LESLIE FIEDLER
The Break-through is characterized not only by the separa–
tion of psychology from philosophy, the displacement of the tra–
ditional leading genres by the personal lyric and analytic prose
fiction (with the consequent subordination of plot to character) ;
it is
also
marked by the promulgation of a theory of revolution
as a good in itself and, most notably perhaps, by a new concept
of inwardness. One is almost tempted to say, by the invention of
a new kind of
self,
a new level of mind; for what has been hap–
pening since the eighteenth century seems more like the develop–
ment of a new organ than the mere finding of a new way to
describe old experience. The triumph, for instance, of the theory
that insanity is not possession by forces outside the psyche but a
failure within the psyche itself is a representative aspect of the
change-over.
It was Diderot who represented a first real awareness (as
Freud represents a final one) that man is
double
to the final
depths of
his
soul, the prey of conflicting psyches both equally
himself. The conflict had, of course, always been felt, but had
traditionally been described as occurring between man and devil,
or flesh and spirit; that the parties
to
the dispute are both man
and spirit was a revolutionary suggestion. In his demi-novel,
Ra–
meau's Nephew,
Diderot projected the conflicting divisions with–
in man's mind as the philosopher and the parasite, the rational–
ist and the underground man, debating endlessly the cause of
the head versus that of the gut. And in his pornographic
Bijoux
Indiscrets,
he proposed another version of the same dialogue:
the enchanted (and indiscreet) genitals speak the truth which
the mouth
will
not avow, thus comprising an allegorical defense
of pornography in the guise of a pornographic work. In the
same year in which Richardson's sentimental novel
Clarissa
was
published, John Cleland's long-lived
dirty
book
The Memoirs of
Fanny HiU
was making a stir. Pornography and obscenity are,
indeed, hallmarks of the age of the Break-through. Not only
pious novels but titillating ones show the emergence of the
