XVI

THE APPROACH TO M. MARCEL

PROUST1

WHEN we speak of literary filiation we have

frequently to make quite considerable mental reservations in the use of the term, for it is not so much the mere game of tracing influences which is involved as the implied definition of the artist's status, his relation not to the men of his own period but to his illustrious predecessors. Conducted with tact, the investigation is a kind of criticism; it is, at any rate, a first means of approach. In the case of quite definitely minor intelligences-a Dowson or a Collins-men who have simply found a nugget or two in a mine previously worked by a more competent hand; in such a case we can hardly talk of literary filiation in the precise sense. Here, if it is not a matter of imitation "pure and simple,” it is at least a case where the smaller mind is self-ranked as such by its yielding to the greater. And in the case of sturdier minds which have achieved a certain some

1 Written before M. Proust's death.

thing which we yet know by instinct to be devoid of distinction-a Wells or a Bourget-here again our filiation is of small importance. It is like trying to persuade ourselves that an agreeable parvenu has the surface, the inimitable manner of some finished example of the centuries' selection. But apply the method to an écrivain de race, one who at least appears to be in the grand line, and the result is illuminating. Either we find that our subject is not quite so fine as our enthusiasm proposed, a little uneasy among the permanent residents of Parnassus, or we discover that we have put down the outline of a critical sketch. To establish these relationships, these spiritual ancestries, as it were, is as important to the student of literature as the correct tracing of family descents is to an enthusiastic genealogist. Of course no contemporary author can appear to us with the prestige of those whose memories have suffered from generations of incense burners. But the mere fact of noting the filiation has its uses if only those of introduction and of avoiding the merely uncomparative method of criticism which leaves one wondering whether the superlatives are superlatives or only politenesses. It means that we are judging an artist by his peers and implies the compliment that we consider the immortals as such. "Influences," as such, are uninteresting; but it is valuable to trace the main roots of a vigorous growth,

or, to vary the metaphor, to select an artist's spiritual affinities, the minds he would frequent in some ideal Elysium of the Landor kind.

As an artist M. Proust does nothing without significance; or rather everything he does, even his use of the word "and," of a blank space, has a significance. His recent article on Flaubert in "La Nouvelle Revue Française" not only displayed a critical finesse which left one breathless, but revealed the writer's own methods, inasmuch as he was doing startling things with prose and achieving unheard of subtleties. It is hardly fantastic to see in M. Proust's "Pastiches" not so much a set of parodies which would rank above even a brilliant book like "A Christmas Garland," as a statement, oblique but unmistakable, of his literary filiation. There may be a further significance in the fact that this book is dedicated to an American, which is at least piquant and suggestive. I feel almost sure that in publishing these elaborate essays in the styles of his predecessors -pastiches which are at once a criticism and an homage-M. Proust had the intention of showing us a few of the writers from the study of whom he has built up his own unique style and something of the fabric of his thought. Balzac, Flaubert, SainteBeuve, Henri de Régnier, the Goncourts, Michelet, Faguet, Renan, and Saint-Simon-this is at once a formidable list of "great names" and, if the phrase

may be used without impropriety, a somewhat heterogeneous paternity for an artist. Yet the list is by no means complete, for we must add to it the name of an Englishman-let the super-modern reader prepare to start-John Ruskin, and probably Chateaubriand and Mallarmé.

I see I was right to speak of that list as "formidable," not because of the implied pretentiousness, but because of the very elaborate analyses which would become necessary if these relationships were minutely discussed. The responsibility may be thrown on M. Proust; he is not only an elaborate artist but the cause of elaboration in others. His work is perhaps the most complex literary" problem ' of this decade; it is certainly the most fascinating. But I can do no more than hint at the immense opportunities for literary analysis which I see in this problem. To pursue them at all far would involve me in endless subtleties. Yet one or two suggestions may be usefully made.

It will be noted that only five of the first ten artists named were novelists; the the others were historians, critics, philosophers, and writers of memoirs. This is significant, for if M. Proust is first of all a novelist of tremendous ability, he is also an acute critic, a philosopher in morals, and a writer of contemporary history. His work is the first attempt at a synthesis of modern European civilization,

localized at a point of intensity. It is this attempt (and its success), one of the many motives of the million-word "A la Récherche du Temps Perdu," which gives the volumes which have appeared their first startling importance. The book has so many roots, so many intentions; it is packed so full of meaning, of thought, and observation, that it is a kind of literature in itself.

The writer of memoirs, of contemporary social history, is conspicuous in M. Proust. If this side of varied talent links him partly to Balzac it also proves a closer filiation with Saint-Simon. It is not the modern habit of decrying Balzac which causes me to set M. Proust above him in this particular; it is because M. Proust has a conception of the art which places him, lower indeed than Saint-Simon, but in Saint-Simon's class. Balzac too often wrote as a woman acts; from intuition. His observations on social life, his attempts at an epitome of the civilization he lived in, are generally brilliant guesses, sometimes rather ridiculous guesses. Saint-Simon, with his more restricted purpose, enjoyed the advantages of really knowing the life he described and the characters he analysed. The creative value of his work is not greater than Balzac's, it is not even more voluminous, but it has that sense of reality which is the gift of intimacy alone (in comparison with which Balzac's writing appears like that of an art-critic