576
PARTISAN REVIEW
in fact, harassed by all the forms of madness which assail us from
every
side, would be a better vindication than the whole of
his
little
hour·
geois fiction. In this work, of which unfortunately the author has
It–
leased only some fragments, there are some truly brilliant passages. I
do not speak only of the prodigious feast of Nebuchadnezzar, of
the
marvelous apparition of that little fool of a Queen of Sheba, like
a
miniature dance on the retina of a hermit, of the charlatanesque
and
definitely theatrical procession of Apollonius of Tyanus followed
by
his
elephant-driver, or rather his provider, the imbecile millionaire
whom he drags around the world. I would especially like to draw
the
reader's attention to that quality of suffering underground and seeth–
ing, which
runs
through the entire work, that shadowy vein
(what
the English call
subcurrent)
which lights and guides the way through
this pandemoniacal Capharnaum of solitude.
It
would have been easy for me to show,
as
I
have already said,
that
M.
Gustave Flaubert has voluntarily concealed in
Madame
Bovary
the high lyrical and ironic qualities so unreservedly demon·
strated in the
Tentation,
and that the latter work, which is the secret
chamber of his mind, is obviously the more interesting to poets
and
philosophers.
Perhaps another time I will have the pleasure of completing this
task.
(Translated by William Troy)
