332
PARTISAN REVIEW
dans Milan"-so
Stendhal begins
La Chartreuse de Parme,
and
this
event is the fulcrum in the life and destiny of Fabrizio del Dongo.
But it is never the mythopoeic aspect of history which these writers
seek out and emphasize; history is always referred to the individua:l.
Even situations that invite mythopoeic treatment are passed over,
and indeed, whatever illusion naturally attaches to such situations
is consciously destroyed. Stendhal "disenchants" Napoleon's battles;
Tolstoy "demythifies" the great fire of Moscow. He states emphati–
cally that it was not set by the inhabitants to demonstrate their and
Russia's spirit of resistance. It was no patriotic beacon and no symbol;
the city was built of wood, and therefore was bound to go up in
flames when the citizens left and enemy soldiers moved in. The exact
empirical truth means more to Tolstoy than even the most apt
symbolic interpretation. A symbolist would say that here the artist
in Tolstoy was defeated by the historian. But the truth is that we
here have a manifestation of the principle of the historical novel,
which derives the meaning of events solely from experienced and
duly established reality.
What are the principles of artistic creation in this kind of novel?
The most important principle has to do with subject matter. Almost
all of these novels were written for the sake of the great discovery
of the age, the personality of the individual; it is this that shapes the
novel. Julien Sorel, Fabrizio del Dongo, Balzac's many heroes, Pierre
Bezukhov, Prince Andrey, and Anna Karenina are personalities of
fascinating interest, and as such they justify the work of
art.
They are
characteristic, but they are not typical. On the contrary, they are
unique and incomparable, but they are so constructed that in them
the problems of the human situation stand out with particular force.
H it is the task of the novel to show how character, milieu, historical
period, and the individual's relations to others shape his destiny,
there can be no further question as to what principle governs the
selection of subject matter. It must be the principle of a causality,
not precisely demonstrable but accepted because factually present,
between the external world and human actions, the same causality
that in a wider context is also the concern of the historian. Certain
elements in the specific circumstances shape the actions and destiny
of the hero. Hence certain details of the circumstances are important;
and so the novelist depicts them for the reader. Stendhal begins his
