382
PARTISAN REVIEW
sional writers should have decided that Flaubert had actua1iy devised this
story. The i1iusion is based on the idea that a novel can be identified with its
story. We are beginning to understand that the story of Madame Delamare,
even if it is the seed of the plot, is not the seed of the novel ; this is because
the novel is the sum of all the factors which make of the plot the coat-hanger
on which
Madame Bovary
is the dress. As in painting, the work and the
model do not belong to the S;lme world. If we can find in local incidents the
source of many plots, but not the ferment of a great book, it is because the
novelist's true initial outline comes
to
birth in the
world ofwriting,
not in
the world outside. It matters more that the
Mona Lisa
belongs to the world
of painting more than it resembles its original model. ...
The initial design of a great novel delivers real life from its endless con–
fusion. Life undergoes a change in character as meadows cease
to
be shape–
less in the eyes of the hunter. The creative wi1i neither involves nor suggests
a world architecture. It filters the world . This is done in successive stages be–
cause the filtering process varies according to the progress of the work in
hand, as the pupils of a cat will vary according to the darkness. Nevertheless
the creative wi1i becomes what Delacroix ca1is the dictionary: a catalogue.
The novelist draws from it the elements he needs-including those required
for his characters-as the painter draws from it the complementary items
which the voids left in his sti1i-life ca1i for. But the elements thus drawn are
assimilated rather than inserted . A work of art develops as an organism
rather than as a game of chess. For in spite of the secret or recognized tules of
the game the assimilation is responsible for direction and hierarchy: from
the supposed imitation of models to the independence a1iowed
to
the
characters... .
Since the elements of reality penetrate the world of art by a process of
assimilation, the world of the novel does not feature a vast reverie or photo–
graph, it features a world whose likeness with life and the world we know is
subordinated
to its own coherence. This coherence is as strict as the one
to
which the world of music subordinates its ba1iets or libretti. We become
more aware of this through the development of audio-visual narration than
through the evolution of the novel. This coherence does not only establish
the novel as a genre (it was that already) but also as a convention similar
to
that of the theatre or the
chanson de geste.
We do not compare Bizet's
Car–
men
to Merimee's hypothetical model. What existence does an opera
character have outside the world of opera?
If the initial design is not conceived in a specific world, there is ground
for believing that it is simply lack of training which prevents an artist from
