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JOSEPH FRANK
existence, but only a sustained and disciplined
[?]
pursuit of ourselves
inwardly, only life truly lived leads to wisdom." This remark accurately
conveys the sense of increasing disenchantment with the world that
pervades the book, and the process of inner withdrawal and spiritual
purification exemplified by the narrator's life. Whether such values
should be ruled out of the Western tradition entirely is of course
disputable. E. R . Curtius seems
to
me much closer to the actual sources
of
Prou~t's
culture in calling him a Platonist. But in any case, there
is
a sense in Proust of being hopelessly entrapped on the wheel of life that
may be described as "Oriental." Such an emphasis, however, implicitly
concedes the point that Fernandez was trying to make.
No doubt these oscillations in Mr. Shattuck's interpretation stem
partly from the very richness and complexity of Proust himself, whose
work is an inexhaustible and many-faceted prism that appears differently
from each new angle of illumination. More essentially, though, Mr.
Shattuck's difficulties arise from his determination to read into or out
of Proust everything that he most values himself. On the one hand, he
speaks of Proust's novel assuming "the proportions of a gospel" because "
it rejects "the bravura activism and possessiveness of the West." On
the other, he tries to convince
U"S
that the narrator's renunciation of the
world amounts to an active domination of life's complexities" Un–
fortunately one cannot have the best of both East and West in one
writer, even in so great a writer as Proust. Mr. Shattuck cannot con–
sistently both exalt him for rejecting the standards of the Western
tradition of moral activism, and then argue that his character achieves a
self-integration that fulfills these very standards.
It
is permissible to
maintain that these standards are inapplicable to Proust, or that they are
in any case spiritually inferior
to
the ones expressed by his work; but not
that he both accepts and negates them at the same time.
For all these reasons, the "wrench" that Mr. Shattuck gives "to
Proustian esthetics seems
to
me to throw it entirely out of kilter rather
than to provide a more proper adjustment of its parts. But this does
not mean, of course, that his book has no value. On the contrary, Mr.
Shattuck is an excellent example of a critic whose intense one-sidedness
has led to some extremely fecund results. More specifically, his exclusive
focus on the reco"gnition-scene has led to his definitive treatment of the
"optics of Time"; this important subject will scarcely have to be explored
again. In addition, the book contains many other excellent observations
of great interest. One such is his remark on the importance of "forgetful–
ness" as a necessary condition for the workings of the "optics of Time."
This shrewd insight serves as an esthetic justification for the sheer
