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NATHALIE SARRAUn
jected him are well known: the famous
"gueuloir,"
in which he tested
the harmonies and sonorities of
his
phrases;
his
complaints about the
impossibility of expressing oneself, about the difficulties inherent in
language, that "diabolical prose" which he was constantly, breath–
lessly, pursuing. "My head is swimming and my throat raw from
having hunted, sweated, dug, turned inside out, ransacked and
shouted in countless different ways a sentence that is now finally
finished. It is a good one, that I can guarantee, ..." "To write well,
that's all...." One could find many such quotations.
This has led some people to the conclusion that for Flaubert all
that counted was form. Expression, not content. And they see proof
of
this
fact in declarations like the following, which have become
famous from having been so frequently quoted and requoted in
recent years: "I should like to write books in which one had only
to compose sentences," or, "What I call beauty, what I should like
to do, would be a book about
nothing,
a book that had no tie with
the outside. . . ."
In other words, pure form, whose content, we are told, is unim–
portant. Language that refers to nothing but itself, that refuses to do
service. This is the model, the example, cited in support of current
notions about the real content of the novel; this
is
the justification
for the theories advocating the quest for pure form without concern
for the substance that form reveals.
But it is idle to discuss an author's theories without considering
the results of those theories.
In order, therefore, to inject a bit of life and truth into this
discussion, we shall have to examine Flaubert's own novels. Let us
see, then, to what
this
arduous quest of form led, what was the
result of all
this
gigantic effort. But first let us examine
this
form, this
language, which is supposed to be self-sufficient, as though it were
really the only content of these works.
For this we must
try
to forget all preconceived ideas, all critical
commentary on this language, and force ourselves to enter into the
direct, ingenuous contact with it that
all
works of art, however time–
worn, however familiar, demand. We must forget, too, all controversy,
and
try
to read as though for the first time, concentrating, to begin
with, upon the writing alone, independent of meaning.
For instance, let us take just any page from
SalammbO,
which has
been promoted to the rank of masterpiece. For here, more than in
