36
PARTISAN REVIEW
Moreover, Romanticism is far from being so dreadful as Mirsky
makes out. Its impulse was partly reactionary, of course, but in ap–
proaching the old values through the self-consciousness of the new
epoch,
it
responded to new emotions and invented new themes. There
are numberless examples of this dual function of Romanticism. Cha–
teaubriand, for instance, was faithful to throne and altar; he set out
to defend tradition and belabor Rousseau. "I am not like Rousseau,"
he wrote in the introduction to
AtaLa,
"an enthusiast over savages....
I do not think that pure nature is ... beautiful. ... I have always
found
it
ugly. Let us paint nature, but selected nature
(La belle nature) .
Art should not concern itself with the imitation of monsters." This
declaration, however, as Saint Beuve noted, was belied by the actual
content of
AtaLa,
in which one meets a crocodile on virtually every
page.
Dostoevsky'S "crocodiles" are
thinking
men.
