606
PARTISAN REVIEW
He was made rabid-to use his own word-by
this
book,
this
phrase,
this
solecism,
this
grossness of shape or form,
this
debasement of man–
ners,
this
hollow imitation of thought. He was beyond believing that
he could do anything to stem or divert the flood of swinishness, as he
called it, that was sweeping away every hope of the good
life-Bouvard
and Pecuchet
is a triumph of the critical mind, but if we suppose criti–
cism to be characterized by the intention to correct and reform, the
book cannot be called a work of criticism. In its intention it is less
to be compared with any other literary work than with the stand of
Roland at Roncesvalles. No less beset than the hero, no less hopeless,
no less grim, and no less grimly glad, Flaubert resolves that while the
breath of life is in him he will give blow for blow and pile up the
corpses of his enemies as a monument to the virtues they despise and
he adores.
His long fierce passion for the book was not matched by the ex–
pectation of certain of his friends who were most competent to esti–
mate the chances of its success. "I am preparing a book," he wrote to
Turgenev in November of 1872, "in which I shall spit out my bile."
But Turgenev grew troubled, and so did Taine and Zola, because
Flaubert was precisely not spitting out his bile. The new novel,
as
Flaubert said of it, was to be "a kind of encyclopedia made into farce,"
and he devoured libraries,
his
notebooks grew ever more numerous,
and his pride in them grew with their number; he was to brag that
he had read 1,500 books in preparation for the novel. Anyone who
loved Flaubert must have been dismayed as he gave year after year
of his life to gathering the materials for a massive joke which was no
doubt very funny but surely not so funny as to need this sacrificial
attention from a man of genius. His love of research, his insatiable
craving for particularity, was said to have spoiled
Salammbo
by over–
loading it with antiquarian lumber. Now it threatened to defeat the
new work. Turgenev and Taine believed that an intellectual satire such
as Flaubert planned must be short if it was to be read; Turgenev
pointed to Swift and Voltaire in support of his opinion that
Bouvard
and
Pecuchet
must be treated
presto.
But Flaubert persisted in his ex–
travagance. What he wanted to do, he said, was nothing less than to
take account of the whole intellectual life of France.
"If
it were treated
briefly, made concise and light, it would be a fantasy-more or less
witty, but without weight or plausibility; whereas if I give it detail
