But if, having torn himself away from his jar, he should attempt to turn his attention towards these men and make them come to life in his books, he is assailed by fresh misgivings. His eyes, having become accustomed to semi-darkness, are dazzled by the garish light of the outside. As a result of examining only the tiny space about him, of staring lengthily at one spot, they have become magnifying lenses that are incapable of taking in vast expanses at one time. Long maceration in his jar has made him lose his innocent freshness. He has seen how difficult it was, when he examined closely some tiny recess in himself, to make an inventory of all the things to be found there: not of any great importance, he is well aware, more than often disappointing, but concerning which a rapid examination, made from a distance, would never have permitted him even to suspect their existence. He consequently has the impression of not seeing these men from the outside clearly.
Their actions, which he respects and admires, seem to him to be like wide-meshed netting: they let slip through their large holes all this turbid, teeming matter to which he has grown accustomed, and he is unable to break himself of the habit of looking for the living substance, the, for him, only living substance; also, he is obliged to admit that he sees nothing in what they bring back but large empty carcasses. These men whom he would so like to know and make known, when he tries to show them moving about in the blinding light of day, seem to him to be nothing but well- made dolls, intended for the amusement of children.
Furthermore, if it is a matter of showing characters from the outside, devoid of all swarmings and secret tremors, and of recounting their actions and the events that compose their story, of telling stories about them, as he is so often incited to do (isn't this, people continually tell him, the gift that best characterises the real writer?), the cinema director, who disposes of means of expression that are far better suited to this purpose and much more powerful than his own, succeeds in easily surpassing him, with less fatigue and loss of time for the spectator. And when it comes to describing men's sufferings and struggles plausibly, to making known all the frequently monstrous, almost unbelievable iniquities that are committed, the journalist possesses the immense advantage over him of being able to give to the facts he reports—however unlikely they may seem—that look of authenticity which, alone, is capable of compelling the reader's credence.
Lacking encouragement, lacking confidence, with a frequently painful sense of guilt and boredom, he has no alternative, therefore, but to return to himself. But here, although he has plunged once more into his jar after this evasion, which is more than often imaginary—he is usually far too distrustful and discouraged in advance to venture outside—it would be painting far too black a picture of his situation, if we did not say that to his own astonishment and pretty rarely at that, he occasionally experiences moments of satisfaction and hope.
One fine day he hears that even out yonder, on the outside, not in those gloomy, solitary regions in which he is groping about, and into which the little company of moderns had once ventured, but in the rich, eternally fertile, well-populated and carefully cultivated lands where tradition continues to blossom in the sun, people have finally noticed that, after all, something is happening. Novelists whom nobody would ever accuse of making revolutionary claims are forced to recognise certain changes. One of the best contemporary English novelists, Henry Green, has pointed out that the centre of gravity of the novel has moved, that more and more importance is being given to dialogue. 'Today,' he writes, 'it is the best way to give the reader real life.' And he even predicts that it will be 'the principal support of the novel for a long time to come.'
In the silence that surrounds him, this simple statement is an olive branch for our die-hard. It makes him take heart immediately. It even revives his wildest dreams. No doubt, the explanation Mr. Green gives of this change risks destroying all the promise contained in his remark: it is probably, he adds, because 'nowadays people have stopped writing letters. Instead, they use the telephone.' It is not to be wondered at then that, in their turn, characters in fiction should have become so talkative.
But this explanation is disappointing in appearance only. It should not be forgotten that Mr. Green is English and it is well known that reserve often incites his countrymen to adopt a tone of playful simplicity when speaking of serious matters. Or perhaps it is a dash of humour. Perhaps, too, after making this bold statement, Henry Green experienced a certain fear: if he were to carry his investigation too far, where would it not lead him? Might he not eventually come to ask himself if this single indication of his were not a sign of profound disturbances that could lead to reexamination of the entire traditional structure of the novel? Might he not end by claiming that contemporary novel forms are cracking on all sides, and thus instigate, even invite, new techniques adapted to new forms? But the words 'new forms' and 'techniques' are even more immodest and embarrassing to pronounce than the word 'psychology' itself. They result immediately in your being accused of presumption and bumptiousness, and arouse, in both critics and readers, a feeling of mistrust and annoyance. It is consequently more proper and more prudent to limit oneself to mention of the telephone.
But however great our novelist's fears of appearing to yield to an enthusiasm that is suspect, he cannot be content with this explanation. For it is above all when he must make his characters speak that it seems to him that something is changing, and that it appears most difficult to avail himself of the methods that have been in current usage thus far. Between Henry Green's observation and his own impressions and reluctance there must be something more than mere coincidence. And from then on, everything changes: the confusion he senses is apparently not, as people tell him, and as he himself in his moments of depression is liable to think, that of senility, but of growth; his endeavours would seem to make him go forward in the direction of a vast general movement. And all the arguments used against those whom Virginia Woolf called moderns could be turned to their advantage.
But, people say, it is not possible to repeat what they did. Their techniques, in the hands of those who attempt to use them today, immediately become a device, whereas the traditional novel retains eternal youth. Without having to undergo any appreciable changes, its generous, supple forms continue to adapt themselves to all the new stories, all the new characters and new conflicts that appear in the societies that succeed one another, and it is in the novelty of these characters and conflicts that the principal interest and only valid renewal of the novel lie.
And it is true that we cannot repeat what Joyce or Proust did, even though Stendhal and Tolstoy are repeated every day to everybody's satisfaction. But isn't this, first of all, because the moderns displaced the essential interest of the novel? For them it ceased to lie in the enumeration of situations and characters or in the portrayal of manners and customs, but in the revelation of a new psychological subject-matter. Indeed, it is the discovery if only of a few particles of this subject-matter, which is an anonymous one, to be found in all men and in all societies, that constituted for them and continues to constitute for their successors, genuine renewal. To re-work after them this same material and, consequently, to use their methods without changing them in any way, would be quite as absurd as for supporters of the traditional novel to re-write with the same characters, the same plot and the same style, The Red and the Black or War and Peace.
On the other hand, the techniques used today with occasionally still excellent results by advocates of tradition, techniques invented by novelists of another day to explore the unknown material that fell within their range of vision, and which were perfectly adapted to this purpose, these techniques have ended by constituting a very strong, coherent system of conventions, which is well constructed and entirely closed; a universe that has its own laws and is self-sufficient. Through force of habit, by virtue of the authority conferred upon it, and because of the great works it has engendered, it has become a second nature. It has assumed a necessary, an eternal aspect. So much so that tod
ay still, those persons, whether writers or readers, who have been the most disturbed by all the upheavals that have been taking place for some time now outside its thick walls, as soon as they enter within them, docilely allow themselves to be confined there; they very soon feel quite at home, accept all limitations, conform to all restraints, and abandon all dreams of escape.
But by freeing themselves of its fetters, the moderns, who sought to tear themselves as well as their readers away from this system, lost the protection and security it offered. And the reader, being deprived of all his accustomed stakes and landmarks, removed from all authority, suddenly faced with an unknown substance, bewildered and distrustful, instead of blindly letting himself go, as he so loves to do, was constantly obliged to confront what was shown him with what he could see for himself.
Just in passing, he must have been extremely surprised by the opacity of the fictional conventions that had succeeded in concealing for so long what should have been obvious to all eyes. But once he had taken a good look and arrived at an independent judgement, he was unable to stop there. At the same time that they had awakened his powers of penetration, the moderns had awakened his critical faculties and whetted his curiosity.
He wanted to look even further or, if preferred, even closer. And he was not long in perceiving what was hidden beneath the interior monologue: an immense profusion of sensations, images, sentiments, memories, impulses, little larval actions that no inner language can convey, that jostle one another on the threshold of consciousness, gather together in compact groups, loom up all of a sudden, then immediately fall apart, combine otherwise and reappear in new forms, while unwinding inside us, like the ribbon that comes clattering from a telescriptor slot, is an uninterrupted flow of words.
With regard to Proust, it is true that these groups composed of sensations, images, sentiments and memories which, when traversing or skirting the thin curtain of the interior monologue, suddenly become visible from the outside, in an apparently insignificant word, a mere intonation or a glance, are precisely what he took such pains to study. But—however paradoxical this may seem to those who, today, still reproach him for his extreme minutae—to us it appears already as though he had observed them from a great distance, after they had run their course, in repose and, as it were, congealed in memory. He tried to describe their respective positions as though they were stars in a motionless sky. He considered them as a sequence of causes and effects which he sought to explain. He rarely—not to say, never—tried to re-live them and make them re-live for the reader in the present, while they were forming and developing, like so many tiny dramas, each one of which has it adventures, its mystery and its unforeseeable ending.
It was doubtless this that prompted Gide to say that he had collected the raw material for a great work rather than achieved the work itself, and brought upon him the serious reproach still made today by his opponents, of having gone in for 'analysis', that is to say, in the most original parts of his work, of having incited the reader to use his own intelligence, instead of giving him the sensation of re-living an experience, of accomplishing himself certain actions, without knowing too well what he is doing or where he is going—which always was and still is in the very nature of any work of fiction.
But isn't this like reproaching Christopher Columbus with not having constructed the port of New York?
Those who have followed him and who have wanted to try and make these subterranean actions re-live for the reader as they unfold, have met with certain difficulties. Because these inner dramas composed of attacks, triumphs, recoils, defeats, caresses, bites, rapes, murders, generous abandons or humble submissions, all have one thing in common: they cannot do without a partner.
Often it is an imaginary partner who emerges from our past experiences or from our day-dreams, and the scenes of love or combat between us, by virtue of their wealth of adventure, the freedom with which they unfold and what they reveal concerning our least apparent inner structure, can constitute very valuable fictional material.
It remains nonetheless true that the essential feature of these dramas is constituted by an actual partner.
For this flesh and blood partner is constantly nurturing and renewing our stock of experiences. He is pre-eminently the catalyser, the stimulant, thanks to whom these movements are set in motion, the obstacle that gives them cohesion, that keeps them from growing soft from ease and gratuitousness, or from going round and round in circles in the monotonous indigence of ruminating on one thing. He is the threat, the real danger as well as the prey that brings out their alertness and their suppleness; the mysterious element whose unforeseeable reactions, by making them continually start up again and evolve towards an unknown goal, accentuate their dramatic nature.
But at the same time that, in order to attain to this partner, they rise up from our darkest recesses towards the light of day, a certain fear forces them back towards the shadow. They make us think of the little grey roaches that hide in moist holes. They are ashamed and prudent. The slightest look makes them flee. To blossom out they must have anonymity and impunity.
They consequently hardly show themselves in the form of actions. For actions do indeed develop in the open, in the garish light of day, and the tiniest of them, compared with these delicate, minute inner movements, appear to be gross and violent: they immediately attract attention. All their forms have long since been examined and classified; they are subject to strict rules, to very frequent inspection. Finally, very obvious, well-known, frank motives, thick, perfectly visible wires make all this enormous, heavy machinery work.{10}
But lacking actions, we can use words. And words possess the qualities needed to seize upon, protect and bring out into the open these subterranean movements that are at once impatient and afraid.
They have in their favour their suppleness, their freedom, the iridescent richness of their shading, their transparency or their opaqueness.
Their rapid, abundant flow, with its restless shimmer, allows the more imprudent of them to slip by, to let themselves be borne along and disappear at the slightest sign of danger. But they risk little danger. Their reputation for gratuitousness, lightness, inconsistency—they are, after all, pre-eminently the instruments of frivolous pastimes and games—protects them from suspicion and from minute examination: we are generally content to make purely formal verification of them; they are subject to rather lax regulations; they rarely result in serious sanctions.
Consequently, provided they present a more or less harmless, commonplace appearance, they can be and, in fact, without anyone taking exception, without the victim even daring to admit it frankly to himself, they often are the daily, insidious and very effective weapon responsible for countless minor crimes.
For there is nothing to equal the rapidity with which they attain to the other person at the moment when he is least on his guard, often giving him merely a sensation of disagreeable tickling or slight burning; or the precision with which they enter straight into him at his most secret and most vulnerable points and lodge in his innermost recesses, without his having the desire, the means, or the time, to retort. But once they are deposited inside him, they begin to swell, to explode, they give rise around them to waves and eddies which, in turn, come up to the surface and spread out in words. By virtue of this game of actions and reactions that they make possible, they constitute a most valuable tool for the novelist.
And this, no doubt, is why, as Henry Green has noted, characters in fiction have become so talkative.
But this dialogue, which tends more and more, in the modern novel, to take the place left by action, does not adapt itself easily to the forms imposed by the traditional novel. For it is above all the outward continuation of subterranean movements which the author—and with him the reader—must make at the same time In the character, from the moment they form until the moment when, having been forced to the surface by their increasing intensity, to reach the other person and protect themselves from exterior dangers
, they cloak themselves in the protective capsules of words.
Nothing, therefore, should break the continuity of these movements, and the transformation they undergo should be analogous to that sustained by a ray of light when it is refracted and curves as it passes from one sphere into another.
This being the case, there is really no justification for the heavy indentations and dashes with which we are accustomed to make a clear-cut separation between dialogue and what precedes it. Even the colon and quotation marks are still too apparent, and it is understandable that certain novelists (for instance, Joyce Cary) should strive to blend dialogue with its context—to the extent that this is possible—by simply marking the separation with a comma followed by a capital.
But even more awkward and hard to defend than indentations, dashes, colons and quotation marks, are the monotonous, clumsy, 'said Jeanne,' 'answered Paul,' with which dialogue is usually strewn; for contemporary novelists these are becoming more and more what the laws of perspective had become for painters just before Cubism: no longer a necessity, but a cumbersome convention.
Indeed, it is curious to see that, today, those very novelists who refuse to let themselves become what they consider to be needlessly disturbed, and who continue to use the devices of the old-fashioned novel with blithe assurance, seem unable to escape a certain feeling of uneasiness as regards this particular point. It is as though they had lost that certainty of being within their rights, that innocent unawareness that gives to the 'said, resumed, replied, retorted, exclaimed etc. . . .' with which Madame de Lafayette or Balzac so brightly studded their dialogues, that look of being securely where they belong, indispensable and perfectly as a matter of course, that makes us accept them without raising an eyebrow, without even noticing it, when we re-read these authors today. And compared to them, how self-conscious, anxious and unsure of themselves contemporary novelists seem, when they use these same formulas.
The Age of Suspicion Page 5