592
PARTISAN REVIEW
Balzac's novels in detail, and intelligently singles out the best. But
when he concludes by saying that the
ComMie humaine
"proves
nothing," that no "conception of the good life" emerges from it, and
that Balzac was an imperfect artist because "his outlook was funda–
mentally immature," the quality of Mr. Turnell's thought and language
seems unequal to the complexity of the critical problem. By way of
brief reply it may be suggested that Balzac's immaturities, or those
most nearly relevant to the problem, were the immaturities of the
novel-form itself at the moment of its first full engagement with the
evils and powers of our society. And the life which the
Comedie
con–
tinues
to
lead in the memories of its readers is not a phantom life.
It
is sustained by the great images of rooms and streets and houses, by
the abrupt compelling juxtaposition of persons, and by other things that
are really there on Balzac's page.
Balzac endows the man of the modern age with at least a febrile
kind of greatness; Flaubert in the main strips him of greatness altogether.
This is how Mr. Turnell sees Flaubert's purpose and why he devotes to
him a long, very personal and, as I think, wildly incoherent chapter.
As in the study of Balzac, the method of accounting for the man and
his art is curious. His personal heritage and historical milieu are al–
lowed substantially no part in his formation. There are only the two
things: his moral will which expresses itself in his art, and his
art
which expresses his moral will. Thus he has,
in
effect, no society as a
man, no subject as an artist; and the bad bourgeois world to which
he pretends to address himself exists only in his imagination. Yet this
spectral Flaubert has, it appears, a story. Having refused to take the
steps whereby he might have "settled down and adapted himself to
life," he evolved an "outlook" which was not "mature" (Mr. Turnell is
an expert on the maturation processes of writers); and devoured by
"cynicism" he undertook in
Madame Bovary
a "carefully planned at–
tack on human nature." Such a career naturally leads to the law
courts. "We may conclude, too," Mr. Turnell writes, "that it was this
nihilism [in
Madame Bovary]
. . .
rather than a few lurid scenes which
really upset French
meres de famille
in the year 1857 and led to
Flaubert's prosecution for indecency."
With this remark Mr. Turnell demurely accomplishes -a literary
revolution. The
bete bourgeoisie
are no longer the villains but the
victims in Flaubert's story.
If
Mr. Turnell will not allow them any
solid existence for Flaubert, he insists on the reality of their existence
for themselves and for himself. Alas the poor
meres de famille!
Had the
prosecutor who represented them in court possessed Mr. Turnell's
