could not stand in the shadow of the highly-admired Masters,
especially of the Italian Renaissance.! i But then, first the Impres
sionists discovered that his paintings contained valuessuch as
the style of composition, the use of de-toned colours and sugges
tions of spacewhich they tried to reproduce themselves on their
own canvasses. After them the Cubists discovered that Breughel
was a Cubist, the Expressionists and the Surrealists that he was
an Expressionist and a Surrealistthe first because the figures of
Breughel were built up from certain basic forms, cubes, balls and
cylinders, and the latter because they recognised dramatic and
symbolic backgrounds to his work.
From this variegated appreciation of Breughel, a general thesis
can easily be formulated: a work of art takes its greatness from
the measure in which it can'be interpreted ,as giving artistic,
sense to the life of people in a different era from that in which it
originated.
'This rule, of course, is equally applicable to the literature of the
novel. The use of the historical method in the exercise of the
interpretation of novels is impossible. No investigator in this field
of literature can withdraw himself from what he, without keeping
some historic order, has read.
Alt was on the basis of these considerations that an authoritative
literary historian in the Netherlands, Professor Dresden, recently
found that the work of the writer of novels is co-dependent on the
novels written after him. Taken too far, the idea can be defended
that the reading of every new novel compels a researcher to read
again all earlier novels and to test their values, possibly thereby
thus re-evaluating them.
In practice, of course, such a task is impossible of achievement,
although this fact need not prevent certain important conclusions
being drawn from.it. Our. investigation into the literary value of
Dickens apparently cannot be exclusively limited to his works
themselves, but must also stretch out to cover the development
of the novel since his time and embrace the works of the great
novelists like Flaubert, James, Tolstoy, Dostoevski, Proust, Gide,
Kafka, Joyce, Mann and Sartre. To be completely up to date,
we must not even neglect to check, when reading Dickens, what
influence we experience from authors belonging to the group which
created the Nouveau Roman and has turned away from literary
means7 by which the naturalist novel obtained its classic form.
My fear, and at the same time my feeling of shame, that by
expressing these ideas I might have considerably shaken your self-
confidence as Dickens-lovers, can only be overcome by assuring
you that it has been my true intention to discover the truth. So
you will, I hope, forgive me if I continue a little further along the
road I have chosen.. In this connection, then, I put forward the
question, What agreement is there between two such different
authors' as, for example, Kafka and Dickens, and what influence
can reading the first exercise on reading the second
At first sight it would seem that the irrational world of Kafka,
with its internal threatening oppression, compares hardly at all
with the sparkling, energetic, extrovert and exuberant world of
Dickens. But this difference, I think, is only apparent.
