Nathalie Sarraute
FLAUBERT
Books that have real vitality continue to perturb and sway
the course of literature for a long time, and periodically we see them
emerge from their remoteness to come join the fray, participate in
the struggles of the day, side with one camp or the other, share in
its defeat or victory.
This happened with Stendhal just after the last war. His dry,
direct, perfectly natural, matter-of-fact style, without trace of bombast
or desire to please, stark to excess, transparent and invisible, a style
through which one passes to achieve a goal one feels urgently driven
to reach, was considered a model for the most modem writing. It
was the
dernier eri,
and well-known writers did not hesitate to
copy it.
Just now we all have one
maitre,
Flaubert, whose work, it is
unanimously agreed, is the precursor of today's novel. His work is
said to correspond to the problems and demands of the contemporary
writer-a point which is never questioned.
But beyond this point have appeared certain differences of
opinion that are defended by reasoning which is frequently contradic–
tory. Some claim Flaubert's work, some the ideas he expressed con–
cerning it or on literature in general, while others claim both his ideas
and his work, in which they discover features that foreshadow and
justify their own endeavors.
For some, Flaubert is the father of the present-day novel, the
novelist whose work marks the appearance of modem literature,
because he was the first for whom form played a predominant role.
Form, they say, was the object of
his
research;
all
his concern, all his
anxiety as a writer, was centered on form. And indeed the tortures,
the long martyrdom, to which this concern with fine writing sub-
