WHAT IS WRITING?
one point of view it is a possession; he lends his body to the dead in
order that they may come back to .life. And from another point of
view it is a contact with the beyond. Indeed, the book is not at
all
an object; neither is it an act, nor even a thought. Written by a dead
man about dead things, it no longer has any place on this earth; it
speaks of nothing which interests us directly. Left to itself, it falls
back and collapses; there remain only inkspots on musty paper. And
when the critic reanimates these spots, when he makes letters and
words of them, they speak to him of passions which he does not feel,
of bursts of anger without objects, of dead fears and hopes. It is a
whole disincarnated world which surrounds
him,
where human feel–
ings, because they are no longer affecting, have passed on to the status
of exemplary feelings and, in a word, of
values.
So, he persuades him–
self that he has entered into relations with an intelligible world which
is like the truth of his daily sufferings. And their reason for being.
He thinks that nature imitates art, as for Plato the world of the
senses imitates that of the archetypes. And during the time he is read–
ing,
his
everyday life becomes an appearance. His nagging wife, his
hunchbacked son, they too are appearances. And he will put up with
them because Xenophon has drawn the portrait of Xantippe and
Shakespeare that of Richard III.
It is a holiday for him when contemporary authors do him the
favor of dying. Their books, too raw, too living, too urgent, pass on
to the other shore; they become less and less affecting ·and more and
more beautiful. After a short stay in Purgatory they go on to people
the intelligible heaven with new values. Bergotte, Swann, Siegfried
and Bella, and Monsieur Teste are recent acquisitions. He is waiting
for Nathanael and Menalque.
As
for the writers who persist in living,
he a:sks them only not to move about too much, and to make an
effort to
r~emble
from now on the dead men they will be. Valery,
who for twenty-five years had been publishing posthumous books,
managed the matter very nicely. That is why, like some highly excep–
tional saints, he was canonized during his lifetime. But Malraux is
scandalous.
Our critics are Catharians. They don't want to have anything
to do with the real world except eat and drink in it, and since
it
is
absolutely necessary to have relations with our fellow-creatures, they
25
