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PARTISAN REVIEW
obsession with the problem of time is nothing but the expression of
his pessimistic outlook on life. Time is the real subject of his novels,
and the motive power behind his characters. It is the principle which
wears them out, which destroys and devours them. For it is time
itself, the mere passing of time, the monotonous, never-changing, bare
sequence of hours, days, and years which undermines their lives. And
just this, just the fact that they are not destroyed by tragedies and
catastrophes, that they die not from their greatest disappointments,
but perish slowly with faded hopes and broken ambitions, is their sad–
dest experience. This slow, imperceptible, irresistible pining away, this
silent wearing out of life, is the experience around which FIaubert's
novels and practically the whole of the modern Naturalistic novel
revolve.
Flaubert discovers the constant presence of passing and past time
in our life. He is the first to feel that the present, every present, is dull
and without significance, and that even the past was lacking in all
value and attraction so long as it was the present. He is the first to
discover the truth of Proust's dictum that the real paradises are the
lost paradises. Proust is, in fact, the only legitimate heir of FIaubert;
he is, in any case, the first to develop further and to deepen his con–
ception of time. But Proust approaches the problem from the aspect
of a new generation-a generation brought up on the lesson of Im–
pressionism, on the conscious experience of instantaneous impressions
and the endeavor to render the mood and atmosphere of the fleeting
moment. Proust's time is a structure which rests on the pillars of two
moments, an arch which connects a transitory, apparently meaning–
less and puzzling experience with a similar experience in the past,
and it is just this connection, an affinity defeating time, which gives
meaning and significance to them.
It was the discovery of Impressionism that facts and phenomena,
shapes and structures have no objective and constant meaning, but
only a subjective, shifting, perspective significance; that everything
changes with time and time itself consists of moments which not only
are thoroughly individual and, in a way, unique, but also appear in
a different shape from every angle and for every individual eye.
The scientific origins of the Impressionist conception of time
are obvious. Impressionism is, to start
with,
the artistic statement
of a philosophy which is also expressed in the theories of the con–
servation of matter and energy, a philosophy which has accustomed
