attention to the phonic content of onomastic signifiers. Outside the novel in early manuscripts, we can watch him move from Bolbec to Bricquebec, to Balbec, from Troussinville and Pinsonville to Tansonville, and so on. No one can read the punning on “ordure” (filth) and “merde” (excrement) and “la mère Verdurin” (mother Verdurin) (1.283) or Charlus’s malicious plays on the “Saint” and “Verte” (green) of Mme de Saint-Euverte (3.99) without acknowledging the importance of the material (or “natural”) features of names. Likewise, assonance may explain the famous and often discussed passage where the narrator associates Guermantes with “this amaranth color of the last syllable” before going on to link the name, as well, to “aspects of yellowing woods and the whole of a mysterious, provincial spot” (2.506). Such passages have led some to talk of synesthesia, others of phonetic suggestions, and still others of lexical, semantic, and semiotic associations.24 I do not want to argue against “natural” (that is, material) relationships. They are an important part of the author’s image-making activity, though not sufficiently consistent to permit generalizations about the creative process. Instead, I prefer to join Claudine Quémar and say that the protagonist was influenced by phonic associations, guidebooks, other interferences from reality, and reminiscences of other art works. Both “natural” and cultural associations are important, and neither should be neglected. The author’s reality, his world, his life had a very strong and direct influence. We know, for example, that Proust was aware that Illiers, the name of a real French town that he knew well, was one etymological variant of Saint Hilaire, for the Combray priest mentions it (1.103). Still, the importance of these associations is not in what it tells us about Proust’s creative process, but rather in the way these associations occur, for they are a part of the Proustian effort to train his reader. The numerous phonic, lexical, and semantic associations that occur across À la recherche help readers to understand what the text expects and the sorts

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of apposite analogies. “Anyway,” Oriane tells Swann, “these Cambremers have a very astonishing name. It finishes just in time [shi . . . ], but it finishes poorly!’ And Swann ripostes, “It begins no better,” since it suggests the very same excretal expletive phrased as “Cambronne’s word” (1.335–36). The narrator invites the reader to follow him as he retraces in detail the protagonist’s image-making. The cities of Normandy or Tuscany, for example, “took on something even more distinctive in being designated by names, names which were for them alone, names like those of people” (1.380). The boy recognizes that words, ordinary common nouns, have many referents, many images. Proper names, to the contrary, are related to a unique reality, and he imagines a reality concocted from hearsay, guidebooks, railway schedules, legends, fiction, history—in short, from anything that happens to cross his curious, receptive mind. “[N]ames present a confused image of people—and of cities that names accustom us to think of as individual and unique like people—it draws from the names, from their brilliant or dark sonority, the color with which it is uniformly painted. . . . The name of Parma, one of the cities that I had most wanted to visit since I had read La Chartreuse, appeared compact, smooth, mauve, and soft to me” (1.380–81; cf. 2.310–11). For page after stunning page, Proust turns his impressive knowledge of linguistic theory into poetry. Gérard Genette is beyond reproach when he says that À la recherche incorporates both a poetics of language and a critique of what he calls the referential or cratylian illusion (the belief in a material relationship between sign and referent) (“Langage indirect” 248–93). The narrator’s reflection on names serves to indicate and illustrate the protagonist-hero’s apprenticeship. Proust’s considerations of language and art have, however, another function. These passages, dazzling in their humor, sensitivity, and insight, are “incentives,” a term he explains in “Journées de lecture” (Days of Reading): And there, in fact, is one of the great and marvelous characteristics of beautiful books (which will cause us to understand the role, both essential and limited, that reading can play in our spiritual life), that for the author could be called “Conclusions” and for the reader “Incentives.” We sense very clearly that our wisdom begins where the author’s ends, and we would like him to respond to us, when all he can do is give us desires. And he cannot awaken these desires in us except by making us contemplate the supreme beauty that the utmost effort of his artistry has permitted him to attain. . . . [W]hat is the end of their wisdom appears to us as nothing but the beginning of ours. (CSB 176–77)

Consequently, however appropriate or far-fetched readers’ lexical or phonic associations may be with a given, early segment, I would mute my

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objections, since in general, readers making associations are functioning precisely as a Proustian reader should. They have sensed the “Incentive,” and they are responding. It is essential for us to link those characters that Jean-Pierre Richard calls “creatures of desire” (236) by means of the seme bert: There is Gilbert le Mauvais, Gilberte Swann, Robert de Saint-Loup, Albertine; one of Albertine’s friends even bears the name of Berthe (4.129). For those who share Proust’s sensitivity to etymologies, it might even be interesting to recall that bert derives from bericht, meaning “bright” or “famous.” Surely one should as well couple Charlus and Charlie. Given the narrator’s recognition that homosexuals may mentally transform the young women into young men (4.489), or the possibility of Albertine’s lesbian proclivities, it seems fitting to remember that Andrée derives from the Greek andros, meaning “male.”25 Similarly, the association of Crécy with crécelle (a rattle—cf., 3.626, 644) emphasizes Odette de Crécy’s importance as a light and frivolous person who gains her significance from the imaginary constructs of such observers as Swann and the protagonist. Some might even think of anagrammatic “lâcher” (to release) or “harceller” (to badger) in relation to Rachel. I would not object to joining Michel Butor in seeing Whistler in Élstir (19), though because of the network of allusions to the grail legends it seems more likely that Proust wanted readers to think of the Swan-Knight, who in some versions bears the name of Helyas, Élyas, or Élie (French for Elijah).26 Nor would I share Jean Milly’s hesitations about Leo Spitzer’s associating Swann with svelte.27 Nonetheless, although Proust unquestionably encouraged readers to make their own associations as they perceived his names, he did not by any means encourage free association. He seldom left his readers without clear indications of the direction he wished them to go, the form he wanted their creations to take. There was very little that was haphazard about the way Proust worked. The “natural,” material level was almost always deeply involved in the “cultural.” Readers devoid of a personal agenda and attentive to the text will easily distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable associations. This limited, but real, freedom allowed readers has certain dangers. Gilles Deleuze has rightly indicated some of the problems with free association from the syllabic qualities of proper names: “a hiatus between the contained and the container . . . the inadequacy of the contained, and its incommensurability.”28 Because of the numerous hints, implicit signposts, and explicit examples, I do not believe that the result is damaging. Proust apparently understood that readers reading are always free to make whatever associations they wish. His genius allowed him to devise a way to guide, inform, and use their choices. Proust was undoubtedly aware that the relationships linking signifier and signified, opaque and transparent signs, and external and internal 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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referents might be and often are deformed, but he had not had the benefit of post-Bloomfieldian linguistics or of la Nouvelle Critique. He was then not inclined to exclude connotations, and certainly not denotations, from the world of the work. In fact, as I have been arguing, he used them. His ultimate reality was not the semiotic sign; it was rather the semantic system of images and concepts. For him the medium was primarily a means for communicating a message. The medium is indeed the message. The widely discussed etymologies in Proust’s work are a case in point.29 As is often the case, the theme and its vehicles serve a number of functions. At first, when the Combray priest proposes his etymologies, they do little but stress the depth of meaning incorporated in names. They indicate history and historical figures, stressing people who lived exotic lives in the distant past. They do not reduce once fantastic names to mere words, with multiple objects (the myriad of “chairs” deriving from the Latin cathedra, for example), which is the normal result of Brichot’s later pedantic, etymological lectures. For Brichot, -fleur (3.484) becomes a simple, uninteresting “port” (2.281), M. de Cholet a cabbage (2.322), and “Saint-Mars, formerly (shame on anyone who evil thinks!) Saint-Merd” (2.281). Of course, Brichot is working his nefarious, destructive action in the Age of Words, while the good village priest helps the boy build the images from the stimulus of names. Unlike Brichot’s etymons, where a unique seme operates like a word, the Combray priest with little or no validity evokes seemingly random etymons: people, vegetables, trees, or plants, from which both he and his impressionable audience may infer multiple signs all pointing to the same, important referent of a legendary name, a real person living in times when extraordinary things happened: “[I]n the corner of the stained glass window you never noticed a woman in a yellow robe? Well, it is Saint Hilaire, who as you know is also called, in certain provinces, Saint Illiers, Saint Hélier, and even, in the Jura, Saint Ylie” (1.103). The priest’s etymology elicits the following story: “Wanting to get even with Charles, Gilbert had his men burn what was the early Combray church, that of Théodebert, when he and his court left the country house that he had near here at Thiberzy, to go fight the Burgundians. He had promised to build a church above Saint Hilaire’s tomb if the saint procured victory for him” (1.104). For the protagonist, the name not only brings history to life in his own time, but is directly tied to it. In one of Proust’s notebooks at the French National Library, there is a passage that goes far in explaining the process engaging the protagonist: Youth is the age of Names. So it is that for youth the world is peopled with unknown personages that cannot be reduced to each other. And growing old is to convert names little by little into words, into common notions that may be reduced to others. A child already lives words: when he says the word

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“chair,” he sees a chair as though it were a picture in outline, and he knows that it is not a unique species. But tell him to write you at the Château de Glisolles, because this place has a name of its own, he will imagine this place as though it were like none other and will imagine it with the aid of the syllables that compose it. He will not build it out of real elements, but out of dreams of colors and of sonorities. And while things—the things that are in words, whether beautiful or ugly, parallel to what we have seen and not differing from them, memory’s pictures—inspire no desire in us, do not appear real, not unknown, because the only real that there is for us is what has no equivalent in anything else, a name presents something real, something irreducible to anything else, something that we only dream about and that we would very much like to know. (N.A.F. 16669, fols. 23r–25r)

If I am correct that the Combray priest’s etymologies serve as “incentives,” readers should have been encouraged to generate their own associations. And indeed they have, though they often ascribe them to Proust. JeanPierre Richard says, for instance, that Proust may have been thinking of another name found in Augustin Thierry, “that of the Cambrians, the original inhabitants of England” (Sensible 230). If this is a reasonable hypothesis, and I would think it so on the grounds of paronomasia, one should perhaps also consider Fénelon’s Les aventures de Télémaque, both because he was known as the Swan of Cambrai and because, though Mentor was more active than Swann in guiding his ward and warning against the wiles of Venus, Swann’s importance as herald, guide, and model is too obvious to be denied. Occasionally, readers refuse textually inscribed associations. In regard to Saint-Hilaire, for example, Richard says, “In fact, with an etymology that seems fanciful, Proust connects the name of this saint . . . to that of Illiers, a village where he was at the time, etymology exposed by the Combray priest, and not destroyed later by Brichot’s critique” (Sensible 230). The reason Brichot does not use his pernicious knowledge to correct the etymology is, of course, that it is perfectly accurate. Illiers is indeed one of the variants of Hilaire (Réau 3.1397). It also recalls the nineteenth-century naturalist Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who, as Balzac reported with some enthusiasm, represents the “beautiful law . . . on which the unity of composition rests”30 and stands appropriately at the beginning of the two ways that join in a view from the church tower, according to the Combray priest (1.104–05), and, in another perspective, featured in Le temps retrouvé, when the protagonist learns that he can walk from one to the other during one of the visits to Gilberte’s home (4.268–69). The most interesting and, I think, most important association of Combray is etymological. As Victor E. Graham pointed out, Combray

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derives from etymons, indicating the meeting or junction of rivers.31 In addition, the text indicates that one should also remember the sixteenthcentury braie from Latin braca, meaning a “dam.” Graham is obviously made uneasy by the fact that neither Brichot nor the village priest gives the name’s etymology. Nonetheless, Graham is indeed correct to point out that “[w]e can only postulate, as with the name Guermantes, that Proust had in mind a precise connotation based on a plausible derivation” (“Etymologies” 308). Proust was a rather accomplished, amateur philologist, and his knowledge of more specialized work by Jules Quicherat and August Longnon makes it seem probable that an etymology like that of Combray was within his ken. After all, as Graham points out, it was known to philologists, and Proust would have had little difficulty uncovering it. Certainly, a number of passages link Guermantes with Combray and with the little Vivonne. The Guermantes Way, for example, is “like a typical river landscape” (1.133), and since M. et Mme de Guermantes’s ducal beings seem able to contain “the whole of the sunny ‘Guermantes Way,’ the course of the Vivonne, its lilies and big trees, and so many beautiful afternoons” (1.169–70), we perceive how Combray is joined by the little Vivonne to that realm lost in time where the Guermantes’ estate resides. Similarly, while the most important people have their source in the boy’s Combray life— the Swanns, the Guermantes, Legrandin, and the Vinteuils—as time passes and the protagonist pursues his quest, these names are gradually joined to each other and to all the others. Finally, we arrive in the concluding volume at an understanding of the accuracy of the narrator’s insight that he was not the only person who had been socially successful. “[F]rom the Combray basin where I was born, a rather large number . . . of fountains had risen symmetrically with me above the same liquid mass that had fed them” (4.547). He compares Legrandin’s differing path to “a divergent stream which in spite of the deviations in its course, flows into the same river” (4.547). A “basin” is, of course, the area drained by a river and the streams that flow into it. But in French a bassin is also a mineral or coal field, which leads by lexical association to the narrator’s comparison of his mind to “a rich mine field where there were enormously extended and very diverse, precious deposits” (3.614). The paronomastic Basin, Duke de Guermantes, is surely no more an accident than is Saint-Loup en Bray, since it recalls the etymology suggesting one or more of the confluent streams mentioned above. As a final remark, it is amusing to note that Oriane is on at least one occasion called Oriane-Zénaïde (3.441), especially when we remember the passage where she is “like a divinity of water” (3.139). Perhaps in her guise as Zénaïde, she is the divine naiad who presides over the Vivonne. Earlier, she is called the “lady of the lake” and explicitly evokes Lancelot and the

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Knights of the Round Table as well as Viviane and the magician Merlin (2.314, 1529–30n5).

Proust, of course, did very little textually to tie Combray to the Guermantes family. Nonetheless, if the reader has been caught up in the onomastic reverie first stimulated by the Age of Names, he or she has surely sensed the necessary, inherent, indeed, generic confluence of Combray and Guermantes. The reader arrives at the associations on his or her own, but the author has carefully provided signposts that show the way. Another important stimulus for the reader’s onomastic associations comes from allusion. Because the novelist recognized that readers may not be sensitive to a particular stimulus, he provided many opportunities (or optics). “[O]ther particularities . . . may make the reader need to read in a certain way in order to read well; the author should not be offended, but on the contrary he should give the reader the greatest possible freedom in telling him: ‘Look yourself to see whether you see better with this lens, with that one, or with that other one’ ” (4.490). Not infrequently, Proust’s names recall eponyms, and the reader is prepared for or reminded of the similarity between an episode in other literature or history and a capital event in a particular character’s life. On learning that Charlus bears the given name of Palamède, for example, one perhaps expects him to be falsely accused and exiled from the Verdurin circle, if not put to death like his Greek namesake. Similarly, the déclassée Mme de Villeparisis was doubtless fated both to fall from the lofty realms of her birth and youth and to regain some, if not all, of her luster. After all, she bears the Christian name Madeleine, known to all as the quintessential example of a fallen woman, subsequently restored. Such cognomens serve so patently as narrative supports that no one with the necessary background could miss them. They are, however, quite simple, shallow, and they do not permit the rich onomastic reverie that Proust’s most important names may stimulate. À la recherche uses a number of allusions to increase our ability to sense the power that Albertine has over the protagonist. Some are as extensive as the allusive patterns that bring the Arabian Nights into the reader’s experience.32 Others like the intertextual uses of Barbey d’Aurevilly’s “Le Rideau cramoisi” are much more limited in extent.33 Proust brings Barbey’s diabolical Albertine and her uncanny power into the text and shows how the hero is eventually enslaved. Whether Proust knew of other eponyms in Hoffmann’s “Le choix d’une finacée” (1819), Amédée Achard’s Les fourches caudines (1866) or Goethe’s Les années de

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voyage de Wilhelm Meister (1821–29) is an open question, though none of the associations would detract from À la recherche. Another of Proust’s onomastic incentives, the Guermantes-Swann imago, leaves no doubt of its relevance. The textual allusions link these families as firmly in the protagonist’s childhood as they are linked many years later in Gilberte’s and Saint-Loup’s daughter. For the reader who remembers that another Odette is one of the swan-maidens in Swan Lake, there are no surprises in discovering that Gilberte, the daughter of a Swann and a swan-maiden, has become a member of the family of Gilbert le Mauvais, Gilbert, and Marie-Gilberte de Guermantes. It would be neither the first Gilberte nor the first swan in the family. After all, a legendary duchess de Brabant married the Swan Knight, and, moreover, the Combray priest has told us that the Guermantes descend from Geneviève de Brabant (1.103). That the “hoarse voice” of the Guermantes women can be attributed to the ancestral swan who gave birth to the family through “the mythological impregnation of a nymph by a divine Bird” (2.732) may seem tenuous, but it is more convincing when the narrator compares Oriane’s husband to Jupiter (3.551), who impregnated that swan. And King Oriant was moreover the father of the Swan Knight. Oriane’s name is rich in allusions. Oriana was Amadis’s lady, heiress to the throne of Great Britain, and the great love of Amadis’s life. Amadis, hero of the Spanish romance, became particularly well known because of the twenty-four-volume French translation of Amadis de Gaule published in the sixteenth century. Completely subdued by his idealized love of Oriana, Amadis is nonetheless a great hero, in fact the flower of chivalry, and he usually returns victorious, covered with the blood of his enemies. Nor does Proust neglect the paronomastic potential. The mythic Orion, now a constellation, was killed because he vexed the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis. Much later, the author of À la recherche exploited the story for several comparisons. On one occasion the narrator sees Oriane “deviate from her stellar course” (2.672), and on another she moves “like a huntress” (2.727). Other imagery related to Oriane created an aura as readers respond to the incentive of the name Guermantes34 and its indication of the Parsifal legend. It is not clear what Proust’s source was. It may have been Wagner, whose work he knew and loved,35 but there was considerable interest in other versions of this and related legends. Parsifal was an important part of the author’s thought from quite early on. Sometime around 1910 or 1911, for example, he wrote a fragmentary comment in the margin of a manuscript version of Le temps retrouvé that firmly links Parsifal to other major images and themes: “Just as I will present the discovery of time found once again, like an illumination in the manner of Parisfal in the spoon, tea, etc. sensations, so . . . ”36

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The two texts most clearly brought into our reading experience by the name Guermantes are Chrétien de Troyes’s unfinished Conte du Graal37 and Wagner’s Parsifal. They differ considerably, but both seem to have left traces in À la recherche. In Chrétien’s version, Perceval has been taken to a sylvan retreat in an attempt to avoid the chivalric profession that had killed his father and two elder brothers. But the call to adventure was too strong, and the boy abandoned his weeping mother to the care of his uncle Gornementz. In the course of the young hero’s wanderings, he came to the castle of the Fisher King, where he saw the Grail. Had he asked the Fisher King his name, had he asked a question designed to elicit an explanation for the strange ceremony he witnesses, the king would have been freed from an enchantment. This would have brought ineffable happiness for him and his hosts. Unfortunately, Perceval remained mute, and the necessary question was not asked. The vision evaporated, and, desperate for another experience of the Grail, he began his quest. Proust’s treatment of this theme begins with the humorous description of the intense interest that Aunt Léonie takes in all the details of Combray life (Proust’s humor is often treacherous, for beneath the comedy he is frequently making a serious point). “[A] person whom we didn’t know was as incredible a being as a mythological god, and in fact we did not remember that each time one of these stupefying apparitions . . . had taken place, careful research had finally reduced the fabulous personage to the proportions of ‘whom we did know’ either personally or abstractly in his civil status as having a certain degree of family relationship with people in Combray” (1.56–57). Even a dog “that she didn’t know” was a major event (1.57), and after upsetting his aunt by telling her that he has seen a stranger near the Pont-Vieux, he is warned by his parents to avoid such impetuousness in the future. A stranger is an important event that interests everyone, though in most cases it takes little or no effort to reduce the wondrous being to a flesh-and-blood person belonging to one or the other of the local families. This preparation makes it difficult to understand why the boy did not ask the identity of the “fisherman in the straw hat . . . the only person whose identity I never discovered” (1.165).38 He started to ask his parents for enlightenment: “I wanted to ask his name then, but they waved me silent so as not to frighten the fish”. And the event dissipates. We should perhaps wonder ourselves why the question was never asked, but I suspect we forget as well.39 The memory of this peculiar behavior may return in later instances, however, when we begin to perceive that the protagonist’s failure to ask the necessary questions constitutes a serious flaw in his character, a major impediment to discovery. While strolling on the Guermantes Way, for example, he often has a feeling of intense pleasure on observing a roof, sunlight on a rock, an odor. He has the impression of a glimmer

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[S]o arduous was the duty imposed on me by these impressions of form, fragrance, or color—to try to note what was hiding behind them—that I did not delay in finding excuses for myself that would allow me to shirk these efforts and spare myself this fatigue. Luckily my parents would call, I would sense that I did not at present have the tranquility necessary to pursue my research usefully. . . . Then I would no longer pay attention to this unknown thing that enveloped itself with a form or fragrance, at peace when I would bring it back to the house, protected by the sheathing of images under which I found it alive, like the fish that, on the days when they let me go fishing, I would bring back covered by a layer of grass that preserved their freshness. Once back at the house, I thought of other things. (1.177)

Only once prior to Le temps retrouvé is there an exception: after seeing the three steeples of Martinville and Vieuxvicq (1.177–81), he did not turn away from the impression, but rather asked for paper and pencil and turned his experience into his first literary creation. If he had continued to be as persistent and perspicacious with other sensations as he was on considering the three steeples, he would have saved himself much torment. In one way or another, the reader is made privy to frequent cases of the protagonist running away from the mental effort necessary to come to terms with his life and thus find a subject for his art. The most vivid and perhaps most significant experience of this nature, however, occurs during his vacation at Balbec. Mme de Villeparisis has taken them on a ride to Carqueville. The church’s shifting, ivy-covered, wind-blown façade makes it difficult to perceive the true outlines of the church and, thus, provides an excellent analogy of the way images are hidden in our minds by the bombardment of new sensations. It then prepares what is to follow. First off, the hero sees and meets a beautiful fisher-girl, but he is content to make an impression on her. He consequently fails to go further and learn anything significant. Likewise, when he catches sight of the three trees near Hudimesnil, though the narrator hints at the reason for his joy by referring to the three Martinville-Vieuxvicq steeples, the boy does not persist in his efforts to plumb and thus “know” his pleasure. As he rides off, the trees seem to say, “What you do not learn from us today, you will never know. If you drop us at the end of this road where we were trying to raise ourselves up to you, a whole part of yourself that we were bringing to you will fall forever into nothingness” (2.79). He turns his back, “sad as though I had just lost a friend, died to myself, denied a dead person or failed to recognize a god” (2.79). Of course, the reality he should have continued to seek exists

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of significance behind the scene, but he rapidly abandons any attempt to understand.

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not outside but within himself. Still, this discovery only comes after much inner turmoil and many years. Finally, at the Princess de Guermantes’s gathering in Le temps retrouvé, he persists in his attempt to understand, that is, so to speak, to ask the Fisher King the appropriate question. Rather than the legendary Fisher King, of course, he needs to ask himself in order to discover the potential for art. Wagner’s version of the Grail story serves allusively to stress other aspects of the narrator’s quest, for it opens with the information that the Fisher King’s condition is worse than ever. Seduced by Kundry, one of the evil Klingsor’s temptresses, the king had allowed the sacred lance to be taken from him. The wound that the magician then inflicted causes him terrible and continuing pain, which will be healed only when “a pure fool, who has been taught by compassion” recaptures the lance and touches the wound with it. Parsifal’s arrival is heralded when he shoots one of the sacred swans, which then falls at the knight’s feet. Gurnemanz, among the oldest and most revered of the Grail knights, reproaches the boy who, overcome with shame, breaks his bow and arrows. Parsifal then learns that his forgotten mother has died. Though he is filled with sorrow at this additional evidence that he is a “shallow-brained fool,” that “senseless Folly dwells in me,”40 Gurnemanz grows hopeful at the sight of this simpleton. He takes the boy under his wing and teaches him everything a knight should know about combat and chivalrous conduct. Parsifal is filled with compassion as he watches the tortured king prepare and bless the sacrificial meal when it is exposed in the Holy Grail before the assembly of knights. After they have received their sustenance, the chalice’s supernatural glow fades, and it is put away. Parsifal determines to wrench the sacred lance from Klingsor’s wicked grasp and thus heal the pathetic Fisher King. He sets out for Klingsor’s castle and those Madchen ganz wie in Blumengewandern, selbst Blumen erscheinend (maidens so totally festooned with flowers that they seemed themselves to bloom), much like the girls in À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs. Parsifal too is tempted—he, like the protagonist of Proust’s novel, is at this point “on the wrong track” (1.563)—but after sinking to Kundry’s couch in Klingsor’s enchanted garden and receiving a kiss, he feels as if a lance has been thrust in his side, and he pushes the flower-girl away. Grasping the holy lance, he sets out for the Grail castle. On finally arriving, he heals the Fisher King and then succeeds him as king of the Knights of the Grail. It is for good reason that “the unknown quality of her [Guermantes] name” makes Proust’s narrator perceive “a strange sense of a medieval tapestry, of a Gothic stained glass window” (2.506). The previously mentioned allusion to Swan Lake illuminates Swann, the socialite and idolatrous art worshiper. Prince Siegfried, we remember, fell in love with the Swan Queen, Odette, but was tricked into marrying 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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Odile, who was disguised by the enchanter, Von Rothbart, to look like his true love. According to legend, as long as swan-maidens have the power of transforming themselves into swans or, to phrase it another way, as long as they are free, they retain their youth.41 Proust’s Odette, of course, preserves both her youth and her freedom. Even when the calendar should have forced her into retirement, she seems “a challenge to the laws of chronology that was more miraculous than the conservation of radium to those of nature” (4.526). She has no trouble keeping the Duke de Guermantes under her thumb. Though Mme Swann, as Odette/Odile, is surely not responsible for her husband’s seeming inability to rise to an acceptable understanding of life, and thus to the creation of art, the allusion emphasizes and illumines that failure. Wagner’s Fisher King may, as well, intensify our sense of Swann’s pain and suffering for “a woman whom [he] did not like, who was not [his] type” (1.375). Wagner’s Parsifal adds further luminescence to the Guermantes name. Perhaps the peculiar syllabic division, Guerm- and -antes, where, as Graham points out (Imagery 245), one would expect Guer-mantes, may be explained by the desire to suggest that they were formerly German. The Verdurins claim to believe that Charlus is, in fact, either Austrian or Prussian (4.346–47). The implication that Mme de Guermantes may take Gurnemanz’s role in training Proust’s protagonist prepares us for a quest of importance. She will go fishing with him, he dreams, teach him the names of flowers, and provide him with the subject matter for the poetic Grail he will create (1.170; 2.313). The allusion may also add a shiver of dread when we see the boy following in Swann’s path, as though he were indeed Parsifal hazarding himself in the Fisher King’s footsteps. The danger he runs is clear for the reader to see, especially when the hero says, “And certainly I would have been less ill-at-ease in an enchanted cavern than in this little waiting room [belonging to Mme Swann] where the fire seemed to be conducting transmutations as in Klingsor’s laboratory” (1.518). When he arrives at Balbec in À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, his seduction is complete. “And yet,” he decides, “I was perhaps not wrong to sacrifice the pleasures not only of society but of friendship to the one of passing an entire day in this garden” (2.260). He is figuratively, if not in fact, “Parsifal in the middle of the flowering girls” (2.716) in Klingsor’s garden. His later introduction to the Guermantes circle is little improvement in his perpetual lack of fulfillment. He merely adds “flowering women” (2.833) to the “flowering girls” (2.833). I could tease out other major allusions, keyed largely by names, for they occur to some degree with virtually every character. Charlus trails vestiges of someone we once met in Saint-Simon, Jupien of Scaron,42 Morel of Louis XVIII’s steward when he was the count of Provence,43 and so on. It is no 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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accident that Eulalie, the gossip who brings Léonie her news, means “fair speech,” or that Vinteuil suggests both the wine (vin) of poetic inspiration and the tragic mourning (deuil) that darkened his last days.44 While Proust clearly sensed that a name offers one of the most direct means of marking a character and of giving him or her the breath of life, he sought names that additionally have paronomastic, etymological, and eponymic reverberations. One could even point out that in attempting to know Albertine, to imprison her, and to capture her essence, the protagonist is repeating the error of Lohengrin’s wife. Not surprisingly, when Albertine departs, like Lohengrin who left behind his ring, she leaves behind her rings.45 Lohengrin’s boat was pulled by a swan; Albertine’s was to be named Le Cygne (The Swan, 4.38). Names offer efficient means of introducing history, the Bible, legend, or myth to a text. Proust’s names do all of these things, though one of their most important functions is to encourage the reader to join the protagonist in the formation of images from names and thus to provide a shimmering backdrop that illuminates the joys, dangers, and despairs of the protagonist’s search for self-definition and meaning on the road to artistic expression. I do not agree with Deleuze that Proust’s names are “stuffed with a content that makes them explode; not only do we witness a sort of dynamiting of the containers by the contained, but in this explosion of the contained itself which, unfolded, explained, does not form a unique figure, but the debris of heterogeneous truths that continue to struggle among themselves more than they agree” (131–32). To have this effect, the connotations would have to be obtrusive, and they never are. Instead, they remain quietly in the background working a subtle enchantment, encouraging readers to have their own Age of Names. Unless readers follow the trail blazed by the protagonist-narrator, they cannot have the benefits. They will be deprived not just of their own moments bienheureux but of their own works of art as well. The medieval jurists may have been wrong when they proclaimed, “Nomina sunt consequentia rebus” (names are the consequences of things), but Proust’s readers would be wise to regard the formula as axiomatic during one portion of their experience in the world of À la recherche du temps perdu. Because Proust had no way of knowing when, if ever, readers would begin their own quest, from the Age of Names, to the Age of Words, to the Age of Things, he included such initiatory, onomastic incantations throughout À la recherche. Most operate in the first part, however, where the hero believes with Bloch that “you create what you name” (1.89). The boy and his friend are wrong, but theirs is a happy, optimistic age, full of life and beauty. As Proust put it in an already cited passage, “Youth is the age of Names.” It is enough to make one wish never to arrive at the dreary wasteland of the Age of Words, where the signifier lacks special traits and

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In the End It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of names, characters, and settings as a way of preparing readers to live the experience of À la recherche in the same way the narrator finally lives his own life, but I suspect the most important means to this end consists of the narrative sequence itself. Still, because the first part of novel gives every appearance of “a gathering of pieces with haphazard seams, from several freely followed currents of inspiration,” as Revel would have it,46 it poses serious difficulties. Proust was of course aware of the problem. He acknowledged in 1920: “In Du côté de chez Swann, certain people (even some who are very well read), misunderstanding the rigorous though hidden composition, . . . thought that my novel was a sort of collection of memories tied together according to the fortuitous laws of the association of ideas” (CSB 598–99). In this passage, he points to his use of “a phenomenon of memory” as a means of juncture and insists on the rigorous organization. Specifically, he has the madeleine sequence in mind, although his view of the entire novel similarly depended on the ways ideas could be tied together. For him, À la recherche was constructed in accordance with the human mind and its analogical workings. Take Un amour de Swann and the way it is prepared by the heavy emphasis on love and obsession throughout Combray. I think of Geneviève de Brabant’s problems with Golo, the drama putting mother and son at odds on the fateful evening of the boy’s revolt, François le champi, whose themes will be replayed in Swann’s story, the obsessive Léonie, not to mention Uncle Adolphe and his embarrassing affair with “the woman in pink.” Nor should I fail to mention Françoise and the kitchen maid, Gilberte and the hawthorns, the protagonist’s masturbation, the associations of Roussainville, and Montjouvain. Numerous critics have considered the difficulties posed by the unorthodox sequence of Proust’s narration, and the results of these investigations frequently support Proust’s contention.47 The sequence is very orderly, but it follows an analogical chain of relationships, where the episodes are “tied together according to the . . . laws of the association of ideas” that are anything but “fortuitous” (CSB 599). They do not, however, follow the traditional rules for chronological and causal sequencing in novels. Thus, they oblige readers who sense that the order is rigorous and right, though perhaps not of the kind they might expect,

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is but one of many facsimiles. But then, were one to stop and become permanently mired in Swann’s arrested development, one would never attain the Age of Things and become one’s own narrator.

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to seek other principles of order. It was doubtless particularly difficult for readers of Proust’s day, who lacked the advantage of distance or the benefit of more recent literature to grasp the structural relations of À la recherche.48 Even today it may be difficult, but, then, Proust makes clear in his preface to Sésame et les lys that no worthwhile reading is easy. To read successfully requires effort. The acceptance of other unorthodox novels by later audiences also requires that readers have accurate expectations of the work they are exploring. They can, of course, be sensitized with exposure to novels that are oriented in new ways. The narrator points out that in Victor Hugo’s early poems, he “is still thinking, instead of being content, like nature, with giving the material for thought” (2.837). The author of À la recherche did not make the same error. He encourages a kind of “selective breeding” that emphasizes already embedded though latent traits. Proust did everything in his power to educate his readers, so that they might understand his book.49 Nonetheless, he recognized that “each time someone looks at things in a somewhat new way, almost without exception people do not see anything of what he is showing them. You need at least forty years for them to succeed in making it out” (2.811). Forty years and more have passed. Many of Proust’s innovations occur in the work of recent novelists and are explained by perceptive critics, but I think it is particularly due to the program of learning Proust inserted into his novel that we are now reading À la recherche suitably. Today, we know that our “memory does not ordinarily present our recollections in their chronological order, but rather as a reflection where the order of the parts is reversed” (1.568), and we accept the truth of what Balzac said long ago: “There is nothing absolute about words. We act more on a word than it acts on us; its force is because of the images that we have acquired and that we group with it” (Louis Lambert 11.602). Proust’s narrator in Contre Sainte-Beuve is willing to admit that “reading acts only as an incentive which in no way substitutes for our personal activity” (180). As he understood, the rationalistic order taught in classes on reasoning and argumentation need not be the only kind of systematic thought, since logic could lack the ordinary kind of connectives. “[T]his absence of a logical and necessary connection . . . is, more than the facts recounted, the sign of truth” (3.604), and with full knowledge that “truth has no need to be said in order to be manifested” (2.365), we are devoting the effort necessary to uncover those richly woven “mysterious threads” of our experience of À la recherche, which form “a rich network of recollections [that] leaves only the choice of the path to take between them” (4.607). No one can doubt that À la recherche du temps perdu is didactic. The pedagogical imperative was not uncommon for novels between the two great wars, when novelists were bent on teaching solutions to the world’s

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problems. Nonetheless, Proust understood that the novel constitutes what René Godenne has called an “anti-didactic genre par excellence.”50 He sees it as an essential paradox that can only be resolved through the active pursuit of understanding. “People reason,” says Proust, “that is to say that they meander” (3.461). Where Jean Ricardou has suggested that “great narrations are recognized by the sign that the fiction they propose is nothing but the dramatization of their own functioning,”51 Proust not only dramatized, he not only allowed, but he encouraged the actualization of his fiction in reality. Many readers find it very difficult to approach À la recherche, for Proust’s perspective on the reading experience is unusual. He explained that although exhortation, explanation, description, and vicarious experience may help direct a reader’s quest for truth, only real-life discovery can teach. He expects his novel to be “real-life experience, thus suitable for the kind of discovery that changes people and elicits art” (CSB 177). There exists, he explains, “a remarkable and moreover providential law of mental optics (a law which perhaps signifies that we can receive truth from no one and that we must create it ourselves)” (CSB 177). “What we have not had to decipher, to illuminate by our personal effort . . . is not ours” (4.459). The extensive, detailed explanation and exposition that surrounds the episodes of the protagonist’s involuntary memory acts as little more than a vade mecum for the reader. It does not in any way satisfy the goals of À la recherche. But it is not just the moments bienheureux that serve such an end. All the characters, all the settings, all the episodes, all the systems of meaning, indeed the entire novel functions to produce a similar kind of experience in the reader. The glorious synthesis brought by an episode of involuntary memory cannot be explained or willed into existence. Because it “would be impossible by direct and conscious means” (4.474), it only takes place when provoked by unconscious, subjective stimuli. And it can germinate uniquely where it has been sown and cultivated, that is, in the reader’s mind. For À la recherche du temps perdu to become a living thing, and thus succeed, it must produce involuntary memory in the reader. Consequently, where the idea of submitting his work to the mercy of a reader revolted Valéry and reduced him to silence, in a passage I have referred to before, Proust not only permitted, he insisted that his audience read within themselves. “The recognition within oneself, by the reader, of what the book says is the proof of its truth” (4.490). The writer must provide many opportunities, or lenses, and allow “the reader the greatest possible freedom in telling him: ‘Decide for yourself whether you see better with this lens, with that one, with that other one’ ” (4.490). Proust could be tolerant of the major causes for the occasionally extreme divergence in the

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perceptions that various persons may have of an event. Individuals see or hear differently, according to their position in relation to objects, their perspectives, and the intervening distance in time and space. Literature does away with this relativity. The physical distance between a book and the reader’s eyes is unimportant, but because the artist dominates perspective, he or she unfailingly controls that of the reader. The author either declares that a stone stands at a certain distance or describes it so that we visualize it from afar. He or she may tell the reader that a trip takes several hours or may describe it so as to convey an impression of lapsed time. Another type of false, often aberrant, perception is outside the artist’s control. As any policeman knows, any two people observing the same event will understand it differently, depending on perceptual flaws, their background and education, their prejudices, and so on. Proust was, probably correctly, indifferent to this type of aberration, for it would be consistent in its anomalies. That is, the person who is blind to the color red, but who hears G-flat when confronted with the color, would always do so. The homosexual who mentally transforms fictional mistresses into young boys (4.490) would consistently do so. He has not damaged the quality of his experience, for his aberrations are invariably the same. The narrator was then accepting of such psychological and physiological irregularities, for they would invariably produce a consistent response. Deprived of readers, Proust knew quite well that his work would die. As a result, he was very concerned with finding an audience. He kept current with the reviews of his book as portions appeared and was anxious to attract readers to consider his work seriously. He asked for nothing more than that his book be read carefully. From this point of view, it is worth noting that only once does the narrator set aside his impartial observance of Charlus. The resulting virulent criticism reflects neither Charlus’s snobbishness nor his homosexuality, nor his cruelty, rather his sloth. And it concludes as the narrator condemns his careless reading habits (2.856). One may read with whatever lens one wishes, but one must read attentively, “deeply and seriously” (2.856). As all these considerations attest, À la recherche perceives the reader as integrally important. To the degree that a text is an objectively independent entity, it may have been organized as a sequence or structured as a whole, but it cannot have either coherence or unity until the mind of a reader creates the relationships implied by the organization and, moreover, forms images. A text, as the formal translation and transformation of a writer’s thoughts into words, continues as nothing but a mere sequence of hieroglyphics until a reader translates or decodes these inked configurations into ideas and images. Unlike buildings, which have foundations, load-bearing walls, braces, and so forth that hold it up, independent of the spectator, a

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literary work provides nothing but the raw material. It lacks the final step. Neglecting aesthetic value for the moment, a work of literature may be said to resemble a prefabricated building, which is sophisticated enough to allow a few, limited variations in the final structure, and which is all organized in the order of assembly, awaiting the necessary crew. A book or a poem is no more than a pile of smudged paper until the moment that the reader, with his or her understanding of the conventions of the written language and tradition, arranges the parts appropriately, binds the dispersed materials, and provides the work with order, form, and structure. Style, according to À la recherche, is vision and revelation for the reader (4.474). Communicated by style (4.474) and images (4.460–61), art is the spiritual equivalent of reality (4.457), having value only to the degree that it becomes transparent, a lens at the service of a reader. Proust understood that language as commonly used is nothing but a convention that we accept within a community and that thus permits communication of sorts. Because of its approximate nature, however, it is unable to transmit the individual secrets of one human being to another with any precision. Words are not sensations; they only represent the common denominator of sensations. What is unique to an experience cannot be transmitted by ordinary language. “Is it not so that these elements, all of this real residue that we are obliged to keep for ourselves, that conversation cannot transmit even from friend to friend, from master to disciple, from lover to mistress, this ineffable something which makes a qualitative difference between what each person has sensed, and that he is obliged to leave on the threshold of sentences, where he can only communicate with someone else in limiting himself to external points common to everyone and without interest, art, the art of a Vinteuil as of an Élstir, causes it to appear, exteriorizing in the colors of the spectrum the intimate worlds which we call individual and which we would never know without art?”52 For a writer, there are two obvious resolutions to the desire to communicate the virtually incommunicable. Proust did not disdain the first, Mallarmé’s answer: to put language under extreme pressure and thus force it, by using rhythms, rhetorical devices, lexical precision and imprecision, imagery and symbolism, to evoke not the experience common to all readers but the particular reality of the protagonist. The power of Proust’s style to spellbind is undeniable. But Proust’s system of working indicates a second important tool. One of the things that a scholar may note on considering the novelist’s manuscripts is the quantity of formulas such as “Put elsewhere,” “Don’t forget elsewhere,” “Put someplace here or there,” “At some point in this chapter, or before, or for something else,” “[P]ut (Capitalissime [)] at the place where it can fit in our life,” “Intercalate some place farther on,” or “Put this some place or other for Élstir. Important.”53 Proust would

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moreover frequently write an entire sequence—for instance the one that takes M. Vinteuil from our first introduction (1.111) to the posthumous resurrection of his works (N.A.F. 16654, fols. 8r–16r)—and then break it up and scatter it across thousands of pages. Indeed, he often does not seem to know where, when, or, elsewhere, in respect to whom (N.A.F. 16654, fols. 8r–16r) he will insert an image, a thought, or even, on occasion, a whole episode. Could it be that such considerations are not the most significant? Some insight into his priorities may be gained on looking at another passage that was at first a unit but is in the final edition separated.54 Subsequent to describing the odors and sounds that he once perceived in Léonie’s house, he started to worry that the conjunction of the descriptions interfered with the impression that he wished to make on the eventual reader, for he jotted the following note in the margin: “To be put someplace else. Doubtless these odors are not striking” (N.A.F. 16648, fol. 52v). His later decision to insert the olfactory images in one place and the auditory images in another apparently came from his wish to highlight each. To argue that chronology and causality had no influence on the final position of a passage would be nonsensical. Obviously, the protagonist would find it impossible to discuss forgetting his grandmother until after her death (N.A.F. 16693, fol. 9v). Nonetheless, many months of studying the manuscripts have led me to conclude that his most important consideration was that each significant passage be set off, while lesser ones took their proper place in relative obscurity. Proust wished the reader to perceive some images intensely, to “fix” them, and to record them mentally. The protagonist began at this point: “Even at Combray I attentively fixed in my mind some image which had forced me to look at it: a cloud, a triangle, a steeple, a flower, a pebble” (4.457). The reader must do likewise. Proust mocked those who could not do similarly: “I leave it for people of taste to decorate their homes with the reproductions of masterpieces they admire. By confiding them to sculpted wood frames, they relieve their memories of the need to conserve precious images” (CSB 167). If À la recherche succeeds, the reader will come to resemble Louis Lambert, whose knowledge came from books, but for whom “the image [of things] impressed on his soul could not have been more vivid if he had really seen them” (Louis Lambert 11.593). When profoundly perceived, the images are tucked away in the mind and, for the most part, forgotten until they are recalled to conscious memory. The resurrection of the image may be due to a mere word or name, or to a character, a scene, or even the whole of an episode. It may include any of the original sensory perceptions, whether actually perceived or merely suggested, and, when mentally stored, it constitutes a complex of interrelated or interacting sensations. Though the stored image is generally retained in the same form as first

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perceived (“the gesture, the simplest act remains enclosed as though in a thousand closed vases each one of which is filled with things having absolutely different colors, odors, temperatures”—4.448), it may also join with other images by combining analogous elements. When an individual image is stimulated by Proust’s novel and encased in the attentive reader’s memory and is then followed by another, and another, and another, eventually “all these memories added to each other no longer formed anything but a mass” (1.184). Eventually, however, the reader will perceive that the image currently apparent resembles something he has sensed before; the sensation caused by whatever is before his eyes will form a relationship with the similar stimulus of a previous object or text and, thus, with a previous experience; and, if sufficiently alert, he will then discover the proof that this “mass” is in fact like a work of art, “harmoniously regulated by a general idea from which [the images] were suspended” (2.96). Because the reader must have forgotten the image for the resurrection to have its full effect, À la recherche stands in direct opposition to the theories of Edgar Allan Poe, who insisted on the necessity of an uninterrupted reading.55 Rather, Proust says, “If, thanks to forgetfulness, the memory has been unable to establish a tie or link between it and the present moment, if it has remained in its place, at its date, if it has kept its distance, its isolation in the hollow of a valley or at the peak of a mountain, it suddenly causes us to breathe new air, precisely because it is air that we previously breathed, this purer air that poets have tried in vain to establish in Paradise and which could not give this profound sense of renewal had it not been breathed before, because true paradises are those we have lost” (4.449). The very length of Proust’s novel guarantees that no one can read it in one sitting. The days, weeks, months required to absorb this reality subordinate it to time and, perhaps more important, to forgetting.56 The sudden sensation of a significant repetition will allow a reader to grasp not just the “point . . . common to one person and another” but as well the “general essence common to several things which nourished and filled him with joy” (4.296), but only after forgetting the image that made an impression. In short, like the protagonist, on receiving an impression “that brings us from outside of time the essence common to past and present sensations” (4.477), we must construct a new image that retains the integrity of its constituent parts metaphorically. The reader will have captured one of the proffered lenses and (re)discovered a world within him- or herself (4.489–90). There is no way to tell what if anything will bring this experience about. It may be envisioning all of the disparate perceptions of a particular character as an ensemble. It may be the surprising comprehension that the bedrooms, the dreams, or the closed social groups, whether the family

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in Combray, the Villeparisis coterie, or the Guermantes’s circle, all form meaningful extensions. It may be Swann’s desire to have absolute control of Odette (1.308–09) when it reappears in the protagonist’s attempt to control Albertine (1.152). It may be the birds, the flowers, the windows, the churches, the bells—each of which forms metaphoric chains of more or less extensive importance. It may be the instantaneous understanding that Gilberte, Oriane, and Albertine are considerably more than mere characters . . . they are settings. Or, as I suggested some years ago in The Color-Keys to À la recherche du temps perdu, it may be a color. Color offers the reader an excellent “lens.” It is consistent; each colorcomplex establishes a web of relationships; each provides the possibility of a moment bienheureux. When viewed as an image, or a constellation of sensations, all of the occurrences of a range of colors form an overriding unity within which “the smallest facts, the smallest events are nothing but the signs of an idea which must be disengaged and which often cover others as in a palimpsest” (2.408). Any one of the constituent “facts” or “events” could key the others and thus stimulate the reader’s discovery of the whole. Though Proust did not explain explicitly what he was attempting to accomplish with the colors, one of his notebooks explains that artistic reality is a relationship or “law” that brings different sensations together through the synthesizing effect of a penetrating impression (N.A.F. 16668, fol. 33r). To have expanded the explanation with an illustration would doubtless have impaired the possibility for readers to uncover their own unity.57 Every occurrence of a color, name, character, place, or whatever acts as a “parameter” is a variable whose value or significance not only depends on the relationship in which it is found but that changes its meaning depending on the particular relationship involved. À la recherche offers many examples. The pink hawthorns the boy first saw in Combray comfortably join in the long, poetic tradition of floral imagery outside À la recherche and, especially when united with the imagery of les jeunes filles en fleurs, make the theme of carpe diem an inescapable association. Eventually, it is furthermore included in the extension the color pink (rose) establishes across the text of the novel, and it suggests the appetitive process of sensation and desire (Color-Keys 39–55). But it is equally important to note that these flowers work within a realistic setting that encourages readers to envision the scene in detail. In the latter function or connection, however much the emphasis may change depending on the context, the pink has value of a mimetic nature that is simultaneously symbolic and allusive. The pink, then, constitutes a parameter, for, though fixed, its value changes depending on the relationship the reader grasps. Unquestionably, Proust prepared the opportunity for readers to perceive one or more of these relationships,

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though, as I shall suggest, his redundant usage of them relieved the reader of the obligation to be susceptible to all. The choices for sensitive readers are legion. Once readers have recognized an incipient metaphor (or relationship) of involuntary memory, they have taken the first step toward another discovery that awaits them if they follow the author’s directions closely: it is essential to “oblige yourself to make an image go through all the successive states that end with its fixation” (4.461). Because every impression or image bears “the reflection of things that logically are not tied to it” (4.448), because every part of the image points to neighboring complexes, and because almost every element recurs in other contexts, “a complicated, flowery magician’s book” (4.457) is created. The revitalized, complex of sensations that create the experience of involuntary memory in a totality of constructive recall will extend “in every direction and dimension, with every sensation that I had experienced, uniting the square to the church, the quay to the square, the canal to the quay, and to everything perceived in the world of desires which is only seen by the mind” (4.455). Clearly, the famous phrase “The whole of Combray . . . came, city and gardens, from my cup of tea” is much more than a clumsy trick to get into the heart of the story the author wishes to tell. Instead, it demonstrates basic Proustian insights into involuntary memory and the moments bienheureux. By persistently probing the impression arising from a blessed moment, and by following the analogical chain from one contiguous (metonymic) sensation to another, one will finally have a sense of the whole, as it exists within the self. As an intermediate step, a reader who has pursued and reached this goal will recognize both “the unity of composition” and the fact that “the creator only used one and the same patron for all organized beings.” (Here I quote Balzac’s discussion of the importance of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in the “Foreword” to the Comédie humaine, which may well have been the source of Proust’s idea for the name of the Combray church.) Saint-Hilaire then serves as a symbol for the unity of À la recherche, for it is “an edifice occupying, so to speak, four dimensional space—the fourth being that of Time” (1.60). Like this monument in four dimensions, Proust’s novel stands in the reader’s mind, and, as Jean Cocteau put it, “[I]n the space of a second, you can dream the equivalent of Marcel Proust’s work.”58 An even more adequate symbol for this unity might be its setting, that is, the “I” of the novel. The significance of Proust’s negative narration, where the protagonist-narrator is the unified complex of everything he sees, was previously discussed. Rather than À la recherche telling a story “out there,” we soon learn that the “I” is made up of all the characters, all the places, all the events, all the thoughts, and all the errors. “He is nothing

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but the place for sensations,” as Martin-Chauffier puts it.59 For precisely this reason, Proust’s “I” serves as an effective vehicle. As Michihiko Suzuki saw in his excellent article “Le ‘je’ proustien,” the first person performs as a means of generalization. The reader “fixes” the images of the “I,” thus transforming what the protagonist sees in his or her own images, that the narrator recounts, and Proust’s fictional first person becomes the reader’s “I.”60 When the narrator writes, “This [internal] book [of unknown signs (of signs in relief, it seems, that my attention, exploring my unconscious, was seeking, collided with, skirted, like a diver sounding)], the most arduous of all to decipher, is also the only one that reality has dictated to us, the only one whose ‘impression’ was made in us by reality itself. . . . The book with figurative characters, not traced by us, is our only book,” Proust’s choice of the image of a book is revealed as obviously purposeful (4.458).

Pygmalion and the Creation of Life “During [the] reading” of À la recherche, Proust’s ideal reader does not execute “incessant movements from within to without” as does the young protagonist in Combray (1.83); he or she goes “from without to within” and thus “toward the discovery of truth.” While following the analogical path that leads from the first person of À la recherche to the “I” of the reader, we are able to perceive the author’s sense of art and of reality. In a period when the conflict between the real and the illusory tormented artists, Proust was certain that our experience, our life, our inner reality held primary importance, rather than the physical substance that surrounds us, rather than our idea of it. The book that “recomposes life exactly” (4.476)—not imitation, let me insist, but recomposition—provides an experience through time and space that has real existence. As with other real objects, the reader’s idea of it is the only thing that exists—“Everything is in the mind” (4.491). That said, of course, the novel includes many sets of lenses that offer an equal number of opportunities controlling his point of view to a significant degree. “Things—a book with its red cover like the others—, as soon as we perceive them become something immaterial in us, of the same nature as all our sensations and preoccupations . . . and combine indissolubly with them” (4.463). Consequently, art is no more an illusion than is life. Indeed, art is life or, to be more precise, “true life, life finally discovered and explained, consequently the only life really lived is literature” (4.474). Comments suggesting that “the supreme truth of life is in art” (4.481) might even mean that for Proust art is distinctly superior to life. And, in truth, evidence exists that would lead to this conclusion. He wrote in the

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margin of one of his notebooks, for example, that we need art because life is an imperfect realization (N.A.F. 16696, fol. 8r). Those of us, in short, who have been unable for whatever reason to find unity in the shifting multiplicity of daily life (the world we perceive is a chaos, the narrator tells us—2.190), artists like Proust create an exquisitely ordered, essential reality at man’s level and within his grasp. When À la recherche succeeds in bringing readers to the point of experiencing involuntary memory and discovering the novel’s unity, Proust has succeeded in several ways. He has transmitted his own unity, for the book is his negative reflection, and he has communicated one of the two great lessons of his masterpiece: Unity (the other lesson is Time). If both the reader and the Proustian “I” are unified, and if the author can make others grasp this quality, then there are universals that rise above the obstacles separating men.61 In short, while the process of involuntary memory and of artistic creation remain individual and subjective, the fact that many succeed in experiencing the phenomenon offers definitive proof that the subjective event is an objective, universal truth. Perhaps, the narrator thinks, such a reality might even overcome death. At the point where the unenlightened protagonist despondently believes that the images of his past are “in reality dead to me” and possibly dead forever (1.43), art offers him reasons for more optimism. He recognizes that musical phrases like that in Vinteuil’s sonata or a theme in Tristan depend on the future of those who are listening. At our death, they accompany us. “And death with them has something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps less probable about it” (1.344). In the end, his musings on Bergotte’s death lead the narrator to understand art, and the devotion required to create it, as one of the primary reasons for believing that there are universal, governing laws directing men, “so that the idea that Bergotte was not dead forever is not improbable” (3.693). However that may be, the Countess de Monteriender’s exclamation is by no means as ridiculous and trivial as one might believe when she observes a moment of supernatural, transcendent time and materiality, even before the end of the performance of Vinteuil’s sonata: “It’s prodigious. I’ve never seen anything so great. . . . . . . nothing so great . . . since table turning!” (1.347). Despite the unquestionable significance literature has in eliciting universals, Proust is always conscious of human worth that far outweighs the value of art. The author may lead the reader with explanations and other “incentives” that will help him perceive those potential systems imbedded in the work; nonetheless, no one but the reader can experience the revelation capable of creating complexes of truth and significance. Although art was undoubtedly important to Proust, he realized that “reading is at the threshold of spiritual life; it can introduce us to it; it does not constitute

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it” (CSB 178). He could do little but warn his readers against “idolatry” and urge them to create their own lives and work, echoing Gide’s instruction: “Nathanaël. . . . When you have read me, throw this book away . . . and leave.” “Certain minds that love mystery want to believe that objects conserve something from the eyes that look at them, that the monuments and paintings only appear before us beneath the sensible veil that the love and contemplation of many adorers have woven during the centuries. This chimera would become true if they were to transpose it onto the only reality for each person, into the domain of his own sensibility” (4.463). As said before, Proust was not dismayed by literature’s dependency on readers. He viewed rather its capacity to incite, to stimulate, to create creators as one of its greatest glories. As far as Proust was concerned, the true test of the work of art was in whether it succeeded in provoking the reader to artistic creation. It does not suffice to meditate peacefully on the vision of glorious, artistic unity. The reader must go beyond, as the protagonist did when he finally heard Vinteuil’s “mysterious call” to the creation of art (4.456). All individuals must unify themselves and, further, create their own works of art. Because of the narrator’s interpretation of reality, À la recherche du temps perdu has notable coherence and economy. The critics who have denied that Proust’s novel has these qualities find other reasons to explain their interest in the text (see n10). For them, the author’s goal was to narrate the development of a young man who eventually becomes capable of creating a work of art and to analyze the process of his discoveries. If that in fact were the case, the book obviously would include an enormous amount of extraneous material. If, however, I am correct in concluding that, while both the protagonist’s quest and the narrator’s explications are important, they represent only the first small step (“incentives”) toward a true understanding of the masterpiece, the exposition and the rather disconnected account of the protagonist’s vocation constitute but a part of the novel’s vocation, which is to stimulate the reader’s discovery of his unified self and to incite him to undertake his own act of creation. The narrator’s all too deliberate progress can therefore not be used as criteria for judging either coherence or economy. Should that indeed have been Proust’s goal, analogy not only functions but, in addition, is essential in triggering metaphor. Analogy and the rigor of its connections then become the only valid touchstones for the judgment of aesthetic coherence and unity. General considerations by such previously cited critics as Rousset, Bolle, and Tadié have stimulated a number of studies in detail, which, as mentioned before, indicate that analogy has extreme importance in governing the narrative sequence. Whether it be viewed as a reader’s progression through the

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temporal sequence or as the instantaneous vision (moments bienheureux) of the whole in all its detail and complexity, the harmoniousness of the parts should be absolute. If economy is determined in the light of function, it seems essential to recognize the need for sufficient length to allow the reader to forget what he had experienced and, in addition, to fix the complexes of imagery indelibly. From this point of view, it is difficult to imagine that the novel could be shorter. Given the number of critics who deny that À la recherche is unified, one might even wonder whether the novel should have been longer. More length would have made the parameters or variables more obvious and, thus, facilitated an understanding of the whole. Still, the novel would have lost something in the process. As Jan Mukarovsky said, “Unity should not be understood as something static, as complete harmony, but as dynamic, as a problem with which the work confronts the viewer. . . . If the task faced by the viewer is too simple, that is, if in a given situation similarities outweigh differences, the effect of the work is weakened, . . . since the work does not force the viewer to remain or to return. Therefore a work having a weakly based dynamics rapidly becomes automatic.”62 Without question, of course, the solitary reader must be the ultimate judge of all such problems, for Proust’s aesthetic strategy depended on the individual’s subjective experience of his novel. Proust leaves no doubt that that was his intention. Every reader must be a new Magellan; he must set out on his voyage À la recherche du temps perdu in the effort to discover his own structure and meaning, his own new world. On disembarking, he suppresses all distinctions between form and content, all separation between subject and object, because Proust’s structure is subordinate to the reader. It is of course no doubt true that the voyager may become lost and turn aside, thus leaving unity unproven, the call of art unheeded, and the earth flat. Though both Magellan and Proust died in the course of their endeavors, we may find encouragement in knowing that Magellan’s men completed the task. Likewise, Proust did his part; the rest depends on those of us who follow the course he has mapped in detail. One should not be overimpressed with the enormous freedom that Proust allowed the reader. Although the author is certainly responsible for the metaphoric chains of images that cross the novel—whether colors, bells, churches, characters, or places—I find no reason to believe that he gave preference to one over another. Proust’s goal was not in establishing one or more sets of variable relationships; he sought rather a particular effect, and any of the chains could produce the reader’s response and satisfy the author’s goal. However it might happen, and Proust provided numerous, redundant opportunities, he hoped only that À la recherche would provoke involuntary memory, that the reader would then bring back to

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mind the elements of an extension, and, finally, that because of a blessed moment, artistic spectators might be incited to create their own lives and works. Proust’s masterpiece then constitutes what I would call an open novel, but it is a different kind of overture. We are not invited to contemplate what the protagonist would become or do after reading the last page, but rather to take the lessons of the novel and create something of our own. Though the author has provided a text, readers have considerable freedom in the way they treat the preestablished creation; they have, however, not been granted complete license to create from the novel in unauthorized ways. Those who insist on deforming Proust’s creation, say, by using it to divine the author’s biography, do so on their own with no encouragement from the novel or novelist. Despite the many variables, including the radically shortened Mauriac manuscripts,63 Proust’s masterpiece has rigorous structure. By whatever extension an individual reader may consciously—or more probably, unconsciously—choose, he or she must acknowledge the focal issue of involuntary memory. It matters not at all that Proust did not bother to disguise the narrative asyndeton and anacoluthon. The lack of links, like the inconsistencies and apparently illogical juxtapositions, are intended to train readers to make metaphoric connections. Should this apperception not occur, the novel has failed, at least for the reader in question. Whether the reader seizes on the plot or on one or more characters or objects does not matter. The result will differ, but in unimportant ways. Although every work of art requires the “consumer’s” involvement, this participation usually follows a more explicitly defined path. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, it was unusual to permit numerous alternative patterns for the reader to attain aesthetic satisfaction, especially with an apparent lack of preference. Even today, when reader-response criticism has taught readers about their active role in creating meaning, the clarity of Proust’s understanding of the relationship between the text and the reader may seem overly ambitious and uncommon. It, however, does nothing to negate the fact that À la recherche du temps perdu both challenges the past and empowers the future.

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I

n the past, novelists regularly exploited formats and techniques borrowed from other genres—whether from collected correspondence, memoirs, diaries, or other generic traditions. Eventually, in every instance, novelists’ pilfering came to seem hackneyed and was discarded. Of course, even today, writers continue to feel justified in taking devices and strategies from other genres. Looking for something useful, they do not hesitate to pick through the techniques of theater, poetry, cinema, essay, opera, or history. Revivals from past masterpieces are also possible. Many novelists strive to make their creations novel by expanding subject or technical scope, and practitioners shamelessly borrow wherever they can to transmit a sense of newness in the hope of attracting, stimulating, and retaining readers. The genre is not exactly parasitic, for the best authors rework and renew whatever they steal. When Gide’s narrator pretends that his L’immoraliste records the exact words of Michel’s horrifying account, for example, he is bringing a worn-out eighteenth-century device back to life (“I heard these exact words one evening,” or “I found these letters in the attic of an abandoned chateau”), but he is using the tired claim to insist on the artificiality rather than the realism of the narration. The work then becomes the struggle between reality and fantasy that he felt the novel should be.1 I expect that novelists will continue to search for effective, if not untried, devices to rejuvenate their works and give them a sense of newness. To date, however, despite the innovations and expansions, the dominant pattern of the novel seems little different from that of the past. The process of revitalization nonetheless leaves no doubt that new subject matter alone is too undiscriminating to distinguish novels from other genres. Neither spiritual nor sensual topics require a particular genre, for example. Whether love or adventure, as in thousands of novels, or the fear and oppression of Danièle Sallenave’s vaguely central European nation in Les portes de Gubbio (1980),

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6

INNER WORKINGS OF THE NOVEL: STUDYING A GENRE

the fog of occupied France in Patrick Modiano’s Quartier perdu (1984), or the death of a father in Annie Ernaux’s La place (1983), almost any topic could have been exploited more or less effectively in any genre whatsoever, from lyric to graphic books. Granted, there are exceptions. The study of an institution in Émile Zola’s Au bonheur des dames (1883) or the sudden seizure of loneliness in Baudelaire’s poem “Recueillement” (1862) requires length, on the one hand, and brevity, on the other, and would be impossible in most other genres. Despite such rare exceptions, however, subject matter remains of little import when distinguishing between genres. It is not surprising that Vladimir Nabokov and Philippe Sollers focused on technique when they wished to challenge the very existence of the novel genre (with Pale Fire, 1962, for example, or Nombres, 1968). These and other of their works unquestionably caused a great deal of discussion. Nonetheless, in the end, such revolts leave little doubt that the novel indeed exists as a distinct genre. However interesting, the radical works themselves appear as no more than complex experiments ensconced between genres. They succeed neither in eradicating the novel as a discreet discourse nor in establishing a new one. Even the more outrageous literary creations, meant to push beyond other novelists’ efforts and undermine the genre, like a “novel” in verse, leave novels much the same: a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary. The novel thus continues to serve as a foil for rebellion or as a comfortable form that can be exploited for almost any aesthetic purpose. The stress that Nabokov, Sollers, and others placed on technique is nonetheless significant, for in the process of their experiments that were often designed to lessen the importance of the novel, however unknowingly they demonstrated the importance of technique to the genre. Short story cycles are particularly helpful in circumscribing the novel. While the best of them are unquestionably long prose fictions that are unified and literary, they lack the overall coherence required by novels. The most powerful cycles are, of course, unified, but the ruptures separating one story from another are sufficient to limit their coherence. The mere fact that one may remove or add stories without doing irreparable damage is an indication that they fall short of the much more intense, coherent wholeness of novels. It would be wrong to suggest that novels are distinguished from short story cycles solely by an identical character, however, for there are instances where the same character reappears in succeeding stories of a cycle, as for example in William Faulkner’s Go Down Moses (1942). Nonetheless, the ruptures between the narrations are so significant that despite common images, themes, narrative voice, and, in this case, character, they resist each other. Novels and short story cycles may have the same characters and analogous plots throughout, though they never have the same narrative. Significant rhetorical breaks between stories

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clearly differentiate cycles from novels. For the short story cycle, however, discursive anacoluthon is a seldom, or minimally, functional by-product, whereas novels have a limited tolerance for such disruptions if they serve no purpose to the whole. When such narrative breaks occur in the novel, because the genre’s metonymic syntagm has importance to the work, they shortly reveal that they have a function. Un amour de Swann’s apparently separate relationship to À la recherche provides an excellent example of profound functionality. Still, differentiating novels from short story cycles is a matter of degree and discriminating judgment. As in either of the two cycles considered in Chapter 2, the development of major themes and images, whether by the thematic progression of L’exil et le royaume or by filling in the overriding concept of Les diaboliques, provides a sense of wholeness though of limited syntagmatic coherence. In either case, the themes of evil or of exile and kingdom, such as images of sex and sun, become powerful tools for holding the somewhat disparate stories together. Either cycle could be equally powerful, or almost so, lacking one of the tales or including another. The reason Camus left La chute out of L’exil et le royaume, for instance, had nothing to do with the former’s completion or integration, but rather that it repeated themes of “Le renégat.” Such cycles, like many novels, are organized either as a sequential development (L’exil et le royaume) or as an image (Les diaboliques). On the one hand, the prose is organized by the sequence; on the other, the various developments are integrated into a powerful complex of unified meaning, while in both the coherence is problematic. Novels have considerably more coherence and a tighter unity than short story cycles, effected by a dominant discourse that integrates the narration or vision and the characters. When breaks occur, the events of the interstices will eventually become clear and, as well, an implicit part of the surrounding discourse. Readers finally understand how Odette became Mme Swann, for example, just as they understand how Indiana and Sir Ralph came to paradise, after thinking of suicide. Perhaps curiously, novels must be coherent to be recognizable examples of the genre. Moreover, until such writers as Balzac, Huysmans, Proust, and Robbe-Grillet began experimenting with the novel’s potential, most exemplars of the genre were chronologically or causally arranged. Then things began to change. Balzac, for example, regularly subsumed several plots to a dominant theme or image. Proust’s “I” is created from a composition of everything he experiences. Not only does the narrator depend for his existence on all the events and characters that he perceives, but the reader comes to understand that the narrator’s “I” must be transformed into the reader’s “I” for the novel to succeed, at least as the novel defines success. I have termed such arrangements “negative structure”—that is, they need to be turned, figuratively,

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CONCLUSION

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inside out to make sense. To the degree that the “I” constitutes the novel’s focal center or matrix, the work could appropriately be called an “image novel.” Certainly, the entire development of La tentation de saint Antoine is admirably incorporated in the terminal image of the Trinity. Balzac regularly organized his novels around a vision of society. I think as just one example of the warring religions in Eugénie Grandet.2 Although both of these works include substantial plots that run from beginning to end, in neither case are they the central focus, rather the overriding image gives focus to the plots. There are numerous ways of renewing narration. I particularly appreciate ruptures in the plot, such as those already mentioned in Du côté de chez Swann and Indiana, especially when they are so well done that they do not harm coherence of the whole. Though they always run the risk of appearing radical chasms, rather than bridges, when skillfully accomplished the reader sooner or later fills in what is missing and, thus, the work avoids collapsing into another genre. Balzac often established what might be called dueling narrations. In Illusions perdues (1837–43), for example, the stories of David and Lucien, twins but in name and character, interact frequently but leave one wondering why the author intertwined them, until, that is, the reader allows the title to organize the plots thematically around disillusion, despair, and failure. One of Balzac’s most adventurous plots occurs in La Rabouilleuse (1842), where the focus is not continuously on any character. Instead, we follow the Rouget fortune as it shifts serially from the doctor to several other characters. Character has been a favorite means of renewal. La princesse de Clèves (1678) slowly constructs the central figure from the stories told to her one after the other, for they form her character, motivating her withdrawal from society and rendering it perfectly understandable. André Malraux’s use of a group hero in La condition humaine (1933) successfully suppresses the importance of individuals within the overriding revolutionary movement. And Nathalie Sarraute consciously neglects flesh-and-blood incarnation in her Tropismes (1939). To the degree that life, like the continuum of words stretching from first to last in a novel, is sequential, novels are considered by many to be mimetically sequential as well. Of course, not all prose fiction is, though novelists can never completely negate the linear order of words, thus of novels. Some novelists subordinate the sequence to an image. For years scholars argued over whether Balzac, as just one example, should have titled his most famous novel Le père Goriot or whether he should have called it Rastignac. I argued in my consideration of the novel that the story of Rastignac was just one of the plots and that it joined with the story of Goriot to paint a vivid representation of their corrupt society based on

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venal love and friendship. Goriot derives from the Renaissance word gorre, which had the sense of ostentation and/or syphilis, and, to further emphasize the very common disease of venereal infections, the novelist set his work in a boarding house with a “statue representing Love” covered by “the scaly varnish” that would remind “lovers of symbols . . . of . . . Parisian love which is treated a few steps from there.” He is speaking of the Hospital of the Capucins that was at the time a center for the treatment of venereal diseases. The various plots insist on the venality of all kinds of love, whether of family or lover. Balzac was expert at image structure.3 Many of his novels use plots as subordinate devices to emphasize the overriding image that he wished to communicate. He was not alone in exploiting such a strategy. Using topics that rise from across the full range of human existence, the stories told in most novels are organized according to chronology and causality. The Russian Formalists called such realistic organization of stories the “fabula.” They also noted, however, that the chronology and the causality, indeed, every aspect of the “fabula,” in novels can be further changed in the effort to enhance art. The common arrangement of mystery novels provides an excellent example. Beginning with the discovery of a crime, the detective occupies the rest of the novel unraveling the sequence of events leading to the dastardly deed that ended in murder but began the novel, thus “solving” the crime. Though all art rearranges reality, the Formalists used their concept of artistically rearranged plot or sjuzhet to emphasize the art involved in repetition, contrasts, parallels, gradation, reversals, displacement, substitution, reconfiguration, digression, retardation, and so on. Each of these devices may be used in any genre, and such devices often change the realistic sequence until neither its chronology nor its causality is recognizable. In chapters 4 and 5, I pointed to Flaubert’s La tentation de saint Antoine and Proust’s À la recherche as different varities of image structure, though there are many others. Robbe-Grillet’s La jalousie (1957), for example, projects what the anonymous narrator sees, and good readers understand that he is in effect presenting the cycle of his own obsessive suspicion that his wife has had an affair with his neighbor Franc. What was projected “out there” is in effect what is taking place within the narrator. Likewise for Saporta’s Composition no. 1 (1962), a novel whose sequence may be changed by shuffling the loose pages, without changing the central image of a delusional narrator injured in an automobile accident. Many novels have exploited “open structures,” that is, a plot that will implicitly continue long after the close of the novel. Gide’s Les fauxmonnayeurs (1925) is often mentioned in regard to the device. At the end of the book, keyed to Edouard, who has had a less than satisfactory relationship with Bernard and Olivier, we understand that his curiosity about

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CONCLUSION

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Caloub will result in something rather similar. Even though the novel stops, readers easily project the new adventure, having a good sense of what will transpire. Gide is attempting to make his novel seem like a continuing life, since, as he says, the novel is an intersection between life and art, “a crossroads, a meeting of problems.”4 It was, of course, a device intended to enhance realism. As life goes on, so should the novel. However much novelists may attempt to free themselves entirely of the sequential nature of language, the effort is doomed to failure. Still, they can to some degree control what happens in the reader’s mind. In general, there is one progression from beginning to end. While there may be several plots—the actions, for example, of Rastignac, of Goriot, of Vautrin, of Anastasie, and so on—if the novel succeeds, the various plots will eventually intersect in the reader’s mind and bring unity to what may have seemed a disparate whole. Even when the novel exploits some other multiplicity, as with the group hero of Malraux’s La condition humaine (1933), at some point what was multiple in one way or another reinforces singularity, and, consequentially, the whole. The main character may be the narrator, as in Henry James’s novels, or some other “flesh and blood” character, as Ricardou put it, or even a disembodied conscience, as in Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropismes (1939). Although RobbeGrillet was exaggerating when he announced that the plot armature of most novels had broken apart in the early 1960s,5 it is true that the narrative sequence of his day frequently lacked a character acting, but rather relied on some sort of mental development of a theme or of a shift in one sequence or structure or another. The form itself may be the organizing element. Hippolyte cites Flaubert,6 though a more dramatic example might be Godard’s tumultuous film Weekend, which only makes sense on recognizing the all-important theme of chaos. Huysmans even exploited description dramatically in La cathédrale. Elsewhere, in most cases, description and setting remain in the background, seldom becoming a dominant, organizing device. The nice thing about plot and character is that they organize fragments relating to either or both with facility. Readers are used to watching people do things, and the transition to fiction occurs easily. In fact, all literature is fragmentary; it simply takes shape because of the reader’s willing participation in connecting the pieces and making plots, characters, themes, places, symbols, and so on. Whatever the organizing factors, at some point the author knows that all the pieces come together, in the same way as the shards of a broken pot or the fragments of an ancient sculpture do for archeologists. Pinget has an unusual but useful concept for this assembly. “What gives unity to each of my books, taken in particular . . . is what I call the ‘tone.’ It is a question of a certain choice of vocabulary. From one book

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to another, I pass from one tone to another.”7 When Pinget senses that the tone is established, he knows that the novel has reached a conclusion (“Comment travaillent les écrivains” 32). This is the ideal for all novels. At the point where (or when) the author recognizes that all the chains are complete and the major conveyances arrive at a resolution, it is time for the book to end. Critics of recent vintage have made much of the incompletion or vagueness of various novels, while it seems to me that any critic’s sense of inconsistency in a novel worth reading comes because of inattentive, misdirected, or shallow, pedestrian reading. There are hundreds of examples. I could refer to the critical ambiguity growing from the main character’s incomprehension in Modiano’s Quartier perdu (1984), or that of Claude Simon’s La route des Flandres (1960), or that of Robbe-Grillet’s Les gommes (1953), but I shall be content to recall the confusion that has arisen about La tentation de saint Antoine and À rebours. In all these cases the widespread difficulties are resolved on refocusing attention. Of course, fragmentation can be rectified by drawing on any number of categories and traditions. I followed the way Proust used names to key an essential part of his novel’s organization. On the one hand, they reflected the pattern of development that awaits the protagonist, and on the other, they point to the reasons he has not yet succeeded in unifying all the fragmentary memories that remain from his various experiences. He joins names with stories from various traditions and with objects. The marvelous Guermantes name, for example, carries with it the associations established in succeeding contexts. It is traditional at the Princess de Guermantes’s gatherings to serve orange juice, for instance. When it continues to be offered in Le temps retrouvé, even after the very aristocratic wife of the Prince de Guermantes has disappeared and the bourgeois Mme Verdurin takes her place and becomes an upper-class hostess, it marks the latter’s upward mobility. In so doing, the name reminds of the family’s legendary and real past, while bringing the reader to an example of modern-day social ascendancy. A Huysmans, a Zola, a Proust, in fact any fine novelist turns these disparate pieces into linked systems that illuminate textual relationships from the outside, validating what the novelist had in mind in their contextual iteration, until the reader senses the metaphoric relationship resonating from one metaphoric chain to another across the novel. The resulting images may be allusive, bringing history, opera, the Bible, myths, and legends into the relationship existing between the reader and the text, or they may be simple patterns like symbols or simple objects in a repeated context from various traditions. Most often the novel simply projects an adventure on an imaginary, external screen. With increasing frequency, however, novelists are exploiting the negative or intaglio structure that I described in relation to

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CONCLUSION

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À rebours and À la recherche du temps perdu. While I would be hard put to prove that Proust had read À rebours, since he never mentions it, he knew Huysmans’s friend the Abbé Mugnier sufficiently well to elicit some correspondence, he frequented Mallarmé’s salon on the rue de Rome, where À rebours was esteemed, and Proust’s novel seems redolent of À rebours in myriad ways. Whatever the case, both authors used negative structure to good though different effect. As one reads des Esseintes’s experiments with visual, oral, aural, tactile sensations, using a turtle, a mouth organ (orgue-à-bouche), books, paintings, flowers, and music, it becomes clear that what is external to the main character has importance only because of what is taking place within him. The external vision is internalized, and we follow the progressively slow disintegration of des Esseintes’s body, mind, and soul. Proust operated differently. His novel introduces a protagonist who yearns to find a subject of literature. Complaining all the while that his past is fragmented, he seeks unity, though everywhere he turns he finds only the contrary. Swann’s way is separated from the Guermantes way. Swann himself is but a fashionable hanger-on at the Guermantes. Françoise and Théodore seem very different from Aunt Léonie. The grandmother is distinct from the mother, the past from the present. Perhaps as early as the episode in which the boy projects the experiences of his own reading on external reality of the garden or sees Golo’s body bend and conform to the doorknob do we understand that we are reading a subjective though externally projected vision. What we read must be raised to the light like a negative, so that we may “see” what it means to the source of the projection, that is, to the narrator. All the images, all the episodes, indeed all the situations, characters, and emotions reveal the protagonist and function as the building blocks of the narrator. After the narrator explains the way involuntary memory and the moments bienheureux operate, it makes perfect sense when the older protagonist sees the cover of George Sand’s François le champi or feels the uneven paving stones beneath his feet and has a moment bienheureux of involuntary memory. Proust hoped that, after having read À la recherche, the reader would duplicate within himself the protagonist’s experience. Just as the protagonist has one of these marvelous moments, forces himself to understand its importance, plumbs its reality, and becomes the narrator of a work of art, so the reader is invited to take one or another of the systems inserted in the text of Proust’s novel, have his own precious experience, and become an artist/creator in his own right. À la recherche has become one of the reader’s creative building blocks. Proust integrated numerous metaphoric systems in his novel. As Swann rang the little bell on visiting the protagonist’s parents, as the protagonist hears bells throughout his experience, the reader may be stimulated

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as was the protagonist with a madeleine dipped in tea. The surprise of a moment in the past may resurrect the reader’s past, whether from reading or from his own experiences, and including the object, the sensation, the memory with all the colors of the original and remembered moment. The fish at Balbec can recall the minnows of the Vivonne. Pink can bring the recollection of Gilberte and the other “flowering girls.” Gilberte can herself serve to resurrect the Guermantes family. Proust’s highly complex images invite metaphoric creativity capable of rejuvenating Proust’s novel and the reader’s experiences. With each rereading, there may be a different epiphany, and within each reading former totalizing experiences continue in the reader’s consciousness, nesting rather like Russian dolls. Because the future always holds surprises, the devices I have outlined are surely not exhaustive, though to the best of my understanding they cover the most interesting innovations of the novels to the present time. Whereas novelistic subjects can be varied ad infinitum, techniques of narration are limited in number. They can be exploited in all kinds of novels, whether supernatural, autobiographical, historical, Western, romantic, or whatever. The devices I mention go to the heart of the organization, form, and structure of novels. What I have called intensifiers range across any element of fiction that can be repeated, from narrative patterns to symbols, to images, to rhetorical devices, to characters, to groups, to objects like orange juice in À la recherche or jewels in À rebours or saints in La tentation. They fit into the major conveyances of meaning, whether plot or character or thematic development. While sequence is impossible to avoid in novels, given the inherent sequential nature of words, novelists often work effectively to subordinate these linear structures to a vision, or representation, or image. The definition I have proposed distinguishes the novel from other genres. The medium differentiates it from theater, the rhythm from poetry, the fiction from history or essay or biography, the exhaustive iteration of character and coherent story from short story cycles, the length itself from short stories. Simultaneously, as we have seen, novelists brush up against other genres. As Baudelaire rightly put it in a previously cited passage, the novel is a “bastard genre” that can borrow and exploit many devices and techniques consecrated by other genres. In every case, as the reader takes a text in hand, he or she has expectations that structure the experience of the work of art. The definition that a novel is a long prose fiction that is unified, coherent, and literary is sufficiently general to include the genre’s exemplars, even those of a very experimental nature. There is always a main conveyance of meaning. Usually, as in popular fiction, it consists of a main character and a plot, though the narration may be oriented by a developing or fixed theme or some other motif. The finer and more thought-provoking

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novels include many devices that intensify whatever the novel attempts to do or say. With increasing frequency, experimental novels of the twentiethand twenty-first centuries invert the plot, and one perceives its negative image. Whether negatively or positively projected, however, to focus attention, novelists use many devices, for example, allusions to legends, other works of literature, or history, as well as images, themes, motifs, syntactical patterns, parallels, contrasts, repeated plots or types, and numerous other varieties of analogies and devices. It does not “evolve” into other genres; it remains a novel, but select qualities are emphasized from its plethora of natural qualities and thus bring meaning. It is moreover constructed on variations of the definition that I have suggested, and is as alive today as it has ever been.

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Preface 1. For further discussion and bibliography, see my “Nouveau oˇu ancien roman: Open Structures and Balzac’s ‘Gobseck,’ ” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 20 (1978): 15–19. 2. A convenient bibliography of these and other such work accompanies Robert Scholes’ Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction (New Haven: Yale UP, 1974) 201–17. 3. E.g., B. E. Perry, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins (Berkeley: U of California P, 1967) 30–31. 4. E.g., André Malraux, marginal annotation to Gaïton Picon’s Malraux (Paris: Seuil, 1953) 66; Maurice Z. Shroder, “The Novel as a Genre,” Theory the Novel, ed. P. Stevick (New York: Free P, 1967) 14–17. 5. E.g., Juan Ignacio Ferreras, Teoria y praxis de la novela: La ultima aventura de Don Quijote (Paris: Ediciones Hispanoamericanas, 1970) 5, 16. 6. E.g., Arthur Heiserman, The Novel before the Novel: Essays and Discussions about the Beginnings of Prose Fiction in the West (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1977) 3–4. 7. E.g., Philip Stevick, ed., “Introduction,” Theory of the Novel 4.

Chapter 1 1. David I. Grossvogel, Limits of the Novel: Evolutions of a Form from Chaucer to Robbe-Grillet (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1968) 278. Indeed, “Formula kills the novel more quickly and more decisively than it kills any other genre, because . . . the novel cannot afford in any sense to repeat itself ”—John Bayley, “Character and Consciousness,” New Literary History 5 (1974) 232; and Ronald Hayman, “Deprived of Novelty, the Novel Ceases to Be Itself ”—The Novel Today: 1967–1975 (London: Longman, 1976) 133. 2. See, Allan H. Pasco, Novel Configurations: A Study of French Fiction, 2nd ed. (Birmingham: Summa, 1994) 99–122. 3. Cloonan, French Review 81 (2007): 61–77. 4. Cf., Frank Kermode, “Novel and Narrative,” Theory of the Novel: New Essays, ed. John Halperin (New York: Oxford UP, 1974) 156.

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Notes

NOTES TO PAGES 2–5

5. Doody demonstrates convincingly that the novel continues from antiquity, though I wish she had added the aesthetic impulsion, however weak, to her concept of the novel as prose fiction of a certain length—True Story of the Novel (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1996) 16. Terry Eagleton’s definition is the same: “A novel is a piece of prose fiction of a reasonable length”—The English Novel (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005) 1. Likewise, E. M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel, Harvest Books (1927; rpt. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1954) 5–6. There are variants, but most definitions hold close to a combination of character and narrative. 6. Percy Lubbock’s definition is somewhat more interesting. For him, the subject is “the novelist’s intention, in a phrase,” and he wants it to be “expressible in ten words that reveal its unity”—The Craft of Fiction (New York: Viking, 1957) 41–42. 7. Maurice Blanchot, “Autour du roman,” L’Arche 9 (September 1945): 109. For considerations of the recent novel, see, Warren Motte, Fables of the Novel: French Fiction Since 1990 (Chicago: Dalkey Archive Press, 2003), Motte, Fiction Now: The French Novel in the Twenty-First Century (Chicago: Dalkey Archive Press, 2008), and Alain-Philippe Durand and Naomi Mandel, eds., Novels of the Contemporary Extreme (New York: Continuum, 2006). 8. In an interview with Bettina Knapp, Raymond Queneau said, “We consider the Rhétoriqueurs to be our literary ancestors”—French Novelists Speak Out (Troy, NY: Whitston, 1976) 45. 9. Ricardou is, of course, opposing what he considers an oversimplification— Nouveau roman: Hier, aujourd’hui: Communications et interventions du colloque tenu du 20 au 30 juillet 1971 au Centre culturel international de Cerisyla-Salle, 2 vols. (Paris: 10/18, 1972) 2.43. 10. For a time, a number of New Novelists were claiming that their readers were free to create their own fictions from the works the authors offered. See, e.g., Jean Ricardou, “Naissance d’une fiction,” Nouveau roman: Hier, aujourd’hui 2.393–417, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, “An Interview with Alain Robbe-Grillet,” by Beverly Livingston, Yale French Studies 57 (1979) 235. The novelists’ insincerity was perhaps highlighted by the vociferous rejection of Jean Alter’s interpretation, which was not harmonious with the author’s intention— “Perspectives et modèles,” Nouveau roman: Hier, aujourd’hui 1.35–73. 11. Pavel, “The Novel in Search of Itself: A Historical Morphology,” The Novel, ed. Franco Moretti, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006) 3–31. 12. Barzun, “The Novel Turns Tale,” The Novel and Its Changing Form: Essays, ed. R. G. Collins (Winnipeg: U of Manitoba P, 1972) 128–29. 13. Virginia Woolf, “Modern Fiction,” The Common Reader, first series (1925; London: Hogarth P, 1962) 190. 14. W. Tatarkiewicz, “Form in the History of Aesthetics,” Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, ed. Philip P. Wiener, 5 vols. (New York, Scribner, 1973–74) 2: 216–25. 15. Leonard Orr, Problems and Poetics of the Nonaristotelian Novel (Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1991) 14.

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16. Hunter, Before Novels: the Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth-Century English Fiction (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990) 7. Although I agree with Franco Moretti that genres are morphological, at least to the point that incorporated subsets can vary paradigmatically, I differ in that I do not believe that the novel genre, at least, is chronologically demarcated. Moretti’s best examples justify his belief in temporality, but they are rather limited generic structures or subgenres, like epistolary novels, gothic novels, and historical novels, and it seems both more interesting and more useful to see the similarity between these and other kinds of novels. Such attempts uncover the structures that transcend time, while components (or subsets) like plot, character, and theme of the definition change. See, Franco Moretti, Graphs, Maps, Trees: Abstract Models for a Literary History (London: Verso, 2005). Michael McKeon recognizes that prior to the eighteenth century there were novels, although they were indiscriminately referred to as romances, histories, or novels. They mediated history and romance as the middle class rose and took form, though he believes that Richardson and Fielding, in particular, introduced something new to the enlightenment culture—McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel: 1600–1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987) 25–26. Doody makes the point that “[s]ets and subsets are not stable entities but fluid variables dependent on the conceptual interests of those who deal with them”—The True Story of the Novel xvii. See, also, Arthur Heiserman, The Novel Before the Novel (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1977), and Pierre Grimal, ed., “Introduction,” Romans grecs & latins. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) ix–xxiv, who provide numerous examples of ancient novels. 17. Neither Lynn A. Higgins, New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar France (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1966) 14, nor Bloom were, of course, the first to make such a point. As Wallace Martin pointed out, Roman Jakobson argued in an essay of 1921 that each new generation of writers “tends to assert that the works of its predecessors are improbable, artificial, stylized, not true to life”—Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1986) 64. 18. Not everyone agrees with this distinction. Jeremy Hawthorn takes his definition from the Oxford English Dictionary: “a novel is a ‘fictitious prose narrative or tale of considerable length . . . in which characters and actions representative of the real life of past or present times are portrayed in a plot of more or less complexity’ ”—Studying the Novel, 4th ed. (London: Arnold, 2001) 4. 19. Leonard Orr gives an excellent summary of those who have believed that art must be unified (or coherent, complete, or closed)—Problems and Poetics 13–30—though he disagrees and considers novels that are “epistemological rather than emotional in mode . . . non-mimetic . . . non-chronological but not achronological . . . and non-teleological” to differ in nature, thus are nonaristotelian (31). The concept of resolution, rather than unity, may avoid the problem whether the novel’s predominant design is an image or a sequence.

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20. Pablo Picasso, “Conversation with Picasso,” by Christian Zervos, in The Creative Process: A Symposium, ed. Brewster Ghiselin (Berkeley: U of California P, 1954) 49. 21. Richter, Fable’s End, Completeness and Closure in Rhetorical Fiction (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974) 6–7. For contrary examples, for example, see what Gayatri Spivak has to say about recent literary discourse: “Whereas in other kinds of discourses there is a move toward the final truth of a situation, literature, even within this argument, displays that the truth of a human situation is the itinerary of not being able to find it. In the general discourse of the humanities, there is a sort of search for solutions, whereas in literary discourse there is a playing out of the problem as the solution, if you like”—In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics (New York and London: Methuen, 1987) 77. 22. Robin Wood, “Godard and Weekend,” Weekend/Wind from the East, by JeanLuc Godard, Modern Film Scripts (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972) 5. For an illustration, see the conflicting readings author and critic give William Burrough’s The Exterminator—Ihab Hassan, “The Subtracting Machine: The Work of William Burroughs,” Critique 6 (1963) 10. 23. Kermode, The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1967) 138. 24. I make more distinctions than Northrop Frye’s drama, epos, fiction, and lyric, only as a matter of usefulness and common practice. I would also agree with Stephen Heath that “the [Aristotelian] lyrical-epical-dramatic triad is . . . a matter not of genres but rather of modes of enunciation, ways of presenting that do not in themselves involve any defined content”—“The Politics of Genre,” Debating World Literature, ed. Christopher Prendergast (London: Verso, 2004) 166–67. A recent, special issue of PMLA provides meat for critical teratologists. Some Americanists of a post-structuralist bent restructure the concept of genre to include a “database as an emerging genre”—Ed Folsom, “Reply,” PMLA 122.5 (October 2007): 1609. For Wai Chee Dimock, “Introduction: Genres as Fields of Knowledge,” PMLA 122.5 (October 2007): 1377–88; Ed Folsom, “Database as Genre: The Epic Transformation of Archives,” 1571– 79; Lev Manovich, The Language of the New Media (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. P, 2001)—and others, the morphological aspect of genre, and indeed narrative have conflated—see, N. Katherine Hayles, “Narrative and Database: Natural Symbionts,” PMLA 1603. Embracing virtually unlimited sequence, depth, and breadth (any item with the slightest connection to Whitman is accepted by the database), unlike the rigidly structured movement of a Calder mobile, the terms “genre” and “narrative” have become so loosely related as to be useless for anyone believing in the essential discrimination of art. Jerome McGann terms the redefined terminology “seriously misleading”—“Database, Interface, and Archival Fever,” PMLA 1588. 25. Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1976) 120–21. Maupassant is even more categorical: “After Manon Lescaut, Paul et Virginie, Don Quichotte, Les liaisons dangereuses, Werther, Les affinités électives, Clarisse Harlowe, Emile, Candide, Cinq-Mars, René, Les trois mousquetaires, Mauprat,

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Le père Goriot, La cousine Bette, Colomba. Le rouge et le noir, Mademoiselle de Maupin, Notre-Dame de Paris, Salammbô, Madame Bovary, Adolphe, M. de Camors, L’Assommoir, Sapho, etc., the critic who still dares to write: ‘This is a novel and that is not’ seems to me to be gifted with perspicacity that strongly resembles incompetence”—“Le roman,” Pierre et Jean (Paris: Ollendorff, 1908) 2. B. E. Perry is somewhat less pessimistic: “It is useful and legitimate to speak of literary forms or genres only so long as we understand those terms in a purely descriptive sense as referring to arbitrary categories of literary phenomena, categories which may be greatly varied, multiplied or restricted at will, according to the criteria on which one chooses to base them. But a genre in this sense of a category cannot have a genealogy. . . . It is true that a genre in the description, ex post facto sense may represent (and usually does) a strong literary fashion, which in turn may influence a subsequent genre; but such influence is strictly secondary and superficial”—The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins (Berkeley: U of California P, 1967) 20. Norman Friedman takes a position more in line with my own: “Trying to particularize the definition of a genre on the basis of a single and general differentia, which is all too common, is doomed to failure from the start. What is needed instead is a set of multiple differentiae”—“Recent Short Story Theories: Problems in Definition,” Short Story Theory at a Crossroads, ed. Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1989) 17–18. Leon S. Roudiez, French Fiction Today: A New Direction (New Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 1972) 6. See, Douglas Hesse’s analysis of what he calls a “boundary zone”: “A Boundary Zone: First-Person Short Stories and Narrative Essays,” ed. Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey 85–105. Jurij Tynjanov, “On Literary Evolution” (1927), Readings in Russian Poetics: Formalist and Structuralist Views, ed. Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. P, 1978) 72–73. Tzvetan Todorov, Les genres du discours (Paris: Seuil, 1978) 45. For a contrary point of view, i.e., “[T]he novel has no fixed identity and never will,” see, Irving H. Buchen, “The Aesthetics of the Supra-Novel,” ed. John Halperin 97. Richard Pearce, “ ‘The Present and Future States of Novel Criticism’: Our TwoHeaded Profession,” Why the Novel Matters, ed. Mark Spilka and Caroline McCracken-Flesher (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990) 35. There is, of course, a negative side to “the powerful effect that preconceived generic assumptions have on a reader’s understanding of every textual moment,” as Dorrit Cohn insists in considering the writers who have viewed Freud’s case studies as fiction—The Distinction of Fiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999) 47. See, Enrico de’Negri, “The Legendary Style of the Decameron,” Romanic Review 43 (1952): 166–89. One of Bakhtin’s points in, “Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel,” Modern Genre Theory, ed. David Duff (Harlow: Longman, 2000) 68–81.

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33. Stephen Owen gives another example: Heliodorus’s Aethiopica was a history from around 1569, before becoming a “romance” and finally a “novel”— “Genres in Motion,” PMLA 122.5 (2007): 1389–90. Robert Scholes advances an interesting twist on the importance of the reader’s expectations. He adds that of the author by beginning “The Novel as Ethical Paradigm?” with a familiar passage, after which he announces, “I must stop and confess to an unethical act.” He has “plagiarized” from an essay by Ortega Y. Gasset. In confessing, he has “transformed an unethical act into an ethical one. What began as theft has ended as the quotation and citation of authority. The unethical has become the ethical”—“The Novel as Ethical Paradigm?” Why the Novel Matters, ed. Spilka and McCracken-Flesher 207. 34. Heinrich Wölfflin, Principles of Art History: The Problem of the Development of Style in Later Art, trans. from the 7th ed. (1929) by M. D. Hottinger (New York: Dover, n.d.). 35. Williams, A Beginning on the Short Story [Notes] (Yonkers, NY: Alicat Bookshop Press, 1950) 5. I have considered the short story in considerably more detail in: “On Defining Short Stories,” New Literary History 22.2 (1991): 409–24, republished in, Charles May, ed., The New Short Story Theories (Athens: Ohio UP, 1994) 114–30. 36. Paul Zumthor, “La brièveté comme forme,” Formation, codification et rayonnement d’un genre médiéval: La nouvelle, Actes du colloque international de Montréal (McGille U, 14–16 octobre 1982), ed. Michelangelo Picone et al. (Montreal: Plato Academic P, 1983) 3. Of course, the idea that form is content and in their relationship the one is governed by the other is implicit in Aristotle. Nor is the thought that brevity may structure short stories new— see, e.g., Edward D. Sullivan, Maupassant: The Short Stories (London: Edward Arnold, 1962). Zumthor’s contribution resides in his attempt to go beyond the “form equals content” truism and to show how, specifically, the quality of being short affects form at every level. See, also, Zumthor’s Essai de poétique médiéval (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 339–404. I attempt to carry the analysis somewhat further. 37. The Joycean epiphany, often referred to as a “revelatory moment,” is comparable to one of Proust’s “blessed moments” [moments bienheureux]. Joyce uses it to suggest the Incarnation of the Word, “in the liturgical sense, i.e., as the shining-forth of the mystery of the Incarnation”—Beryl Schlossman, Joyce’s Catholic Comedy of Language (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985) 102. I shall return to the Proustian moment bienheureux in chapter 6. 38. See, e.g., Marian Zwerling Sugano, “Beyond What Meets the Eye: The Photographic Analogy in Cortázar’s Short Stories,” Style 27.3 (1993): 332–51, and Charles May, “Reality in the Modern Short Story,” in the same special issue 369–79. May’s “The Nature of Knowledge in Short Fiction,” The New Short Story Theories 131–43, is particularly useful. For an analysis of image (spatial or descriptive) and process (sequential or narrative) structures in the same story, see Suzanne Hunter Brown’s consideration of Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily”—“Reframing Stories,” Short Story at a Crossroads, ed. Lohafer and Clarey 311–27.

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39. Charles Baudelaire, “Théophile Gautier,” Œuvres complètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1962) 691. Jeremy Hawthorn puts the matter in less lurid language: “One of the things which sets the novel apart from many other literary genres is its ability to incorporate the most disparate elements from human life and experience in itself ” (17). 40. Michael Wood, “The Last Night of All,” PMLA 122.5 (2007): 1401n4. 41. Shattuck’s discussion of the necessity of “forgetfulness” is excellent: Proust’s Binoculars: A Study of Memory, Time and Recognition in À la recherche du temps perdu (New York: Random House, 1963) 65–68. Howard Nemerov’s little book also talks about what interests me here: the “causes that grow subterraneously, invisibly, until at last they erupt through the surface and begin to bloom as determinate effects”—The Oak in the Acorn: On Remembrance of Things Past and on Teaching Proust, Who Will Never Learn (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987) 44. 42. Pasco, “Crazy Writing and Reliable Text in The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper: A Dual-Text Critical Edition, ed. Shawn St. Jean (Athens: Ohio UP, 2006) 88–99. 43. Gide, Œuvres complètes d’André Gide, ed. L. Martin-Chauffier, 15 vols. (Paris: N.R.F., 1932–39) 6.361. 44. Gide, Journal: 1889–1939, 2 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1951, 1954) 1.760. 45. Eagleton, The English Novel 13. As Mary Donaldson-Evans suggested to me, I should mention Flaubert’s Madame Bovary here, since the entire novel turns on this distinction. 46. Quoted by, Hans Boll-Johansen, “Une théorie de la nouvelle et son application aux Chroniques italiennes de Stendhal,” Revue de la littérature comparée 50 (1976): 422. 47. Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman, Collection Idées (Paris: N.R.F., 1963) 20. 48. Victor Erlich, Russian Formalism: History—Doctrine, 3d ed. (Paris: Mouton, 1969) 213. 49. Anonymous editor, Adventures in the Skin Trade and Other Stories, by Dylan Thomas (New York: Signet, 1956) vii. 50. Johnson, “Introduction to Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs?” The Novel Today: Contemporary Writers on Modern Fiction, ed. Malcolm Bradbury (Manchester: Manchester UP, 1977) 154. Mark Schorer is not quite so categorical: “[A] novel . . . is not life; and the critical problem is first of all to analyze the structure of the image”—“Fiction and the ‘Analogical Matrix,’ ” Critiques and Essays on Modern Fiction, 1920–1951, Representing the Achievement of Modern American and British Critics, ed. John W. Aldridge (New York: Ronald, 1952) 83. 51. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1929) 5–6. Diderot likewise leaves no doubt about the truth of fiction: “He who would take what I write as the truth would be less mistaken than he who would take it as a fable”—Denis Diderot, Jacques le fataliste (1796), Œuvres romanesques, ed. Henri Bénac (Paris: Garnier, 1962) 505.

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52. Thomas J. Roberts, When Is Something Fiction? (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1972) 11. See, also, René Wellek and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1949) 15–16, 221–22; Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958) 419–37; and Michel Butor, Répertoire [I] (Paris: Minuit, 1960) 7–8. 53. Philippe Van Tieghem, “Les prosateurs du XVIIe siècle,” Encyclopédie de la Pléiade, ed. Raymond Queneau, vol. 3 (Paris: Gallimard, 1958) 429. 54. Joseph Frank, The Widening Gyre: Crisis and Mastery in Modern Literature, Midland Book (1963; rpt. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1968); and my Novel Configurations 51–71; for “tone,” see Robert Pinget, “Pseudo-principes d’esthétique,” Nouveau roman, ed. Ricardou, and van Rossum-Guyon 2.311– 24; for “mood,” see, Georg Lukacs, The Theory of the Novel (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. P, 1971) 51–52; for “theme,” see, Frank O’Connor (pseud. Michael O’Donovan), The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1963). 55. Tzvetan Todorov, “La grammaire du récit,” Langages, no. 12 (1968) 96; Gerald Prince, A Grammar of Stories (The Hague: Mouton, 1973) 31. 56. Annie Ernaux, Une femme (Paris: Gallimard, 1987) 106. 57. Blanchot, “Autour du roman,” 110. 58. Ian Reid, The Short Story, Critical Idiom, no. 37 (London: Methuen, 1977) 12–13. 59. H. E. Bates, The Modern Short Story: A Critical Survey (Boston: The Writer, 1972) 17. Anton Chekhov, “The Short Story,” The New Short Story Theories, ed. May, 195–98. A character in Richard Powers’s novel Galatea 2.2 concludes, simply, “Maybe the only universally valid generalization about stories: they end”—(New York: Farrar, 1995) 219 (previously quoted by M. Wood 1395). 60. Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls this an “intermediate person,” that is, neither a first nor a third person, but rather an indeterminate voice that could be and is occasionally both—“Cinq notes sur Claude Simon,” Médiations: Revue des expressions contemporaines 4 (Winter 1961): 6. 61. Wellek, “Literary History,” Literary Scholarship: Its Aims and Methods, ed. Norman Foerster et al. (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1941) 124.

Chapter 2 1. “A story cycle . . . is a set of stories linked to each other in such a way as to maintain a balance between the individuality of each of the stories and the necessities of the larger unit”—Forrest L. Ingram, Representative Short Story Cycles of the Twentieth Century: Studies in a Literary Genre (The Hague: Mouton, 1971) 15. A few pages farther on, he insists that the stories of such cycles are so linked to each other “that the reader’s successive experience on various levels of the pattern of the whole significantly modifies his experience of each of its component parts” (19). Susan Mann phrases it somewhat differently: “[T]here is only one essential characteristic of the short story cycle:

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the stories are both self sufficient and interrelated. On the one hand, the stories work independently of one another: the reader is capable of understanding each of them without going beyond the limits of the individual story. On the other hand, however, the stories work together, creating something that could not be achieved in a single story”—Susan Garland Mann, The Short Story Cycle: A Genre Companion and Reference Guide (New York: Greenwood P, 1989) 15. Some years after the publication of Ingram’s book, Robert M. Luscher suggests preferring the term “short story sequence” to “short story cycle”—“The Short Story Sequence: An Open Book,” Short Story Theory at a Crossroads, ed. Susan Lohafer and Jo Ellyn Clarey (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987) 148–67. For reasons that will become clear, I prefer the term “cycle,” which is large enough to incorporate the two most important modes of cyclical structure: sequential and image. Albert Camus, Théâtre, récits, nouvelles, ed. Roger Quilliot, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1962) 1568. All further references to L’exil et le royaume will be to this edition and indicated parenthetically. Baldi, “L’exil et le royaume d’Albert Camus: une lecture de la nouvelle ‘Les muets,’ ” Francophonia 13.24 (1993): 91. Although the study is nominally a consideration of only one story, her understanding of the whole is remarkably perceptive (92). Prescott, quoted from English Showalter, Jr., Exiles and Strangers: A Reading of Camus’s Exile and the Kingdom (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1984) 10. Yosei Matsumoto, “L’ombre portée par Le premier homme sur L’exil et le royaume,” Albert Camus: Lettres modernes 20 (2004): 93. The problematic unity of Camusian fiction has, of course, been frequently mentioned. For a sensitive discussion, see, Gaëton Picon, L’usage de la lecture, 2 (Paris: Mercure de France, 1961) 170–72. Peter Cryle’s warning that the author’s ambiguity represents a “creative conciliation of divergent attitudes” should, however, be remembered—Bilan critique: L’exil et le royaume d’Albert Camus: Essai d’analyse (Paris: Minard, 1973) passim. The conflict between philosophic and artistic thought and presentation has been widely discussed— e.g., Germaine Brée, Albert Camus, Columbia Essays on Modern Writers, 1 (New York: Columbia UP, 1964) 44–45; Louis Hudon, “The Stranger and the Critics,” Yale French Studies 25 (1960): 60; Anthony Zahareas, “ ‘La femme adultère’: Camus’s Ironic Vision of the Absurd,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 5 (1963): 319; Jules Roy, “La tragédie algérienne,” Camus (Paris: Hachette, 1964) 208; Owen J. Miller, “L’exil et le royaume: Cohérence du recueil,” Revue des lettres modernes 360–65 (1973): 21–50; Laura G. Durand’s subsequent, helpful “Thematic Counterpoint in L’exil et le royaume,” French Review 47 (1974): 1110–22, should be mentioned, as well. Claude Coste, “Le sang dans Les diaboliques de Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly,” Tangence 70 (Fall 2002): 53–65; Pasco, “A Study of Allusion: Barbey’s Stendhal in ‘Le rideau cramoisi,’ ” PMLA 88 (1973): 461–71; Karen Humphreys, “Dandyism, Gems, and Epigrams: Lapidary Style and Genre Transformation in Barbey’s Les diaboliques,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 31.3–4 (2003): 259–61, 269–73.

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8. Victor Chklovski [Shklovsky], Sur la théorie de la prose, trans. Guy Verret (1929; Lausanne: L’Age d’Homme, 1973) 99. 9. Maddocks, “Marcel Proust: Witness to a Dissolving Dream,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 1971: 9. 10. See Chapter 5. 11. J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962) 154. See, René Guénon’s related thought: Le symbolisme de la croix (Paris: Vega, 1931) 204–06. Blaise Pascal would have us believe that Janus’s (and Janine’s) problem is universal: “Let each one examine his thoughts; he will find them all occupied with the past or with the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we think of it, it is only to gain some insight into the future. The present is never our goal. The past and the present are our means; only the future is our goal. So it is that we never live, but only hope to live, and are always arranging things to be happy. Inevitably, we will never be”—Pascal, Pensées, ed. Philippe Sellier (Paris: Mercure de France, 1976) 57n80. 12. Carina Gadourek, Les innocents et les coupables: essai d’exégèse de l’œuvre d’Albert Camus (The Hague: Mouton, 1963) 202. 13. Showalter rightly emphasizes the importance of meals: the communal meals shared by Yvars and Saïd, repeated between Yvars and his wife, the schoolteacher and his prisoner, and D’Arrast and the little group at the end. He also points to the “anti-communal” meals of Janine and Marcel and to the bitter drinks and salt forced on the renegade (60–61). 14. In respect to L’étranger, Emily Zants says, “When the sun reigns omnipotently, the ideals become ideologies, absolute systems which disregard the individual”—“Camus’ Deserts and their Allies, Kingdoms of the Stranger,” Symposium 17 (I963): 36. It is because the sun appears in close association with extremes that S. Beynon John notes “a tonality of violence” evoked by “allusions to the sun in Camus’ essays”—“Image and Symbol in the Work of Albert Camus” (1955), Camus: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Germaine Brée (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962) 135—and that Victor Brombert considers the “word ‘sun’ [a] symbol of absolute violence”—The Intellectual Hero: Studies in the French Novel, 1880–1955 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1961) 228. Brombert’s essay concentrates on the importance of absolutism to an understanding of the story. See, also, Patricia J. Johnson, “An Impossible Search for Identity: Theme and Imagery in Camus’ ‘Le renégat,’ ” Research Studies (Pullman, WA) 37 (1969): esp. 172–77, for a discussion of the sun and its relationship to Christ. As for absolutism, Curtis writes, “In ‘Le renégat’ the crucial issue seems to be . . . that absolutism alienates and essentially destroys the humanity of man”—“Alienation and the Foreigner in Camus’ L’exil et le royaume,” French Literature Series 2 (1975): 132. 15. In respect to “râ,” see, Stephen Ullmann, The Image in the Modern French Novel: Gide, Alain-Fournier, Proust, Camus (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1960) 293; Marguerite Nicod-Saraiva, “Une lecture du ‘Renégat,’ ” Etudes de lettres, serie 3, t. 6.2 (avril-juin 1973) 79; Philip Thody, Albert Camus: 1913– 1960 (New York: Macmillan, 1961) 188, and the related note on 240; and,

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finally, Roger Barny, “Une lecture descriptive du ‘Renégat,’ ” Mélanges offerts à Jean Peytard, ed. Jacques Bourquin et Daniel Jacobi (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1993) 145, 149. In respect to the theme of silence, see, Pierre Gascar, “Le dernier visage de Camus,” Camus (Paris: Hachette, 1964) 262–63; Lawrence D. Joiner, “Reverie and Silence in ‘Le renégat,’ ” Romance Notes 16 (1975): 262–67. Camus uses the names to stress the social conflict: Yvars derives from “yew,” a flexible wood used to make bows. Marcou very likely derives from Mars, the god of war, and Ballester from an Old French word meaning crossbow— Albert Dauzat, Dictionnaire étymologique des noms de famille et prénoms de France (Paris: Larousse, 1951); Patrick Hanks and Flavia Hodges, Dictionary of Surnames (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1988); and their A Dictionary of First Names (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990). Roelens, “Un texte, son ‘histoire’ et l’histoire ‘L’hôte’ d’Albert Camus,” Revue des sciences humaines 165 (1977): 14. Guers-Villate, “Rieux et Daru ou le refus délibéré d’influencer autrui,” Papers on Language and Literature 3 (1967): 231, a conclusion that Cryle accepts (e.g., 135). Other conclusions vary wildly. Cryle offers a survey in his chapter on “L’hôte.” Since Cryles’ summation, the story has continued to elicit commentary, the most curious of which is “that the Arab tribesmen do not exist and that the words ‘clumsily chalked-up’ on Daru’s blackboard were composed by the schoolmaster himself.” This possibility, the author points out, “has consistently been overlooked by critics of ‘The Guest’ ”—Constance Rooke, “Camus’ ‘The Guest’: The Message on the Blackboard,” Studies in Short Fiction 14 (1977): 78. Of course, the text gives no evidence of Daru’s hand. Simon, “Camus’ Kingdom: The Native Host and an Unwanted Guest,” Studies in Short Fiction 1 (1964): 290. Albert Camus, Essais, ed. R. Quilliot and L. Faucon, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1965) 1079. For Jerry Curtis, the star is “that spacious, silent and obscure inner vision which we call intuition”—“Structure and Space in Camus’ ‘Jonas,’ ” Modern Fiction Studies 22 (1976–77): 575. Raymond Gay-Crosier’s consideration of the star is excellent: “Renegades Revisited: from Jonas to Clamence,” Albert Camus’ L’exil et le royaume: The Third Decade, ed. Anthony Rizzuto (Toronto: Paratexte, 1988) 21–26. See, also, Adele King, “Jonas ou l’artiste au travail,” French Studies 20 (1966): 267–80. She suggests convincingly that essays by George Orwell (Inside the Whale) and Henry Miller (Un être étoilique) had a decisive impact on the star of this story. To her analysis of “Jonas” in terms of Camus’ life should be added a passage that Peter Cryle, I believe, first quoted from Camus’ Carnets (10 janvier 1950): “I never saw very clearly within myself, but I always instinctively followed an invisible star . . . ”—Carnets: janvier 1942–mars 1951 (Paris: Gallimard, 1964) 303. Cryle gives the text in his Bilan critique 158. For Jerry Curtis, the star is “that spacious, silent and obscure inner vision which we call intuition”—“Structure and Space in Camus’ ‘Jonas,’ ” Modern Fiction Studies 22 (1976–77): 575.

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22. The relationship of “L’hôte” to “La pierre qui pousse” may be indicated by the similarity in the names, both of which make use of “dar” (Spanish for “to give”): DARu and d’Arrast (DARrast), one suggestive of a French past tense and one of the reflexive future—se te dara. 23. Michael Issacharoff, L’espace et la nouvelle (Paris: Jose Corti, 1976) 101–02. 24. In addition, as Alexander Fischler has pointed out, “throughout the conception of L’exil et le royaume, which originally was to include La chute, Camus developed a series of figures who somehow found a road in the world that they can follow, not so much because they established a direct rapport with their fellow men, but because they experienced a mystical communion in which cosmic forces as well as the very elements participated without losing any of their aweinspiring and alien majesty. D’Arrast, the colossus at the end of the series, is fit to embody all his predecessors, though even he is somewhat strained under the weight of so much symbolism”—“Camus’s ‘La pierre qui pousse’: Saint George and the Protean Dragon,” Symposium 24 (1970): 216. In a note Fischler refers to d’Arrast as “the bridge-builder becoming pontiff ” (n8), a pun, of course, on “pont,” the French word for “bridge.” I see d’Arrast as a pontiff only to the degree that he is a model man. 25. Philip Thody makes the point clearly: “D’Arrast cannot sacrifice his intelligence and join the natives of Iguape in the wild dancing through which they quite forget their own individuality, any more than he can live in his own country where ‘the rulers are merchants or policemen.’ . . . He can share religious feeling but not religious faith”—Albert Camus: A Study of His Work (1957; rpt. New York: Grove, 1959) 91. Fischler goes on to draw attention to d’Arrast’s nausea, which, he suggests, emphasizes his “ontological separateness” (212) and which Camus toned down considerably in revising the early drafts. Fischler explains: “He was perhaps becoming aware of an excessively Sartrean note in his presentation” (217n71). 26. Jacques Petit, ed., Œuvres romanesques complètes, by Barbey d’Aurevilly, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1964, 1966) 2.1275. All further references to Les Diaboliques will be to this edition. 27. Jacques-Henry Bornecque, ed., “Introduction,” Les Diaboliques, by Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Garnier, 1963) xcvii. 28. A fictional character to whom a story is told—Gerald Prince, A Grammar of Stories (The Hague: Mouton, 1973); “Introduction to the Study of the Narratee,” Reader-Response Criticism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980) 7–25. In this case, the narratee has heard a story, which he then tells. As will be clear below, there can be several levels of narratees and narrators. 29. See my, “A Study of Allusion: Barbey’s Stendhal in ‘Le Rideau cramoisi.’ ” All of these tales are riddled with references to Satan, the devil, hell. See, also, Robert Willard Artinian’s “Barbey’s Decadence: The Test of Time,” French Literature Series 11 (1984): 89–96. 30. Anne Giard, “Le récit lacunaire dans les Diaboliques,” Poétique 41 (1980): 39. The frustration is indeed so textually inscribed that Herta Rodina considers

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35.

36.

37. 38.

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it harassment—“Textual Harrassment: Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Les diaboliques,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 24.1 & 2 (1995–96): 144–53. Jacques Petit, “Note sur la structure des Diaboliques,” Revue des lettres modernes 199–202 (1969): 88. See, also, his comment 2.1302n2. Gracq, “Préface,” Les diaboliques, by Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Livre de poche, 1960) 3. Petit, Essais de lectures des Diaboliques de Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Lettres modernes Minard, 1974) 32–33. Berthier, L’ensorcelée, Les diaboliques de Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Champion, 1987) 102. See, also, Jacques-Henry Bornecque, ed., Les diaboliques, by Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Garnier, 1963) c. Philippe Berthier, “Les diaboliques et la critique française,” Revue des lettres modernes 403–08 (1974): 92. For Jean-Paul Bonnes, it is “doubtless the least interesting of these stories and . . . the least diabolical”—Le bonheur du masque: petite introduction aux romans de Barbey d’Aurevilly (Tournai: Casterman, 1947) 99. For recollections of Delacroix, see Bornecque 79n1; Petit, Œuvres romanesques 2.1305n2. For Petit, the image of Sardanapalos’s pyre is simply a “triumphant image of destruction” (Essais 111), but as Patrick Brady has pointed out in detail, the painting turns around impotence: Interdisiplinary Interpretation of Art and Literature: The Principle of Convergence (Knoxville: New Paradigm Press, 1996) ch. 2. J.-K. Huysmans, À rebours (1884; Paris: Fasquelle, 1968) 40. In respect to this erotic mass, see, especially, Philippe Berthier, “Les diaboliques à table,” Barbey d’Aurevilly: L’ensorcelée et les diaboliques: La chose sans nom, Actes du colloque du 16 janvier 1988 (Paris: SEDES, 1988) 134–35; MarieClaire Ropars-Wuilleumier, “ ‘Le plus bel amour de Don Juan’: narration et signification,” Littérature 9 (1973): 118; Jean-Pierre Boucher, Les diaboliques de Barbey d’Aurevilly: une esthétique de la dissimulation et de la provocation (Montréal: P de l’U du Québec, 1976) 52. Guillemette I. Holder points out that through linguistic slippage, Don Juan is identified with the devil—“Séduction narrative et donjuanisme chez Barbey d’Aurevilly,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 23.1 & 2 (1994–95): 172–73. Crouzet, “Barbey d’Aurevilly et l’oxymore: ou La rhétorique du diable,” La chose sans nom 88. Andrée Hirschi, ed., “Le ‘Procès’ des Diaboliques,” Revue des lettres modernes 9 (1974): 19. Przybos, “ ‘Le plus bel amour de Don Juan’ or a Child’s Phantom Pregnancy,” Notebook in Cultural Analysis 2 (1985): 56–57. McKeon (106) also cites Pascaline Mourier-Casile, who discusses the readers’ desire for a conclusion, a frustration “that will not be satisfied”— Barbey d’Aurevilly, “Préface,” Les diaboliques (Paris: Pocket, 1993) 24–25. Armand Le Corbeiller, Les diaboliques de Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Malfère, 1939) 93.

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44. Some of these questions were posed by Berthier, L’ensorcelée, 101, 104–06; Bornecque xcviii; Michel Crouzet, ed., “Introduction,” Les diaboliques, by Barbey d’Aurevilly (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1989) 20; and Petit, Essais 21. 45. Pasco, “Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Force of Evil dessous les cartes,” Romance Studies 28.1 (January 2010): 36–47. 46. “The story, for Don Juan, never began. The plot never ends”—Petit, Essais 27. “[T]his, the most beautiful love, never happened”—Michel Crouzet, “Barbey d’Aurevilly et l’oxymore: ou La rhétorique du diable,” La chose sans nom 88. These critics do not appreciate the crucial spiritual blasphemy and focus rather on the insignificant, nonexistent, physical penetration. See, also, Giard, “Récit lacunaire” 43, 51. 47. Petit, “Le temps romanesque et la ‘mise en abyme,’ ” Revue des lettres modernes 199–202 (1969): 37–38. It is also true as Petit later suggests that “[i]n each Diabolique, at a precise instant, a whole is formed that was up to this point confused”—Jacques Petit, “Note sur la structure des Diaboliques,” Revue des lettres modernes 199–202 (1969): 199–202. 48. Forrest Ingram insists that the stories of cycles are so linked to each other “that the reader’s successive experience on various levels of the pattern of the whole significantly modifies his experience of each of its component parts”—Representative Short Story Cycles 19. 49. Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975) 113–14. This statement needs, of course, considerable development, which Culler has expertly provided—see his chapter, “Literary Competence,” 113–30.

Chapter 3 1. See, especially, Mary Donaldson-Evans, Medical Examinations: Dissecting the Doctor in French Narrative Prose, 1857–1894 (Lincoln, NE: U of Nebraska P, 2000) 22–40; Max Aprile, “L’aveugle et sa signification dans Madame Bovary,” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 76 (1976): 385–92; P. M. Wetherill, “Madame Bovary’s Blind Man: Symbolism in Flaubert,” Romanic Review 61 (1970): 35–42. 2. Pasco, “Myth, Metaphor and Meaning in Germinal,” French Review 46 (1973): 739–49. 3. Michael Issacharoff, J.-K. Huysmans devant la critique en France (1874–1960) (Paris: Klincksieck, 1970) 67–68. Pierre Jourde’s more recent study comes to the same conclusion: Huysmans—À rebours: l’identité impossible (Geneva: Slatkine, 1991) 9. 4. Émile Zola’s “confusion” was expressed in his letter of May 20, 1884, to Huysmans: Pierre Lambert, ed., Lettres inédites à Émile Zola (Geneva: Droz, 1953) 103–04. 5. William York Tindall, The Literary Symbol (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1965) 69. Per Buvik also wonders whether it is a novel (16) and concludes that the work is “composed of a series of odd textual fragments that refer to nothing but

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7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

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themselves”—Per Buvik, “Manifeste et roman de crise: A propos d’ À rebours, de Joris-Karl Huysmans,” Bulletin de la société J.-K. Huysmans 19.71 (1980): 26. H. Brunner and J. L. de Coninck, En marge d’À rebours (Paris: Dorbon aîné, 1929) 75. Laurence M. Porter suggests, rather, a literary function in noting that Moreau’s painting of Salomé’s “jewelled costume recalls the gemincrusted shell of the tortoise”—“Huysmans’ À rebours: The Psychodynamics of Regression,” American Imago 44 (1987): 56. Marc Fumaroli, “Préface,” À rebours, by J.-K. Huysmans (Paris: Gallimard 1977) 21. Pedro Paulo Catharina considers the work to be constructed “on a rather thin narrative structure which does not support a true novelistic framework obeying the most traditional models,” that indeed it “destabilizes and puts the novel genre in check”—“À rebours: cet étrange roman si en dehors de toute la littérature contemporaine,” Excavatio 20.1–02 (2005): 142–43. Charles Bernheimer, Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989) 263. Lilian R. Furst also stated that the actual order “could be shuffled without substantially altering the work, specially in the middle”—The Contours of European Romanticism (London: Macmillan, 1979) 130. Ruth Plaut Weinreb, “Structural Techniques in À rebours,” French Review 49.2 (1975): 223–24. Joseph Halpern disagreed with her conclusions on the progress of des Esseintes’s sickness: “[F]or fourteen chapters we have a sense of entropic degeneration; des Esseintes’s health spirals up and down without any real change” (95). Halpern also mentions that the novel “subverts narrative logic” (94). For Daniel Grojnowski, “À rebours is a novel in which nothing happens. Impressions, sensations, experiments, reveries of a quibbling collector are presented in an arbitrary order as a result of a description organized as an inventory that replaces narrative logic based on episodes”— Le sujet d’À rebours (Villeneuve d’Ascq—Nord): PU du Septentrion, 1996) 30. Later, he calls it “a tale that proceeds by the juxtapositions of heterogeneous developments” (100). “[T]he story unrolls following ricochets of the imagination” (101). David Mickelsen, “À rebours: Spatial Form,” French Forum 3.1 (1978): 48–55. Huysmans, “Préface écrite vingt ans après le roman,” À rebours, ed. Rose Fortassier, Lettres françaises (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1981) 52, 61. Further references to Fortassier’s edition of the preface and the novel will be indicated parenthetically. Paul Valéry, Tel Quel, Œuvres, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1960) 2.557. C. A. Cevasco, “Delineating Decadence: The Influence of J.-K. Huysmans on Arthur Symons,” Nineteenth-Century Prose 23.1 (1996): 74–86. Paul Valéry, November 19, 1890, Letter 13, Lettres à quelques-uns (Paris: Gallimard, 1952) 35. Valéry, Letter 2, Lettres à quelques-uns 11. Valéry, according to Frédéric Lefèvre, Entretiens sur J.-K. Huysmans (Paris: Horizons de France, 1931) 39. Fortassier’s edition gives a number of other examples of the novel’s reception (359–66).

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17. Gisèle Séginger, “À rebours de Huysmans: la lévitation du sens,” NineteenthCentury French Studies 23.3–4 (1995): 485. 18. I previously used the concept and the illustration below in an analysis of En rade: Pasco, Novel Configurations: A Study of French Fiction, 2nd ed. (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1994) 149. 19. William J. Berg, Imagery and Ideology: Fiction and Painting in NineteenthCentury France (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2007) 165. 20. The quotation is from Séginger, “À rebours, le roman de l’écriture,” Littératures 25 (automne 1991): 72, though the entire argument is significant (74–80). Given that the two opposing, incompatible images of an oxymoron function compatibly (or combine in a third conceptual image), Roy Jay Nelson makes a similar point in suggesting that in order to make sense of À rebours, readers must give “assent to the notion that every counterforce is dependent upon its opposite”—“Decadent Coherence in Huysmans’s À rebours,” Modernity and Revolution in Late Nineteenth-Century France, ed. Barbara T. Cooper and Mary Donaldson-Evans (Newark: U of Delaware P, 1992) 33. 21. Françoise Carmignani-Dupont, “Fonction romanesque du récit de rêve: L’exemple d’ À rebours,” Littérature 43 (October 1981): 57–74, and, respectively, Jeffrey B. Loomis, “Of Pride and the Fall: The Allegorical À rebours,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 12.4–13.1 (Summer-Fall 1984): 147–61. 22. See the discussion of methodology in Pasco, The Color-Keys to À la recherche du temps perdu (Geneva: Droz, 1976) 1–23. I have not hesitated to use documented, organized scholarly compilations of recent vintage. The most convenient references are the following: Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, Dictionnaire des symbols: Mythes, rêves, coutumes, gestes, formes, figures, couleurs, nombres (Paris: Robert Lafont, 1969), and J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), though I have confirmed these texts with wide reading in other resources, some of which Huysmans might have known: Artémidore’s second century The Interpretation of Dreams: Oneirocritica, trans. Robert J. White (Torrance, CA: Original Books, 1990; Isaac Myer, Qabbalah: The Philosophical Writings of Solomon Ben Yebudab Ibn Gehirol or Avicebron (1888; rpt. New York: Ktav, 1970); Éliphas Lévi, Dogma et rituel de la haute magie, 2 vols. (Paris: Baillière, 1856); Lévi, La clef des grands mystères (Paris: Baillière, 1861); Lévi, Histoire de la magie (Paris: Baillière, 1860); Lévi, Fables et symboles avec leur explication (Paris: Baillière, 1862); Lévi, La science des esprits (Paris: Baillière, 1865); Frédéric Portal, Des couleurs symboliques dans l’antiquité, le moyen-âge et les temps modernes (Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1837); Adolphe Franck, La kabbale ou la philosophie des Hébreux (Paris: Hachette, 1843); Carl G. Jung et al., Man and His Symbols (New York: Doubleday, 1964); Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, vol. XIV, The Collected Works, trans. R. F. C. Hull (London: Routledge, 1963); Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, vol. XII, The Collected Works; Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and Mysteries (London, Harrvill, 1960).

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23. See, Robert Ziegler, Mirror of Divinity: The World and Creation in J.-K. Huysman (Newark, NJ: U of Delaware P, 2004) 139–56. 24. For the symbolic significance of the house, see, Ania Teillard, Ce que disent les rêves: le symbolisme du rêve (Paris: Stock, 1970) 54–56. A very complete analysis of the symbolic house, with many examples, is also to be found in Gaston Bachelard, La terre et les rêveries du repos (Paris: Corti, 1948) 95–129. Mallarmé’s “Les fenêtres,” offers as well a brilliant illustration. 25. Ziegler, “Taking the Words Right Out of His Mouth: From Ventriloquism to Symbol-Reading in J.-K. Huysmans,” Romanic Review 91.1–2 (Jan.–Mar. 2000): 77–88; and “The Pervert, the Aesthete, and the Novelist,” Romance Studies 25.3 (2007): 199–209. 26. Nuccitelli, “À rebours’s Symbol of the ‘Femme-Fleur’: A Key to Des Esseintes’s Obsession,” Symposium 28 (1974): 336–45. 27. See, Emanuel J. Mickel’s analysis of the three poems in, “À rebours’ Trinity of Baudelairean Poems,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 16 (1987–88): 154–61. 28. Gaston Bachelard, L’eau et les rêves: Essai sur l’imagination de la matière (Paris: J. Corti, 1947) 81. 29. I shall be referring to Étienne Bonnot Condillac, Traité des sensations (1755), ed. Georges Le Roy, Corpus générale des philosophes français: Auteurs modernes, vol. 33 (Paris: P.U.F., 1947). Condillac had considerable influence in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1851 or 1852, Hippolyte Taine, one of the major intellectuals of the period, studied Le traité des sensations for his aggregation examination—H. Taine: Sa vie et sa correspondance: correspondance de jeunesse 1847–1853, vol. 1 (1876; Paris: Hachette, 1902) 122. Indeed, according to C. Pion, Taine’s Les philosophes français au XIX e siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1857) signals Condillac’s resurrection—“Condillac et sa philosophie,” Bulletin mensuel de l’académie delphinale 17 (1881–82): 18–19. Taine refers several times to the Traité in his Les origines de la France contemporaine, 3 vols. (1876–94; Paris: Hachette, 1937), e.g., 1.284–85, 317. Over a third of Victor Cousin’s Philosophie sensualiste au XVIII e siècle, 5th ed. (Paris: Didier, 1866) is devoted to Condillac. He terms the Traité “l’ouvrage capital de Condillac” (68). In 1869, Cousins said flatly, he “est le métaphysicien français du XVIIIe siècle.” Perhaps because of the Ferry educational reforms of 1879–83, there was a flurry of increased interest in the early 1880s that resulted in five separate editions of Le traité des sensations by F. Picavet, E. Belin, T.-V. Charpentier, Abbé Drioux, and Georges Lyou in 1885 and 1886. In short, the work was very much a part of the intellectual life when Huysmans wrote À rebours. I am grateful to André Chervel, Denis D. Grélé, and Ralph Albanese for their help with Condillac’s work in the nineteenthcentury. 30. Chevalier 761; Hans Biedermann, Dictionary of Symbolism, trans. James Hulbert (1992; New York: Facts on File, 1992) 358. 31. Jung, Mysterium Coniunctionis 287. See, also, Chevalier 565; Jung, Psychology and Alchemy 248; Pasco, Color-Keys 136–37n29.

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32. Cirlot 155; Chevalier 106; George Frederick Kunz, The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913; New York: Dover, 1971) 1–18. 33. Chevalier 284; Biedermann 347. 34. See, above, n31. Ann Heilmann believes that Gilman emphasizes the negative aspects of the color yellow—“Overwriting Decadence: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Oscar Wilde, and the Feminization of Art in ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper,’ ” The Mixed Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ed. Catherine J. Golden and Joanna Schneider Zangrando (Newark; U of Delaware P, 2000) 133n2. For the ferocity and desperation of orange, see, Oswald Wirth, Le tarot des imagiers du moyen âge (Paris: Tchou, 1966) 102. 35. Chevalier 360–62; Biedermann 135–36. That they may also represent the soul (Teillard 92) is particularly interesting, given the substance of des Esseintes’s attempt and the fact that though starting with the artificial, he then turns to the monstrously real but apparently artificial. 36. See Chapter 4. 37. Harold Bayley, The Lost Language of Symbolism: An Inquiry into the Origin of Certain Letters, Words, Names, Fairy-Tales, Folklore, and Mythologies (1912; New York: Citadel P, 1960) 157–58; Pasco, Color-Keys 160n2. 38. Biedermann 78–79; Wirth 227–32. 39. Roy Jay Nelson, “Malraux and Camus: The Myth of the Beleaguered City,” Kentucky Foreign Language Quarterly 13.2 (1966): 91. 40. See, Pasco, Balzacian Montage: Configuring La comédie humaine (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1991) 108–13. 41. Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, ed. Jean-Yves Tadié, 4 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1987–89) 1.153.

Chapter 4 1. Paul Valéry, “La tentation de (saint) Flaubert,” Variété, Œuvres, ed. by Jean Hytier, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1957, 1960) 1.613, 619; Margaret G. Tillett, On Reading Flaubert (London: Oxford UP, 1961) 85. More recently, Jonathan Culler asserts that it is a “blatantly stupid . . . work”—Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty (Ithaca, Cornell UP, 1974) 180. Albert Sonnenfeld says simply that it is a “failure”—“La tentation de Flaubert,” Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Études Françaises 23 (1971): 311–12. John Charles Tarver does not appreciate Flaubert’s love of the grotesque, and although he is convinced that the book is badly titled (he believes it should have been called “A Vision of St. Anthony,” 98), it “remains the work of a giant”—Gustave Flaubert: As Seen in His Works and Correspondence (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1970) 99. For Maurice Bardèche, it is an “imperfect but brilliant work”—Œuvres complètes, by Gustave Flaubert, vol. 4 (Paris: Club de l’honnête homme, 1971–76) 331. R. B. Leal gives a good sampling of other adverse reactions—“The Unity of Flaubert’s Tentation de saint Antoine,” Modern Language Review 85 (1990): 331–32. Gisèle Séginger also gives a brief overview of the book’s reception—Naissance et métamorphoses d’un écrivain:

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Flaubert et les tentations de saint Antoine (Paris: Champion, 1997) 13–16. Henri Mazel, however, offers unmitigated praise—“a work of art of absolute perfection in its last form”—“Les trois tentations de saint Antoine,” Mercure de France 152.564 (December 15, 1921): 643. For sources, see, especially, Jean Seznec’s important book-length studies, Les sources de l’épisode des dieux dans La tentation de saint Antoine (Première version, 1849) (Paris: J. Vrin, 1940), and Nouvelles études sur La tentation de saint Antoine (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1949), though several of his articles go further and posit certain structures, particularly of source but in a larger sense in providing an accurate reflection of the decadent aesthetic of the day: “Flaubert historien des hérésies dans la Tentation,” Romanic Review 36 (1945): 200–21, 314–28, and “Les monstres,” Nouvelles études 58–85. See, also, Francis J. Carmody, “Further Sources of La tentation de saint Antoine,” Romanic Review 49 (1958): 278–92. Many scholars have considered the novel’s genesis. See, e.g., René Dumesnil and René Descharmes, eds., Autour de Flaubert: Études historiques et documentaires: Suivies d’une bibliographie chronologique, d’un essai bibliographique des ouvrages et articles relatifs à Flaubert et d’un index des noms cités, 2 vols. (Geneva: Slatkine, 2002) 219–93; Michal Peled Ginsburg, Flaubert Writing: A Study in Narrative Strategies (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1986) 46–81; and the works cited in n11 below. In addition, I am significantly in the debt of those scholars who have made Flaubert’s notes, drafts, and letters available. Several are mentioned above. See, his letter of January 16, 1852, where he tells Louise Colet that he “forgot” the thread for his necklace’s pearls in the effusions of the first two versions. He returns to the necklace image two weeks later, on February 1, 1852, complaining that there is no thread, that Saint Antoine lacks a plan. The complaint returns repeatedly. See, e.g., his letter of June 1, 1856, to Bouilhet and that of January 16, 1852, to Louise Colet. Leal provides other similar examples (“Unity” 330). Flaubert regularly referred to La tentation as an “extravagant” work, see, e.g., the letter to Princess Mathilde of July 1, 1869, that of July 2, 1870, to George Sand, that of July 8, 1870, to his niece Caroline, and that of May 3, 1871, to Princess Mathilde. Michel Butor, “La spirale des sept péchés,” Critique 36 (1970): 387–412. Michal Peled Ginsburg, Flaubert Writing, expands on Butor’s argument with little more precision. As the following pages will demonstrate, I disagree with her assertion that none of the versions have closure. When Flaubert finally found a “plan” he was able to give closure to his last, published version. I seek, in short, the “new framework” that he finally settled on, mentioned in Flaubert’s letter of June 24, 1867, to George Sand. Robert Griffin, “The Transfiguration of Matter,” French Studies 44 (1990): 18. Dominique Cardin, “Le principe des métamorphoses: Essai sur la dernière version de La tentation de saint Antoine de Flaubert,” Dalhousie French Studies 28 (1994): 101–05.

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8. Mary Orr, Flaubert Writing the Masculine (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000)136–37. Her thought is further refined in her excellent study: Flaubert’s Tentation: Remapping Nineteenth-Century French Histories of Religion and Science (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008). With particular regard to Flaubert’s critique of Christianity, see, Orr, “East or West? Flaubert’s La tentation de saint Antoine, or the Question of Orthodoxy,” (Un)faithful Texts? Religion in French and Francophone Literature from the 1780s to the 1980s, ed. by Paul Cooke and Jane Lee (New Orleans: UP of the South, 2000) 79–91. 9. Orr, “Stasis and Ecstasy: La tentation de saint Antoine or the Texte Bouleversant,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 34 (1998): 339. 10. I shall return to the concept of dualism or antithesis as it functions to establish the opposition between Antoine and his God. 11. Cf. “I see only one means of resolving the thorny question of the three versions. . . . : I regard the three of them as the text of La tentation”—Jeanne Bem, Désir et savoir dans l’œuvre de Flaubert: Études de La tentation de saint Antoine (Neuchâtel: La baconnière, 1979) 17. The rule that Bem proposes for justification of her inclusive position—“Flaubert neither burned nor repudiated any of them” (18)—is not the generally accepted guide for establishing definitive texts. 12. Paul Valéry, “La tentation” 1.613, 619. As said before, Leal’s “Unity” 331–32 gives a good sampling of other adverse reactions. See, above, n1. 13. Laurence M. Porter, “A Fourth Version of Flaubert’s Tentation de saint Antoine (1869),” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 4 (1975–76): 53–66. In regard to comparisons of the three versions, see, e.g., Mazel, “Les trois tentations” 626– 43; Jacques Madeleine, “Les différents ‘états’ de la Tentation de saint Antoine,” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 15 (1908): 620–41; Jeanne Bem, Désir et savoir; and Gisèle Séginger, Naissance et métamorphoses. 14. Charles Baudelaire, “Théophile Gautier,” Œuvres complètes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1962) 691. Marshall C. Olds—Au pays des perroquets: Féerie théâtrale et narration chez Flaubert (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001) 68–86—perspicaciously analyses the theatrical nature of the work. 15. All references to the final version of La tentation and, except where otherwise indicated, to the manuscripts are to the Bardèche edition, referred to above in n1. The current reference is to 4.39. Though I concentrate here on the definitive version, I do not wish to imply that the early manuscripts lack importance, though I do find their most useful function to be an encouragement to see and attempt to understand the material changes the author effected in the definitive version. As just one example of the useful results of considering the various versions in detail, and indeed his other works, see Mary Nieland’s consideration of how the topoï of the banquet, the cityscape, the crowd, the seductive female, and the devil gain significance and dynamism across the Flaubertian oeuvre—Les tentations de saint Antoine and Flaubert’s Fiction: A Creative Dynamic (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001). 16. Jean Chevalier, Alain Gheerbrant, eds., Dictionnaire des symboles: Mythes, rêves, coutumes, gestes, formes, figures, couleurs, nombres (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1969) 165.

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17. For La tentation, money and women are equated. See, e.g., his hallucination where, surrounded by gold, he looks at a pearl necklace: “With a jewel like that you could even win the wife of the Emperor” (4.51). 18. For other suggestions as to the temptation (la tentation), see, e.g., Alfred Lombard, who sees the desire to dissolve himself in matter, to be matter as the “saint’s supreme temptation”—Flaubert et saint Antoine (Paris: Victor Attinger, 1934) 56; Sonnenfeld who conflates Antoine and Flaubert being led from an erotic fantasy “to nothingness, or to matter”—“La tentation” 326; Emily Zants, who considers it to be a desire to dominate others—“Flaubert’s Tentation, an Escape from Power Over Others,” French Review 52 (1979): 604– 10; Peter Starr, who sees it as “the temptation of confusion” as opposed to the “irrefutable” model of science—“Science and Confusion: On Flaubert’s Temptation,” Gustave Flaubert, ed. Harold Bloom (New York: Chelsea House, 1989) 200; Leal, who situates the temptation in Antoine’s attraction for the natural world that is “set against the temptation of a largely egocentric individualism which seeks a position of authority or ascendancy” (“Unity” 332). In Flaubert, Orr summarizes several other views (136n4) before suggesting that Antoine’s temptation is “the desire to impart, to be in partnership with a fellow creature, to join, to be in unity with another of like mind or spirit” (136–37). 19. Leal, “Unity” 335. See, also, Zants. 20. I could say “Spinoza’s idea,” since his influence is evident and has been widely studied, Cf., Albert Thibaudet, Gustave Flaubert (Paris: Gallimard, 1935) 166– 67, 172–73; Porter, “A Fourth Version” 65–66; Victor Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert, A Study of Themes and Techniques (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1966) 201–02; Andrew Brown, “ ‘Un assez vague Spinozisme,’ Flaubert and Spinoza,” Modern Language Review 91.4 (1996): 848–65; Timothy Unwin, “Flaubert and Pantheism,” French Studies 35 (1981): 394–406. Though the philosopher is important to Flaubert’s preparation for La tentation (see, e.g., “I am reviewing my Spinoza”—letter to George Sand of February 19, 1872) and, in particular, for part vi, I have made little of him, since it seems to me both that one need not refer to his ideas to explicate Flaubert’s novel and that an emphasis on Spinoza is ultimately confusing, since the conclusion of La tentation differs significantly from the philosopher’s thought. 21. Although I believe I am interpreting this passage correctly in the context of La tentation, my interpretation does not parallel Scripture: see, e.g., John 17.21: “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” 22. Kitty Mrosovsky, ed. and trans., “Introduction,” The Temptation of Saint Antony, by Gustave Flaubert (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981) 47. 23. E.g., Séginger, Naissance 380–81; Jean Seznec, Nouvelles études sur La tentation de saint Antoine (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1949) 80; Ginsburg, Writing 50–54. 24. J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962) 227. 25. In his letter to Louise Colet of October 4, 1846, he wonders, for example, whether she has been nourished by the Bible. “For more than three years I read

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nothing but that in the evening before going to sleep. As soon as I’m free I’m going to start over again.” Several years later on December 28, 1853, in another letter to Colet, he expresses his palpable annoyance at “poor old Augier,” who takes pride in not having “stuck his nose in that book (speaking of the Bible).” 26. Antoine’s desire to be matter has been important to the confusion inspired by the ending. Edouard Maynial believes that the conclusion “seems tacked on, and has but little to do with what precedes”—Madame Bovary: Mœurs de province. Suivie des réquisitoire, plaidoirie, et jugement du procès intenté à l’auteur (Paris: Garnier, 1951) 312n553. Séginger considers Antoine’s adherence to matter a narcissistic commitment to the eternal transformation of forms and a refusal to conclude, thus leaving the conclusion ambiguous—Le mysticisme dans La tentation de saint Antoine: La relation sujet-objet, Archives des Lettres Modernes (Paris: Lettres Modernes, 1984) 63–68. Like Alfred Lombard, Flaubert et saint Antoine (Paris: Victor Attinger, 1934) 56, Marie J. Diamond finds “Antoine’s capitulation to the primacy of matter to be his ultimate temptation and his greatest error” (117). To support her position, she cites a manuscript note for an earlier version: “1. trailing past/2. whirlwind of action/Antoine/temptation—wants to be matter the devil/(carries him off)” (N.A.F. 23670, fol. 14)—quoted from Diamond, Problem of Aesthetic Discontinuity 117. If this desire signals his submission to the devil—Diamond 117–18; Charles Bernheimer “ ‘Être la matière!’: Origin and Difference in Flaubert’s La tentation de saint Antoine,” Novel 10.1 (1976): 65–78, 72; Brombert, The Novels of Flaubert 201–02—as was the case in the conclusions of the first two versions, there is no explanation for the terminal vision that, as Mary Orr argues convincingly (Writing the Masculine 138), rewards his submission. In the final version, there seems little question that Antoine’s “defeat” is in relation to God. He has rejected the devil, bowed his neck to God, and recommences his prayers. Flaubert reiterated as his work on the final version neared completion, “I am redoing the outline . . . I hope to succeed in finding a logical connection (and hence dramatic interest) between the saint’s different hallucinations” (N.A.F. 23670, fol. 41v, quoted from Diamond 120; see n2, above). In the final version, Antoine’s entire situation has changed. Now, by wishing to be matter, Antoine embraces creation, God’s creation, and rejects the devil. 27. Leal mentions several critics (e.g., Lombard and Thibaudet) who consider this desire to be the greatest of Antoine’s temptations. As Leal recognizes, however, while Antoine was aware that the other temptations were in fact temptations, he does not see this as one, and, furthermore does not experience the guilt that accompanied the aftermath of other temptations (Leal, “Unity” 334). For Griffin, the entire conclusion “invites contemplation of the void” (“Transfiguration” 32). Jean-Pierre Richard would bundle such concluding passages with others, “Failure by engulfing (engloutissement) is the standard of all Flaubertian enterprises”—Stendhal et Flaubert, littérature et sensation (Paris: Seuil, 1954) 181. Seznec sees the saint as descending the scale of being: “He ends by dissolving his spirit in matter, and by bringing man back to primitive larva” (Nouvelles études 85). Henri Guillemin understands Antoine’s cry

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in a slightly different way, not as a defeat but as a way of joining God by being absorbed into his creation, “He hands in his resignation. . . . [the conclusion] would no longer be an escape . . . but this other manner of attaining the absolute, which consists of melting into it”—Flaubert devant la vie et devant Dieu (Paris: Plon, 1939) 199–200. Robert Griffin, Rape of the Lock: Flaubert’s Mythic Realism (Lexington: French Forum, 1988) 287. Tertullian, Apology: De spectaculis (A.D. 197; rpt. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1931), paragraph 21, ll. 11–12. I use Everett Ferguson’s translation. For Dumesnil and Descharmes it is a “a great metaphysical poem. . . . a philosophical drama” (222). Mazel views it as an outstanding philosophic work (643). Lombard considers the philosophical and, in particular, the Spinozan ideas as an unavoidable problem for Flaubert (56). Taine terms La tentation “the fourth century seen through the mind of an aesthete . . . [and] theologian” that exploits “the theological dreams and constructions’ of the day” (Letter of April 1, 1874, to Flaubert). Allan H. Pasco, “Ironic Interference and Allusion: ‘Un cœur simple,’ ” Allusion: A Literary Graft (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1994) 22–38. The relationship between the linear (word) and visual (image) arts has been studied with considerable perspicacity, though from different points of view, by Mary Ann Caws, The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981); Henry Majewski, Transposing Art into Texts in French Romantic Literature, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002); William J. Berg, Imagery and Ideology: Fiction and Painting in Nineteenth-Century France (Newark: U of Delaware P, 2007). I differ basically in that I do not believe that the mind necessarily “thinks” in either words or images but in more diffuse sensations. Consequently, painting is no more immediate than prose. The mind translates both varieties of visual stimulation, whether visual print or visual image, into those sensations that make up the complex of sensations that psychologists call an image, which then must be translated into meaning.

Chapter 5 1. Melvin Maddocks, “Marcel Proust: Witness to a Dissolving Dream,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 10, 1971, 9. More recent approaches consider this fragmentation in a more positive vein, while insisting nonetheless on the novel’s lack of coherence. Richard Terdiman mentions, for example, “the extraordinarily low degree of contingence between events and existences”— The Dialectics of Isolation: Self and Society in the French Novel from the Realists to Proust (New Haven: Yale UP, 1976) 106. See, also, Margaret E. Gray, Postmodern Proust (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1992). For Antoine Compagnon, it is “the novel of the in-between”—Proust entre deux siècles (Paris: Seuil, 1989) 9. Christie McDonald suggests that Proust was

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2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

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committed to an unfinished novel—The Proustian Fabric: Associations of Memory (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1992) 82–83 and chapter 6. Although she perhaps attaches more importance than one should to the deletions in the “short version” of Albertine disparue in: À la recherche du temps perdu. Albertine disparue/Marcel Proust; Edition originale de la dernière version revue par l’auteur (Paris: Grasset, 1987), ed. Nathalie Mauriac and Etienne Wolff (Paris: Grasset, 1987), the heavily edited edition does not affect my argument. Proust’s “fragmentation” and “digressions” were designed to highlight images that are then available for readers to form a radically new structure of associative or analogical chains keyed by their own involuntary memory. See, Anne Chevalier’s discussion of the Mauriac ms. in Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu, ed. Jean-Yves Tadié, 4 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1987–89) 4.1028–43. References to this edition will be cited parenthetically with volume and page, while other editions will be preceded by the primary editor’s name, whether Milly, À la recherche du temps perdu, ed. Jean Milly, 10 vols. (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1984–87), or Clarac, À la recherche du temps perdu, ed. Pierre Clarac and André Ferré, 3 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1954). Correspondance générale, vol. 3 (Paris: Plon, 1932) 306. Similar statements are to be found in À la recherché 2.397; 3.899. Howard Moss, The Magic Lantern of Marcel Proust (New York: Macmillan, 1962) 2. Jean Rousset, Forme et signification: Essais sur les structures littéraires de Corneille à Claudel (Paris: Corti, 1962) 166. Gaëtan Picon, Lecture de Proust (Paris: Mercure de France, 1963) 9–10. Vincent Descombes, Proust: Philosophie du roman (Paris: Minuit, 1987), offers a particularly insightful consideration of À la recherche as a traditional, though sophisticated, novel that “projects” the protagonist’s subjective reality into an objective work of art. For a more complete explanation of what Proust is doing here, see my The Color-Keys to À la recherche du temps perdu (Geneva: Droz, 1976) 5–6. For a subtle and insightful analysis of Proust’s style that includes allegory, image, metaphor, and the “ecstatic experiences” that stylistically link “metaphor, ecstasy, and time” across À la recherche, see, Beryl Schlossman, The Orient of Style: Modernist Allegories of Conversion (Durham: Duke UP, 1991) 178–260. Bersani, Marcel Proust: The Fictions of Life and of Art (New York: Oxford UP, 1965) 212. Fisher, Le symbole littéraire: Essai sur la signification du symbole chez Wagner, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, Bergson et Marcel Proust (Paris: Corti, 1941) 169. Revel, Sur Proust: Remarques sur A la recherche du temps perdu, Bibliothèque Médiations (Paris: Denoël-Gonthier, 1970) 33. Believing that the novel as published included large quantities of extraneous material, Albert Feuillerat attempted to reconstruct what he considered an “original” version, lacking the apparent irrelevancies—Comment Marcel Proust a composé son roman (New Haven: Yale UP, 1934), an attempt that

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Jean-Yves Tadié has discussed in his Lectures de Proust (Paris: Armand Colin, 1971) 211–15. Robert Vigneron likewise writes of the “compromised” order of the published text—“Structure de Swann: Combray ou le cercle parfait,” Modern Philology 45 (1948): 190—and Henri Peyre claims that the À la recherche we know is “liberally encumbered with digressions and extraneous accretions”—French Novelists of Today (New York: Oxford UP, 1967) 76. For Richard Goodkin, “it became a novel of endless digression, when it lost its way and started to indulge in lengthy developments”—Around Proust (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991) 6. Letter 161, July 22, 1922, in Marcel Proust et Jacques Rivière: Correspondance: 1914–1922, ed. Philip Kolb (Paris: Plon, 1955) 265. Marcel Proust, “Journées de lecture” (1905), rpt. in Contre Saint-Beuve; Précédé de Pastiches et mélanges; Et suivi de Essais et articles, ed. Pierre Clarac and Yves Sandre, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) 178. Subsequent references to materials published in this edition will be preceded by CSB. I have discussed this character and her ramifications in: “Albertine’s Equivocal Eyes,” Australian Journal of French Studies 5 (1968): 257–62. Revel, Sur Proust 34. J. Vendryes took a similar position some time ago: “Marcel Proust et les noms propres” (1940), Choix d’études linguistiques et celtiques (Paris: Klincksieck, 1952) 85. See chapter 10 of my previously cited The Color-Keys. For “Verdurin,” see also, Gérard Genette, who has suggested “via Duras”—“Proust et le langage indirect,” Figures II (Paris: Seuil, 1969) 243. See, J. Wayne Conner, “On Balzac’s Goriot,” Symposium 8 (1954): 70. William C. Carter recently indicated that the tripartite structure may remain in certain imagery: “Taking into account Proust’s cosmological outlook and the abundant vertical and planetary imagery in the last section, it is probable that he envisaged three states for the evolution and progress of the Narrator’s quest: land (Combray), sea (Balbec), and air (the artist ascends to his native region)”—Proustian Quest 204. The “Age of Names” shows up occasionally in the secondary literature— Genette, for example, decided to title his republication of a portion of “Proust et le langage indirect,” as “L’âge des noms”—Mimologiques (Paris: Seuil, 1976) 315–28; and Elyane Dezon-Jones suggests in her “Introduction” to Le côté de Guermantes in the Milly edition that the volume constitutes a transition between the “Age of Names” and the “Age of Words” (4.8–9). Here I want to build on these insights to emphasize the importance of the paradigmatic, three ages to À la recherche as a whole and, especially, of the function of the Age of Names. This despite Compagnon’s belief that the etymologies of Sodome et Gomorrhe serve both to mark the protagonist’s disappointment and to retard it, thus troubling “the beautiful symmetry of ‘The Age of Names’ and ‘The Age of Things’ ” (243, 254–56). Jean-Jacques Nattiez, Proust as Musicien, trans. Derrick Puffett, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989) 36.

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20. Brian G. Rogers discusses this unquestionably important aspect of Proust’s work in, The Narrative Techniques of À la recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Champion, 2004), esp. 111–20. See, also, Nathalie Mauriac Dyer’s Proust inachevé: Le dossier Albertine disparue (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005), which makes a strong argument for À la recherche as a binary system and thus brings additional support to Maurice Bardèche’s interpretation, in Marcel Proust romancier (Paris: Les Sept Couleurs, 1971). 21. See, e.g, Michel Raimond, “Note sur la structure du Côté de Guermantes,” Revue d’histoire littéraire 71 (1971): 854–74; Gérard Genette, Mimologiques 315–28; Jean-Yves Tadié, Proust et le roman (Paris: Gallimard, 1971); Roger Shattuck, Proust’s Binoculars: A Study of Memory, Time and Recognition in À la recherche du temps perdu (New York: Random House, 1963); and his Marcel Proust (New York: Viking, 1974) 25–55. 22. E.g., Ullmann; Grossvogel 196–200; Genette, “Langage indirect” 238– 39; Tadié, Roman; Milly, Phrase; Shattuck Binoculars; Claudine Quémar, “Rêverie(s) onomastique(s) proustienne(s) à la lumière des avant-textes,” Littérature 28 (1977): 77–99; Serge Doubrovsky, La place de la Madeleine: Écriture et fantasme chez Proust (Paris: Mercure de France, 1974); Jean Ricardou, “ ‘Miracles’ de l’analogie: Aspects proustiens de la métaphore productrice,” Études Proustiennes 2, Cahiers Marcel Proust 7 (Paris: Gallimard, 1975) 11–39; Michel Raimond, “Note sur la structure du Côté de Guermantes” 854–74; Tom Conley, “The Improper Name,” Reading Proust Now, ed. Mary Ann Caws and Eugène Nicole (New York: Peter Lang, 1990) 121–36. 23. Roland Barthes, “Proust et les noms,” To Honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday: 11 October 1966, Janua Linguarum 31.1 (1967): 152–56. See, also, Lelong, and Nicole 464–65. It is nonetheless true that Proust’s onomastic interests began early. See, Thanh-Vân Ton-That, “Problèmes d’onomastique proustienne: rêverie et poésie autour du nom dans Jean Santeuil,” Cahiers de lexicologie 67.2 (1995): 193–205. Compagnon is probably correct to claim that in the creation of the name Brichot, the phonic pairing of br and cr are more important than the possible model, Victor Brochard (132–34). Certainly, as Plottel says, his etymologies indicate that Proust “selected the names of his book very carefully” (65). I would not go so far as Quémar, who suggests that Barthes and Genette were caught in the “piège” (trap) of accepting a textual device for unconscious associations (80–81). Nor would I join with Alain Roger who advances one of the more extreme interpretations when he not only associates certain phonemes with meanings (generally sexual) but goes on to conclude that “Proust’s onomastics never gets beyond the puerile, if not pathological, level of simple psittacism or echolalia”—Proust: Les plaisirs et les noms (Paris: Denoël, 1985) 118. 24. Doubrovsky, Place de la madeleine 56–58; Philippe Lejeune, Pacte autobiographique (Paris: Seuil, 1979) 29; and Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes: la littérature au second degré (Paris: Seuil, 1982) 293; Seuils (1987; Paris: Seuil, 2002) 209–10—though Genette later changes his mind in Fiction et diction (Paris: Seuil, 1991) 36–37—not to mention the Feuillerats and the Vignerons of

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another day, all insist that À la recherche is, or almost is, an autobiography. Dorrit Cohn disagrees, indicating that though Proust brushed up against autobiography, À la recherche is not autobiography—The Distinction of Fiction (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1998) 58–78. She expands: “Granting that Proust enters into no binding pact concerning the generic status of the Recherche, that contractually his work remains ambiguous; granting as well that other criteria (of content and narrative mode) incontestably signal its novelistic status—how can we explain the inhibition on the part of critics to read Proust’s masterwork ‘simply’ as a novel?” (77). I might add that with the exception of discredited biographies like that of George D. Painter, who took large handfuls of “biographical” material from À la recherche, and critics like Paul de Man, Roland Barthes, and a few others, who have been limited by their poststructuralist optic, the vast majority of critics from Martin-Chauffier on have had no trouble reading the novel as a fiction, however much the author may have exploited his own, personal experiences. Goodkin, Around Proust 80. In grappling with Albertine’s sexual proclivities, whether they were transformed, male homosexuals, as Justin O’Brien believed—“Albertine the Ambiguous: Notes on Proust’s Transposition of Sexes,” PMLA 64 (1949): 933–52—or true lesbians, it is important to recognize that Albertine represents the unknown and unknowable facet of external reality. Elisabeth Ladenson, Proust’s Lesbianism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1999), discusses the issue of homosexuality. See, e.g., the version of the Chevalier au Cygne (Paris: A. Aubry, 1874) published by Célestin Hippeau in 1874 and studied by Harry Alfred Todd, PMLA 4.3–4 (1889): viii–ix. Claude Vallée’s La féerie de Marcel Proust (Paris: Fasquelle, 1958) proposes that Élstir recalls “Eblis, the grand Master of the demons in Oriental tales” (353), but because the allusion has none of the supporting markers in a complete system centered on the grail legends that demand linking Élstir to Élie, it seems far-fetched. Spitzer, Études de style (Paris: Gallimard, 1970) 443; Milly, La phrase de Proust (Paris: Champion, 1983) 92n44. Deleuze, Proust et les signes (Paris: P.U.F., 1970) 131. E.g., 1.103–05, 144. Milly’s edition (1.594–95, n. 109) and Nathan (17 and passim) trace the priest’s etymologies to Jules Quicherat’s De la formation française des anciens noms de lieux (1867), though Graham argues that Auguste Longnon constitutes Proust’s principal source (“Etymologies”). Compagnon disagrees with Graham, arguing indeed that for most of the etymologies Longnon is an unlikely source (231n2; 245–55). Also under the influence of Saint-Hilaire, Balzac continues, claiming, “There is only one animal. The creator only used one single pattern for all organized beings. Animals only have a single principle, or, to speak more exactly, the differences of their forms are determined by the milieus where they . . . develop”—“Avant-propos,” La comédie humaine, 12 vols., Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, ed. Pierre-Georges Castex (Paris: Gallimard 1976–81) 1.8. Proust, of course knew Balzac’s work well.

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NOTES TO PAGES 133–135

31. Victor E. Graham, “Proust’s Etymologies,” French Studies 29 (1975): 307– 12; “Water Imagery and Symbolism in Proust,” Romanic Review 50 (1959): 126–27. 32. Vallée, La féerie; Jan Hokenson, “Proust in the Palace of Sheriar,” Far-Western Forum 1 (May 1974): 187–98; and Dominique Jullien, Proust et ses modèles: Les Mille et une nuits et les Mémoires de Saint-Simon (Paris: José Corti, 1989). 33. Dorothy Kelly, “Seeing Albertine Seeing: Barbey and Proust through Balzac,” Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature 14.2 (1990): 139–57; Brian G. Rogers, Proust et Barbey d’Aurevilly: Le dessous des cartes (Paris: H. Champion, 2000). 34. Jean-Jacques Nattiez points to the similarity of Guermantes and Gurnemanz— “Le septuor de Wagner,” Magazine littéraire 210 (September 1984): 48. Proust chose the name Guermantes “around the month of May 1909,” according to Philip Kolb—Carnet de 1908, Cahiers Marcel Proust, Nouv. sér. 8 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976) 141n61; 185n. 392. Anthony R. Pugh believed, however, that the leaf of this notebook where the Guermantes name first appears in the manuscripts (N.A.F. 16637, fol. 35) was written in April of 1909—The Birth of À la recherche du temps perdu (Lexington: French Forum, 1987) 64. On May 23, 1909, Proust asked Georges de Lauris, whether the Guermantes name was free for artistic use—Correspondance 9.102. More than a decade later, in a 1922 letter to Martin-Chauffier, he asked about its etymology—see, Kolb, Review of The Imagery of Proust, by Victor E. Graham, Modern Language Quarterly 29 (1968): 119. Of course, Proust was perfectly capable of sketching out these etymologies, which may have influenced his choice of imagery around the name, as Graham suggests, and moreover his choice of the name itself. We cannot be certain, though it seems very likely. 35. Florence Hier, La musique dans l’œuvre de Marcel Proust (New York: Columbia UP, 1933) 45; Georges Piroué, Proust et la musique du devenir (Paris: Denouël, 1960) 107–08. Nattiez argues convincingly that “[l]ike Parsifal, À la recherche is a work whose hero is on a quest for redemption” (“Septuor” 32). Danièle Gasiglia-Laster goes into some detail in respect to the parallels between Wagner’s “filles-fleurs” (flowering girls) and those of Proust (in the Milly edition—2.40–41). Margaret Mein argues that Proust thought at one point of insisting on the parallels between the redemption of Amfortas, the Fisher King, and Swann in Le temps retrouvé—“Proust and Wagner,” Journal of European Studies 19 (1989): 205–22. Rina Viers says twice, “The Narrator is identified with Parsifal”—“La signification des fleurs dans l’œuvre de Marcel Proust,” Bulletin de la société des amis de Marcel Proust et des amis de Combray 25 (1975): 158–59. Jean-Marc Rodrigues shows conclusively that Proust’s love of Wagner must be distinguished from the shallow fin-de-siècle Wagnerism—“Genèse du wagnerisme proustien,” Romantisme 17.57 (1987): 75–88. Of Proust’s many epistolary references to Wagner, the following seems particularly telling: “The more Wagner is legendary, the more I find him human. His most splendid artifices of the imagination seem to me nothing but the symbolic and gripping language of human truths”—Letter 239 to Reynaldo Hahn, May? 1895, Correspondance, ed. Philip Kolb, 21 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1970–93) 1.383.

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36. N.A.F. 16697, fol. 13; quoted from Henri Bonnet and Bernard Brun, ed., Matinée chez la princesse de Guermantes: Cahiers du Temps retrouvé (Paris: Gallimard, 1982) 318. 37. Per Nykrog appended, as an “Epilogue” to his Recherche du don perdu 84–88, a summary of Chrétien’s uncompleted version of the Conte du Graal. He makes no comment on parallels with À la recherche, and he draws no conclusions— La recherche du don perdu: Points de repère dans le roman de Marcel Proust, Harvard Studies in Romance Languages 42 (Cambridge: Dept. of Romance Languages, Harvard U, 1987). Matoré and Mecz link Perceval’s failure to ask the appropriate questions of Swann, “forgetting” to ask Vinteuil whether the creator of the sonata was related to him—Georges Matoré and Irène Mecz, Musique et structure romanesque dans La recherche du temps perdu (Paris: Klincksieck, 1973) 97–98. Furthermore, as Marie Miguet-Ollagnier points out, like Perceval, the protagonist abandons his mother—La mythologie de Marcel Proust, Annales littéraires de l’université de Besançon, no. 276 (Paris: BellesLettres, 1982) 139—though the latter’s betrayal is submerged and diffused across several thousand pages. 38. Marcel Muller believes that “[T]he anonymity of this fisherman may be taken as symbolical of the unknowable quality of all Proustian characters’—Les voix narratives dans la Recherche du temps perdu (Geneva: Droz, 1965) 56. 39. The manuscripts make it clear that the author revised his text to obscure the stranger’s identity. An early version indicates that the fisherman might have been a friend of Mme Putbus’s maid (N.A.F. 16675, fols. 4r–5r). By deleting any indication of recognition, Proust emphasized the strange fact that the boy did not ask the expected question. 40. As H. L. and Friedrick Corder put it in their translation of Wagner’s Parsifal, A Festival-Drama (Boston: Oliver Ditson, 1903) 31. 41. Anna Louise Frey, The Swan-Knight Legend (Nashville: George Peabody College, 1931) 5–6. Proust explicitly mentions Gurnemantz, Parsifal, and Wagner in his letter of 6 February 1914 to Jacques Rivière, and elsewhere. He unquestionably knew the legend well. 42. Vallée 353; Jullien 79, 81–82. Watkins suggests that Wagner is but a part of a pattern of allusions to Courtois literature. Anne Herschberg-Pierrot discusses a number of possible sources, including stained glass windows—“Proust et le légendaire dans Swann,” Autour du roman: Études présentées à Nicole Cazauran (Paris: P de l’École Normale Supérieure, 1990) 199–210. 43. Will L. McLendon, “Lettre de Marcel Proust à Léon Bailby,” Bulletin de la société des amis de Marcel Proust 21 (1971): 1124n5. 44. Per Nykrog compares the “wine” (vin) of Vinteuil and the Septet that grew from his suffering to the wine of the Eucharist and Christ’s blood sacrifice—La recherche du don perdu 60. One of Proust’s variant spellings for Vinteuil was “Vindeuil” (Nicole, “Genèses” 80, n. 3). 45. 4.45–46; Frey refers to several versions, including Wagner’s Lohengrin, where the Swan Knight leaves the ring—13, 49, 55, 76, 116. Albertine’s rings may indicate that she was having an affair with one of the Swan Knight’s

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46.

47.

48.

49.

50. 51.

52.

NOTES TO PAGES 141–145

descendants, since the rings, which are inscribed with what Françoise makes out as an eagle (or could it be a swan?), were perhaps given to her by her lover. Revel, Sur Proust 199. Such early critics as Paul Souday would share Revel’s opinion: “It seems to us that the thick volume by M. Marcel Proust is not composed and that it is as excessively long as it is chaotic, but that it encloses some precious pieces with which the author could have formed an exquisite little book,” and “Certain murky episodes do not have the excuse of being necessary”—Marcel Proust (Paris: Kra, 1927) 11 and 13 respectively. E.g., Rousset, Forme et signification 135–70; Louis Bolle, Marcel Proust ou le complexe d’Argus (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1967) 216–42; Raimond, “Note sur la structure du Côté de Guermantes” 854–74; Tadié, Roman, esp. 236–92; Gérard Genette, “Métonymie chez Proust, ou la naissance du récit,” Poétique 2 (1970): 156–73; Jean Ricardou, “ ‘Miracles’ de l’analogie.” Fasquelle’s reader who was largely responsible for the publisher’s rejection of Du côté de chez Swann, provides a good example: Jacques Madeleine [pseud. for Jacques Normand], “Lecteur chez Fasquelle, n’aimant pas À la recherche du temps perdu . . . Il fut le Madeleine de Proust,” published by Henri Bonnet in, Le figaro littéraire 1077 (8 déc. 1966): 15; republished by Franck Lhomeau and Alain Coelho, Marcel Proust à la recherche d’un éditeur: Face à l’édition (Paris: Olivier Orban, 1988) 255–62, discussed by Lhomeau and Coelho 92–97. See the excellent development on an author’s necessary creation of his or her reader: Warren Motte, Fiction Now: The French Novel in the Twenty-First Century (Champaign: Dalkey Archive, 2008) 17–37. While it is to some degree always true, it is especially important in some novels, when the reader must become the artist in order to create the work. Godenne, “La bibliothèque de l’homme de l’an 2440 selon L. S. Mercier,” French Review 45 (1972): 579. Ricardou, Problèmes du nouveau roman (Paris: Seuil, 1967) 178. Pascal Ifri, who focuses specifically on À la recherche and, in particular, on the narrataire or narratee (the textual character or consciousness whom a narrator addresses), says, “The narratee gives the narrator’s enterprise the entirety of its meaning”—Proust et son narrataire dans À la recherche du temps perdu (Geneva: Droz, 1983) 200. Gerda Blumenthal has perceptively considered the Proustian permutations of reading: Thresholds: A Study of Proust (Birmingham: Summa, 1984). 3.762. See, also, 3.149–51, 463–64, 468–69. I have already referred to a particularly vivid example of this reality that occurs in Combray. The boy is walking joyously when, overwhelmed by the pale reflection of pink tile on the water in a pond, he cries out, waving his closed umbrella, “ ‘My, my, my, my [Zut, zut, zut, zut].’ But at the same time I felt that my duty would have been not to stop with these opaque words and to try to see more clearly in my delight” (1.153). He does not yet understand the inability of language to translate such emotion simply and exactly. Even if I were at the same place and time, my delight would be slightly and perhaps very different from his, though Proust strives

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53.

54.

55. 56.

57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62.

63.

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to succeed in such communication with thousands of words and an arsenal of artistic devices. The above quotations are to be found in the French National Library: Nouvelles acquisitions françaises, ms., respectively, 16648, fol. 52v; ms. 16652, fol. 100v, ms. 16694, fol. 46v; ms. 16693, fols. 13v and 18v; ms. 16683, fol. 58v; ms. 16668, fol. 16v.29. N.A.F. 16648, fol. 52v; À la recherche 1.48–50, 118–19. This and the following examples should be read in the light of Brian G. Rogers’s discussion of the poetic passages that are found along the protagonist’s way—Narrative Techniques, e.g., 56–65. Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition,” The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (London: J. C. Hotten, 1872), p. 662. See, Shattuck’s discussion of the importance of “forgetting”: Proust’s Binoculars 65–68. Howard Nemerov also considers what interests me here: the “causes that grow subterraneously, invisibly, until at last they erupt through the surface and begin to bloom as determinate effects”—The Oak in the Acorn: On Remembrance of Things Past and on Teaching Proust, Who Will Never Learn (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1987) 44. Any time a work of art can no longer provoke discovery, that is, when it has been thoroughly analyzed or “masticated,” it “dies.” The narrator remembers that Albertine “guessed at the third or fourth execution [of a musical work] that my intelligence having reached all the parts, having consequently put them at the same distance, and no longer having any activity to exert for them, had reciprocally extended and immobilized them on a uniform plane.” Of course, “at the moment when my intelligence had succeeded in dissipating the mystery of a work, it was very rare that it did not, in the course of its destructive task, pick up some profitable reflection by compensation” (3.874). Cocteau, Journal d’un inconnu (Paris: Grasset, 1953) 153. Louis Martin-Chauffier, “Proust et le double ‘je’ de quatre personnes,” Problèmes du roman, ed. Jean Prévost (rpt. Lyon: Confluences, 1943) 60. Suzuki, Bulletin de la société des amis de Marcel Proust et des amis de Combray 9 (1959): esp. 80–82. Many passages across À la recherche indicate the importance of universals: e.g., 1.216–17; 4.473–74, 479, 483, 484, 485–86. Gilles Deleuze, in the material added to the second edition of his provocative Proust et les signes (Paris: P.U.F., 1970), would agree that despite the fragmentation of Proust’s world, it can communicate, though he would nonetheless deny the degree to which this communication may exceed the simple effect of involuntary memory to the exact, detailed image of the whole, of the author’s self, and of the reader’s essence. Mukarovsky, Aesthetic Function, Norm and Value as Social Facts, trans. Mark Suino, Michigan Slavic Contributions, no. 3 (Ann Arbor: Department of Slavic Languages, University of Michigan, 1970) 91–92. I refer to the much abbreviated, late manuscripts edited by Nathalie Mauriac Dyer and Etienne Wolfe and mentioned above, n1.

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1. See my Novel Configurations: A Study of French Fiction—Stendhal, Balzac, Zola, Gide, Huysmans, Proust, Robbe-Grillet, and Others, 2nd ed. (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1994) 99–122. 2. Pasco, Allusion: A Literary Graft (1994; rpt. Charlottesville: Rookwood P, 2002) 111–20. 3. Pasco, Balzacian Montage: Configuring La Comédie humaine (Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1991), for Le Père Goriot, 22–35, though there are other structurally similar examples. 4. André Gide, Journal 1889–1939, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1951) (June 17, 1923) 760. 5. Alain Robbe-Grillet, Pour un nouveau roman, Collection Idées (Paris: Gallimard, 1963) 37. 6. Jean-Louis Hippolyte, Fuzzy Fiction (Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 2006) 216. 7. Robert Pinget, “Comment travaillent les écrivains” (Interview with Jean-Louis Rambures), Le Monde 8677 (December 7, 1972): 32. See, also, Pinget’s “Préface,” Le libera: Roman (Paris: Minuit, 1968) 6.

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Chapter 6

Note: Locators followed by “n” represent note numbers. Achard, Amédée, 134 action, 8, 10 thought vs., 28, 43, 83–5 Actuelles II (Camus), 44 Adventures in the Skin Trade, and Other Stories (Thomas), 23 Airport (Hailey), 20 À la recherche du temps perdu (Proust), xi, 7, 19, 38, 117–54, 187–94nn Age of Names, 127–32, 134, 140, 189n18 Age of Things, 127, 141, 189n18 Age of Words, 127, 131, 140–1, 189n18 Albertine disparue, 188n1 À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs, 127, 138, 139 Un amour de Swann, 36, 61, 117–19, 141, 157 analogies and, 141–2 art and life in, 122–3, 145, 150–2 breaks or ruptures and, 37–8, 117–20 coherence and unity of, 38, 152–4 colors and, 64, 125–6, 148–9 Combray, 61, 117, 127, 141, 148, 194–5n52 Le côté de Guermantes, 189n18 Du côté de chez Swann, 117, 126–7, 141, 158, 194n48 education and, 122–3, 142–3 “I,” protagonist’s and reader’s, 119, 121, 124, 149–51, 157–8

image structure and, 17, 159 involuntary memory and, 121, 143–4, 147, 149, 151, 153–4, 162, 188n1, 195n61 length and, 18–20, 30–2, 147 lenses and, 134–41 moments bienheureux in, 19, 120–1, 123, 140, 143, 148, 149, 153, 154, 162, 170n37 music and, 121–2, 126–7, 151, 192n35 names and, 127–34, 161, 190n23, 192n34 negative structure and, 31, 118–19, 162 Noms de pays: Le nom, 117–18, 126 “Noms de pays: le pays,” 126 onomastics and, 127–8, 134–5, 140, 190n23 paronomasia and, 132, 133, 135, 140 pedagogical imperative of, 142–3 proposed titles for, 126 reader and reading and, 124, 128–9, 137–8, 142–54 Sodome et Gomorrhe, 189n18 Le temps retrouvé, 25, 118, 132, 135, 137, 138, 161, 192n35 Albanese, Ralph, 181n29 alchemy, 69, 75 Alcoforado, Maria, 24 Alcott, Louisa May, 18

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Index

INDEX

allusion, 22, 26, 30, 87, 161, 164 Barbey and, 53, 55, 176n29 Camus and, 44, 48 Proust and, 25, 130, 134–40, 148, 191n26, 193n42 Zola and, 30, 64–5 Alter, Jean, 166n10 Amadis de Gaule, 135 Amphritryon, 55 amplification, 18, 20–2 an, Un (Echenoz), 10 anacoluthon, 154, 157 analogy or analogical chain, 87–8, 164 Huysmans and, 68–9, 83–4 Proust and, 121, 141–2, 149, 150, 152–3 années de voyage de Wilhelm Meister, Les (Goethe), 134–5 Anthony, St. (Antoine), 92, 93, 98 see also tentation de saint Antoine, La antithesis, 35, 50, 68, 91, 92, 107, 112, 184n10 Anxiety of Influence, The (Bloom), 7 “Anywhere Out of the World” (Baudelaire), 72 Apology (Tertullian), 110–11 Arabian Nights, 37, 134 À rebours (Huysmans), xi, 7, 22, 65–86, 88, 161, 162, 178–9nn analogy and, 68, 83–4 books and reading and, 72, 80–2, 86 coherence and unity and, 9, 86, 88 colors in, 71–2 Condillac and, 72–3 house in, 70–2 innovation and, 68–9 music and, 82 negative structure and, 65–8, 72–84, 162 poetic devices and, 84 spiritual naturalism and, 85–6 symbolism and, 66–70, 74–9, 83, 85–8 touch and, 72–4 Aristotle, 5, 10, 11, 53, 87, 170n36

artificiality, 1, 6, 77, 155, 167n17, 182n35 “artiste et son temps, L’ ” (Camus), 43 artistic design, 26–9, 159 asceticism, 101 assommoir, L’ (Zola), 80 asyndeton, xi, 66, 117, 119–20, 154 see also breaks Athanasius, 94–6, 98, 113 Au bonheur des dames (Zola), 20, 156 Augustine, Saint, 101 À vau-l’eau (Huysmans), 84–5 aventures de Télémaque, Les (Fénelon), 132 Awakening, The (Chopin), 22 Bachelard, Gaston, 72–4, 181n24 Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 4, 169n32 Baldi, Maria Rosa, 35, 41, 173n3 Balzac, Honoré de, xi, 4, 5, 17, 24, 25, 33, 64, 84, 88, 142, 157, 112–13, 120, 126, 132, 149, 158, 159, 191n30 Barbey d’Aurevilly, Jules-Amédée, xi, 36–7, 50–9, 80–1, 88, 119, 134, 176n29 Bardèche, Maurice, 182n1, 190n20 Barth, John, 4 Barthes, Roland, 127, 128, 190n23, 191n24 Barzun, Jacques, 4 Baudelaire, Charles, x, 17, 36, 72, 80, 82, 93–4, 156, 163 Beckett, Samuel, 2 Bel ami (Maupassant), x, 37 Bem, Jeanne, 184n11 Berg, William J., 67, 187n32 Bernheimer, Charles, 65 Beroalde de Verville, 37 Bersani, Leo, 120 Berthier, Philippe, 52, 54, 178n44 Bible, 24, 34, 44, 48, 56, 69, 94–6, 98–9, 109, 140, 161, 185–6n25 Bildungsroman, 118 binary composition, 127, 190n20

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198

Blanchot, Maurice, 3, 26 Bloom, Harold, 7, 167n17 Bloy, Léon, 80 Blumenthal, Gerda, 194n51 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 13 Boileau, Nicolas, 123 Bolle, Louis, 152 Bonnes, Jean-Paul, 177n35 Borel, Pétrus, 55 Borges, Jorge Luis, 2 Bornecque, Jacques-Henry, 52 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, 80 Bouilhet, Louis, 92, 183n3 Bourdaloue, Louis, 80 bourgeois gentilhomme, Le (Molière), 22 Brady, Patrick, 177n36 breaks (disarticulation, fragmentation, ruptures), xi, 9–10, 21, 157–8, 160–1 Barbey and, 51 Flaubert and, 92, 93, 97, 103, 108, 111, 113 Huysmans and, 67, 162, 178–9n5 Proust and, 36–8, 117–20, 123, 146, 161–2, 187–8n1, 195n61 short story cycle vs. novel and, 36–7, 156–8 see also anacoluthon; asyndeton; parataxis Brecht, Bertolt, xi, 3 Bremond, Claude, ix, 64 Bresdin, Rodolphe, 76 Breton, André, 87 brevity, 15–17, 19–22, 25, 29, 33, 36, 156, 170n36 Brombert, Victor, 110, 174n14 Brooks, Peter, 3 Brunner, H., 65 Buchen, Irving H., 169n29 Burgess, Anthony, 64 Burroughs, William, 168n22 Butor, Michel, 84, 90–1, 112, 130, 183n5 Buvik, Per, 178–9n5

199

Cabbala, 69 Camus, Albert, xi, 26, 30, 35–49, 50, 60, 87, 157, 173–6nn Canterbury Tales (Chaucer), 34, 37 Cardin, Dominique, 91 “Carmen” (short story), 16 Carter, William C., 189n17 Catharina, Pedro Paulo, 179n7 cathédrale, La (Huysmans), 18, 83, 160 Catholicism, 39, 53, 56, 60, 81, 93 causality, ix, 1, 8, 17, 25, 37, 64, 157, 159 Huysmans and, 74 Proust and, 117, 141, 146 short story cycle vs. novel and, 119–20 Cervantes, 7 Cevasco, C.A., 66 Chaeras and Callirhoe (Chariton), 37 chaos, 9, 151, 160 character, 3–5, 7–8, 67, 158, 160 artistic design and, 27 Camus and, 35, 36, 47 frame tales and, 34 Proust and, 119, 124–5 short story cycle vs. novel and, 50, 156 Chariton, 37 Chartreuse de Parme, La (Stendhal), 17, 129 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 34, 37 chef d’œuvre inconnu, Le (Balzac), 113 Chekhov, Anton, 22, 27, 33 Cherchi, Paolo, xi Chervel, André, 181n29 Chevalier, Anne, 188n1 Chevalier, Jean, 180n22 Chimera, 78, 107, 114 “choix d’une finacée, Le” (Hoffmann), 134 Chopin, Kate, 17, 22 Chrétien de Troyes, 136, 193n37 Christianity, 30, 40, 56, 80, 81, 90–2, 95, 99–101, 107, 110, 112, 184n8

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INDEX

INDEX

chronology, ix, 1, 7, 8, 17, 25, 26, 37, 157, 159, 167n16, 167n19 Balzac and, 157 Flaubert and, 90 Huysmans and, 74 Proust and, 126, 141, 142, 146 short story cycle vs. novel and, 50, 119–20 chute, La (Camus), 26, 30, 157, 176n24 cimetière marin, Le (Valéry), 84 Cirlot, J.E., 71, 108 City of God (Augustine), 101 Clarac, Pierre, 126, 188n1 Claudel, Paul, 87 Clockwork Orange (Burgess), 64 Cloonan, William, 1 Clope au dossier (Pinget), 37 Cocteau, Jean, 149 “cœur simple, Un” (Flaubert), 112 coherence, ix, x, 5, 9–10, 13, 27, 29, 63, 156–8, 163, 167n19 Flaubert and, 91, 93, 112 frame tales and, 34 Huysmans and, 66, 83–4, 86, 88 Proust and, 144, 152, 187n1 short story cycle and, 36, 49, 60, 163 Cohn, Dorrit, 24, 169n30, 191n24 Colet, Louise, 183n3, 185–6n25 Color-Keys to À la recherche du temps perdu, The (Pasco), 148, 180n22, 188n6 colors, 182n34 Huysmans and, 71–2, 76, 79 Proust and, 64, 119, 125–6, 128, 148–9, 163 Comédie humaine (Balzac), “Foreword,” 149 see also specific titles Compagnon, Antoine, 187n1, 189n18, 190n23, 191n29 Composition no. 1 (Saporta), 8, 159 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot, 72–5, 79, 83, 181n29 condition humaine, La (Malraux), 7, 80, 158

confessions, Les (Rousseau), 24 Coninck, J.L. de, 65 Conte du Graal (Chrétien de Troyes), 136, 193n37 see also grail legend Contre Sainte-Beuve (Proust), 127, 142 Corbière, Tristan, 82 Corbière-Gille, Gisèle, 52 Cortázar, Julio, 8, 64 Coste, Claude, 36 Cousins, 181n29 crescendo, 26, 59, 80 Crouzet, Michel, 55 Cryle, Peter, 46, 48–9, 173n6, 175nn Culler, Jonathan, 61, 178n49, 182n1 Curtis, Jerry, 174n14, 175n21 decadence, 65, 74–6, 80, 83 Delacroix, Eugène, La mort de Sardanapale, 53, 177n36 Deleuze, Gilles, 130, 140, 195n61 Delphine (Staël), 30 Descharmes, René, 183n2, 187n30 Descombes, Vincent, 188n5 description, xi, 8, 10, 160 Balzac and, 24 Flaubert and, 93, 94, 109 Huysmans and, 18, 67, 82, 160, 179n9 Proust and, 64, 120, 143, 146 Robbe-Grillet and, 28 Dezon-Jones, Elyane, 189n18 diaboliques, Les (Barbey d’Aurevilly), 51–61, 119, 176–8nn “À un dîner d’athées,” 56, 59 “Le bonheur dans le crime,” 57, 58, 59 “Le dessous de cartes d’une partie de whist,” 57, 59 image structure and, 36–7 “Le plus bel amour de Don Juan,” 52–7, 59, 178n46 “Le rideau cramoisi,” 52, 57, 59, 134 theme and, 51, 59–60

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title of, 50–2 “La vengeance d’une femme,” 51, 56–7, 59 Diamond, Marie J., 186n26 Dickens, Charles, 78 Diderot, Denis, 171n41 Didron, Adolphe Napoleon, 110 Didymus the Blind, 92, 94 dieux ont soif, Les (France), 80 disarticulation, see breaks disparition, La (Perec), 3 Distinction of Fiction, The (Cohn), 24, 169n30 Dom Juan (Molière), 18, 53 Donaldson-Evans, Mary, 171n45 Doody, Margaret A., 2, 7, 166n5, 167n16 doubling, 21 dualism, 91, 92, 184n10 du Camp, Maxime, 92 Dugrip, Albert, 66 Dumesnil, Réné, 187n30 Eagleton, Terry, 21, 166n5 e-books, 22 Echenoz, Jean, 10 Eco, Umberto, 20 Eden, Garden of, 96, 99 education, of reader, 20, 122–3, 142–4 éducation sentimentale, L’ (Flaubert), 90, 93 El Greco, 76 ellipsis, 21, 59 see also breaks embedded stories, 52–3 Emile (Rousseau), 28 “ennemi, L’ ” (Baudelaire), 72 En rade (Huysmans), 67, 69, 85, 180n18 “entelechy,” 5 epic, 13, 20, 23 epiphany, x, 17, 112, 120, 163, 170n37 see also moments bienheureux epistolary novel, 28, 53 eponyms, 134–5, 140 Erlich, Victor, 23

201

Ernaux, Annie, 25, 156 étranger, L’ (Camus), 14, 174n14 etymologies, 125, 128, 130–3, 140, 189n18, 190n23, 191n29, 192n34 Eugénie Grandet (Balzac), 113, 158 Eugen Onegin (Pushkin), 23 exil et le royaume, L’ (Camus), 35–6, 38–50, 60, 173–6nn “La femme adultère,” 38–9, 47, 48 “L’hôte,” 41–3, 47, 48–9, 176n22 images and unity of, 36, 47–8 “Jonas ou l’artiste au travail,” 43–4, 47–9, 175n21 “Les muets,” 40–1, 42, 48 “La pierre qui pousse,” 44–9, 176nn “Le renégat ou un esprit confus,” 39–40, 48, 157 thematic unity of, 47, 50, 157 “extreme” novel, ix, 1–2 fabliaux, 34 “fabula,” 159 Falloux, Frédéric, comte de, 80 Faulkner, William, 33, 156, 170n38 faux-monnayeurs, Les (Gide), 8, 159–60 Fénelon, François, 132 Ferré, André, 126 Feuillerat, Albert, 188–9n10 Fischler, Alexander, 176nn Fisher, Eméric, 120 Fisher King, 136–9, 192n35 Flaubert, Gustave, x, xi, 2, 5, 26, 33, 64, 78, 81, 88, 89–115, 159, 160, 171n45, 182–7nn fleurs du mal, Les (Baudelaire), 50 flowers Huysmans and, 22, 65, 69, 75, 77–8, 83, 86, 162 Proust and, 121, 138, 139, 148, 163, 192n35 form, content vs., 5, 170n36 Forster, E.M., 14–15, 166n5 Fortassier, Rose, 69, 75, 179n16 fourches caudines, Les (Achard), 134 fragmentation, see breaks

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INDEX

frame tales, 34 France, Anatole, 10 François le champi (Sand), 141, 162 Frank, Joseph, 8 Freud, Sigmund, 169n30 Frey, Anna Louise, 193n45 Friedman, Norman, 169n25 Frye, Northrop, 14, 168n24 Fumaroli, Marc, 65 Furst, Lilian R., 179n8

Grand Dictionnaire (Larousse), 99 Greimas, A.J., ix Grélé, Denis D., 181n29 Griffin, Robert, 91, 110, 186n27 Grojnowski, Daniel, 179n9 Grossvogel, David I., 1 Guénon, René, 174n11 Guers-Villate, Yvonne, 42 Guillemin, Henri, 186–7n27 Guilleragues, Gabriel de, 24

Gadourek, Carina, 46, 49 Gasiglia-Laster, Danièle, 192n35 Gay-Crosier, Raymond, 175n21 Genette, Gérard, 129, 189nn, 190nn genre definitions of, 7–8, 11–14 expectation of reader and, 13, 30 generic vs., 5–6 “narrative” and, 168n24 stylistic devices and, 20–1 see also novel; short story; short story cycle Germinal (Zola), 30, 64–5 Gheerbrant, Alain, 180n22 Giard, Anne, 51 Gide, André, xi, 1, 6, 8, 16, 21, 87, 152, 155, 159–60 Gil Blas (Lesage), 28 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 20, 182n34 Ginsburg, Michal Peled, 112, 183nn Giono, Jean, 20, 84, 87 Gnostic heresies, 95, 99–102, 113 Gobseck (Balzac), 64 Godard, Jean-Luc, 9, 12, 160 Godenne, René, 143 Go Down Moses (Faulkner), 156 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 7, 134–5 gommes, Les (Robbe-Grillet), 161 Goodkin, Richard, 189n10 Gracq, Julien, 52 Graham, Victor E., 132–3, 139, 191n29, 192n34 grail legend, 130, 136–9, 191n26

Hailey, Arthur, 20 Halpern, Joseph, 179n9 Hawthorn, Jeremy, 167n18, 171n39 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 33 Heath, Stephen, 168n24 Hegel, G.W.F., 22 Heilmann, Ann, 182n34 Heliodorus, 170n33 Hello, Ernest, 80 Hemingway, Ernest, 17 heptaméron, L’ (Marguerite de Navarre), 22, 120 Herschbert-Pierrot, Anne, 193n42 Hesse, Douglas, 169n27 Higgens, Lynn A., 7, 167n17 Hippolyte, Jean-Louis, 160 Hirsch, E.D., Jr., 11 Histoire du roi de Bohême (Nodier), 84 Hoffmann, E.T.A, 55, 134 hommes de bonne volonté, Les (Romains), 15 homosexuality, 78, 130, 144, 191n25 “Horla, Le” (Maupassant), 26 houses, symbolism of, 70–1, 181n24 Hugo, Victor, 79, 142 Hunter, J. Paul, 6 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, xi, 7, 65–88, 157, 160–2, 178n3, 179–82nn hypotaxis, 37 Iconographie chrétienne (Didron), 110 idealist novel, 3 Ifri, Pascal, 194n51 Illusions perdues (Balzac), 33, 120, 158

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image and image structure, 8, 10, 16–18, 22, 24, 29–30, 157–9, 161–3, 167n19, 170n38, 171n50, 187n32 Balzac and, 112–13, 157–9 Barbey and, 36–7, 50–1, 59–60, 157 Camus and sequence vs., 36, 39, 43, 45–9, 174n14 defined, 8, 37 Flaubert and, 90, 96, 106–7, 109–13, 115, 158–9 Huysmans and, 66–7, 72, 83, 86, 88, 180n20 painting vs. prose and, 187n32 Proust and, 17, 18, 120–1, 125, 128–9, 131, 135, 137, 140, 144–50, 153–4, 157–9, 188nn, 189n18, 192n34, 195n61 Robbe-Grillet and, 28, 159 Saporta and, 159 sequence vs., x, xi, 10–11, 17, 25–6, 30–1, 37, 158–60, 163 short story and, 16–17 short story cycle vs. novel and, 47–8, 50, 60–1, 156–7 immoraliste, L’ (Gide), 1, 14, 16, 155 “incentives,” 123–5, 129–30, 132, 135, 142, 151, 152 Indiana (Sand), xi, 157, 158 Ingram, Forrest L., 50, 60–1, 172–3n1, 178n48 innovation, 3, 30–1, 37, 87, 89, 94, 142, 155 intaglio, see negative narration intensifiers, xi, 49, 60, 79, 88, 112, 139, 163, 164 involuntary memory, 121, 149, 151, 153–4, 162 see also moments bienheureux Issacharoff, Michael, 65 Jakobson, Roman, 91, 167n17 jalousie, La (Robbe-Grillet), 28, 68, 159 James, Henry, 2, 160 Janus, 38, 174n11

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“ ‘je’ proustien, Le” (Suzuki), 150 Jesus Christ, 45, 53, 76, 95–102, 104, 109–11 Job, 13 John, S. Beynon, 174n14 Johnson, B.S., 23 Johnson, Patricia J., 174n14 Jonah, 44, 48 Jourde, Pierre, 178n3 “Journées de lecture” (Proust), 129 Joyce, James, 33, 170n37 Jung, Carl, 71, 75 Justine (Sade), 25 Kermode, Frank, 3, 10 Kilchenmann, Ruth J., 27 King, Adele, 175n21 “King Cheops and the Magicians,” 37 Là-bas (Huysmans), 85 Laclos, Choderlos de, 28 Ladenson, Elisabeth, 191n25 Lafayette, Madame de, 7, 28 Lancelot, 133–4 Larousse, Pierre, 99 Lauris, Georges de, 192n34 Lawrence, D. H., 21 Leal, R.B., 91, 102, 112, 182n1, 183n3, 184n12, 185n18, 186n27 “légende de St. Julien l’hospitalier, La” (Flaubert), 2 Leiris, Michel, 87 length, 14–17, 19–21, 29–30, 147–8, 153, 156 Leroyer de Chantepie, Marie-Sophie, 89 Lesage, Alain-René, 28 Lettres de la religieuse portugaise, 24 Levi-Strauss, Claude, ix Lewis, Monk, 55 liaisons dangereuses, Les (Laclos), 28 “Literature of Exhaustion, The” (Barth), 4 Little Women (Alcott), 18 livre mystique, Le (Balzac), 113 Lohengrin (Wagner), 140, 193n45

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INDEX

Lombard, Alfred, 185n18, 187n30 Longnon, August, 133, 191n29 Look Homeward, Angel (Wolfe), 15 “loteria en Babilonia, La” (Borges), 2 Louis Lambert (Balzac), 142, 146 Louÿs, Pierre, 66 Lubbock, Percy, 166n6 Lucan, 74 “Lucie ou la femme sans ombre” (Tournier), 22 Luscher, Robert M., 173n1 Luyken, Jan, 76, 82 lyric, 20, 87 Madame Bovary (Flaubert), 2, 26, 50, 64, 89, 93, 171n45 Maddocks, Melvin, 37–8, 117 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 66, 69–70, 82, 87, 145, 162 Malleus maleficarum (Sprenger), 69 Malraux, André, 7, 158, 160 Man, Paul de, 191n24 Mann, Susan Garland, 172–3n1 Manon Lescaut (Prévost), 28 Martin, Wallace, 167n17 Martin-Chauffier, Louis, 150, 191n24, 192n34 Mary, see Virgin Mary Mathilde, Princess, 183n4 Matoré, Georges, 193n37 Matsumoto, Yosei, 35 Maupassant, Guy de, x, 10, 17, 26, 33, 37, 168–9n25 Mauriac Dyer, Nathalie, 188n1, 190n20 May, Charles, 170n38 Maynial, Edouard, 186n26 Mazel, Henri, 183n1, 187n30 McDonald, Christie, 187–8n1 McGann, Jerome, 168n24 McKeon, Andrew, 58 McKeon, Michael, 167n16 meaning levels of, 64–5 patterns of, 69–70

Mecz, Irène, 193n37 Mein, Margaret, 192n35 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 172n40 metaphor and metaphoric chains, 35, 68, 91, 121, 124–7, 147–9, 152–4, 161–3, 188n6 Mickelsen, David, 65–6 Migne, Jacques-Paul, 69 Miguet-Ollagnier, Marie, 193n37 Miller, Henry, 175n21 Miller, O.J., 42 Milly, Jean, 126, 130, 188n1 Milton, John, 7 misanthrope, Le (Molière), 18 “mixed genre,” 16 Modiano, Patrick, 156, 161 Molière, 18, 22, 53, 63 moments bienheureux (“blessed moments”), 19, 120–1, 123, 140, 143, 148, 149, 153, 154, 162, 170n37 Moore, George, 66 Moreau, Gustave, 69, 76, 179n6 Moretti, Franco, 167n16 “mort des amants, La” (Baudelaire), 72 motifs, recurring, 48, 60 Motte, Warren, 3, 194n49 Mourier-Casile, Pascaline, 177n42 moyen de parvenir, Le (Beroalde de Verville), 37 Mrosovsky, Kitty, 107 Mugnier, Abbé, 162 Muller, Marcel, 193n38 multiplicity, 10, 21, 151, 160 muse du département, La (Balzac), 33 music, 22, 82, 121–2, 126, 151 Musset, Alfred de, 115 mystery novels, 11, 25, 159 Nabokov, Vladimir, 156 names, see onomastics narratee, 176n28

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narrative structure, 3, 25, 27, 53–4, 67, 157, 158, 168n24 dueling narrations, 158 Flaubert and, 94, 112 Huysmans and, 85 Proust and, 120, 141–2, 152–3 see also negative narration; sequence narrative retardation, 59 narrative voice, 49, 51–3 Nathan, Jacques, 191n29 Nattiez, Jean-Jacques, 126, 192nn naturalism, 7, 85–6 Navarre, Marguerite de, 22, 34, 120 negative narration (intaglio structure), xi, 30, 67–8, 83, 119, 149–50, 157–8, 161–2 Nelson, Roy Jay, 80, 180n20 Nemerov, Howard, 171n41, 195n56 Neo-Aristotelians, 16 new, as “oppositional,” 7 New Critics (Nouvelle Critique), xi, 12 New Novel (nouveau roman), ix, 4, 28, 53, 64, 68, 84, 87, 166n10 Nicole, Eugène, 80 Nodier, Charles, 84 Noé (Giono), 84 Nombres (Sollers), 156 nouvelle Héloïse, La (Rousseau) 6 novel Baudelaire on, 93–4 challenges to, 156 changes in understanding of, 12–13 coherence and unity and, 9–10, 49–50, 157–8 see also coherence; unity crescendo, see under crescendo definitions of, ix–xi, 3, 6–14, 27, 29–30, 53, 156, 163–4, 167–9nn fiction as element of, 23–4, 29 form as element of, 160 Huysmans’s revolt vs., 68, 70, 84–6 image structure and, see under image structure innovation and novelty and, ix, xi, 1–6, 64, 87, 155

205

length and, 14–17, 19–21, 29, 147–8, 153, 156 open structure and, see under open structure origins of, 6–7, 167n16 other genres exploited by, 18–22, 63, 87, 155 prose as element of, 9–13, 15, 16, 21–3, 29, 33–4, 156, 163 resolution and, 161, 167n19 romance vs., 2 sequence and, see under narrative structure; negative narration; sequence short story vs., 16–18, 22, 29 short story cycle vs., 16–18, 36–7, 47–50, 60–1, 156–8 subgenres and, 11, 167n16 subject matter or content and, 1–2, 7–8, 26, 155–6 temporality and, 167n16 theater vs., x, xi, 60, 114–15 see also specific aspects; authors; and works novel cycles, 15 novella, 16 Nuccitelli, Angela, 71 Nykrog, Per, 193nn O’Brien, Justine, 191n25 O’Connor, Flannery, 20 O’Connor, Frank, 25 Olds, Marshall C., 184n14 onomastics, 127–8, 134, 135 open structure, xi, 8–10, 28, 154, 159–60 opposition, 7, 20–1, 30–1, 49, 91, 112, 180n20 Orr, Leonard, 5, 167n19 Orr, Mary, 91, 112, 184n8, 185n18, 186n26 Ortega y Gasset, José, 170n33 Orwell, George, 175n21 Oster, Christian, 3 Oulipo, ix, 3, 53, 87

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INDEX

Owen, Stephen, 170n33 oxymoron, 68, 180n20 Painter, George, 191n24 painting, 187n32 Flaubert and, 112 Huysmans and, 67, 76, 82, 83, 86, 162, 177n36, 179n6 Proust and, 152 Pale Fire (Nabokov), 156 parataxis, 21, 36–8 see also breaks paronomasia, 132, 133, 135, 140 Parsifal legend, 135–9, 192n35, 193nn Parsifal (Wagner), 136, 193n40 “parure, La” (Maupassant), 10, 17 Pascal, Blaise, 80, 174n11 Pasco, Allan H., 59, 67, 112, 148, 158–9, 165n2, 171n42, 173n7, 178n45, 178n2, 180n18, 187n31, 196nn Patrologies (Migne), 69 Pavel, Thomas, 3 Pearce, Richard, 13 Péguy, Charles, 87 Perec, Georges, ix, 3 père Goriot, Le (Balzac), 25, 53, 113, 158–9 Perkins, Maxwell, 15 Perry, B.E., 169n25 Petit, Jacques, 50–2, 56, 178nn Petronius, 74 Peyre, Henri, 189n10 Picasso, Pablo, 9 picque-nique, Le (Oster), 3 Pinget, Robert, 37, 160–1 place, La (Ernaux), 25, 156 plot, 3–5, 8, 25, 27, 36, 47, 48, 50, 60, 64–7, 84–6, 159–60, 163, 164 Plottel, Jeanine P., 190n23 Poe, Edgar Allan, 15, 29, 72, 81, 147 porte étroite, La (Gide), 1 Porter, Laurence M., 66, 93, 179n6 portes de Gubbio, Les (Sallenave), 155 postmodernism, 21 post-structuralism, 12, 14, 30, 168n24

Powers, Richard, 172n59 Prescott, Orville, 35 Prévost, Abbé, 28 Prince, Gerald, 25, 176n28 “prince de Bohème, Un” (Balzac), 84 princess de Clèves, La (Lafayette), 4, 7, 28, 158 prise/prose de Constantinople, La (Ricardou), 22 “procureur de Judée, Le” (France), 10 Propp, Vladimir, ix, 64 Proust, Marcel, x, xi, 3, 5, 6, 7, 17–19, 25, 36–8, 61, 64, 68, 87–8, 117–54, 157–9, 161–3, 170n37, 187–95nn Proust as Musician (Nattiez), 126 Przybos, Julia, 55 Pugh, Anthony R., 192n34 Pushkin, Alexander, 23 Quartier perdu (Modiano), 156, 161 Quémar, Claudine, 128, 190n23 Queneau, Raymond, ix, 3, 166n8 Quicherat, Jules, 133, 191n29 Rabelais, François, 7, 28, 37 rabouilleuse, La (Balzac), 158 Rahmenerählungen (frame tales), 34 Rayuela (Cortázar), 8, 64 reader expectations of, 13, 14, 170n33 power of, 30 Proust and, 142–54, 162–3, 194nn realism, 3, 6–7, 21, 86, 87, 92–3, 155 reality, 1, 24, 94, 151, 155 “Recueillement” (Baudelaire), 156 Redon, Odilon, 76, 82 repetition, 16, 18–21, 36–7, 161 “Return of the Story (Maybe)” (Cloonan), 1 Revel, J.-F., 121, 125, 141, 194n46 Ricardou, Jean, 3, 22, 87, 143, 160, 166n9 Richard, Jean-Pierre, 130, 132, 186n27 Richter, David, 9 Ricœur, Paul, 24 Rise of the Novel, The (Watt), 6–7

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Rivière, Jacques, 122, 193n41 Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 22, 28, 68, 84, 87, 157, 159, 160, 161 Robert, Louis de, 126 Roberts, Thomas J., 24 Robles, Umberto, xi Rodina, Herta, 176–7n30 Rodrigues, Jean-Marc, 192n35 Roelens, Maurice, 42 Roger, Alain, 190n23 Roger des Genettes, Madame, 110 Rogers, Brian G., 52, 59, 190n20, 195n54 roi des aulnes, Le (Tournier), 20, 26 Romains, Jules, 15 Roudiez, Leon, 11–12 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 6, 24, 28, 64, 80 Rousset, Jean, 118, 152 route des Flandres, La (Simon), 8, 10, 161 Rubin, David Lee, xi ruptures, see breaks Russian Formalists, xi, 23, 24, 64, 159 Sade, Marquis de, 2 “Saint Julien” (Flaubert), 112 saints’ lives, 34, 86 Sallenave, Danièle, 155–6 Sand, George, xi, 108, 157, 162, 183nn, 185n20 Saporta, Marc, 8, 159 Sarraute, Nathalie, 87, 158, 160 Schlossman, Beryl, 170n37, 188n6 Scholes, Robert, 170n33 Schoolcraft, Ralph, 1 Schorer, Mark, 171n50 Sedgwick, Ellery, 27 Séginger, Giséle, 67, 68, 180n20, 182n1, 186n26 semiotic signs, 128, 131 senses, 73–9, 81, 83, 121–2 sensualist school, 73

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sequence, 16, 167n19 Barbey and, 51, 59 Huysmans and, 83–4 image vs., x, xi, 10–11, 17, 25–6, 30–1, 37, 158–60, 163 Proust and, 118, 141–2, 146 short story cycle and thematic, 35–7, 157 see also narrative structure; negative narration Sésame et les lys (Ruskin/Proust), 142 setting, 36, 47, 67, 160 Seznec, Jean, 90, 100, 108, 110, 183n2, 186n27 Shakespeare, William, 7, 79 Shattuck, Roger, 19, 171n41, 195n56 Sherrington, R.J., 90 Shklovsky, Victor, 8, 37 “Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, The” (Hemingway), 17, 63–4 short story, 170n35 early, 2, 33–4 endings and, 10 image structure and, 16–17 length or brevity and, 14–22, 26 novel vs., 14–19, 21, 22, 29 short story cycles, 15, 18, 33–61, 119–20, 172–3n1 antithetical themes in, 35–6 Barbey’s Les diaboliques, 36–7, 51–60 Camus’ L’exil, 35–50 frame tales and early, 34 image structure and, xi, 36–7 novel vs., 36–8, 49–50, 60–1, 156–7 see also specific works Showalter, English, Jr., 48, 174n13 Simon, Claude, 8, 10, 161 Simon, John K., 42–3 sjuzhet, 159 Sollers, Philippe, 12, 156 Sonnenfeld, Albert, 182n1, 185n18 Souday, Paul, 194n46 “spatial form,” 8 see also image and image structure

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INDEX

Sphinx, 78, 107, 114 Spinoza, Baruch de, 107, 109, 185n20, 187n30 spiritualistic naturalism, 85 Spitzer, Leo, 130 Spivak, Gayatri, 168n21 Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes (Balzac), 120 Sprenger, Jacob, 69 Staël, Madame de, 30 Starr, Peter, 185n18 Stendhal, 17 “Storm, The” (Chopin), 17 structuralists, xi style, unity and, 50 subplot, 21 Sur Catherine de Médicis (Balzac), xi, 17, 113 Suzuki, Michihiko, 150 Swan Knight, 135, 193n45 Swan Lake, 135, 138–9 symbolism, 50, 64, 86–7, 161 Balzac and, 159 Barbey and, 36 Camus and, 47–8 Huysmans and, xi, 68–71, 74–6, 83–6 Proust and, 64, 148 short story and, 22 symbolist poets, 87 Symons, Arthur, 66, 70 syntagmatic coherence, 9, 51, 67, 83, 92, 112, 126–7, 157 Tadié, Jean-Yves, 126, 152, 189n10 Taine, Hippolyte, 181n29, 187n30 Tarver, John Charles, 182n1 Temps et récit (Ricœur), 24 tentation de saint Antoine, La (Flaubert), xi, 2, 18, 89–115, 161, 182–7nn challenge of, 89–94, 114–15 image structure of, 112–14, 158–9 part i (three major categories of sin), 94–5, 97–9, 113

part ii (seven deadly sins), 90–1, 97–9, 113 part iii (continuation of seven deadly sins), 98, 113 part iv (spiritual temptation and heresies), 90, 99–102, 108, 113 part v (temptation of things), 98, 102–4, 108, 113 part vi (temptation of idea), 90, 98, 104–6, 108 part vii (Trinity), 106–11, 114 revisions of, 90, 92–3 temptation, the, 97, 111–2 unity of, and Trinity, 91–2, 96, 106–12, 114 Terdiman, Richard, 187n1 Tertullian, 101, 109, 110 theme, 2, 3, 9, 22, 60, 87, 157, 160, 163, 164, 167n16 Balzac and, 158 Barbey and, 36, 50–2, 55–60, 78, 99, 100, 157 Camus and, 35–45, 47–50, 157 Huysmans and, 72, 87–8 image structure and, 25, 37–8 Proust and, 131, 135–6, 148, 157 short story cycle and, 35–45, 51, 59–60, 156, 157 see also image and image structure Thierry, Augustin, 132 Thody, Philip, 176n25 Thomas, Dylan, x, 23 Thucydides, 14 Tieck, Ludwig, 27 Tieghem, Philippe van, 24, 172n53 Tindall, William York, 65 Todorov, Tzvetan, ix, 8, 12–13, 25 tone, 25, 160–1 Tournier, Michel, 20, 22, 26 Traité des sensations (Condillac), 72–3, 181n29 Trébutien, Guillaume, 50 triadic format, Proust and, 126–7 triangular relationships, 59

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trinitarian structure, Flaubert and, 91–2, 94–8, 104–14, 115, 158 Tripet, Arnaud, xi Tristan and Isolde (Wagner), 151 Trois contes (Flaubert), 26 Tropismes (Sarraute), 158, 160 True Story of the Novel, The (Doody), 7, 166n5, 167n16 Tynjanov, Jurij, 12 unity, 160–1, 166n6, 167n19 Camus and, 35, 36, 47, 49, 173n6 coherence vs., 9–10 Flaubert and, 90–2, 107–8 Proust and, 38, 61, 117, 144, 148, 149, 151–3, 162 resolution vs., 167n19 short story and, 21 short story cycle vs. novel and, 34, 49–50, 60–1, 157–8 Valéry, Paul, 66, 68, 70, 84, 87, 91, 92, 143, 179n16 Vallée, Claude, 191n26 Vendryes, J., 189n14 Verlaine, Paul, 82 verse, 23, 34 Viers, Rina, 192n35 Vigneron, Robert, 189n10 Virgin Mary, 55–7

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Wagner, Richard, 82, 135–6, 138, 139, 192n35, 193nn War and Peace (Tolstoy), 15, 20 Watkins, J.H., 193n42 Watt, Ian, 6–7 Watt (Beckett), 2 Weekend (Godard), 9, 160 Weinreb, Ruth Plaut, 65, 179n9 Wellek, René, 29 Wiese, Benno von, 21 Wilde, Oscar, 66, 70 Williams, William Carlos, 15 Wolfe, Thomas, 15 Wölfflin, Heinrich, 14 Women in Love (Lawrence), 21 Wood, Michael, 19 Wood, Robin, 9 Woolf, Virginia, 4, 24 Yeats, William Butler, 66 “Yellow Wallpaper, The” (Gilman), 20, 182n34 Zants, Emily, 174n14, 185n18 Ziegler, Robert, 70–1 Zola, Émile, 20, 30, 64–5, 81, 85–6, 88, 156, 161, 178n4 Zumthor, Paul, 16–17, 25, 170n36, 183n36

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Copyright material from www.palgraveconnect.com - licensed to Universitetsbiblioteket i Tromso - PalgraveConnect - 2011-04-02 10.1057/9780230117433 - Inner Workings of the Novel, Allan H. Pasco

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