I
The difficulty of speaking at all adequately of Marcel Proust has grown
with the number of volumes of “A la Recherche du Temps Perdu,” and
also with the lapse of time since the first were published. The cycle,
moreover, is still incomplete (though we now know that its conclusion
will appear); and the critic who ventures to see a definite intention
in the dense and branching pages already published does so at his
peril, and on the faith of that sense of inner continuity communicated
from the outset by all the greatest novels, from the rambling and
extravagant “Gil Blas” to the compact and thrifty “Emma.”
The death of Marcel Proust, premature though it was, yet did not happen
till his dying hand had put the last words to the last page of his vast
narrative. Last words; but unhappily not last touches. The appearance
of “La Prisonnière” confirms the report circulated after his death
that the volumes then unpublished were left without those innumerable
enriching strokes which gave their golden ripeness to the others. But,
whether or not these final chapters, written in illness, and clouded
(as one perceives from “La Prisonnière”) by physical weakness and deep
mental distress, fulfil the promise of that unity to which all the
strands of the elaborate fabric seem to tend, the first volumes (by
which the author’s greatness will perhaps finally be measured) make
it clear that he himself felt the need of such unity, and would have
submitted his restless genius to it if illness had not disintegrated
his powers. On this inference the critic will probably have to rest;
and it is enough to justify treating the fragment before us as already
potentially a whole.
More serious for the critic is the obstacle caused by the long lapse of
years since “Du Côté de chez Swann” led off the astounding procession.
Since then the conception of the art of fiction, as it had taken shape
during the previous half-century, has been unsettled by a series of
experiments, each one too promptly heralded as the final and only way
of novel-writing. The critics who have handed down these successive
ultimata have apparently decided that no interest, even archæological,
attaches any longer to the standards and the vocabulary of their
predecessors; and this wholesale rejection of past principles has
led to a confusion in terms which makes communication difficult and
conclusions ambiguous.
An unexpected result of the contradictory clamour has been to
transfer Proust, who ten or twelve years ago seemed to many an almost
unintelligible innovator, back to his rightful place in the great line
of classic tradition. If, therefore, the attempt to form a judgment
of his art has become doubly arduous it has also become doubly
interesting; for Proust, almost alone of his kind, is apparently still
regarded as a great novelist by the innovators, and yet is already
far enough off to make it clear that he was himself that far more
substantial thing in the world of art, a renovator.
With a general knowledge of letters extending far beyond the usual
limits of French culture he combined a vision peculiarly his own; and
he was thus exceptionally fitted to take the next step forward in a
developing art without disowning its past, or wasting the inherited
wealth of experience. It is as much the lack of general culture as
of original vision which makes so many of the younger novelists, in
Europe as in America, attach undue importance to trifling innovations.
Original vision is never much afraid of using accepted forms; and
only the cultivated intelligence escapes the danger of regarding
as intrinsically new what may be a mere superficial change, or the
reversion to a discarded trick of technique.
The more one reads of Proust the more one sees that his strength is
the strength of tradition. All his newest and most arresting effects
have been arrived at through the old way of selection and design. In
the construction of these vast, leisurely, and purposeful compositions
nothing is really wasted, or brought in at random. If at first Proust
seemed so revolutionary it was partly because of his desultory manner
and parenthetical syntax, and chiefly because of the shifting of
emphasis resulting from his extremely personal sense of values. The
points on which Proust lays the greatest stress are often those inmost
tremors, waverings, and contradictions which the conventions of fiction
have hitherto subordinated to more generalized truths and more rapid
effects. Proust bends over them with unwearied attention. No one else
has carried as far the analysis of half-conscious states of mind,
obscure associations of thought and gelatinous fluctuations of mood;
but long and closely as he dwells on them he never loses himself in
the submarine jungle in which his lantern gropes. Though he arrives at
his object in so roundabout a way, that object is always to report
the conscious, purposive conduct of his characters. In this respect
he is distinctly to be classed among those whom the jargon of recent
philosophy has labelled “behaviourists” because they believe that the
proper study of mankind is man’s conscious and purposive behaviour
rather than its dim unfathomable sources. Proust is in truth the
aware and eager inheritor of two great formulas: that of Racine in
his psychology, that of Saint-Simon in its anecdotic and discursive
illustration. In both respects he is deliberately traditional.