PARTISAN REVIEW
In the face of such kindness, one can't be humble enough-! mean,
humble enough with regard to people: it is obviously impossible
ever to be anything but humble with regard to art, because
qf
the
disparity between what could be done and what one does do. For
me personally, as a woman, any sort of kindness or being wished
well or thought well of is the breath of life. Nor is that need wholly
personal, womanish: it exists in the writing part of me too. I was
struck by Osbert Sitwell's saying the other day, in
The Scarlet Tree,
that the artist, like the child, makes the best growth,
does
best, in an
atmosphere of affection and encouragement. How I agree.
At the same time, you don't think it possible that things these
days may be almost too propitious? And that to let this propitiousness
invade us mayn't make for a lowering of internal pressure? We must
have something to push against. Oh well, one need not worry: we
always shall have. I expect the effects of the present pro-art indoc–
trination are very much more limited than I'm inclined to feel. A
healthy animal indifference to art probably is endemic in human
nature, in your crowds in the Lichfield marketplace.
If
anyone on
that wet day had been told they were shouldering up a writer, they'd
probably have thought: "Lucky to have an indoor job." It's this
virgin indifference on the part of the mass of people, this unspoken
individual mystery in each one of them, that they don't propose to
trade in, that's lovable and infatuating, that makes you and me write
novels• and stories. One writes
for
the ideal reader, but not about
him. At least, I don't, and you don't. One writes, in so many cases,
about the man or woman who would throw a crooked glance at your
or my page of prose and groan: "What
is
this
about?" I doubt–
though the analogy on my part may be impertinent- whether, for
instance, a Proust character could or would have read Proust. Oh
yes, Oriane de Guermantes might have- but with a glance up at the
clock, from time to time, to see if it was time yet to go and dress
for the ball, alternating with a light sigh: "Ce pauvre Marcel. ... "
Oh yes, and Bloch would have. But how Proust loathed Bloch. Emma
Bovary would have dropped asleep over
Madame Eo vary
long before
she came to anything she could like. But, of course for Flaubert that
was half the pleasure- making "uninteresting" people (by which one
implies, uninterested people) interesting to himself.
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