moody fantasies is crippling. We
may be hypnotized by
it;
we all
have deep impulses to passivity be–
fore the fright of time; but an as–
piration to perfection expressed as
static clutching leads finally to
paralysis. We stiffen; we are iso–
lated. Platonism here parallels
what the psychoanalysts call 'fixa–
tion'-a retreat to impossibly per–
fect and unchanging gratifications
or frustrations. We sneeze, we
wheeze, our bodies protest.
Let us now set the empirical
novelist against the deductive one.
"Love" is not an abstraction to be
encompassed by definition: it is
this Jack and Jane, that Bud and
Joy-look and see! The novelist
is
not
studying shadows for some
ultimate reality beyond earth; he
accepts that the shadows them–
selves give him all that he can
know; in fact, that they are
enough; in fact, they are not
shadows-they are thick reality it–
self and a marvel to behold.
The man moving in conscious–
ness and contemplation of his will
-really conscious and watching,
really moving and committed-is
the personality capable of defining
freedom for all of us. His is the
will which, in type, reaches to the
divine maximum, where God made
something from nothing, the heav–
ens and earth popping out of his
pride in six days, not seven--on
the seventh day He gloated. At a
slightly less monstrous level, Bal–
zac created
Pere Goriot
in fifty–
eight days, complete with Vautrin
-461
swarming over Rastignac's soul.
Love, ambition, power under the
sun of mortality! These are the is–
sues; the great heroes of fiction
meet their risks head-on, as we all
must do, but too often we do it
also faces down.
The novelist must reach for the
grown-up, risking, athletic person–
ality, surely must in some way be
this person, in order to find a hero
who gives the sense of men at their
best on earth: and catch him fi–
nally where his great gifts do not
suffice: this is tragedy. American
life is rich in suggestions of tragic
themes: The man in politics is
cracked by his
ambition~but
real–
ly involved, not floating above pol–
itics; the man in business fails
against the fierce appetite of the
devouring business world-but
really struggling and pretty fierce
himself while not mistaking the
business world for the whole of
life; the lover is lost by love, as it
is perhaps still possible to be, but
by a love which is health and de-
Sociological Studies
of the European
Drama and Novel,
1600-1900
By LEO LOWENTHAL
Shows the changing
image Western man
has had of himself in
relation to his society.
$4.95
WRITE FOR SPRING CATALOG
BEACON PRESS
BEACON HILL, BOSTON
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