And yet it is quite evident that reality is not their main interest, but form, always, form invented by others, and from which a magnetic force makes them unable ever to break away. At times this is the harmonious, pure form in which so-called 'classic' writers tightly enclosed objects created from one single piece of the dense, heavy matter upon which their efforts were concentrated. The fact that these objects, having been disintegrated into countless particles, are now nothing but an immense fluctuating mass, which it is no longer possible to enclose between these spare outlines, matters little to these formalists. What they strive to achieve above all else is the elegant simplicity of the classic form, even though the form that they contrive to create is today nothing but a thin, empty shell that will crack under the slightest pressure.
At other times, abandoning harmony and quiet distinction, they adopt a form, whose essential characteristic is that it tries to obtain 'likeness'. This it succeeds in doing with no difficulty, being so constituted that today it is hardly able to seize upon anything whatsoever that is still little known, or unusual, and consequently, to start with, improbable or disconcerting. This was not the case formerly, at the time it was invented for the purpose of disclosing what was still unknown and hidden. But since then, the unknown and hidden having taken up their abode beyond its reach, it has been emptied of its living content, and today only serves to conceal rather gross, schematic appearances: characters reduced to oversimplified types, conventional sentiments, actions based less on sincere experience than on the fictional convention this form prescribes, dialogues that recall less those we might hear if we listened very attentively and without bias to what we ourselves say and what is said about us, than those that usually take place between the characters in novels of this kind.
Nothing but habit of long standing, that has become second nature, in addition to our submission to all generally accepted conventions, our continual absent-mindedness and haste, and, above all, the avidity that impels us to devour the appetising foods these novels offer, make us agree to let ourselves be taken in by the deceptive surfaces that this form sets shimmering before our eyes.
When we see the hold that the formalists have succeeded in getting on the novel today, we cannot help agreeing with those who declare that it is the most underprivileged of all the arts.
Of course it is hard to imagine novelists permitting themselves to undertake anything that would be comparable to the evasion attempted by painters when, with one blast, they blew up the entire classic system of conventions—which had come to serve less to reveal, as it once did, than to conceal what, to their eyes, was the real object of painting—abolishing subject and perspective, and wresting the spectator from the familiar appearances in which he had been accustomed to find satisfactions that had ceased to have much in common with painting. True, this evasion was shortlived. The new formalists, imitators of these painters, were not long in changing these living forms into dead ones, and the spectators soon replaced the facile pleasures they had derived from the true-to-nature subjects of earlier painting, by those to be had from looking at agreeable, decorative patterns.
But how could a novelist free himself from the necessity of having a subject, characters and a plot? For no matter how hard he tried to isolate the fragment of reality that he was striving to grasp, he could not keep it from integrating with some character whose familiar figure, presented in simple, precise lines, the practised eye of the reader would immediately reconstitute and rig out with a 'personality', in which he would recognise one of the types he so relishes and which, by virtue of its very true-to-nature, 'live' aspect, would absorb most of his attention. In fact, however the author may try to maintain this character in a motionless state, in order to concentrate his own and the reader's attention on the barely perceptible tremors in which it seems to him that the reality he would like to disclose has taken refuge, he will not succeed in keeping it from moving just enough for the reader to see in its movements a plot whose ins and outs he will follow with curiosity while impatiently awaiting the ending.
And so, no matter what the novelist may do, he cannot distract the reader's attention from all sorts of objects that just any novel, whether good or bad, can furnish him.
Many critics encourage this absent-mindedness and frivolity in readers by giving in to it themselves, thus fostering confusion.
Indeed, it is astonishing to see with what complacency they dwell upon anecdotal features, relate the 'story' and discuss the 'characters', appraising their verisimilitude and examining their morality. But it is with regard to style that their attitude is strangest. If a novel is written in a style that recalls the classics, they usually attribute the qualities of Adolph or The Princess of Cleve to the subject matter, however indigent, that this style covers. If, on the contrary, one of these novels with such life-like characters and thrilling plots happens to be written in a flat, slip-shod style, they mention this fault indulgently, as an imperfection that is to be regretted, no doubt, but is of little importance; only the fastidious will be shocked by it and it in no way affects the real value of the book: something, in other words, as superficial and insignificant as a small wart or an ordinary pimple on a handsome, noble face. In reality, however, it is more like the tell-tale pimple that appears on the body of a plague victim, the plague in this case being nothing else but an attitude that is hardly sincere and hardly honest towards reality.
But the confusion reaches its peak when, as a result of the novel's tendency to be an art that always lags behind the others, and is less capable of breaking away from outmoded forms that have been emptied of all living content, people want to make it into a weapon of combat that will serve the revolution or maintain and perfect revolutionary gains.
This leads to strange results which constitute a rather disquieting threat, not only to the novel—this after all, would not be very serious, and if need be, we might become resigned to it—but to the revolution to be achieved, to the masses it is intended to liberate, and to the safeguard of the gains made by a revolution that has already taken place. Indeed, the satisfactions we termed extra-literary, advice, examples, moral and social education, etc. . . . which it is in the very nature of the novel to mete out generously to its readers, having become the essential raison d'être of the novel, we witness a reversal of all values: to forge a revolutionary weapon from the novel, it is necessary to use the very things that make it subservient to an academic, set form: characters that are like wax dolls, as life-like as possible, so 'alive', in fact, that at first glance the reader probably feels like poking them to see if they will blink, the way we should like to do to the figures in wax-works museums—all this being needed to make the readers feel at ease, to allow them to identify themselves without difficulty with the characters and, in this way, to relieve their own 'situations', their own sufferings, their own conflicts.
But 'types' that are even more crudely constructed, the simplest of outlines, a positive, irreproachable hero and a traitor, will do even better since, for the masses, whose sensitivity and clearsightedness these novelists greatly underestimate, they are either magnificent bird-snares or very effective scare-crows. A plot that moves forward briskly according to the rules of the old-fashioned novel will make these puppets pirouette about and create the kind of facile excitement that succeeds so well in sustaining the reader's flagging attention. And since the style, which is a sort of digest style, the same in all of these books, never serves to reveal a new reality, never makes a crack in the varnish of conventional appearances that covers it, but flows sluggishly along without encountering the slightest obstacle, coating smooth surfaces—well, there is no doubt that this style will never be too commonplace, too simple or too fluent, since these are qualities that can make a work accessible to the great masses of people and help them to swallow down these substantial foods that it is one's duty to offer them.
Thus, in the name of moral imperatives, we end by accepting the immorality that, in literature, results from
a negligent, conformist, hardly sincere, hardly honest attitude towards reality.
By presenting readers with a reality that is mutilated and a snare, an indigent, flat appearance in which, once the first moments of excitement and hope have passed, they find nothing that really constitutes their lives—neither the real difficulties with which they must cope nor the real conflicts they have to face—we alienate them and arouse their distrust, we discourage them in their efforts to find in literature the essential satisfaction that it alone can give them: a deeper, more complex, clearer, truer knowledge of what they are, of their circumstances and their lives, than they can acquire alone.
Here and there, by drawing upon a sincere, living experience whose roots go deep into the unconscious source from which all creative effort springs, completely shattering the old, sclerosed forms, writers have discovered and are still discovering the aspect of reality that can render direct and effective service to the propagation and victory of revolutionary ideas. But it can also happen (even in a society that applies itself to being the fairest and best designed for assuring the harmonious development of all its members: this may be stated as a certainty without any risk of being mistaken) that isolated, maladjusted, lonely individuals, morbidly attached to their childhood, withdrawn into themselves and cultivating a more or less conscious taste for a certain form of defeat, by giving in to an apparently useless obsession, succeed in digging up and laying bare a fragment of reality that is still unknown.
Their works, which seek to break away from all that is prescribed, conventional and dead, to turn towards what is free, sincere and alive, will necessarily, sooner or later, become ferments of emancipation and progress.
We can understand that it should have seemed and should still seem inopportune to allow the masses, who had been maintained in ignorance for centuries, to have too rapid access to a deeper knowledge of the complexities and contradictions of their lives: this would tend to divert them from the task of construction on which their existence depends, and which requires their concentrated attention as well as their entire effort.
However, the indifference, the increasing detachment, not only of their leaders but of the masses themselves with regard to literary works that lack vitality, that are fabricated according to the old- fashioned methods of sclerosed formalism, and the interest shown by these masses in the great works of the past that are being revealed to them, prove that the time is not far off when these maladjusted, lonely individuals should not only be allowed to work without being discouraged, but should even be encouraged to give in to their obsessions.
January 1956.
{1} 'Roger Grenier, 'Utilité du fait divers,' Temps Modernes, No. 17, p. 95.
{2} Maurice Blanchot, Faux Pas, pp. 257 and 259.
{3} Cl.-Edmond Magny, 'Roman américain et Cinéma', Poesie 45, No. 24, p. 69.
{4} André Gide, Dostoievski, p. 145.
{5} Id., p. 185.
{6} La Table Ronde, Paris, January, 1948, p. 145.
{7} From Flaubert's correspondence.
'Not once,' wrote Proust, 'does one of my characters shut a window, wash his hands, put on his overcoat, utter a phrase of introduction. If there is anything at all new about the book, this would be it! . . .' (Letter to Robert Dreyfus).
{9} Quentin is the Christian name of both the uncle and the niece; Caddy of the mother and daughter.
{10} 'These gross motives, these vast, apparent movements, are usually all that is seen by both writers and readers, who are borne along by the movement of the action and spurred on by the plot in Behaviourist novels. They have neither time nor means—not having at their disposal a sufficiently delicate instrument of investigation—to see clearly the more fleeting, subtler movements that these grosser movements may conceal.
Indeed, we can understand the aversion these writers feel for what they call 'analysis,' which, for them, would consist in pointing out these perfectly visible, frank motives, thus doing the reader's work for him and giving themselves the disagreeable impression of forcing already open doors.
It is nevertheless curious to observe that, to escape the boredom of going round and round in the narrow circle of customary actions, in which they find really nothing much left to be gleaned, seized with the desire natural to all writers to take their readers into unknown regions, and haunted, in spite of everything, by the existence of the 'dark places,' but still firmly convinced that action by itself can reveal them, they make their characters commit unwonted, monstrous acts which the reader, comfortably settled in his own clear conscience, and finding nothing in these criminal acts that corresponds to what he has learned to see in his own conduct, regards with proud, horrified curiosity, then quietly thrusts aside to return to his own affairs, as he does every morning and every evening after reading his newspaper, without the heavy shadow that submerges his own dark places having lifted for a single second.
{11} Stendhal.
{12} Baudelaire.
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