330
PARTISAN REVIEW
define, as exactly as possible, the role played by symbols in prose
literature. This is no simple task, for both symbol and novel are essen–
tially collective concepts, which respectively lump together the most
diverse varieties of symbolism and narrative fiction. Precision, per–
haps even extreme simplification in statement, can alone shed light
on the very complex relations between novel and symbol, and I am
well aware of the dangers inherent in this approach. I am also aware
that finding even one critical flaw in the armor of symbolism is a
sure way of making oneself unpopular these days.
Although the historical approach to any critical problem is now
considered hopelessly outmoded, we do need the perspective of his–
tory, if only as a check against our private prejudices and currently
accepted views. And in fact the historical test shows that the pre–
vailing opinion cannot be right: Symbolism, in the specific sense
developed by modern writers, is not the necessary condition of litera..
ture, nor are all novels symbolic. (For neither we nor the proponents
of the dogma take it to mean every work of
art
is vaguely symbolic
for the simple reason that it represents life.) The great nineteenth–
century novel is not the product of an imagination working in sym–
bolic forms. It is a representation of life, but not a symbolic repre-'
sentation. Stendhal, Balzac, Tolstoy, to mention only the greatest,
did without symbols is the specific sense; for many good reasons,
there is no room for the symbol in their works. This most significant
tradition of the novel is non-symbolic, or at least neutral in regard
to the symbol.
In its origins the European novel, in contrast to the early Ameri–
can novel, is a child of the Age of Enlightenment and of historicism.
The so-called realistic novel of the late eighteenth and early nine–
teenth centuries
is
empirical in both its attitudes and its technical
procedures. It is realistic, not because it set out to produce an ab–
solutely faithful re-creation of reality, but because it holds that only
what actually is can furnish trustworthy data concerning our destiny
as human beings. In this sense it is agnostic, sceptical, empirical, and
secular. In his
The Rise of the Novel
(1957) Ian Watt has shown
that the novels of Defoe, Fielding, and Richardson were born of the
same
Zeitgeist
as the philosophies of Locke and Descartes. They are
critical and unprejudiced studies of life as represented by memorable
personages whose destiny is determined by their individual character,
