ART AND REVO' LT
273
value escaping in a perpetual becoming; but which the artist senses
and wishes to snatch from history. We can show this even more
clearly by reflecting on the art which, precisely, proposes to enter
into the flux and give it a style: the novel.
It is possible to separate the literature of consent, which roughly
coincides with the centuries of antiquity and classicism, from the
literature of dissidence that begins with modern times. In the
former, the novel is a rarity. When it exists, with rare exceptions,
it is not concerned with history but with fantasy
(Theagena and
Charides
or
L'
Astree).
They are tales, not novels. With the second
kind of literature, on the contrary, the novel as a genre develops,
and it has not ceased enriching and extending itself up to our own
day simultaneously with the movement of criticism and revolution.
The novel is born at the same time as the spirit of revolt, and it
translates the same ambition on the aesthetic plane.
"A make-believe story, written in prose," says Littre of the
novel. Is it nothing but that? A Catholic critic, Stanislas Fumet,
has nonetheless written: "Art, whatever its aim, enters into a guilty
rivalry with God." It is more precise, indeed, to speak of a rivalry
with God-so far as the novel is concerned-than to speak of a
rivalry with the civil register. Thibaudet expressed a similar idea
when he said, apropos of Balzac: "The 'Human Comedy'
is
an
'Imitation' of God the Father." The effort of great literature seems
to be to create closed universes or self-sufficient types. The Occident,
in its great creations, does not limit itself to retracing everyday life.
Without ceasing, it conjures up great images and throws itself
feverishly in their pursuit.
After
all,
to write and read a novel are unusual actions. It
is not inevitable, or necessary, for one to construct a story by a
new arrangement of true facts. Even if the vulgar explanation were
true, that this gives pleasure to the writer and reader, we should
still ask by what necessity the majority of men find pleasure and
interest in make-believe stories. Revolutionary criticism condemns
the pure novel as the escape of an idle imagination. Ordinary lan–
guage, in its turn, labels the untruthful recital of a bungling journalist
as being "like a novel." Not so long ago, it was customary, against
all
the laws of probability, to say that young girls were like "those
