616
PARTISAN REVIEW
swer every question "quietly" as Stephen Dedalus does, but, on the
contrary, is without dignity in love or thought, is yet seen to be a
proper object of our respect and affection. Don Quixote is too old,
too stringy, too poor, as well as too late in the day, for chivalry and
courtly love, but he is not too much or too little of anything to be
wise with a new kind of wisdom. The ancient inscription that Mr.
Pickwick discovers is deciphered to read "Bill Stubbs, his mark,"
which he believes to be nothing but the operation of malice-he
really has no mind at all except what makes him defy Dodson
&
Fogg and become the saint of the Fleet.
So with Bouvard and pecuchet. They are funny because they
are what they are, because they are middle-aged, because one is fat
and one is thin; because they wear strange garments; because they
are unmarried and awkward in love; because they are innocent; be–
cause they are clumsy and things blow up in their faces, or fall on
them, or trip them up; because they are gullible and think they are
shrewd; because they are full of enthusiasm. Being funny in them–
selves, being comically
not
the men for high enterprises, they are
therefore funny when they undertake the intellectual life. Their com–
icality is
a priori,
it does not grow out of their lack of intelligence.
When it comes to intelligence, many a man has less who can com–
mand a better laboratory technique than theirs. Granted that they be–
gin each adventure in stupidity, as they progress through the intellec–
tual disciplines these "simple, lucid, mediocre" minds (as Maupas–
sant called them) are likely to see whatever absurdities are to
be
seen; they are the catalysts of the foolishness of others.
Then, whether or not they are properly to be called apostles,
their degree of virtue and their generosity of spirit are unmistakable.
Their hearts-and what is more, their minds--instinctively take the
side of the insulted and injured.
If
they cannot stay long with one
idea, they nevertheless live by the mind; the courage that this re–
quires they abundantly have.
It
is not they who exemplify the vices of
the bourgeoisie that Flaubert despised. For the bourgeoisie they have
nothing but contempt. In their conflicts with the local priest, doctor,
mayor, magnate, it is they who are in the right of things. They stand
for intelligence: they are traitors to their class. And they suffer the
consequences; they acquire the peculiar pathos of their dedication.
