138
JOSEPH
FRANK
Shattuck believes they are of secondary significance for any adequate
understanding of the book. "In this exact sense" he affinns, using italics
to reinforce his point, "most of Proust's commentators have gone astray.
The ultimate moment' of the book is not a
moment bienheureux
but a
recogniti·on."
The common failure
to
recognize this point, Mr. Shattuck
tells us, forces him "to give a sharp wrench to the generally accepted
interpretation of Proust's esthetics."
Now it is simply not true that all other critics have based their
analysis of Proust exclusively on the
moments bienheureux
and have
unduly neglected the recognition-scene.
l
What is true, however, is
that no other critic has made the recognition-scene the crucial center
around which the entire meaning of the novel revolves. Most have
brought these two aspects of the book together in some sort of positive
relation. But one of Mr. Shattuck's main aims is to drive a wedge
between the
moments bienheureux
and this final scene. To be sure,
he acknowledges the importance of the fonner as presentiments; but he
insists on denying them a moral significance that hannonizes with and
culminates in the act of recognition at the climax. Instead, he sees
these
momenfs
as in effect
obstacles
to the attainment of self-knowledge.
"The attitude of passivity on which they rely and the tendency they
have to encourage the substitution of pleasure for effort, and objects
for people, prevent them from offering the key to Marcel's salvation."
Mr. Shattuck attempts to support his devaluation of the
moments
bienheureux
by an esthetic argument that is worth dwelling on for a
moment.
If
the center of the book were contained in these latter, he
contends, then "the structure of Proust's novel would be open
to
severe
criticism. The role of the
moments bienheureux
in the action ceases
two hundred pages before the end, and had the novel stopped there,
a perfect circle could be drawn through this final scene and the early
experience of the
madeleine."
Presumably, then, the criticism would
be that Proust had tacked on two hundred extra pages that add nothing
to the book's ultimate significance. But if we accept Mr. Shattuck's view,
would Proust's artistry be any better vindicated?
Why should he have introduced those elaborate descriptions of the
moments bienheureux)
which each time fill the narrator with a sense of
unutterable joy and peace, if the significance of these events is really
negated by the final consummation-if they represent only, as Mr.
Shattuck will have it, "a vicious circle of fascination with a fleeting
1. In this connection, Mr. Shattuck might have another look at my own article
on "Spatial Form in Modern Literature," which he taxes with exactly this
oversight.
