638
ROBERT GREER COHN
in'the strung-out condition of writing, a feeling of the variegated
harmony and simultaneity of life.
And what is synthesis without the primary building force of
existence: love? Tolstoyan love of life-not just some sector or
faction of it
a
la. Sartre-is what gives us so often, particularly
in
the early volumes, Proust's good candid voice, the bell-tone of
his poetic prose. Sartre's tone-allowing the authenticity of
his
writing in certain pages of
La Nausee,
e.g. the Sunday promen–
ade and, more rarely, in
Les Chemins-is
too frequently me–
chanical, forced,
voulu,
demonstrative, hurried, polemical. Proust
is more patient, sweeter, more
there.
He is an artist.
To dub Proust "analytic" is doubly unworthy of Sartre, not
only because he is far less of an artist than Proust but
also
be–
cause he knows that analysis is a necessary moment of the know–
ing process, that it is even built into (though integrated out of
sight) the subtlest instinct or vision. Proust knew, as well as Pas–
cal, Hegel, Bergson, Sartre himself, that if the last word is for
synthesis ("instinct" in the following passage, "imagination"
elsewhere in his novel),
up
to
that last, analysis plays a decisive
role in any creativity. And so Proust writes: "each day I attach
less value to intelligence [but]
if
intelligence does not merit the
supreme crown, it alone can bestow it. And if in the hierarchy of
virtues it has only the second place it alone can proclaim that
in–
stinct must occupy the first place." (Preface to
Contre
Sainte–
Beuve.)
By 1945, when he wrote his introduction to
Les Temps
M odernes,
Sartre had worked up considerable momentum, and
chose this terrain for a frontal assault on Proust:
This legend of the poet's irresponsibility that we denounced.a mo–
ment ago, springs from the analytical mind. Since the bourgeois
authors consider themselves as peas in a can, the solidarity which
unites them with other people seems strictly mechanical to
them,
i.e., a mere juxtaposition. Even
if
they feel strongly about
their
literary mission, they think they have done enough when they have
described their own nature or that of their friends. Since all men
