612
PARTISAN REVIEW
geois savants. And the ingenious reader may amuse himself by
dis–
covering all the analogies that may be drawn between
Bouvard and
Pecuchet
and
Faust.
II
((Bouvard et Pecuchet sont-its des imbeciles?"
The blunt
question is the title of an essay, notable in the history of Flaubert
criticism, which was published in 1912 by the eminent scholar Rene
Dumesnil. It is the question which lies at the heart of the ambiguity
of
Bouvard and pecuchet.
It
will perhaps seem strange that ambiguity should be imputed
to the novel. In England and America more people know about
Bouvard and Pecuchet
than have read it. The author's purpose
as
stated in his famous correspondence, and also the outline of the story,
are part of our general literary information. Neither the purpose nor
the story suggests the possibility of ambiguity. Flaubert's avowed in–
tention, that of pillorying the culture of bourgeois democracy, does
not seem likely to induce or even permit more than one meaning to
appear.
As
for his plan of having two simple copying clerks under–
take to master seriatim all the sciences and disciplines and to come to
grief or boredom with each one, it seems clear and schematic to a
degree, even to a fault-it is hard to see why it should not be en–
tirely within the control of the author's equally clear purpose. Yet
it has been said by a French writer that of all the works of Flaubert,
it is
Bouvard and Pecuchet
that gives the critics the most trouble;
that it is a book which is intricate, complex, and difficult to analyze;
that its meaning is hard to come at.s
Indeed, so great is the ambiguity of
Bouvardand Pecuchet
that
it is possible to conclude that the book quite fails to be what Flaubert
intended it to be. Which does not, of course, prevent it from being
something else of a very good sort.
The trouble starts with the fact that Bouvard and Pecuchet,
as
Dumesnil demonstrated, are
not
imbeciles. Perhaps it is too much to
say, as Dumesnil does say, that they have the souls of apostles, but
imbeciles they certainly are not, and we shall be able to go consider–
ably further in their praise than this mere negation. There can be no
doubt that Flaubert began with the intention of making them as
3 Claude Digeon, in his
Le Dernier Visage de Flaubert,
Paris 1946, p. 94.
