Recognized by a sizable portion of the French reading public
ready to carry out experiments in storytel
ling: the two narrators in Bleak House, for
instance, ought to have pleased the spirit
of our own age. Yet modernity, after the
event, appears as less important than the
more perennial qualities of literary an
cients. Dealing in depth with the perma
nent and universal characteristics of man
kind is a surer guarantee of enduringness
than piquancy in technical invention.
Besides, when we perceive that Dickens
was too different from Flaubert or Stand-
hal to be received by the French in exactly
the same way as those great French wri
ters, this is obviously true, but it is not of
considerable importance. And I would like
to end these remarks by suggesting that
where the good literature is concerned,
national differences count less than indivi
dual personalities. It was not between
Dickens and Flaubert, but between Dic
kens and Thackeray that wearisome com
parisons used to be made by critic after
critic in the last century - in part because
Thackeray himself had launched the idea
of rivalry and incompatibility between his
fellow-novelist and himself. And George
Orwell very sensibly protested against
similarly idle comparisons between Dic
kens and Tolstoy by saying: 'one is no
more obliged to choose between them than
between a sausage and a rose. Their pur
poses barely intersect. Orwell did not
specify which, in his view, was the sausa
ge and which the rose. It seems at least as
true to speak in the same terms of Dickens
and Flaubert. The sausage and the rose;
their purposes barely intersect.' But surely
we need both. Surely we French can admi
re, and enjoy, and live on, the works of
Dickens, just as Flaubert can delight and
nourish the reading public of many coun
tries.
33
