ANDRE MALRAUX
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the importance of the metamorphosis brought about by the gradual fading
out of antiquity-not unconnected with the phasing out of Latin studies–
we need to imagine what it would be like if, in one or two centuries from
now, all our poetry from Chenier to Saint John Perse, and all Western fic–
tion from Balzac
to
Faulkner were to go by the board.
One no more writes
L 'Assommoir
because one has been moved to tears
by Coupeau than one paints like Corot because one has been stirred by the
morning mist. The novel stems from the novelist's intention. Rather than
take my cue from Valery, who wanted to detect that intention and then
form his own opinion of the author's merits, I will take it from Picasso:
"One always has to have a subject, a purpose, before one starts on a paint–
ing, but that subject must not be too precise ." I do in fact believe that the
novelist's initial intention is but hazy and that it acts as a ferment rather
than as a plan.
This intention is not to be mistaken for the first stage of the plot. A
stoty confined to merely recording the facts would
be
a short one indeed .
Besides a true novelist thinks of his plot in relation to factors which have
nothing to do with the story-Flaubert's: "I wanted to write a puce-colored
novel" bears this out; so do Dostoevsky's confrontations. Cezanne painting
from nature is not bent on imitating it; he tries to find a way of making it
look like a Cezanne. Naturally he does not think up a mental model: pic–
tures may
be
deliberate but they are not imagined-they are actually made.
So is a novel. But nature is not the painter's field of reference: "If I were to
choose a larger tree, if the river were bluer, etc . .. " No: Cezanne was
haunted by the Imaginary Museum, by the picture he was trying to achieve.
Its elements find coordination in the world of painting, shapes and colors,
and not in the world of trees and bathing soldiers . They are born in the
Imaginary Museum, not in real life where the relationship of one thing to
another is specifically different. An artist's initial design, the major part of
his work, belong to the world of art rather than to the world of matter:
through repulsion as much as through admiration.
It was the partial influence of individualism and Impressionism-which
to Degas' indignation-made painters labor for half a century under the misap–
prehension that the artist transcribed his individual vision ,
yet
it would have
been hard to believe that the Cubists saw their fruit dishes in pieces. . ..
And then there is
Madame Bovary.
Flaubert read to his friends the first
version of
Le Tenlation de Saint Antoine.
They thought it bad and sug–
gested: "Why don ' t you set to write the story of Delamare's wife. " This re–
ferred to a local incident which was to bear the same relation
to
Madame
Bovary
as the trial of the seminarian Berthet bore to
Le Rouge et Ie Nair.
But it is very peculiar that Bouilhet, Maxime du Camp and other profes-
