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PA RTISAN REVIEW
what is the value of a novel about intelligent people who are unable
to show intelligence with respect to the problems they consider funda–
mental?
It
is wonderful that Simone de Beauvoir's characters are not
thoughtless. But how discouraging that they are so foolish, opinionated,
and ignorant! How interesting it is to see them at their intellectual
worst, when they have to deal with personal problems which intelligence
cannot solve. And how boring they are when they really set their
minds to work, and on problems where the intelligence should be most
at home! How well they talk about politics! And how ridiculous is
what they have to say about it.
But are these contradictions of the characters those of the author
also? I think so, in so far as Simone de Beauvoir makes no distinction
between her characters as persons and as proponents of ideas. We
cannot take her seriously when she presents as serious the political dis–
cussions of her Mandarins. She is simply incapable of judging their
opinions. So while we are glad she gave us a book about intellectuals,
we must be saddened by the fact that they are all so lacking in intellect.
Lionel Abel
RECOVERED PROU ST
JEAN SANTEU IL.
By
Morcel Proust. Tron sloted
by
Gerord Hopkins, with
o preface
by
Andre Mourois. Simon and Schuster. $5.95.
Proust was sizeable territory to begin with, and in recent years
he has had whole hinterlands added to him by the industry of French
scholars. For one thing,
A la R echerche du temps perdu
has now ac–
quired two alternative texts. MM. Pierre Clarac and Andre Ferre have
compared the old text with Proust's manuscripts and come up with a
version of the novel containing several thousand altered readings. Their
monumental performance has not exactly "revolutionized the study of
Proust" but it has cleared up many difficulties, especially in the problem–
haunted section that used to be called
Albertine disparue
and is now
called
La Fugitive.
The entire work in its new text is now published
in three fine expensive volumes of the Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, com–
plete with tables of variant readings, indices of personal and place
names, a chronology of the author's life, a full resume of the story, and
the inevitable preface by Andre Maurois.
Meanwhile another French scholar, Bernard de Fallois, has dis–
covered among Proust's papers two considerable works of his earlier
years, neither of which was finished or committed to print by him.
