Imagery and Ideology: Fiction and Painting in Nineteenth-Century France [1 ed.] 9780845348932, 9780874139952

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Imagery and Ideology

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Imagery and Ideology Fiction and Painting in Nineteenth-Century France

William J. Berg

Newark: University of Delaware Press

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䉷 2007 by Rosemont Publishing & Printing Corp. All rights reserved. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the copyright owner, provided that a base fee of $10.00, plus eight cents per page, per copy is paid directly to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, Massachusetts 01923. [978-0-87413-995-2/07 $10.00 Ⳮ 8¢ pp, pc.] Other than as indicated in the foregoing, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (except as permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law, and except for brief quotes appearing in reviews in the public press).

Associated University Presses 2010 Eastpark Boulevard Cranbury, NJ 08512 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berg, William J. Imagery and ideology : fiction and painting in nineteenth-century France / William J. Berg. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-87413-995-2 (alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-87413-995-3 (alk. paper) 1. French fiction—19th century—History and criticism. 2. Painting in literature. 3. Art and literature. I. Title. PQ653.B39 2007 843⬘.709357—dc22 2007015250

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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This book is dedicated to those who inspired it: Laurey (my longtime colleague, sometime co-author, best friend, and wife); the ‘‘crew’’ (the Jen, the three Jesses, Stirling, Hunter, Gerard, and Julien); and the ‘‘new crew’’ (Olivia, Erin, Ainsley, Vaughn, Django, Eco, and all their future siblings and cousins).

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Contents Illustrations Acknowledgments

9 11

Introduction: Imagery and Ideology: Literature and Painting 1. Ideology Laid Bare: Corneille and David 2. Imagery and Conflicting Ideologies: Chateaubriand and Girodet 3. The Modern Pygmalion: Balzac and Daumier 4. ‘‘Les trois glorieuses’’: Stendhal, Delacroix, and Hugo 5. Idealizing the Image of the Peasant: Sand, Holbein, and Millet 6. Salome’s Dance: Flaubert, Moreau, and Huysmans 7. From Imagery to Ideology through Irony: Zola and Manet 8. Impressionist Ideology: Maupassant, Monet, and Renoir pe`re et fils 9. Kaleidoscopic Images of Algerian Women: Delacroix, Picasso, and Djebar Conclusion: Reading in the Modern Mode

15 30

225 236

References Index

244 259

51 70 92 122 145 166 202

7

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Illustrations BLACK-AND-WHITE IMAGES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

Rene´ Magritte, Les mots et les images, 1929. Guillaume Apollinaire, ‘‘La Tour Eiffel,’’ 1915. Ary Scheffer, La mort d’Atala, c.1820–30. P. Lambert, La mort d’Atala, 1945. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, La communion d’Atala, c. 1808. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, La mort d’Atala, c. 1806–1807. Honore´ Daumier, Pygmalion, 1842. Hans Holbein, the younger, Le laboureur, 1538. E´douard Manet, Le fiacre, 1878. E´douard Manet, Un fiacre, c.1877. E´douard Manet, Fiacre et bec de gaz, 1878. E´douard Manet, La rue Mosnier au bec de gaz, c.1878. E´douard Manet, La rue Mosnier, c.1878. E´douard Manet, L’homme aux be´quilles, au moment de la feˆte, 1878. E´douard Manet, L’invalide de la rue Mosnier, e´tude pour ‘‘Les Mendiants,’’ 1878. Jean Renoir, Partie de campagne, 1936/1946.

17 18 64 65 66 67 87 124 182 183 185 186 187 194 199 219

COLOR PLATES between pages 64 and 65 Pablo Picasso, Nature morte a` la chaise canne´e, 1912. Jacques-Louis David, Le serment des Horaces, c.1784. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Atala au tombeau, 1808. 9

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Euge`ne Delacroix, La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, 28 juillet, 1830, 1830. Jean-Franc¸ois Millet, Le Semeur, 1850. Gustave Moreau, Salome´ dansant devant He´rode, 1876. Gustave Moreau, L’apparition, c.1876. E´douard Manet, La rue Mosnier aux paveurs, 1878. E´douard Manet, La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, 1878. E´douard Manet, La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, l’homme aux be´quilles, 1878. Claude Monet, Effet d’automne a` Argenteuil, 1873. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, La balanc¸oire, 1876. Euge`ne Delacroix, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, 1834. Pablo Picasso, Femmes d’Alger, d’apre`s Delacroix, 1955.

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Acknowledgments IT HAS BEEN MY GOOD FORTUNE TO HAVE SPENT MY ENTIRE CAREER IN the Department of French and Italian at the University of WisconsinMadison, surrounded by supportive colleagues: Laurey Martin-Berg read the entire manuscript; Richard Goodkin, Deborah Jenson, Nicholas Rand, and Steven Winspur read various chapters. I hope they will recognize and approve the traces of their suggestions, for which I thank them very much. I am also grateful for the advice of colleagues in other Departments: Thomas Gompars and Marsely Kehoe from Art History; Anne Lambert and Drew Stevens from The Chazen Art Museum; Kelley Conway, David Bordwell, and Jean-Pierre Golay from Communication Arts. At a time when publishing books in the Humanities is particularly difficult, I am especially thankful to Professor Donald Mell and the Board of Editors of the University of Delaware Press for their confidence and suggestions, which, along with those of the outside reader and inside reviewer, have been extremely helpful in shaping the final form of the book, a process efficiently expedited by Karen Druliner. Working with the staff at Associated University Presses, which handles editorial and production functions for the University of Delaware Press and several other university presses, has been a great pleasure: Julien Yoseloff has given swift and sound advice, Maryann Hostettler has produced a striking cover, Laura Rogers has provided a very thorough copy edit and a highly thoughtful index, and Christine Retz has become a true friend (both despite and because of our differing football allegiances). Tracking down and securing permissions for the book’s thirty illustrations has been a particularly challenging process, greatly aided by the following scholars and museum personnel: Aimee L. Marshall, Art Institute of Chicago; Tricia Smith and Ryan Jensen, Art Resource; Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz, Artists Rights Society; Amanda Turner, Ashmolean Museum; Vale´rie Rannou, Bere`s Gallery; Sandra Laplace-Claverie, Bibliothe`que nationale; Zsuzsanna Gonda, Budapest Museum of Fine Arts; Dr. Lukas Gloor, Foundation E. G. Bu¨hrle Collection; Louisa Dare, Courtauld Institute; Genevie`ve Fumeron and Florence Giry, Editions Gallimard; Jacklyn Burns, J. Paul Getty Museum; Claudine Dixon, Hammer Museum; Ce´cile Brun11

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ner, Kunsthaus Zu¨rich; Ghislaine Courtet, Muse´e des beaux-arts et d’arche´ologie de Besanc¸on; Ellen Promise and Erin M. A. Schleigh, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Peter Huestis, National Gallery of Art, Washington; France Beauregard, National Gallery of Canada; and the noted Manet scholar, Juliet Wilson-Bareau. Finally, I would like to thank the many scholars and critics of literature and painting cited in this book; their ideas have helped me to develop my own and are thus included in the discussion rather than in footnotes. By acknowledging these debts by no means do I intend to implicate any of my ‘‘creditors’’ in the errors that invariably crop up in a book of this scope.

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Introduction Imagery and Ideology: Literature and Painting LITERATURE IS OSTENSIBLY A SEQUENTIAL AND THUS TEMPORAL MEdium, and painting a static and spatial one; yet writers like George Sand and Emile Zola have attempted repeatedly to represent visual and spatial phenomena in literary texts, just as painters like Euge`ne Delacroix and Claude Monet have sought consistently to capture effects of time and movement on canvas. The incorporation of elements from one medium into another creates a dynamic interplay of imagery and ideology, both between art forms and within individual texts and paintings, which constitutes the crux of this book. Each chapter involves the detailed analysis of a text and a painting—related through topic, theme, and technique—in order to explore various modalities and layers of meaning in nineteenth-century French art, verbal and visual.

SISTERHOOD AND SIBLING RIVALRY On the eve of the nineteenth century, reacting against the long-standing bond between the ‘‘sister arts,’’ Gotthold Lessing defined, then defended the boundaries between poetry and painting in the Laocoon, with his classic statement that ‘‘succession of time is the province of the poet, co-existence in space that of the artist’’ (1766/1910, 109). Among the legions of critics to follow Lessing’s lead is Boris Uspensky, who contends that ‘‘if pictorial art, by nature, presupposes some spatial concreteness in its transmission of the represented world but allows temporal indefiniteness, then literature (which is essentially related not to space, but to time) insists as a rule on some temporal concreteness, and permits spatial representation to remain completely undefined’’ (1973, 76). Yet, in numerous cases, modern literature is characterized precisely by the effort to suggest space, often bending the very rules of temporal concreteness proper to its medium and espousing those of painting, while modern painting often sacrifices spatial precision to achieve the illusion of temporality and even narrativity inherent in literature. 15

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The incorporation of elements from one art form into another often implies undermining the fundamental properties of one’s own medium. Writers have attempted to import visual effects into virtually every area of the text, from theories about painting in Sand and Proust to characters who are painters or models in Maupassant and Zola, from Balzac’s visual portraiture to Hugo’s cityscapes, from Chateaubriand’s pictorial metaphors to Flaubert’s psychologically charged landscapes, from a visual object that reflects the plot, like the wild ass’s skin in Balzac’s La peau de chagrin, to one that represents the character’s life, like Fe´licite´’s parrot in Flaubert’s ‘‘Un coeur simple.’’ This approximation in literature of spatial effects and even spatial form (see Frank 1945; Mitchell 1980) necessarily involves interrupting temporality; that is, time ‘‘stops’’ as the description ‘‘unfolds,’’ hence a certain tension between narrativity and description that has preoccupied leading narratologists (see, for example, Ginsburg 1996, 8–9; Steiner 1988, 3–4). The intrusion of the visual into the verbal medium creates shocks, gaps, frozen moments in the reading process that highlight essential themes, properties, and problems of the medium. Conjointly, the suggestion of temporality in painting often means abandoning spatial concreteness, as with Manet’s blurred contours, Degas’ cropped forms, or Monet’s series paintings, which suggest changes in weather and the passage of time through the sacrifice of linear detail. Similarly, Daumier’s use of ironic titles, David’s allusions to literature and legend in Le serment des Horaces, or the inclusion of words in paintings like Girodet’s Atala can prolong and even rupture the viewing process, while turning it in unexpected directions. And, as Wendy Steiner shows, even narrative painting, prevalent in medieval art, emerges again in modernism, which ‘‘lifted the Renaissance ban on multiple episodes and repeated subjects and destabilized the conventions of pictorial realism’’ (1988, 5). Magritte’s playful visual essay, Les mots et les images (1929), reminds us just how easily the distinction between word and image can be blurred (fig. 1); his demonstration that words and images are interchangeable implies that texts can be visual, just as paintings can be verbal (see also Shattuck 1960/1986, 337–38). Indeed, the typographical configuration of Apollinaire’s calligram, ‘‘La Tour Eiffel’’ (1915), visually reflects at once the shape of the Eiffel Tower, a human tongue (language), and a radio antenna, all symbols of French defiance of Germany during World War One, alluded to verbally in the poem (fig. 2). Conversely, the inclusion of the graphemes JOU in Picasso’s Still Life with Chair Caning (1912), the first known collage, both simulates a newspaper (JOUrnal) pasted onto the surface plane and suggests playing (JOUer), as does the composition itself in its incorporation of an actual

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Figure 1. Rene´ Magritte. Les mots et les images (Words and Images), 1929. First published in La Re´volution surre´aliste 5 (12), 32–33. 䉷 2006 C. Herscovici, Brussels / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: M. Kehoe.

piece of oilcloth and a strand of rope (see color insert). The interplay of word and image in these early twentieth-century works suggests the potential fruitfulness of verbal readings of prior paintings and visual interpretations of earlier texts, such as those undertaken in this book. As artists attempt to borrow from other art forms, whether to expand the boundaries of their own media or to represent the modern view that the individual is positioned at the intersection of time and space, they inevitably end up struggling with the very limits of expression. As they try to ‘‘transpose’’ effects from one sign-system into another, to suggest, for example, the interaction of color and light within the black and white medium of the printed page, or sound and movement within the silent, static space of the canvas, artists are often obliged to come to grips with the fundamental properties and boundaries of their art forms in ways that are revealing to reader and spectator alike. As Lawrence Rickels (1985) puts it, in his discussion of the role of painting in literature: ‘‘Painting is that detour along which literature ultimately confronts its dependence on the sign. For once any literary work has shown that pictures, like words, are signs, it can no longer refrain from reflecting on its own status as a sign system. When literature turns its attention to the medium of another art form—in this case to that of painting—it ultimately makes a statement about its own medium—

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Figure 2. Guillaume Apollinaire. ‘‘La Tour Eiffel’’ (‘‘The Eiffel Tower’’), 1915. A segment of Le 2e canonnier conducteur, first published in Der Mistral (Zurich), 1 (March) under the title of Feldpost brief, later included in Calligrammes: Poe`mes de la Paix et de la Guerre (1918). Photo: M. Kehoe.

language’’ (cited in Boldt 1990, 520). In short, the infusion of one form into another creates a heightened awareness of one’s medium and, indeed, of the very nature of meaning.

IMAGERY AND IDEOLOGY It is the contention of this book that exchanges between literature and painting often follow a discernable pattern involving a dynamic interplay between ‘‘image’’ (or collectively ‘‘imagery’’) and ‘‘ideology’’

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themselves highly problematic terms. Of the many types of images— graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal (see Mitchell 1986, 10)—it might seem logical for a book dealing with the visual arts to borrow a simple definition of ‘‘image’’ from the graphic arts, such as ‘‘the meaningful form immediately perceptible in the minimum instant of vision’’ (Bertin 1967/1983, 151) or ‘‘a sight which has been recreated or reproduced’’ (Berger 1972/1987, 9); in short, a visual form represented or representable on a two-dimensional plane; that is, a pictorial phenomenon. In practice, however, in our analyses of texts and even paintings, far more complicated usages emerge. Verbal and visual images often imply a perceiving and forming consciousness, whether character’s, narrator’s, or author’s, which points us in a direction more akin to that suggested by Sartre’s definition: ‘‘The word image can therefore indicate only the relation of consciousness to the object; in other words, it means a certain manner in which the object appears to consciousness, or, if one prefers, a certain way in which consciousness presents an object to itself’’ (1940, 17). Furthermore, even the radical definition of the modernist poet Pierre Reverdy—‘‘The Image is a pure creation of the mind. It cannot be born from a comparison but rather from the connection of two more or less separate entities. The more the relationships of the two connected entities are separate and pertinent, the stronger the image will be—the greater its emotive power and poetic presence’’ (1917/1975, 73)—seems particularly apt in evoking the juxtaposition of opposing entities inherent in the verbal and visual imagery found in great works of art. Whatever the definition, the image itself is understood to be an arbitrarily coded sign, which is imbued with meaning and from the outset (avant la lettre) with ideology, as W. J. T. Mitchell notes: ‘‘The commonplace of modern studies of images, in fact, is that they must be understood as a kind of language; instead of providing a transparent window on the world, images are now regarded as the sort of sign that presents a deceptive appearance of naturalness and transparence concealing an opaque, distorting, arbitrary mechanism of representation, a process of ideological mystification’’ (1986, 8). In our study, the term ‘‘ideology’’ involves the set of values, overt or covert, embedded in any work; that is, ‘‘the system of the ideas and representations which dominate the mind of a man or a social group’’ and which take forms that include the ‘‘religious, ethical, legal, political, aesthetic, etc.’’ (Althusser 1971, 32 and 40). For our purposes here, battles and picnics depicted visually are considered as images or groups of images; war and peace as ideas or themes; patriotism and pacifism, like all ‘‘-isms,’’ as ideological positions. The complex interaction of these elements within the work creates layers of meaning, both visual and verbal, which may either complement or contradict each other.

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It would also appear, from the evidence of this study, that the expression of ideology, whether in painting or literature, invariably involves the depiction of difference, thereby favoring the painterly techniques of contrast and juxtaposition and the literary figures of antithesis and irony. Moreover, great works often evolve a synthesis of the very antithetical terms they bring into play in order to reach higher ideological ground, or they simply resist resolution in order to preserve ambivalence. In short, ideology tends to represent itself antithetically, sustain itself dynamically, and renew itself dialectically. Consider, for example, any of many versions of the folk tale La Belle et la Beˆte (Beauty and the Beast). The tale, like the title, is structured by the antithesis opposing beauty and ugliness. This essential difference, based as it is on physical appearance, can be transcended by any number of notions stemming from another value system: intelligence, goodness, and love chief among them. Such a shift to a higher ideological plane occurs in every one of the early versions of the tale (including later imitations such as that of Walt Disney), accompanied by a transformation of the beast into a handsome prince. In a hypothetical modern version, however, paralleling the works studied in this book, it would be imperative that the beast remain ugly. The contradiction inherent in the initial antithesis must resist resolution in order to perpetuate consciousness of the superficiality of judgments based on physical appearance; otherwise beauty, not goodness, might appear to be the work’s message. The imagery must preserve ideological integrity through contrast. In his Pre´face de Cromwell, Victor Hugo formulates just such a principle on an aesthetic plane by stressing the importance of the grotesque for sustaining the sublime: ‘‘The sublime on the sublime produces a contrast with difficulty, and one needs to rest from everything, even beauty. It would seem, on the contrary, that the grotesque were a pause, a comparative term, a point of departure from which one rises toward the beautiful with a fresher and keener perception’’ (1827/ 1900, 203).

VERBAL VERSUS VISUAL ART Clearly painting, as a visual art form, favors the image, with its vivacity and simultaneity of perception, while literature, with the articulative power of verbal language, can more readily express the complexities of ideology, a term whose very etymology links the idea (ideo) and the word (logos). The primacy of the visual image in painting leads to an immediacy that Euge`ne Delacroix cites in his Journal as a sign of artistic superior-

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ity: ‘‘The type of emotion peculiar to painting is, so to speak, tangible; poetry and music cannot give rise to it. In painting you enjoy the actual representation of objects as though you were really seeing them at the same time you are warmed and carried away by the meaning which these images contain for the mind . . . In this sense the art of painting is sublime if you compare it with the art of writing wherein the thought reaches the mind only by means of printed letters arranged in a given order’’ (1822–63/1980, 200). On the other hand, with a devotion to his medium as staunch as Delacroix’s, Jean-Paul Sartre defends literature for its ability to invoke and express ideology. In Qu’est-ce que la litte´rature? (1948/1972) he states: ‘‘The writer is a speaker: he designates, demonstrates, commands, refuses, questions, pleads, insults, persuades, insinuates’’ (26; Sartre’s underscore). In short, such a set of discursive options at the writer’s disposal facilitates the expression of ideology in literature. Sartre goes so far as to claim that signifying, the expression of meaning that is the hallmark of literature, is impossible in painting: ‘‘Notes, colors, shapes are not signs, they don’t refer to anything outside themselves. . . . There is green, there is red, that’s all; they are things, they exist by themselves . . . One doesn’t paint meanings, one doesn’t put them into music; in this sense, who would dare ask the painter or the musician to be committed? The writer, on the other hand, deals with meanings’’ (12 and 16). While Sartre quite typically exaggerates his position for polemic purposes, one can nonetheless imagine an ‘‘abstract’’ image defined solely by its visual properties and arrangements of color or shape, and a ‘‘pure’’ ideological statement, like the maxim ‘‘all men are created equal.’’ It is equally true, however, that painters have managed to imbue color with a sense of meaning, like the very anguish that Sartre senses in the yellow sky in Tintoretto’s Golgotha (14), and that writers have sought to crystallize ideology through imagery, as in Rousseau’s famous statement: ‘‘l’homme est ne´ libre, et partout il est dans les fers’’ (1762/ 1963, 50) [man is born free, and everywhere he’s in irons]. Here, Rousseau uses a single word, ‘‘fers,’’ to create a metaphor or visual image signifying the abstract notion of lack of freedom. If it takes a thousand words, read one by one and one after the other, to approach the visual vividness of a picture, it may also take a thousand images, read one by one and one after the other, to approach the universality of the word ‘‘man,’’ the abstraction of the term ‘‘free,’’ and the complexity of the proposition cementing them into an ideological statement. Suffice it to say that each art form, painting and literature, is at its most efficient when dealing with its own attributes and assets, but perhaps at its most compelling when emulating the properties of the other form.

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As modern writers seek to further illustrate and enliven the abstractions of argumentation, or to convey what they cannot say—either to escape censorship (Stendhal), or through preference for the subtleties of indirect expression (Maupassant), or to avoid direct commentary (Zola), or to suggest repressed psychological phenomena (Huysmans), or to transcend the inadequacies of verbal language (Flaubert)—they often attempt to reconstruct the image within verbal language by replicating the very properties of visual expression and, more specifically, of painting. Indeed, in S/Z (1970/1974, 54–56) Barthes suggests using ‘‘painting as a model’’ for approaching nineteenth-century literary portraiture and landscape description, a suggestion no doubt based on and certainly borne out by the number of allusions to paintings in literary texts. At the same time, the painter intent upon rising above the purely pictorial may attempt to lend an ideological dimension to a painting by borrowing properties from verbal expression, by alluding to specific legends or literary texts, or even by including writing within the canvas, not to mention by embedding meaning in the title of the work. Thus, the great work of art—whether visual or verbal—often involves the interplay of image and ideology within the space of the canvas or the page. This is especially true of modern fiction and painting, where the hallmark characteristics of ambivalence, dynamism, selfcommentary, new paradigms, a sense of the creative process, and the projection of the reader/spectator into the space of the work are often achieved by exploring and approximating the properties of other media, at times through undermining one’s own. But what are the properties inherent in visual and verbal expression and how are they modified or enhanced in painting and literature? The brief lists here will be followed by further elaboration and illustration as the terms arise in subsequent discussions of specific works. Despite the ‘‘semiological’’ sound of some of the terms, the following discussion is not intended as an exhaustive catalogue of each art form, but rather as a ‘‘methodological’’ identification of the operative terms that can best lead to concrete analyses of texts and paintings in order to explore their interactions, the primary focus of this book. In short, this discussion attempts to provide students and specialists from either field with a basic introduction to the analytical terms of the other field.

VISUAL EXPRESSION AND PAINTING Visual vehicles of expression (maps and diagrams, as well as posters and paintings) involve marks (lines, dots, spots) that occupy a position on the horizontal and vertical axes of the plane (chart or canvas). These

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marks can vary in shape (geometric to amorphous), size (small to large), direction (right to left), color (hot to cold), tone (light to dark), and texture (fine to coarse), which we refer to as the visual variables (see Bertin 1967/1983, 42; Dondis 1973, 15). The nature of the marks and their relationships with each other also vary, of course, with the type of vehicle: diagrams express and relate quantities; maps topographical configurations; representational art real objects as they are perceived; abstract art the interplay of the visual components themselves. The visual variables and their relationships with each other on the two-dimensional plane constitute the graphic ‘‘image,’’ the basic unit of visual expression and meaning. The image implies spatial specificity and perceptual immediacy, qualities that have led painters from Da Vinci to Delacroix to assert the superiority of painting over literature. In his classic Treatise on Painting (1490–1513/1956), Da Vinci argues that the immediacy of painting (‘‘Painting makes an immediate presentation to you of the view which the artist has created,’’ 25) and its universality (‘‘Painting makes its end result communicable to all the generations of the world,’’ 9) are due to a natural likeness between sign and referent (‘‘painting does not have need of interpreters for different languages as does literature and at once satisfies mankind, no differently than do things produced by nature,’’ 9). This similarity in turn accounts for both the truth (‘‘real’’) and power (‘‘impact’’) of the visual arts: ‘‘painting really places the objects before the eye, and the eye accepts the likenesses as though they were real. Poetry offers things without this likeness and they do not make an impression by way of visual impact as does painting’’ (13). Delacroix sees this immediacy as due less to transparent, material, natural signs than to the simultaneity of perception inherent in the visual image, which distinguishes it from verbal expression: ‘‘Your picture you can see at a single glance but in a manuscript you do not see the whole page, that is to say your mind cannot take it in as a whole. It takes uncommon strength of mind to embrace the work as a whole and to carry it, with suitable extravagance or moderation, through developments that follow one after the other’’ (1822–63/1980, 128). Echoing Delacroix’s words, John Berger links this quality of simultaneity less to the perception of a painting, which can take a certain amount of time, than to its interpretation: ‘‘In a painting all its elements are there to be seen simultaneously. The spectator may need time to examine each element of the painting but whenever he reaches a conclusion, the simultaneity of the whole painting is there to reverse or qualify his conclusion. The painting maintains its own authority’’ (1972/1987, 26). Painting further distinguishes itself from other forms of visual ex-

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pression by the importance of viewpoint, simulating the vantage point(s) of the viewer(s), and the arrangement of objects that it entails, that is, the composition. Perspectival composition involves the use of the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the picture surface to suggest planes (foreground, middle ground, background) and ultimately the illusion of depth, the third dimension, by concepts such as contour, modeling, relief, volume, and perspective. It is perhaps no exaggeration to say of representational art that much of its evolution since the Renaissance was marked by the struggle to convey a sense of the third dimension, while the feeling of dynamics that permeated the late nineteenth century led painters to attempt to capture the fourth dimension, time, a property inherent in literature.

VERBAL EXPRESSION AND LITERATURE Verbal language consists of sounds or written characters, arranged within the spoken utterance or on the page to produce words. These words vary in meaning (a matter of semantics), sound (phonetics), appearance (typography), part of speech (grammar), and position (syntax) (Grevisse 1969, 25–26; Ducrot and Todorov 1972, 71). The signifiers—sounds and typographical characters—constitute sets of verbal variables, as do the grammatical parts of speech that characterize the words—noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction—and their grammatical function: subject, direct object, and so on. Thus a word like r-e-d can vary in meaning (from the denotation of a color, to a connotation of passion, to a symbol of anarchism), in grammatical form (from the noun ‘‘red’’ to the adjective ‘‘reddish’’ to the verb ‘‘redden’’), in position within the sentence, and in typographical appearance (RED or red); its sounds can rhyme as in ‘‘better red than dead’’ or constitute a pun through a homonym like ‘‘read,’’ as with the printed page, which is ‘‘black and white and red (read) all over.’’ While it might be tempting to try to relate the parts of speech to the visual variables (noun to shape; color, value, and texture to adjectives; adverbs and prepositions to position and direction, for example), such equivalencies quickly break down before the complexity of verbal expression, where color, as we have seen, can be expressed by a noun (mellow yellow) or verb (to yellow with age) as well as the more common adjective (yellow fever), not to mention its figurative connotations of cowardice or anguish. It is precisely the variety of verbal possibilities that enables the writer to approximate the visual nuances of color within the bichrome space of the printed page without the rote repeti-

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tion that would be quickly absorbed and synthesized by a painting’s spectator but that would bore and benumb the reader. Verbal language, by its very lack of spatial specificity, has the capacity at once to evoke an object, raise it to a general or symbolic level, and even lend it an ideological value; thus, for Sartre, for example, the word ‘‘hovel’’ can represent poverty, suggest social injustice, and imply the need for change in ways that are far more precise than in painting (1948/1972, 15). The spatial inconcreteness of verbal expression gives it easier access to connotative, symbolic, or figurative possibilities than visual art, and yet its capacity for expressing and thus defining mental phenomena, from unarticulated emotions to abstractions, is powerful, as suggested by Dorian Gray’s reflections on Lord Henry’s words in Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray: ‘‘Words! Mere words! How terrible they were! How clear, and vivid, and cruel! One could not escape from them. And yet what a subtle magic there was in them! They seemed to be able to give a plastic form to formless things, and to have a music of their own as sweet as that of viol or of lute. Mere words! Was there anything as real as words?’’ (1891/1981, 19). Delacroix, on the other hand, finds that ‘‘words are tactless, they interrupt one’s peace, demand attention, and provoke discussion’’ (1822–63/1980, 258), yet he reluctantly recognizes that ‘‘a book has many advantages, no doubt; it has a sequence of ideas, it deduces principles, it develops a theme, it recapitulates, it is in short, a lasting memorial’’(391), no surprise, perhaps for the writer of a journal that contains perhaps the best ongoing discussion of the differences between painting and literature by any painter (see Hannoosh 1995). Indeed, since verbal expression is characterized by the ordering of its elements in a consecutive manner—from the syntax of the sentence, to the scheme of rhyme and rhythm in verse, to the sequencing of compositional segments, to the division of thoughts or events into paragraphs or chapters, to the plot in narrative texts—it lends itself naturally to the construction of a causal system or a logical argument, which favor the clear articulation of ideology. The literary text, however, tends to embellish or eschew didactic ideological statements in order to reinforce or even produce meaning through the manipulation of the variables of verbal expression (that is, through ‘‘style’’). If, for example, a maxim, an ideological statement like ‘‘all men are created equal,’’ can be said to constitute verbal language in its purest form, great literary figures like Rousseau, are, as we have seen, quick to complement it with images in order to concretize and thus convey the sense of such abstract notions to the reading public. Lessing remains among the most staunch and suggestive defenders of literature in the face of painting, a worthy ally of Sartre and rival of

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Da Vinci and Delacroix. In the Laocoon (1766/1910), Lessing emphasizes the capacity of literature to represent not only ‘‘progressive actions’’ (90) but also the ‘‘process of creation’’ (100), a statement he applies to fictional objects but which can be readily extended to the fictional process itself. He also notes the ability of literature to bring together objects separated in space and time (109) and even to synthesize contradictory elements: ‘‘the poet alone possesses the art of so combining negative with positive traits as to unite two appearances in one’’ (60). Pointing out the limitations inherent in visible signs (78), he stresses the power of the arbitrary and immaterial signs of verbal expression to ‘‘personify abstractions’’ (68) and to convey ‘‘a double meaning, being employed as well to make the invisible visible as to render the visible invisible’’ (82). In short, the verbal sign, especially as it appears in literature, goes beyond the concrete representation of the material world to give the poet access to the higher realm of the imagination (see Wellbery 1984). Literature further implies the creation of voices—both characters’ and narrators’—that structure the utterance and orient its composition in a particular way, much as the viewpoint does in a painting. In literature, of course, composition involves the organization of elements over time, in patterns that reveal the basic relationships in all art of similarity, contrast, inclusion, and causality. These patterns can be described as ‘‘poetic’’ according to the definition of Roman Jakobson that the principle of equivalence is projected from the paradigmatic axis of selection onto the syntagmatic axis of combination; that is, basic elements are repeated over the course of the text as over the surface of the canvas (1960, 358) in order to structure the work and our experience of it.

VERBAL AND VISUAL INTERACTION In great works of art—whether verbal or visual—the basic variables of the language and the properties of the art form, apart from, in addition to, or even in spite of what is being said, can serve to reinforce, reproduce, replace, or even reverse the work’s putative ‘‘message’’ and ostensible ‘‘ideology,’’ thereby creating multiple layers of interactive meaning. Such is especially the case with the ideologically charged and complected works of postrevolutionary France. The centralizing force of Paris, drawing writers and painters into close contact and fostering reciprocal influences, has made nineteenthcentury France an ideal testing ground to study the bonds, boundaries, and barriers between literature and the visual arts. Witness the friend-

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ship, beginning in boyhood and extending throughout their careers, of Zola and Ce´zanne; the incidence of artists who, like Hugo and Fromentin, both write and paint; the number of writers, like Stendhal, Gautier, Baudelaire, Huysmans, Zola, and Proust, who have been prominent art critics; the intermingling of writers and painters in the movements of romanticism, realism, impressionism, and symbolism; the choice of painters as central characters in key works of Balzac, Zola, Maupassant, and Proust; the incorporation of paintings into texts by Sand and Huysmans; the interpretation of literary and legendary subjects by David and Moreau; the inclusion of the written word into works by Daumier and Girodet; the visual form of texts like Mallarme´’s Un coup de de`s (see Scott 1988, 116–46). It is this exchange between literature and painting, decried by Lessing in the Laocoon, that the present book proposes to examine. The long-standing traditions of the ‘‘sisterhood of the arts’’ (see Hagstrum 1958), which simply suggests their relationship, ‘‘ut pictura poesis,’’ which implies their active exchange (see R. Lee 1940/1967), and ‘‘ekphrasis,’’ which denotes the verbal copy of a visual image (see Krieger 1991), persist today in the widespread and multifaceted movement of ‘‘interdisciplinarity’’ not to mention its newer offshoots like ‘‘visible language’’ and ‘‘visual studies.’’ Like many illustrious predecessors, chief among them Helmut Hatzfeld (1952), Louis Hautecoeur (1942/1963), Mario Praz (1970/1974), and Wylie Sypher (1960), I utilize a thematic and stylistic approach to analyze the relationships between specific passages and paintings from nineteenth-century France. Unlike most of my forebears, however, and different from my own previous work on Zola, The Visual Novel (1992), I dwell less here on defining boundaries between the two art forms, then showing how artists devise analogies that cross them, than on exploring the interaction between imagery and ideology to forge an overall interpretation of each individual work, whether verbal or visual. The present book shares some features with Roger Shattuck’s The Innocent Eye (1960/1986) and others with Henry Majewski’s Transposing Art into Texts (2002), and probably most parallels Mary Ann Caws’s The Eye in the Text (1981); however, her subtle analyses of modern poetry in relation to Mannerist painting explore the passage between ‘‘inscape’’ and ‘‘outlook’’ within the reader’s mind rather than the interplay between imagery and ideology within the work, as is the case here. My study is further informed by the contention that the representation of ideology involves the formulation of antitheses that are at once transcended and preserved, since contradiction is a condition of consciousness, thereby lending the works a sense of ambivalence and tension that is decidedly ‘‘modern’’ (see Harvey 1990, 10–11).

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An initial chapter looks back before the Revolution to Corneille’s Horace and David’s rendition, Le serment des Horaces, to introduce the properties of verbal and visual analysis used throughout the book and to examine the architectural solidity of neoclassical art. Architecture falls to ruin in romantic works like Chateaubriand’s Atala, where the overt message of Christian control is undermined by the sensuous natural imagery and self-indulgent individualism, an ambivalence preserved in Girodet’s adaptation, La mise au tombeau d’Atala. Balzac’s Le chefd’oeuvre inconnu and Daumier’s Pygmalion are portraits of the artist that develop new techniques of portraiture pointing to caricatural realism. Stendhal’s Le rouge et le noir and Hugo’s Les mise´rables, like Delacroix’s La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, use light and color symbolism to comment on the Revolution of 1830 and its ideological ramifications. Sand in La Mare au Diable and Millet in Le Semeur undercut traditional models to create portraits of rural heroes. Flaubert in ‘‘He´rodias’’ and Huysmans in A rebours parallel Moreau in Salome´ and L’apparition in using the figure of Salome to posit paradoxes of sensuality and spirituality. Like Zola in Le Ventre de Paris, Manet in his rue Mosnier series juxtaposes conflicting images to create first irony, then its inevitable by-product, ideology. In Une partie de campagne, Maupassant uses a network of gazes from a Renoir painting, La balanc¸oire, to uncover and undermine gender roles, as does Jean Renoir, the painter’s son, in his 1937 film adaptation of Maupassant’s tale. A final chapter looks beyond the nineteenth century to the contemporary Algerian woman writer Assia Djebar, who juxtaposes Delacroix’s Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement and Picasso’s Femmes d’Alger, to create a series of visual oppositions that enable the reader to construct an ideological framework from which to evaluate the elusive stories in her collection, also entitled Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement. The conclusion attempts to locate common strands among these works in order to formulate several principles of ‘‘modernity’’ and propose ways of ‘‘reading in the modern mode.’’ In short, the present book illustrates how verbal and visual imagery can be mobilized and manipulated to promote or denigrate patriotism, to advocate or undermine religion, to subjugate or liberate women, to explore the problematic relationship between the individual and social customs, institutions, and classes, or to challenge the very aesthetic grounds on which the images are constructed. In a sense I have attempted to expand Mitchell’s notion of word and image as a ‘‘dialectical trope’’ (1996, 53), resisting resolution, into an approach that explores the interplay of imagery and ideology, both between art forms and within individual texts and paintings. Whether the two poles of this pair—imagery and ideology—underscore or undermine, complement or contradict, reinforce or reverse, support or sub-

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vert each other, their very interaction allows us to witness the dynamic creation and complex layering of meaning in nineteenth-century art and enables us, perhaps, to better ‘‘read’’ a painting and better ‘‘see’’ a text, by embracing, not erasing, contradiction as a primary interpretive principle.

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1 Ideology Laid Bare: Corneille and David FEW WORKS REPRESENT POLITICAL, ETHICAL, AND FAMILIAL ISSUES more directly than two prerevolutionary adaptations of the same episode from Roman history: Pierre Corneille’s mid-seventeenth-century play Horace and Jacques-Louis David’s late eighteenth-century painting Le serment des Horaces (Oath of the Horatii), which was inspired by Corneille’s play. Surprisingly few studies treat these two masterpieces in tandem, much less explore the interplay of verbal and visual elements within each work, as I propose to do here. Apart from the inherent interest of such a ‘‘dialectical’’ approach and the opportunity of highlighting the techniques of verbal and visual analysis to be used throughout this book, juxtaposing the two works enables us, especially, to examine several long-standing questions surrounding these works and their cultural context. The art historian Louis Hautecoeur goes so far as to characterize literature and even painting of this general period as ‘‘purely literary’’: ‘‘Painting, in the 17th and 18th centuries, wanted to say more than it could, because it tried to obtain the same effects as literature, whereas literature remained purely literary, that is psychological, analytical, sometimes abstract’’ (1942/1963, 318). Indeed the prevalence of psychology, analysis, and abstraction may well contribute to the ostensibly clear-cut definitions of ideological positions that we find in Corneille’s play and David’s painting. Examining these neoclassical masterpieces together will, however, add shades of nuance to Hautecoeur’s all too broadly brushed statement, while affording us new perspectives from which to explore perpetually controversial questions, such as Camille’s role in Corneille’s play and David’s unprecedented choice of an oath scene to embody his interpretation of the legend.

CORNEILLE’S HORACE: IDEOLOGY AND VERBAL EXPRESSION Horace is a five-act tragedy in verse written by Corneille in 1640, on the cusp between the baroque and classical periods in France. The ac30

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tion is based on an account by the Roman historian Titus Livius in his History of Rome (1.26) of a war between two sister states of Lavinium, Alba and Rome, during the reign of the Roman king Tullus Hostilius (Tulle in French, 672–640 BC). This tale of two cities becomes a tragedy of two families when, to avoid mass internecine bloodshed, each city, both descended from Troy, names a set of brothers—the Roman Horatii (Horaces) and the Alban Curiatii (Curiaces)—to engage in combat to the death to determine the war’s outcome. Like many of their countries’ citizens, these families have intermarried: one of the Horace brothers is husband to the Curiaces’ sister Sabine, while the Horaces’ sister Camille is betrothed to one of the Curiace brothers. During the combat, two of the Horace brothers die, after inflicting wounds on the three Curiaces; the remaining Roman, by feigning flight to separate his weakened adversaries, is able to defeat them in individual combat, thus rendering Rome victorious and laying the groundwork for the future Roman Empire. Upon learning of her fiance´’s death, however, Horace’s sister Camille laments the loss of her lover while decrying Roman values, thereby incurring the wrath of her brother, who summarily puts her to death. After considerable debate and an eloquent plea by his father, Publius Horatius (old Horace), Horace is acquitted of his crime by the king, Tulle, who owes his kingdom to this wayward warrior whose actions he condemns yet must condone. Corneille further reduces the cast by dramatizing only one Horace (the ultimate victor) and one Curiace (the sister’s fiance´), along with Horace’s wife Sabine, his betrothed sister Camille, and his father (old Horace), accompanied by a confidant who also serves as a reporter (Julie), a messenger who doubles as Camille’s Roman suitor (Vale`re), and the Roman king (Tulle). The action itself is limited by the strict principles of tragedy advanced by Cardinal Richelieu’s newly formed French Academy, and, indeed, the play is often considered the first classical French tragedy for its adherence to these rules (Carlin 1998, 57). These constraints include the notion of proprieties (biense´ances), which precludes physical actions, such as duels and deaths, from the stage, and that of the three unities (unite´s) of time (the action must take place within twenty-four hours), place (only a single setting is used, preferably a neutral antechamber), and action (the plot must be a single, sustained action, involving no subplots). Although the theater is a performed genre involving material presence on the stage, visuality is reduced to a bare minimum in order to focus on ideas and their expression in words. As Barbara Woshinsky puts it, ‘‘on the seventeenthcentury stage, where physical action is circumscribed by propriety as well as practicality, words not only stand for deeds; they act in their own right’’ (1991, 18).

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Far from being muted or masked, ideology is explicit, even didactic, usually formulated through antitheses reflecting the two value systems suggested by the story itself: ‘‘friendship, marriage and love’’ (verses 418, 463) on the one hand; serving one’s country (420) or ‘‘duty’’ (462) on the other. Expressed in more general terms, this ethical conflict ultimately takes the form of personal interest versus public good: ‘‘On pleure injustement des pertes domestiques, / Quand on en voit sortir des victoires publiques’’ (1175–76; see also 1371–72) [One unjustifiably mourns domestic losses / When one sees them produce public victories]. Here we witness one of the numerous examples of the rhetorical figure of antithesis: the two antonyms ‘‘publiques’’ and ‘‘domestiques,’’ which are opposite in meaning, are at the same time identical in grammatical form (adjectives) and syntactical position (final) and similar in both sound (rhyme) and appearance (typography). By utilizing multiple means of verbal expression and juxtaposing the fundamental structuring principles of similarity and difference, the antithesis highlights the two terms of the conflict in the starkest of ways. As Harriet Stone states, ‘‘Horace represents the quintessential classical ideal of order. Restricting the flow of meanings to binary opposites—Rome/Albe; state/ family; duty/passion; male/female—Corneille frames his text within a traditional logocentric system whereby one meaning can be derived from its opposite’’ (1996, 43). Moreover, Corneille systematically distributes ideological positions throughout the play by aligning the characters along various spectrums of possibilities. From one perspective, old Horace and his son lie clearly on the side of patriotic values (‘‘publiques’’), Sabine occupies the other extremity defined by personal values (‘‘domestiques’’), and Curiace and Camille seem, at least initially, to be caught in the middle, sitting squarely on the dilemma’s proverbial horns. From another direction, as Stone indicates, the characters can be grouped by country, the Romans being more rabidly patriotic, the Albans more ‘‘human,’’ and the rhymes regularly reinforce the antitheses between ‘‘romain’’ (Roman) and ‘‘humain’’ (human) (481–82, 977–78, 1367–68); between ‘‘Rome’’ and ‘‘homme’’ (man) (231–32, 467–68). From yet another angle, however, also noted by Stone, the characters can be categorized along male-female lines, creating, implicitly, another conflict and thus an additional ideological dimension in the play. Indeed, some critics see the masculine-feminine distinction as fundamental not only to the structure of Horace but to the very notion of tragedy (Doubrovsky 1963, 133; 1985, 239; and Greenberg 1983, 272 and 279). Since women do not serve their country, since they are confined to domestic social spaces, and since they are traditionally linked to sentiment and personal values, they are obvious candidates for the nonpublic side

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of the spectrum. If gender difference ultimately proves secondary, a consequence rather than a cause, as Diane Fourny contends (1988, 305), it is nonetheless overtly present from the outset: in the opening speech Sabine recognizes that her weakness (‘‘faiblesse’’) (1), disturbance (‘‘e´branlement’’) (4), disorder (6) and ‘‘trouble’’ (8), expressed by tears (‘‘larmes’’) (8) and sighs (‘‘soupirs’’) (9), are far from ‘‘male’’ (5) virtues, and she excuses herself in antithetical form by pleading that ‘‘Si l’on fait moins qu’un homme, on fait plus qu’une femme’’ (12) [If one does less than a man, one does more than a woman]. Later, when the men engage in combat, the women are confined to the personal space of the home: ‘‘Et ne savez-vous point que de cette maison / Pour Camille et pour moi l’on fait une prison?’’ (773–74) [And don’t you know that this house / For Camille and me has been made a prison?]. Among the male characters, rivaling his son for least feminist, most patriotic, and ultra Roman, is old Horace. His first words express open disdain for women: ‘‘Qu’est-ce ceci, mes enfants? e´coutez-vous vos flammes, / Et perdez-vous encor le temps avec des femmes?’’ (679–80) [What’s this my children? you listen to your flames / And still waste your time with women?]. When he speaks of family, he does so less in terms of personal roles or relationships (father-son) than in words like ‘‘sang’’ (blood) and ‘‘race,’’ which reflect his Roman heritage (‘‘Pleurez le de´shonneur de toute notre race,’’ 1019) [Mourn the dishonor of all our race]. Although he expresses friendship for the Curiace brothers and genuine sympathy for his future son-in-law, this personal attachment creates no insurmountable dilemma for him, no impossible choice between value systems, since his main personal interests coincide with his overriding sense of public duty to Rome: Mais enfin l’amitie´ n’est pas du meˆme rang Et n’a point les effets de l’amour ni du sang; Je ne sens point pour eux la douleur qui tourmente Sabine comme soeur, Camille comme amante: Je puis les regarder comme nos ennemis, Et donne sans regret mes souhaits a` mes fils. (957–62) [But finally friendship is not of the same rank And has not the same effects as love or blood; I don’t feel for them the pain that torments Sabine as sister, Camille as lover: I can see them as our enemies, And remorselessly root for my sons.]

In addition to the crystal-clear message of the words themselves, Corneille uses the ordered form of the French alexandrine to under-

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score the inflexible views of old Horace. With irrevocable regularity, each verse has twelve syllables, with a pause (cesura) in the middle, often used to highlight antithetical pairs like ‘‘soeur’’ and ‘‘amante.’’ With inevitable strictness, the couplets alternate between feminine rimes (those ending in e) and masculine ones, often reinforced by inner rimes, like ‘‘regarder’’ and ‘‘regret,’’ placed strategically at the pauses. With military precision the grammatical units (clauses and sentences) end with the poetic units (verses). The conventional verse system is used to convey the regular, even rigid, social system embodied by Rome and embraced by old Horace and his warrior son. Since the versification itself resists change and promotes permanence, one can agree with Mary Jo Muratore’s contention that ‘‘In Horace, repetition is the structuring ideology’’ (1997, 253), an ideology, in short, of law and order. Although the young Horace’s position is potentially more equivocal, since his wife is Alban and since he must kill or be killed by her brother (his best friend in Corneille’s rendition), his complete allegiance to Rome renders his position unambiguous: He bluntly informs Curiace that ‘‘Albe vous a nomme´, je ne vous connais plus’’ (502) [Albe has named you, I know you no more] and, speaking to his sister after the battle, refers to him as a ‘‘public enemy’’ (1269). As for his wife, Horace expects total allegiance, exhorting her to raise her feelings to his level (1353) and, when she doesn’t, he blames the gods for giving women such sway over men (1381–82). If he is in love with Sabine, as he professes, this personal feeling is clearly subordinated to his sense of honor and duty to his country. Again the language he uses, his way of speaking, reinforces what he says, as in the following example: Qui veut mourir ou vaincre est vaincu rarement: Ce noble de´sespoir pe´rit malaise´ment. (385–86) [Whoever wants to die or vainquish is rarely vainquished: Such noble despair perishes only with difficulty.]

The maxim, utilizing the impersonal pronoun ‘‘qui,’’ the third person, and the eternal present, generalizes the thought, depersonalizes the speaker, creates a striking example of public language, matching Horace’s ideological stance. Curiace, whose situation is nearly identical (Camille is his betrothed not yet his wife), is caught between his personal feeling and his public duty. His dilemma is reflected in his response to Horace—‘‘Je vous connais encore, et c’est ce qui me tue . . .’’ (503) [I know you still, and that’s what’s killing me]—and in his divided self description to Ca-

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mille—‘‘Aussi bon citoyen que ve´ritable amant’’ (266) [As good a citizen as a true lover]—where country and personal feelings are placed on the same level. Although he opts for duty—‘‘Avant que d’eˆtre a` vous, je suis a` mon pays’’ (562) [Before being yours, I am my country’s]—he clearly has mixed feelings, second thoughts, and he sees himself as losing, whichever system prevails: ‘‘De tous les deux coˆte´s, j’ai des pleurs a` re´pandre; / De tous les deux coˆte´s mes de´sirs sont trahis’’ (396–97) [On both sides, I have tears to shed / On both sides my desires are betrayed]. Such divided allegiances produce an attitude toward his situation that is ultimately self-defeating—‘‘Je vais comme au supplice a` cet illustre emploi’’ (537) [I am going as to torture to this illustrious event]—especially in contrast with the never-look-back attitude of Horace: ‘‘Et c’est mal de l’honneur entrer dans la carrie`re / Que de`s le premier pas regarder en arrie`re’’ (487–88) [And it’s bad to enter honor’s path / When looking backward from the first step]. Even without knowing the story, the reader entertains little doubt as to the outcome of the battle. Although the same verse form prevails, Corneille modulates it to lend Curiace’s language a different pattern than that of the Horace family: Que de´sormais le ciel, les enfers et la terre Unissent leurs fureurs a` nous faire la guerre; Que les hommes, les dieux, les de´mons et le sort Pre´parent contre nous un ge´ne´ral effort! Je mets a` faire pis, en l’e´tat ou` nous sommes, Le sort et les de´mons, et les dieux, et les hommes. Ce qu’ils ont de cruel, et d’horrible et d’affreux, L’est bien moins que l’honneur qu’on nous fait a` tous deux. (423–30) [Let henceforth heaven, hell, and earth Unite their anger to make war on us; Let men, gods, demons, and fate Prepare a common effort against us! I challenge them to do worse, in our present state, Fate and demons, gods and men. What they have as cruel, horrible, and horrifying, Is much less so than the honor bestowed on us both.]

Clearly, Curiace sees his situation in a negative, personal, even paranoid way that contrasts sharply, for example, with that of Camille, who later states: ‘‘Le ciel agit sans nous en ces e´ve´nements, / Et ne les re`gle point dessus nos sentiments’’ (861–62) [Heaven acts without us in these events / And doesn’t plan them based on our feelings]. Moreover, Cor-

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neille lends Curiace forms of expression and organization that betray his distress. Although Woshinsky’s conclusion that Curiace’s language reveals him to be more ‘‘whole’’ (1991, 40) than Camille is debatable, one can hardly disagree with her overall assessment that ‘‘the opposition between totalitarian commitment and individual completeness is conveyed—in a typically Corneilan way—not just by the characters’ words but by their very syntax’’ (39). Unlike the balanced, binary speech patterns attributed to the Romans, Corneille accumulates, in the example at hand, nouns and adjectives in groups of three or four, mixes categories (‘‘les hommes, les dieux, les de´mons et le sort,’’ 425), then reverses them through the rhetorical figure of chiasma (428) to suggest Curiace’s disarray (see Fourny 1988, 294–95). Instead of ending with the verse, the Alban’s sentences tend to run on, an irregularity easily picked up by the trained French ear. His personalization is manifest in the first-person pronouns (Je, nous); his emotionality emerges from the enumeration (‘‘de cruel, et d’horrible et d’affreux’’) as much as from the meaning of the words, and is evident in the exclamation point. In short, he sees his situation as unique, but in a personal rather than exemplary sense. Compared to Sabine, however, Curiace maintains a certain control of his situation: he acts in a public way, even if his language and thus thoughts are predominately personal. From the outset his sister declares herself to be ‘‘du parti qu’affligera le sort’’ (90) [on the side afflicted by fate] and never wavers from a position that ensures defeat for herself and her sex: ‘‘L’usage d’un tel art [courage], nous le laissons aux hommes, / Et ne voulons passer que pour ce que nous sommes’’ (943– 44) [The use of such courage, we leave that to men / And want to pass only for what we are]. Unlike her brother, she experiences no conflict between public and personal value systems, but only among elements of the personal system. Her entire dilemma (expressed by numerous antitheses) involves her conflicting allegiance to ‘‘brothers’’ on the one hand and to ‘‘husband’’ on the other, and whether to see herself as ‘‘sister’’ or ‘‘wife.’’ In fact, she does both, and negatively at that: ‘‘les douleurs d’une soeur, et celles d’une femme’’ (1596) [the pains of a sister and those of a wife]. She personalizes the conflict, refusing to see it in public terms: ‘‘Je songe par quel bras, et non pour quelle cause’’ (752) [I think by which arm and not for which cause]. As for Rome and Albe, she is for neither—‘‘Je ne suis point pour Albe, et ne suis plus pour Rome’’ (88) [I am not for Albe, and no longer for Rome]—and indeed hates both—‘‘Vous eˆtes ennemis en ce combat fameux, / Vous d’Albe, vous de Rome, et moi de toutes deux’’ (645–46) [You are enemies in this famous combat / You of Albe, you of Rome, and I of both]. On the

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few occasions, early in the play, when she does speak of politics, she does so in entirely personal terms: Ingrate, souviens-toi que du sang de ses rois Tu tiens ton nom, tes murs et tes premie`res lois. Albe est ton origine: arreˆte et conside`re Que tu portes le fer dans le sein de ta me`re. (53–56) [Ungrateful, remember that from the blood of her kings You take your name, your walls, and your first laws. Albe is your origins: stop and consider That you bury cold steel in the bosom of your mother.]

By having her speak to Rome—through the rhetorical device of apostrophe, whereby one addresses directly an inanimate object or entity, along with her use of the personal ‘‘tu’’ form of address (reinforced by the repetition of ‘‘t’’ in verse 54) and personal imperatives (souviens-toi, arreˆte, conside`re)—as well as speaking of Albe as a mother—the family metaphor in the final verse—Corneille mobilizes a rhetoric of personification and personalization that clearly underscores the position evident in the content of her words. Camille’s situation is similar to Sabine’s, except that Curiace is her betrothed not her husband, but Camille’s response to it is entirely different from that of her sister-in-law, perhaps revealing her Romanness and certainly lifting her sex out of the trap set for women by all the other characters, male and female alike. Like Curiace, Camille sees her dilemma as a conflict between value systems, the public and the personal: ‘‘Tantoˆt pour mon pays, tantoˆt pour mon amant’’ (186) [Sometimes for my country, sometimes for my lover]. Indeed she proclaims of the title ‘‘husband’’: ‘‘Jamais, jamais ce nom ne sera pour un homme / Qui soit ou le vainqueur ou l’esclave de Rome’’ (231–32) [ Never, never will this name be for a man / Who is either the conqueror or the slave of Rome]. Textual evidence simply does not support characterizations of Camille as an ‘‘emotional, impulsive creature’’ (Yarrow 1967, xxii), ‘‘impulsive and capricious’’ (Lasserre 1990, 122), or ‘‘inge´nue’’ (Herland 1952/1962, 43). On the contrary, Camille sees her dilemma clearly and expresses it forcefully, befitting a person whose betrothal occurs the same day that her country declares war: Ce jour nous fut propice et funeste a` la fois: Unissant nos maisons, il de´sunit nos rois: Un meˆme instant conclut notre hymen et la guerre, Fit naıˆtre notre espoir et le jeta par terre,

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Nous oˆta tout, sitoˆt qu’il nous eut tout promis, Et nous faisant amants, il nous fit ennemis. (173–78) [That day was propitious and disastrous at once: Uniting our houses, it disunited our kings: The same instant concluded our betrothal and the war, Gave birth to our hope and threw it on the ground, Took all from us, right after promising all to us, In making us lovers, it made us enemies.]

Again the dilemma is expressed by the antithesis evident in the final verse, where the opposing terms, reflecting conflicting values (personal and patriotic), are positioned strategically at the pause (‘‘amants’’) and rhyme (‘‘ennemis’’), highlighted by the repetition of the same pronoun (‘‘nous’’) and verb (‘‘faire’’) in both parts of the verse (called he´mistiches). Indeed each verse in this excerpt contains an antithesis, the binary structure matching that of the rhymed couplets themselves, while overall variety is guaranteed by the part of speech and position in the verse. First the adjectives ‘‘propice’’ and ‘‘funeste’’ are juxtaposed on either side of the pause; next the verbs ‘‘unir’’ and ‘‘de´sunir’’ begin each half of the verse, while the nouns ‘‘maisons’’ (personal) and ‘‘rois’’ (political) end them, much as ‘‘hymen’’ (personal) and ‘‘guerre’’ (political) end the second hemistich of the following verse. The next two verses juxtapose verbs and derive a certain vocal power from the repetition of sounds (‘‘naıˆtre . . . notre’’) and words (‘‘nous . . . tout’’). In her analysis of the same passage, Fourny points out Corneille’s use of temporal expressions to maximize the intensity of Camille’s dilemma: ‘‘Corneille thus makes impossible any movement or change by shattering time, by squeezing eight opposing actions into a single moment, achieved through various temporal expressions that create simultaneity: a` la fois, un meˆme instant, sitoˆt que, and present participles, unissant and faisant’’ (1988, 288). We further note the paucity of figurative, much less visual, expression in Camille’s speech. Only in verse 176 does she use a personification regarding the ‘‘birth’’ of hope and a metaphor when it is ‘‘thrown to the ground.’’ But these are conventional expressions, much like the use of ‘‘feux’’ for passion, ‘‘ciel’’ for God, and ‘‘ruisseaux’’ for tears found in the surrounding verses (172, 179, 180, respectively). In no case is the expression visual, and together they represent a reduction of physical phenomena to the four basic elements of earth, fire, air, and water, a no-nonsense approach worthy of the regal and Roman Camille. This deft, almost mathematical manipulation of language lends Camille a sense of mental toughness and control that separates her from Sabine

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and even from Curiace. Put another way, Camille espouses the very values embodied by the verse form: she is balanced, rational, and forceful, even when speaking of her plight. It is significant also that, quite the opposite of Sabine, who speaks of politics in personal terms, Camille speaks of love in political terms: Et que l’aveu de notre pe`re, engageant notre foi, A fait de ce tyran un le´gitime roi: Il entre avec douceur, mais il re`gne par force; (921–23) [And when the consent of our father, committing our pledge, Made of this tyrant a legitimate king: He enters softly, but he reigns forcefully;]

Here the comparing terms of the metaphor—‘‘tyran,’’ ‘‘rois,’’ and ‘‘regner’’ (none of them, we note in passing, particularly visual) all come from the vocabulary of politics, revealing the higher level on which Camille conceives of her love. The first verse contains the keys to this conception: love is anchored by a pledge (‘‘notre foi’’) binding both father and daughter. It is not Camille’s ‘‘veritable morality of Feeling’’ that renders her feminine weakness legitimate, as Serge Doubrovsky argues (1963, 155–57); legitimacy stems, rather, from a verbal promise engaged in by father and daughter. In short, love, like military service, is based not on passion but on duty, and it is bound by an oath. As Camille asks (though merely rhetorically) at the outset, ‘‘D’un serment solennel qui peut nous de´gager?’’ (158) [From a solemn oath who can unbind us?]. Such examples might cause Claire Carlin to modify her statement that ‘‘The duty, honor, and glory espoused by Chime`ne [the primary female protagonist in Corneille’s Le Cid] interest neither Camille nor Sabine, who do not share the ethics of the male characters’’ (1998, 61). In fact, unlike Curiace, who identifies passion as the basis of his love (335), Camille cites duty (‘‘plus elle doit t’aimer,’’ 250) [more she must love you], which enables her to love Curiace even when she thinks he has deserted and thus forsaken his duty to his country. Unlike Sabine, who invokes natural bonds based on birth and condemns elective ties (911), Camille insists on the necessity of keeping her word (921). To break her vow would be breaking the law, making her a criminal, that is, a public enemy (152, 156, 158, 168, 210). She elevates love from a mere personal concern to the status of a public duty based on law. In this sense, we can now add some nuance to our earlier identification of the principal ideological conflict of the play and to statements like that of Anita Brookner, who contends that ‘‘the drama is one of

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conflict between love and duty’’ (1980, 70). While the two terms are appropriate, they constitute the essential dilemma only for the shortlived Curiace: for Horace and his father, love is not a major factor, while Sabine sees her conflict as between different forms of love, and Camille between different forms of duty. Duty (public) Horace and old Horace

Love (domestic) Curiace

Camille Country

Sabine Brother

Husband

Betrothed

Ultimately it is the notion of duty to her dead lover that determines Camille’s outcome and the eventual movement of the play away from Horace’s triumph and toward his downfall. It is Camille’s sense of duty—‘‘ce que doit une amante a` la mort d’un amant’’ (1250) [what a lover owes upon the death of her lover]; ‘‘ce que je lui dois’’ (1257) [what I owe him]—that leads her to avenge her lover’s death, just as Horace avenged that of his brothers: ‘‘Et j’oublierai leur mort que vous avez venge´e; / Mais qui me vengera de celle d’un amant?’’ (1264–65) [And I’ll forget their death that you have avenged; / But who will avenge the death of my lover?]. Her actions in act 4, her verbal attack on her brother and on Rome, are entirely lucid, driven by reason not passion. She consciously sets out to destroy Horace by the only arms she possesses, the power of language; in blaspheming Rome she reaches the very roots of his value system and with it his proverbial ‘‘hero’s heel.’’ She even predicts Horace’s fall (1293–94). She forces him to commit the act that will topple him from the pinnacle of glory into the depths of crime against the state, betrayer of the very law he sought to defend. As Richard Goodkin argues, ‘‘she forces her brother to kill her against his will . . . and so beats him at his own game’’ (1994, 13). By her own death she both avenges and joins her lover, thereby fulfilling her oath and the oracle’s prediction to her: ‘‘Et tu seras unie avec ton Curiace, / Sans qu’aucun mauvais sort t’en se´pare jamais’’ (197–98) [And you will be united with your Curiace, / Without any bad fate ever separating you]. As the king, the embodiment of public order in the play, decrees that they be placed in the same tomb, he acknowledges that their death derives from a similar sense of duty: ‘‘Puisqu’en un meˆme jour l’ardeur d’un meˆme ze`le / Ache`ve le destin de son amant et d’elle’’ (1779–80) [Since the same day the ardor of the same zeal / Fulfills the destiny of her lover and herself]. Camille is granted a warrior’s rest, as befits the one character who has been able to reach higher ideo-

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logical ground by synthesizing the domestic and the public, by reconceptualizing love as a form of both personal and civic duty. Some contemporaries of Corneille criticized the lack of unity in Horace, claiming that the play should have ended with Horace’s triumphant fulfillment of his oath to defend Rome, and lamenting the seemingly superfluous acts of Camille’s death and Horace’s trial. Aside from fidelity to Roman history (which Corneille might well have sacrificed to structural unity), the play cannot end until the fulfillment of Camille’s own oath, highlighted in the first act of the play. As one critic puts it, ‘‘The presence, almost from the start, of the eventual murder victim, Camille, and the effect of her on the combatants’ expressed attitudes and of the discussions she has with Sabine and le Vieil Horace, are key elements in any consideration of the structural unity or disunity of the play’’ (Gossip 1998, 348). Goodkin goes so far as to see Camille’s conflict with Horace as more important than Curiace’s: ‘‘Horace’s sister Camille, although she purportedly takes an anti-Roman stance, fights her brother with such force, vehemence, and singlemindedness that the play seems to be going out of its way to tell us that the real conflict in the drama is between the two true Romans, Horace and Camille, rather than between Horace and the Alban Curiace . . . The brother and sister cannot be defined by a difference; they are essentially the same’’ (1994, 13). Indeed, Camille’s adherence to principle and word, and her conscious act in defining her own tragic destiny appear to undermine the male-female distinction established throughout the play and situate her within the dominant ideology of order, not outside of it as has been argued by several influential critics, including Greenberg (1983, 282; 289–92) and Stone (1987, 30; 1996, 43–58). Like her brother, Camille is a tragic hero in the Cornelian (some say preexistentialist) sense: she acts willfully according to her principles by a conscious act that shapes yet paradoxically seals her own fate. But Camille’s means (in blaspheming against Rome) and her brother’s act (in killing her), however true to their sworn principles, go against the public good. Ironically, both characters, driven by law, end up breaking it and becoming ‘‘criminals’’ (1411, 1735, 1740, 1760). They create disorder in a world where law and order are the ultimate standards. In an ending that was sure to please Richelieu, who was at the time attempting to consolidate power in France, the Roman king Tulle must step in to restore the law and order disturbed by the play’s protagonists, whose individual heroism must be subordinated to the public good, as represented by the king. Horace is a play whose message seems eminently matched by its medium: the values of law and order are supported by the laws of French tragedy and the order of the alexandrine verse form. Corneille’s work

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is also highly, if not ‘‘purely’’ literary and, as such, has spawned several ‘‘metadramatic’’ readings (see Barnett 1990; Muratore 1990 and 1997). Although a play, visual elements of the spectacle are reduced to a bare minimum (notwithstanding the judgment of Muratore that ‘‘vision is everywhere in evidence,’’ 1990, 34): Costumes are simple, and space is shrunk to a single neutral room. Actions take place offstage and are replayed/replaced by five re´cits, verbal transmissions and transformations of deeds already past. Indeed, three of these descriptions themselves feature direct quotes, all of which affirm the power of the spoken word: Camille is moved by the oracle’s words (‘‘Je pris sur cet oracle une entie`re assurance,’’ 199) [I took from this oracle complete assurance], while the Alban king’s speech to the combined armies (1.3) restores order (‘‘Il semble qu’a` ces mots notre discorde expire,’’ 316) [It seemed that at these words our discord expired], as does later (3.3) the Roman king’s (‘‘Il se tait, et ces mots semblent eˆtre des charmes,’’ 819) [He stops speaking, and these words seem like charms]. One critic even approaches the play’s oft-present gestures and tears as ‘‘speech acts,’’ equating ‘‘larmes’’ [tears] with ‘‘armes’’ and thus language with power (Toczyski 1998, 224–25). Camille precipitates her own death, her own destiny, by words, and order is subsequently reestablished through the law, the ultimate word: ‘‘The whole last act is the Law, that speaking, constitutes itself’’ (Greenberg 1983, 292). As Woshinsky argues of Corneille’s heroes in general: ‘‘This evolution from self-definition to selffulfillment in action is accomplished through language’’ (1991, 38; see also 141). This affirmation of verbal expression is accompanied by a concomitant undermining of the visual: In contrast to her reaction to the oracle, Camille has a dream replete with ‘‘Milles songes affreux, mille images sanglantes’’ (216) [A thousand awful dreams, a thousand bloody images] and in which ‘‘chaque illusion / Redoublait mon effroi par sa confusion’’ (221–22) [each illusion / redoubled my fright by its confusion]; Horace also demeans ‘‘Le peuple, qui voit tout seulement par l’e´corce’’ (1559) [The populace, which sees everything only by its bark], thus displaying his distrust in external vision. The only sustained visual metaphor in the play, where Sabine expresses ‘‘illusion’’ and ‘‘error’’ in terms of blinding light and somber obscurity, serves in fact to undermine visuality itself, since both terms of the antithesis, and thus the entire range of visual possibilities, prove to be equally false: Flatteuse illusion, erreur douce et grossie`re, Vain effort de mon aˆme, impuissante lumie`re, De qui le faux brillant prend droit de m’e´blouir, Que tu sais peu durer et toˆt t’e´vanouir !

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Pareille a` ces e´clairs qui dans le fort des ombres Poussent un jour qui fuit et rend les nuits plus sombres, Tu n’as frappe´ mes yeux d’un moment de clarte´ Que pour les abıˆmer dans plus d’obscurite´. (739–46) [Flattering illusion, sweet and coarse error, Vain effort of my soul, powerless light, Whose false glow tries to dazzle me, How you last little and fast fade! Like these flashes that in full shadows Spawn a light that flickers and makes the nights darker, You struck my eyes with a moment of brightness Only to plunge them into greater darkness.]

In Corneille’s world, order is achieved by reason and expressed by words, not by vision (‘‘mes yeux’’) and visuality (‘‘le faux brillant’’), which are matters of mistrust by many ‘‘men of letters’’ of the prerevolutionary period, as pointed out by W. J. T. Mitchell in his suggestive discussions of Gotthold Lessing and Edmund Burke: ‘‘Burke and Lessing treat the image as the sign of the racial, social, and sexual other, an object of both fear and contempt’’ (1986, 151). Even Jean Starobinski (1961/1999), in his heavily ocular approach to French literature, acknowledges the treachery of visual phenomena (‘‘bedazzlement’’ and ‘‘brightness’’) for the Cornelian hero: ‘‘With Corneille, all begins by bedazzlement. But it is precarious, occupying only an instant’s fleeting interval, like the seduction of bright objects. The Cornelian hero forcefully refuses to belong to them and to adore them; the dazzled conscience pulls away from its passive condition in hopes of reversing roles. It also wants to be dazzling, a source of brightness and power. It is through generous language that it first claims this privilege’’ (18). Even if, subsequently, as Starobinski contends, ‘‘glorious speech does not suffice; it must come down to acts’’ in order for the protagonist to be ‘‘seen’’ as heroic (18), the momentary ‘‘brightness’’ of heroism can be perpetuated only through ‘‘renown’’ (65), that is, through language. If, in addition to the antitheses of masculine/feminine and public/ private that we have already examined, Horace can also be divided by disorder/constancy, as Diane Fourny demonstrates (1988, 288–91), then vision falls squarely on the side of disorder and, coupled with verbal order, constitutes another dialectic from which to approach the play. Visual failure does not, however, stem from a lack of truth; Camille’s ‘‘images’’ of impending death (215–20) prefigure that of Curiace, and her own provocative ‘‘vision’’ of Rome’s demise (1315–18, in which

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‘‘voir’’ [to see] appears in three successive verses) will eventually prove true. It stems, rather, from a lack of order, which verbal language alone can restore, however precariously. In short, Corneille’s Horace is a highly crafted play governed by verbal expression—oaths, oracles, predictions, laws, speeches of all sorts— which calls attention to its own medium and is thus highly ‘‘metaliterary.’’ It is a play where the properties of verbal language espouse precisely the finely chiseled contours of the literary medium to promote a message of law and order, which, as many critics would have it (Barnett 1990, 3; Greenberg 1983, 291; Knapp 1981, 145), ‘‘suppresses’’ or ‘‘represses’’ ideological waywardness, sexual difference, verbal ambiguity, and visual intrusion. David’s Oath of the Horatii is a similarly powerful affirmation of visual expressiveness.

DAVID’S OATH OF THE HORATII: IDEOLOGY AND VISUAL EXPRESSION Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) was a political chameleon whose career spanned and survived the most turbulent of times, which witnessed in rapid succession the ancien re´gime, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Anita Brookner identifies as David’s most impressive characteristic ‘‘his ability to produce a style to meet the needs of the historical moment, a continually evolving equivalent of social momentum and social change’’ (1980, 68). The Oath of the Horatii, a monumental work thirteen feet by ten feet, is generally acknowledged to be David’s masterpiece and perhaps that of the neoclassical movement. The canvas was painted in 1784–85 and exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1785, on the eve of the Revolution, which was to mark the end of the Bourbon re´gime, just as, ironically, Corneille’s era had ushered in its consolidation. David had, in fact, seen Corneille’s play Horace in late 1782 and was apparently so struck by the performance that he quickly drafted a drawing for a vast scene based on old Horace’s defense of his son in the final act. In the foreground to the right stands old Horace, towering over Camille’s cadaver and defending his defiant son before the Roman crowd. The king and his entourage are situated in the middle ground toward the center of the painting, with a temple and an aqueduct in the background to the left. This vast scene, whose composition is similar in scope to that of David’s Sabines (1799), would have been far more romantic in its profusion of figures, use of plunging space, and appeal to local color than the eventual painting.

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The Oath of the Horatii (see color insert) arrays all of the figures along a single frontal plane: the three determined brothers, superimposed to stand as one, to the left; the father, holding aloft three swords, in the center; the mourning female figures to the far right: Camille in white as befits a virgin, Sabine in gold and blue, flanked by a nurse and two children. The intermediate viewpoint, producing a scope that is neither panoramic nor intimate but dramatic, the uniform lighting, and ‘‘the stage-like setting’’ (D. Johnson 1993, 58; see also S. Lee 1999, 89 and Howard 1975, 121 n. 194) seem to pay homage to the painting’s theatrical origins. Certainly, the reduction of figures, details, and scope is truer to the Corneille play and the principles of classicism underlying it than a painting based on the earlier drawing would have been. Furthermore, David’s friends reportedly had convinced him that the initial subject, old Horace’s speech, was ‘‘all words’’ (‘‘toute en paroles’’) and that he should seek a more pictorial subject (Pe´ron 1839–40, as reported in Hautecoeur, 1954, 71). Although an oath is a verbal phenomenon, it can be efficiently constructed by easily recognizable gestures and thus readily represented in visual terms. Simon Lee notes the appropriateness of the oath for distilling the play’s plot—‘‘the motif of the oath allowed David to present a unified and memorable distillation of a highly involved story’’ (1999, 82)—and F. Hamilton Hazlehurst for enhancing the play’s ideology— ‘‘David chose a moment from the Horatii story that would most readily lend itself to the idea of classical serenity and a dauntless moral fortitude; this solution enhanced the sense of permanent values which is indeed the essential content of the painting’’ (1960, 60). In this context, it is highly significant that David returned to the theme of the oath in both the revolutionary period (The Oath of the Tennis Court, 1791) and the Napoleonic era (The Oath of the Army to the Emperor after the Distribution of the Eagles, 1810). Although many of those in the French viewing public would have known the story of Horace, primarily through Corneille’s immensely popular play, already a school classic, any spectator, including one unfamiliar with the play and even unaware of the painting’s title, can immediately grasp numerous themes from the visual image itself: allegiance to a higher ideal from the raised arms, military service from the swords, solidarity from the intertwined figures and converging arms of the three men to the left, male courage and strength from the muscular arms and legs, female weakness from the swooning gestures and supine position of the women figures, family or at least generational hierarchy from the more advanced age of the central figure, a patriarchal order from the central position of the father figure and his raised hand, the focal point of the painting. Dorothy Johnson’s assessment

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that ‘‘the father’s authority, his absolute control over the destiny of his sons, which is emblematized in the power of this hand, is also emphasized in the original title of the painting: The Oath of the Horatii in the Hands of Their Father’’ (1993, 60) reminds us that the play itself, like the painting, was as much about patriarchy as about patriotism (see Goodkin 1994, 10–11; Greenberg 1983, 273; Knapp 1981, 137–41). Since we know Corneille’s version of the tale, we can only marvel at the masterful fit of the visually suggested themes with those embodied in the play. ‘‘There is, however,’’ to borrow Anita Brookner’s words, ‘‘one small but central problem which has bedeviled scholarship on this picture and produced the widest variants in interpretations: in none of these [previous] accounts do the brothers swear an oath of allegiance to their father’’ (1980, 70). Indeed, nowhere in Corneille or Titus Livius or any other source for the story is there to be found a scene where the three brothers swear an oath to their father; however, as we have seen in our analysis of Corneille’s play, the theme of an oath plays a major role in the presentation of both Horace and Camille, a interpretive avenue brought out no doubt by consideration of the painting. David simply finds a visual equivalent for a verbal phenomenon, which explains his reputed statement that he owed his picture to both ‘‘Corneille and Poussin’’(Pe´ron 1839–40, as reported in Hautecoeur 1954, 72). As Brookner suggests, some art historians have seized upon the oath motif to propose a wide variety of painterly antecedents for David’s work, suggesting paintings like Poussin’s The Rape of the Sabine Women, The Death of Germanicus, and The Testament of Eudamidas as sources for specific figures (Hazlehurst 1960), or paintings like Gavin Hamilton’s The Oath of Brutus and Jacques-Antoine Beaufort’s Le serment de Brutus for the theme of the oath (Rosenblum 1961, 1967, and 1970), or sculpture and basrelief as visual models (D. Johnson 1993, 41; A. Se´rullaz 1987, 93). Other critics, however, seek David’s sources in literature, arguing that ‘‘the interchange between painting and theatre in David’s work has a deep history of tangible cause and effect. In his painting, gestures, costumes, props and even exhibition methods can be investigated for their theatrical sources’’ (Carroll 1990, 200), and, as Michel The´voz concludes, ‘‘in short, David conceives his compositions as a playwright, a director, a decorator, and a lighting engineer. The reference code of his painting is theatre’’ (1989, 8). In this debate, I tend to walk a middle ground and to argue both alternatives conjointly: Far from being a misreading or a mistake, David’s choice of the oath to anchor his painting is a brilliant stroke that enables him both to represent the play’s message more totally and at the same time to distance himself from this theatrical source in order to affirm his own visual originality. Clearly the means (literary or painterly)

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are less significant than the meanings (the ideological positions) engendered by the interplay of the verbal and the visual, as several critics to be examined later have shown. Moreover, David accomplishes this visual exposition of ideology by the stark manipulation of virtually all of the properties of the image and their arrangement in antithetical fashion. Particularly striking and controversial is the composition of the painting, the spatial arrangement of the figures. Often compared to a bas-relief or a frieze because of the linear distribution of the figures across the surface of the canvas, the painting has also been criticized for its discontinuous or broken composition, because the figures appear in three separate groups (for ‘‘bas-relief’’ see Hautecoeur 1954, 72 and 82; for ‘‘frieze’’ see especially Howard 1975, 84 ff.; for broken composition, see Crow 1978, 459). A contemporary of David’s, V.-A. Coupin attributed this ‘‘lack of unity’’ to David’s failure to grasp the fundamental differences between literature and painting: ‘‘I find that the painter misunderstood the limits that separate painting and poetry. The poet could, even should display in turn the emotions of the warriors and the pains of the mother and the lover, but the painter couldn’t put two groups together in his painting, without troubling the unity of effect and action’’ (1827, as reported in Hautecoeur 1954, 84). David’s reply that unity of composition was a different matter from unity of action and that ‘‘the latter consists less in a single action, in a unique and isolated fact than in different facts forming the structure of the drama’’ (as reported in Hautecoeur 1954, 84) proves to what extent he understood profoundly the workings of Corneille’s play and provides an important clue to the antithetical nature of the painting’s structure and its key role in conveying ideological positions. Norman Bryson sees a fundamental tension in the Oath’s composition between the friezelike arrangement of the figures across the surface of the canvas and the converging perspective lines of the floor tiles, which create an effect of depth: ‘‘To place a frieze inside a veduta, which is the Oath’s dominant spatial action, is to activate two conventions of representation which stand in fundamental opposition’’ (1981, 79; his emphasis). Since the hypothetical vanishing point of the perspective lines is placed precisely at the intersection of the three swords in the father’s left hand, however, this focal point, coupled with the closed space in the background, has the effect of pushing attention back toward the frontal plane, back toward the thematic action and interaction. It is, in fact, the background, especially the arches, that contains the key to the most thematically rich aspect of the painting’s composition. The three arches divide the painting geometrically into three distinct segments along the horizontal axis, the left one occupied by the sons, the middle one by

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the father, the right one by the women and children. Furthermore, as Hautecoeur points out, the painting can also be divided vertically into three levels, a lower one marked by the height of the seated women’s heads, a second by that of the standing men’s heads, and the third by the top of the painting (1954, 83 and diagram 92). This tripartite division, systematically reinforced by the other visual variables, sets the dominant mode that comes to dictate the ideological content of the painting to the spectator. Since there are three sons, and the father holds three swords, the male figures are seen to correspond with the very organizing principle of the painting’s composition, established by the three arches. Just as Horace’s and Camille’s use of antithesis aligns them with the binary structure of the verse form of Corneille’s play, so does the number three identify the male figures as those representing the norm, established mathematically by the painting’s composition. The group of five women and children deviate from the norm and are thus disfavored in the same way that Curiace is by his uncontrolled speech. The value system based on patriotism embodied by the male figures in David’s painting is valorized, just as the system of personal and emotional values of the women is devalued, although highlighted to emphasize the ideological conflict. Furthermore, the shapes of the male figures are primarily triangular, a geometric equivalent of the mathematical number three, reinforcing their correspondence with the norm, while the flattened oval shape of the group of women and children further sets them apart. The angular, forceful lines established by the men’s rigid arms and legs lend these figures a marble- and metallic-like texture that matches that of the architecture and the weapons (see Crow 1978, 457), while the undulating, flowing lines of the female group again set them at odds with the dominant tone of the painting. The size of the erect male figures is also in sharp contrast with that of the seated females, while the direction of old Horace, turning toward the men and away from the women further excludes the latter. The virile red, brown, and silver colors used for father and sons bind the male groups together, in contrast with the dull blues, browns, and golds of the female group, not to mention Camille’s virginal white. The women are quite literally marginalized and disenfranchised by the systematic manipulation and combination of the visual variables. The tone also sets up a contrast, not between groups, but between the dark setting and the highlighted human figures, which The´voz, seeking theatrical analogies and sources, terms ‘‘a harsh, directional lighting for dramatic effect’’ (1989, 8). Brookner, on the other hand, contends that ‘‘there is no source of light in the picture and something about the crudeness of the illumination sends one looking upwards for a naked opening on to a hostile sky’’ (1980, 69).

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In short, the painting is unrelenting; every visual element focuses attention on the drama, breaks it neatly into two thematic groups, and clearly points to the correct interpretation. The style suggests a norm— based on law, order, and reason—with which the male figures agree and from which the female figures deviate; this difference creates a thematic conflict or antithesis, and, since one of the positions is clearly favored, an ideological stance. Some critics see the political implications of David’s work as ‘‘revolutionary’’ (Antal 1935; Crow 1978); others as merely ‘‘reformist’’ (Ettlinger 1967; Ratcliff 1990); still others as simply a sign of the time: In her penetrating study, for example, Dorothy Johnson (1993) contends that ‘‘the radical challenge’’ in David’s Oath, ‘‘was based on the artist’s revelation of the body and his privileging of corporal expression in art’’ (14), which she then links to an ideology of physical prowess that obsessed the degenerate French nation on the eve of the Revolution: ‘‘David offered, particularly in the male figures, paradigms of physical strength and vigor that corresponded to an adamant moral fervor and attitude. And he did so during a period in which fears concerning the physical and concomitant moral degeneration of the French people were not only prevalent but at a new height’’ (64). We hasten to add that, while this message of physical strength and moral dedication may parallel the ideology of Corneille’s play, it stems here primarily from the visual forms of expression and communication inaugurated by David in the painting itself. Far from being ‘‘purely literary,’’ as Hautecoeur suggests of prerevolutionary painting, David’s masterpiece is highly pictorial: despite its historical subject matter, the painting is less textually narrative than it is visually expressive (see Steiner 1988, 14); that is, the message can be interpreted through the expressions and gestures of the figures themselves, without undue recourse to the complex story that spawned it. As Martial Gue´dron has recently demonstrated, this visual expressiveness of the human ‘‘sign,’’ epitomized by David, characterizes the main thrust of theory and practice in late eighteenth-century art: ‘‘The idea that a painted composition wasn’t uniquely the translation into signs of a story requiring the spectators to refer to a source outside the work appeared incompatible with history painting. However, as this idea pursued its way, many theorists and practitioners reflected on the manner in which the heroic body was able to speak for itself, without necessarily needing recourse to symbolic accessories or attributes. The fascination for its expressive powers encouraged freeing pictorial language from its referential constraints’’ (2003, 209–10). In a highly suggestive article, John Winter sees the message embedded in the painting as fundamentally different from that of the play due

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to their different epochs: ‘‘What is striking is a shrinking of human volume, a general exteriorizing of theme from Corneille to David, subordinating the psychological facts to a social ideal, and thus accentuating the action . . . in order to extract ideological substance from it’’ (1983, 122). While one could argue that Winter exaggerates the psychological presentation of Corneille’s characters in order to downplay their ideological impact, which he lauds in the figures in David’s painting, we must applaud his methodology, in one of the few studies to analyze literature and painting conjointly. Nearly everyone concerned with the ideological implications of David’s Oath, whatever the directions they emphasize, would agree with Walter Friedlaender’s conclusion concerning the starkness of the painting’s statement: No one else would have dared to draw the axes so strongly and simply, to put the swordhilts so strikingly in mid-axis as a centre of attention, to consummate the action so clearly by formal and artistic means. The serious, sober coloring is to be understood as Spartan and manly. Everything is precise and unambiguous; unity of place, unity of time, unity of treatment—all have been observed. Here is a paradigm of the neoclassic or the neo-Poussinist style, improving on its model in tightness and laconic manner . . . above all, these technical means allow the idea of the picture to hit one squarely between the eyes. In their oath the Horatii express a patriotism above and beyond everything personal.(1952, 16–17)

In The Oath, David uses the full range of visual variables to create a striking image that reinforces ideology, just as Corneille manufactures meaning through the manipulation of the entire spectrum of verbal variables in his version of the story of Horace. In studying later examples of verbal and visual interaction, rarely will the messages be so clearly set forth, so clearly parallel, and so clearly confined to the properties of their respective media. Modern art will combine forms in ways unexpected at Corneille’s time yet beginning to be felt in David’s, as suggested by Lessing’s statement in the Laocoon: ‘‘Painting and poetry should be like two just and friendly neighbors, neither of whom indeed is allowed to take unseemly liberties in the heart of the other’s domain, but who exercise mutual forbearance on the borders, and effect a peaceful settlement for all the petty encroachments which circumstances may compel either to make in haste on the rights of the other’’ (1766/1910, 116). Lessing’s warnings notwithstanding, the postrevolutionary period, especially in France, will bear witness to sustained and full-blown incursions over the ‘‘war-torn border’’ (Mitchell 1986, 154) between painting and literature, which will foster new allegiances and alliances, not to mention treason and treachery, often leading to a sense of ambivalence that is a hallmark of modern art.

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2 Imagery and Conflicting Ideologies: Chateaubriand and Girodet IN 1801, THE FRENCH ARISTOCRAT FRANC¸OIS-RENE´ DE CHATEAUBRIAND, newly reinstalled in France after having fled the ravages of the Revolution, published a short novel, Atala, to be followed in 1802 by its companion piece, Rene´. Both set in the New World, where Chateaubriand had traveled in 1791 during his self-imposed exile, the tales are narrated respectively by Chactas, an Amerindian, and Rene´, his adopted French son. Rene´, a thinly disguised biography detailing the melancholic sufferings of a sensitive nobleman cut adrift from family and homeland, was to have a lasting impact on the French romantic psyche. Atala, the story of a mixed-race maiden, whose love for Chactas leads to her death and his chronic wandering, was to have a more immediate success, akin to a mania, before temporarily fading from the public eye, only to reappear in recent revivals of the text by feminist critics on the one hand and postcolonial theorists on the other. At the time of Atala’s first publication, one could find dinner plates, upholstery fabrics, and clocks decorated with motifs from the novel (Delaney 1977, 209), while later in the century even an Atala hairstyle came into vogue (Waller 1992, 166). Moreover, there were numerous depictions of scenes from the novel in the ‘‘serious’’ arts: eighteen paintings exhibited in the Paris Salons between 1802 and 1848 were taken from Atala, including Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson’s well-known Atala au tombeau (Entombment of Atala), painted for the Salon of 1808. If, as David Wakefield (1978) notes, Chateaubriand can be called a ‘‘supremely visual writer, one of the first who set out consciously to use language for pictorial ends’’ (17), then ‘‘Girodet may be seen as an early type of the painter-poet, determined to extend the range of painting to include emotions and effects hitherto reserved for literature’’ (19). Thus, Sylvain Bellenger concludes, in his discussion of the relationships between the two artists, ‘‘Girodet’s painting doesn’t stop leading us toward literature just as Chateaubriand’s prose moves us toward painting; Chateaubriand’s literature is pictorial poetry, just as painting is lit51

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erary for Girodet, who accorded his own practice of writing a role as important as his painting’’ (1999, 134). Comparing the visual adaptation of Atala’s story to its verbal ancestor provides us with a striking example of iconographical partnership and a unique opportunity to explore two parallel cases in which images (both verbal and visual) generate conflicting ideologies, which, nonetheless, coexist in a perpetual state of dialectical interaction that is strikingly modern.

CHATEAUBRIAND’S ATALA: IMAGERY VERSUS IDEOLOGY The visual qualities of Chateaubriand’s prose highlighted by the above quotations of Wakefield and Bellenger emerge in virtually every area of his art: Marc Fumaroli finds direct traces of visuality in Chateaubriand’s landscapes and portraits (1999, 14), Philippe Antoine in a ‘‘vocabulary common to writing and painting’’ (1997, 137), Maija Lehtonen in his figurative imagery (1964, 8), Frans Amelinckz in the very structure of a work like Atala, which is ‘‘framed’’ by a prologue and an epilogue and composed as a series of ‘‘tableaux’’ (1975, 367). Following the Prologue, featuring a lengthy description of the New World, to which he has exiled his fictional counterpart, Rene´, Chateaubriand begins Atala, through the first-person narration of the Amerindian Chactas, with an antithesis: ‘‘C’est une singulie`re destine´e, mon cher fils, que celle qui nous re´unit. Je vois en toi l’homme civilise´ qui s’est fait sauvage ; tu vois en moi l’homme sauvage, que le grand Esprit (j’ignore pour quel dessein) a voulu civiliser’’ (43) [It’s a singular destiny, my dear son, which brings us together. I see in you the civilized man who made himself a savage; you see in me the savage man, whom the great Spirit (I know not why) wanted to civilize]. Indeed the antithesis is doubled, since both men are characterized by the contradictory terms ‘‘civilized’’ and ‘‘savage,’’ yet in opposite fashion, so that each man also stands as the antithesis of the other. This reversal, through the rhetorical figure of chiasmus, serves to further highlight the two terms, which not only dominate the short novel but constitute key themes in French romantic literature. This antithetical pairing of ‘‘civilized’’ versus ‘‘savage,’’ which also takes the form of ‘‘society’’ versus ‘‘nature,’’ stems, of course, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine de l’ine´galite´ (1753), in which he advances and defends the startling ideological position that, since civilization is responsible for the woes of humankind, it would be in a state of ‘‘pure nature’’ that the ‘‘good savage’’ could find equality and happiness. Chateaubriand, however, as he states in his preface to the first edition of Atala is far from being a partisan of Rousseau:

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Au reste, je ne suis point comme M. Rousseau, un enthousiaste des Sauvages ; et quoique j’aie peut-eˆtre autant a` me plaindre de la socie´te´ que ce philosophe avait a` s’en louer, je ne crois point que la pure nature soit la plus belle chose du monde. Je l’ai toujours trouve´e fort laide, partout ou` j’ai eu l’occasion de la voir. Bien loin d’eˆtre d’opinion que l’homme qui pense soit un animal de´prave´, je crois que c’est la pense´e qui fait l’homme. Avec ce mot de nature, on a tout perdu. (8) [What’s more, I’m not like M. Rousseau, an enthusiast of Savages; and although I have perhaps as much to complain about society as that philosopher had to brag about, I don’t believe that pure nature is the most beautiful thing in the world. I’ve always found it quite ugly, wherever I’ve had the opportunity to see it. Far from being of the opinion that the thinking man is a depraved animal, I believe that it’s thinking that makes man. With this word nature, everything is lost.]

Chateaubriand makes his point early and often in Atala, beginning with the first tableau, ‘‘Les Chasseurs’’ [The Hunters], in which he paints a nature that is majestic, yet frightening and destructive, as illustrated by an episode in which a storm wreaks havoc through flooding and lightning-ignited forest fires. At the same time the savage, however ‘‘noble,’’ is also portrayed at times as aimless, drunken, and, especially, cruel: members of different tribes inflict tortures on each other as well as on European settlers like Pe`re Aubry, the priest who rescues Chactas and Atala (the beautiful me´tisse who had saved the Indian from sure death at the hands of her own tribe). On the other hand, the novel hardly constitutes a defense of civilization and society: the French enslave, exile, and massacre the Natchez Indians (a real occurrence in 1727); and, if Pe`re Aubry bears the scars of the savage ‘‘barbarians’’ who tortured him, he is quick to point out that these wounds are nothing compared to those inflicted on his divine Lord by the ‘‘civilized’’ Judeans and Romans (101), and he later describes and decries ‘‘les maux de la socie´te´’’ (129) [the evils of society] with considerable conviction. Indeed, the relationship between nature and culture in Atala has fostered considerable debate: Postcolonial critics like Renata Wasserman (1989, 48) and Ban Wang (1997, 147) find Chateaubriand’s descriptions of both the Amerindians and the American wilderness to be indelibly inscribed with the traces of European culture. On the other hand, Claudia Moscovici, following in the footsteps of Michel Butor (1964, 166; 184–87) and Jean-Pierre Richard (1967, 141–47), stresses the cultural relativism and pluralism of Chateaubriand, resulting in the creation of a hybrid concept of culture that is ‘‘ethnically mixed and ethically complex’’ (2001, 204) and thus highly modern. We can further complicate this debate by noting that Chateaubriand

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appears determined to undermine both terms of the antithesis, nature and society, the civilized and the savage, in order to reach higher ideological ground, which he ostensibly finds in religion, as represented in the second tableau of the novel (‘‘Les Laboureurs’’ [The Laborers]). Here Chateaubriand describes a colony of converted Indians, overseen by Pe`re Aubry, where nature and society come together: ‘‘La`, re´gnait le me´lange le plus touchant de la vie sociale et de la vie de la nature’’ (110) [There reigned the most touching mixture of social life and natural life]. Chactas further notes ‘‘la supe´riorite´ de cette vie stable et occupe´e, sur la vie errante et oisive du Sauvage’’ (113) [the superiority of the stable and occupied life over the wandering and idle life of the Savage]. Chateaubriand is quick to have his spokesman argue that such a synthesis can be effected only through the dominant role of religion: J’admirais le triomphe du Christianisme sur la vie sauvage ; je voyais l’Indien se civilisant a` la voix de la religion ; j’assistais aux noces primitives de l’Homme et de la Terre: l’homme, par ce grand contrat, abandonnant a` la terre l’he´ritage de ses sueurs, et la terre s’engageant, en retour, a` porter fide`lement les moissons, les fils et les cendres de l’homme. (111) [I admired the triumph of Christianity over the savage life; I saw the Indian being civilized by the voice of religion; I attended the primitive wedding of Man and the Earth: man, by this great pact, giving the earth the heritage of his sweat, and earth agreeing in turn to faithfully bear the harvests, the sons, and the ashes of man.]

Chateaubriand does not, however, make his point purely through didactic statements mouthed by Chactas; he also uses imagery to reinforce ideology. In a passage often cited as evidence of European inscription on the wilderness (Freed 1996, 225; Wang 1997, 137–38; Wasserman 1989, 62), oak trees (nature) displaying verses by Homer and Solomon (civilization) engraved by Pe`re Aubry (religion) create a sense of harmony (synthesis): ‘‘Il y avait, je ne sais quelle myste´rieuse harmonie entre cette sagesse des temps, ces vers ronge´s de mousse, ce vieux Solitaire qui les avait grave´s, et ces vieux cheˆnes qui lui servait de livres’’ (104) [There was I know not what mysterious harmony among this wisdom of the ages, these verses worn away by moss, this Solitary old man who had engraved them, and these old oaks that served as his books]. Here the overriding importance of religion is underscored typographically by the capitalization of the Solitary priest and his grammatical function as subject of the transitive verb ‘‘engraved,’’ which (parenthetically, for the moment) also suggests the role of art, as do the verses and the books. Moreover, Chateaubriand’s highly visual metaphors, a hallmark of

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his poetic prose style, often reinforce the union of nature and civilization through the synthesizing role of religion (see Lehtonen 1964, 88): Les troncs de ces arbres, rouges marbre´s de vert, montant sans branches jusqu’a` leurs cıˆmes, ressemblaient a` de hautes colonnes, et formaient le pe´ristyle de ce temple de la mort ; il y re´gnait un bruit religieux, semblable au sourd mugissement de l’orgue sous les vouˆtes d’une e´glise ; mais lorsqu’on pe´ne´trait au fond du sanctuaire, on n’entendait plus que les hymnes des oiseaux qui ce´le´braient a` la me´moire des morts une feˆte e´ternelle. (107) [The trunks of these trees, red marbled with green, climbing branchless toward their crests, resembled high columns and formed the peristyle of this temple of death; there reigned a religious sound, like the muffled roar of the organ beneath the vaults of a church; but as one entered the depths of the sanctuary, one heard only the hymns of the birds heralding the memory of the dead in an eternal celebration.]

Although inspired by the scriptures according to Matthew (xiv), Chateaubriand creates his image not as a prefabricated whole, but by constructing it through the properties of visual representation, especially color and texture (‘‘red marbled with green’’) along with line and shape (‘‘climbing branchless toward their crests’’), followed by a profusion of figurative terms, both visual and auditory, suggesting religion (‘‘columns . . . peristyle . . . temple . . . organ . . . vaults . . . sanctuary . . . hymns’’). Indeed the sustained simile is based on a visual comparison (‘‘resembled’’) rather than on the more abstract equivalents ‘‘like’’ and ‘‘as.’’ Despite Chactas’s cries of ‘‘Pe´risse le Dieu qui contrarie la nature !’’ (119) [Death to the God who opposes nature!] when Atala poisons herself rather than succumb to her growing passion for Chactas (to fulfill a religious vow of virginity made to her dying mother), Pe`re Aubry is able to argue that the error resulted from a misinterpretation of religion that could have been avoided through proper religious instruction or corrected by the Church. Thus, Chactas promises to convert to Catholicism, and he and Aubry give Atala a Christian burial in a natural grotto. Chateaubriand even adds an Epilogue, narrated by a ‘‘reliable’’ European, to reaffirm in the chronological order of the plot the ideological message of the novel—the triumph of Christianity—should it have escaped the by now benumbed reader: Je vis dans ce re´cit le tableau du peuple chasseur et du peuple laboureur, la religion, premie`re le´gislatrice des hommes, les dangers de l’ignorance et de l’enthousiasme religieux, oppose´s aux lumie`res, a` la charite´ et au ve´ritable esprit de l’E´vangile, les combats des passions et des vertus dans un coeur

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simple, enfin le triomphe du Christianisme sur le sentiment le plus fougueux et la crainte la plus terrible, l’amour et la mort. (151) [I saw in this tale a painting of hunters and of laborers, religion, the first legislator of men, the dangers of ignorance and fanaticism in religion, as opposed to the light, the charity, and the true spirit of the Gospel, the struggles of passions and virtues in a simple heart, finally the triumph of Christianity over the wildest feeling and the worst fear, love and death.]

The message could not be more clear, and yet, to Chateaubriand’s chagrin, Atala and its companion piece Rene´ were ‘‘misread’’ by an entire generation of young readers, who gravitated less toward religion than toward the exotic scenery of the New World, the passion and melancholy of the protagonists, and a view of postrevolutionary humankind as cut adrift from family and country, wandering in exile, prey to the ravages of time. Numerous critics have examined the ideological ambivalence that led to this ‘‘curious lack of closure’’ in Atala, which Lawrence Porter finds typical of the genre he terms the romantic epiphany (1987, 436). Charles Porter attributes this ‘‘uneasy diffusion of interest’’ to Chateaubriand’s midstream shift from his original plan to illustrate ‘‘the havoc wreaked on the state of nature by the encroachments of civilization’’ to his later intent to fashion an apology of the Christian religion (1978, 83). As a result, exoticism refuses to relinquish ideological ground to Christianity (see J. Hamilton 1986, 31–35), and the text bears/bares what Waller calls ‘‘the contradictions inherent in attempting to enlist sensuality in the service of Christian abnegation’’ (1992, 164). The ‘‘ambiguous place of the Amerindian in the determination of the boundary between nature and culture’’ uncovered by postcolonial analysis (Wasserman 1989, 57) is compounded by the ‘‘ideological fissures’’ (Schor 1992, 149) and ‘‘ideological cracks’’ (Bailey 1997, 139) unearthed by feminist criticism in the representation of the figure of Atala. Whatever the causes, this ideological ambivalence assumes a consistent textual pattern: the imagery, which privileges nature, is at odds with the stated message, which advocates religion. Even the cathedrallike forest causes the reader to admire the grandeur of nature and the power of Chateaubriand’s descriptive prose as much as the presence of religion. In short, the images create, then communicate, their own message, which destabilizes and undermines the ostensible ideology, thereby creating conflicting ideologies. Moreover, in muddying textual waters it is precisely such conflicts that give the text its depth and dynamism, as Chateaubriand suggests of his own writing in Chactas’s metaphoric description of the human

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heart: ‘‘la surface en paraıˆt calme et pure, mais quand vous regardez au fond du bassin, vous apercevez un large crocodile’’ (149) [the surface appears calm and pure, but when you look at the bottom of the pool, you see a large crocodile] (see also Bailey 1997, 138–54). The Prologue itself is a revolutionary piece of prose, perhaps the first sustained description of nature, exotic and poetic at that, in French literature. Although some critics have stressed the classical origins (Spininger 1974, 530), typical structures (Wasserman 1989, 49–50), and even ‘‘empty space’’ (Wang 1997, 137) of Chateaubriand’s nature descriptions, most emphasize his stylistic innovations (Barbe´ris 1974, 180; Berchet 1996, 31; Kadish 1982, 358; Lehtonen 1964, 72; Lemonnier 1914, 364; Meitinger 1998–99, 2; Richard 1967, 29–31) and would agree with Hugh Honour that ‘‘the amplitude and romantic sensibility of his descriptions refreshed the European vision of America by the addition of richer, deeper, and subtler tones. No European writer of comparable literary ability had previously visited the New World’’ (1975, 286). Certainly, in describing the fauna and flora surrounding the Mississippi River, for example, Chateaubriand’s style exhibits a taste for profusion, sensuality, and movement that is clearly contrary to the principles of simplicity, symmetry, and stasis we have just witnessed in Corneille’s neoclassicism (chapter 1): Une multitude d’animaux, place´s dans ces retraites par la main du Cre´ateur, y re´pandent l’enchantement de la vie. De l’extre´mite´ des avenues, on aperc¸oit des ours enivre´s de raisins, qui chancellent sur les branches des ormeaux ; des caribous se baignent dans un lac ; des e´cureuils noirs se jouent dans l’e´paisseur des feuillages ; des oiseaux moqueurs, des colombes de Virginie de la grosseur d’un passereau, descendent sur les gazons rougis par les fraises ; des perroquets verts a` la teˆte jaune, des piverts empourpre´s, des cardinaux de feu grimpent en circulant au haut des cypre`s ; des colibris e´tincellent sur le jasmin des Florides, et des serpents-oiseleurs sifflent suspendus aux doˆmes des bois, en s’y balanc¸ant comme des lianes. (35) [A multitude of animals, placed in these retreats by the Creator’s hand, spread the enchantment of life. From the extremities of the avenues, one sees bears drunk on grapes, reeling on the branches of elms; caribous bathing in a lake; black squirrels playing in the thick foliage; mocking birds, Virginia doves the size of sparrows, settling on the grass red with strawberries; green parrots with yellow heads, crimson woodpeckers, cardinals of fire clinging to the tops of cypresses; hummingbirds sparkling on the Florida jasmine, and bird-catching serpents hissing suspended from the domes of the woods while balancing like liana vines.]

The passage is striking not only in its subject—exotic animals—but also in its style. Not content with evoking the animals by their species, hab-

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its, and lairs, Chateaubriand seeks, as will the Haitian-born American naturalist John James Audubon several years later, to complement such verbal descriptions with visual images. Chateaubriand again attempts to construct his images, not through a general whole but through the precise visual properties of view point (‘‘de l’extre´mite´ des avenues, on aperc¸oit’’), spatial position (‘‘au haut’’), size (‘‘grosseur’’), shape (‘‘doˆmes’’), light (‘‘e´tincellent’’), and color (‘‘noirs . . . rougis . . . verts . . . jaune . . . empourpre´s . . . feu’’). In this latter area, especially, seemingly confronted by the inadequacy of literal verbal language to convey the variety and vividness of visual phenomena, Chateaubriand ends up inventing a metaphor based on a noun ‘‘feu’’ (fire) instead of the more conventional adjective ‘‘rouge’’ (already present in ‘‘rougis’’) to represent the brilliant color of the cardinals. Moreover, the sheer profusion of visual stimuli causes him to break with classical sentence structure (which privileges pairs of two or at most groups of three) to create a rhythm based on the accumulation of no fewer than eight clauses, highlighted by the typographical repetition of semicolons. Furthermore, the final clause is dominated typographically and phonetically by the repetition of the letter ‘‘s,’’ a technique clearly designed to imitate the contorted forms and hissing sounds of the snakes described, a mimetic or onomatopoetic effect that gives the words themselves a visual and auditory quality rarely found in French descriptive prose before Chateaubriand. In his key discussion of Chateaubriand’s landscape art, Jean-Pierre Richard (1967) begins by noting the profound visual and experiential impact of America on Chateaubriand: ‘‘In the American forest he discovers with passion the immediate presence of the tangible. He encounters objects that, far from recoiling before his hand, ask only to be gathered by it; and that, once gathered, are not used up by desire, but offer him a nearly infinite satisfaction. Marvelous plenitude, revelation of an appetizing immanence proclaimed by all the essential elements of the landscape’’ (29–30). After citing the profusion of visual, aromatic, and auditory sensations found in the Prologue and analyzing a passage immediately preceding the one above, Richard characterizes it as the ‘‘expression of a superlative, polymorphous, almost hysterical totality, which recalls, sixty years earlier, the best landscapes of Rimbaud’’ (31), hardly the empty space expressed in traditional European forms identified by Wang (1997, 137). Indeed, Richard finds that, thanks to nature, language itself acquires a material reality for Chateaubriand: ‘‘Not only would language, experienced in its own materiality, be a sort of immediately grasped nature, but it would also imitate, on the level of expression, a so-called immediate language of Nature’’ (162). However problematically, tenuously, and temporarily Richard finds this junction

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between language and reality to ultimately play itself out for Chateaubriand (162–65), it nonetheless has an immense impact on the reader. Indeed, it is primarily the physical quality of Chateaubriand’s prose that has caused it to be called revolutionary, as in the following comment by Jean-Claude Berchet: ‘‘Such an incarnation of language accomplishes, on the level of literature, an audacious revolution. With Chateaubriand, style acquires the means of producing a physical sensation. The word possesses henceforth its own color and rhythm; it becomes sonorous matter’’ (1996, 31). Philippe Antoine (1997) also stresses the material quality of Chateaubriand’s landscapes and its impact on the reading process, noting how verbal language itself displaces its visual antecedent to become the focus of the text: ‘‘No orientation dominates the reading of such passages, the written landscape is its own end, and the describer invites us to wander within the page while exhibiting a prose that presents itself as a spectacle and frees itself from reality to become an essentially esthetic object. Attention is displaced from the referent to the code of representation’’ (279). Moreover, Antoine attributes this metalinguistic density not only to Chateaubriand’s attraction to nature but even more to his affinity for painting and spatial form: ‘‘The intrusion into writing of a metalanguage borrowed from the visual arts is only the most visible aspect of an approach that transforms the manner of reading the literary landscape. . . . Writing is necessarily linear. The total genius of the poet thus consists in masking succession then substituting a series of elements that reflect each other. The written landscape seems to lend itself, like a canvas, to the back and forth movement of the gaze’’ (278–79). In short, the confrontation with the properties of visual phenomena in the American wilderness and with their expression through the visual medium of painting causes Chateaubriand to expand the properties of verbal expression and thus the power of the exotic image for the reader, foregrounding nature and indeed art itself . . . but at the expense of religion. Another example of such sabotaging of the novel’s explicit ideology through imagery occurs in the scene describing Atala’s burial, which is all the more worthy of extensive analysis since it will become the subject of Girodet’s famous painting. Chactas and Pe`re Aubry have spent the night at the entrance to a grotto watching over Atala’s cadaver, which they will bury at dawn: Cependant une barre d’or se forma dans l’Orient. Les e´perviers criaient sur les rochers, et les martres rentraient dans le creux des ormes: c’e´tait le signal du convoi d’Atala. Je chargeai le corps sur mes e´paules ; l’ermite marchait devant moi, une beˆche a` la main. Nous commenc¸aˆmes a` descendre de ro-

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chers en rochers ; la vieillesse et la mort ralentissaient e´galement nos pas. A` la vue du chien qui nous avait trouve´s dans la foreˆt, et qui maintenant, bondissant de joie, nous trac¸ait une autre route, je me mis a` fondre en larmes. Souvent la longue chevelure d’Atala, jouet des brises matinales, e´tendait son voile d’or sur mes yeux ; souvent pliant sous le fardeau, j’e´tais oblige´ de le de´poser sur la mousse et de m’assoir aupre`s, pour reprendre des forces. Enfin, nous arrivaˆmes au lieu marque´ par ma douleur ; nous descendıˆmes ˆ mon fils, il euˆt fallu voir un jeune Sauvage et un sous l’arche du pont. O vieil ermite, a` genoux l’un vis-a`-vis de l’autre dans un de´sert, creusant avec leurs mains un tombeau pour une pauvre fille dont le corps e´tait e´tendu pre`s de la` dans la ravine desse´che´e d’un torrent! Quand notre ouvrage fut acheve´, nous transportaˆmes la beaute´ dans son lit d’argile. He´las, j’avais espe´re´ de pre´parer une autre couche pour elle ! Prenant alors un peu de poussie`re dans ma main, et gardant un silence effroyable, j’attachai, pour la dernie`re fois, mes yeux sur le visage d’Atala. Ensuite je re´pandis la terre du sommeil sur un front de dix-huit printemps ; je vis graduellement disparaıˆtre les traits de ma soeur, et ses graˆces se cacher sous le rideau de l’e´ternite´ ; son sein surmonta quelque temps le sol noirci, comme un lis blanc s’e´le`ve du milieu d’une sombre argile: ‘‘Lopez, m’e´criaije alors, vois ton fils inhumer ta fille !’’ et j’achevai de couvrir Atala de la terre du sommeil. (146–47) [Meanwhile a bar of gold formed in the East. Hawks were crying from the rocks, and martens were retiring to the hollows of the elms: it was the signal for Atala’s procession. I put her body on my shoulders; the hermit walked in front of me, spade in hand. We began to descend from rock to rock; both old age and death slowed our steps. At the sight of the dog, who had found us in the forest and who, now jumping with joy, traced another path, I burst into tears. Often Atala’s long hair, toy of the morning breezes, spread its veil of gold over my eyes; often bending under the burden, I had to set it on the moss and sit beside it, to regain my strength. Finally, we arrived at the place marked by my pain; we went under the arch of the natural bridge. Oh my son, you had to see a young Savage and an old hermit, kneeling opposite one another in the wilderness, and scooping out with their hands a tomb for a poor maiden whose body lay nearby in the ravine of a dried up stream. When our work was finished, we transported the beauty into her bed of clay. Alas, I had hoped to prepare another laying place for her! Taking then a little dust in my hand, and keeping a frightful silence, for the last time I cast my eyes on Atala’s face. Next I spread the earth of sleep on a forehead of eighteen springs; I saw the traits of my sister gradually disappear, and her graces were covered by the curtain of eternity; for awhile her bosom rose above the black soil, as a white lily rises from the dark clay: ‘‘Lopez, I then cried, behold your son burying your daughter!’’ and I finished covering Atala with the earth of sleep.]

The passage begins with a highly visual sentence. Instead of evoking the rising sun by its name, Chateaubriand does so by its visual traits:

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shape (‘‘une barre’’), color (‘‘d’or’’), and even texture (to the degree that the color ‘‘gold’’ also invokes the metal that displays it). The rising sun is thus allowed to take shape (‘‘se forma’’) in the viewer’s eye as a visual phenomenon rather than in the mind as a pre-existing, abstract entity. Again Chateaubriand goes beyond mere imitation of the visual by stretching the properties of the verbal to represent it, this time as the color ‘‘or’’ is extended over the textual space of the sentence by the repetition of its phonemes in the words ‘‘forma’’ and ‘‘Orient.’’ This ‘‘diffusion’’ of color, much as one would expect with a rising sun over a landscape, further occurs over the entire passage in words like ‘‘ormes,’’ ‘‘corps,’’ ‘‘mort,’’ ‘‘forces,’’ ‘‘torrent,’’ ‘‘transportaˆmes,’’ and ‘‘alors,’’ and, most significantly, in the ‘‘voile d’or’’ of Atala’s hair, where the color is enhanced by the metaphor suggesting women’s veiled modesty and, consequently, the (female) desires that lie beneath it and, of course, the (male) desire to see what lies within. What is most striking about the passage, however, is the utter absence of references to religion, especially in a burial scene presided over by a priest (referred to here as merely an old hermit)! The ‘‘signal’’ to begin the ceremony is given by nature—the sun rising, the hawks crying, and the martens returning to their lairs (see Meitinger 1998–99, 4)—not by the priest, whose presence is noticeably reduced in the passage (referred to only as the hermit), diminished by the detailed references to natural phenomena and, especially, by Chactas’s emotions and perceptions. Here it is the Savage, not the solitary man, whose epithet is capitalized. The Indian’s viewpoint is highlighted repeatedly (‘‘A` la vue . . . sur mes yeux . . . j’attachai mes yeux . . . je vis’’) and riveted not on religious objects but on various body parts of his deceased lover, referred to as ‘‘the beauty’’: first her golden hair, then her face, then her breasts, a sensuous, even sacrilegious focus reinforced with both a visual simile (‘‘comme un lis blanc’’) and alliteration (‘‘son sein surmonta’’). The thinly disguised sensuality, sustained by what Bellenger calls ‘‘erotic floral metaphors lending the burial the eternal and fertile dimension of sowing’’ (1999, 123), is foregrounded at the beginning of the second paragraph, when Chactas punctuates the metaphor ‘‘bed of clay’’ with what amounts to a ribald pun (‘‘I had hoped to prepare another laying place for her’’). Indeed, Chactas’s voice, his passionate expressions (highlighted by exclamation points), his unadulterated memories of the past (the elder narrator relives the scene vividly rather than comment on its significance, much less religious content), and his preoccupations with recreating a lost family structure (‘‘vois ton fils inhumer ta fille’’), since Chactas’s adopted father Lopez, addressed in this passage, was also the natural father of Atala (see Barbe´ris 1974, 190– 94).

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Inaugurated by a striking visual image, the text quickly converts it into verbal forms that explore and exploit the very properties of literature: phonetic density, figurative language, temporal composition, and layers of voices. In short, Chateaubriand’s imagery, privileging nature and human passion, undermines his explicit ideology or rather creates an implicit ideology that renders interpretation of the novel ambivalent. This same ambivalence holds true for the Epilogue, which may begin with a clear emphasis on religion, but continues with a sumptuous description of Niagara Falls, and ends with the European narrator’s lament that he wanders in exile far from his country and family, hardly consoled by religion, as the narrator advocates. The description of nature and the laments of the narrator undercut the explicit religious message, thus creating an ideological impasse. Nor need we assume that such ‘‘ideological doubleness’’ (Waller 1992, 164) is necessarily accidental, the result of an error, an oversight, or a shift in intention. On the contrary, many critics see ‘‘discontinuity’’ (C. Porter 1978, 131), ‘‘de´chirement’’ [ripping] (Butor 1964, 176), and ‘‘rencontre’’ [encounter] (Richard 1967, 123) as the fundamental characteristics, not only of Chateaubriand’s rhetoric, but of his world view. Chateaubriand grasps the world as conflict and contradiction, and this is the mode through which to grasp his work. As Richard puts it on Chateaubriand’s behalf, ‘‘better then to try to choose at once both terms of the confrontation. . . . to embrace both sides simultaneously’’ (143). This fundamental cultural conflict manifests itself, for Richard, in the rhetorical figure of the metaphor, which, by definition, unites disparate entities (122–40). I would propose, in addition, the ever-present and even-more-radical figure of the oxymoron, since it unites opposites through juxtaposition. In Atala, for example, expressions like ‘‘quel affreux, quel magnifique spectacle’’ (89) [what a horrible, what a magnificent spectacle], ‘‘affreuse et sublime nature’’ (93) [horrible and sublime nature], and ‘‘avec un plaisir meˆle´ de terreur je contemplais ce spectacle’’ (158) [with a pleasure mixed with terror I contemplated this spectacle] capture the contradictions inherent not only in nature but in human nature. Unlike the antithesis, which separates two opposing notions rationally, demanding and usually directing a choice between them, the oxymoron simply juxtaposes them, assuming their not-sopeaceful co-existence. Unlike Corneille’s Horace, where one of the terms of the overarching antithesis—the public (versus the private)—is favored, in Chateaubriand’s Atala the use of oxymoron implies and perpetuates the doubleness of both nature and civilization. The opposing terms form a dialectical relationship, or, in Claudia Moscovici’s terms, a double-dialectical one: ‘‘This process of mutual negation and selective

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incorporation of opposing qualities therefore obscures, without completely eliminating, cultural differences. In so doing, the double dialectic creates what I have called hybrid individuals and societies’’ (2001, 205), to which we might add ‘‘hybrid ideologies.’’ In Chateaubriand’s Atala, through the sensual radiance imparted to them by innovative imagery, the wilderness, the savage, and the woman stand on equal ideological footing with civilization, the Christian, and the male, their very coexistence lending the text layers of interactive meaning. How then, does Girodet read the novel and translate his interpretation into painting?

GIRODET’S ATALA: COMPOSITION AND IDEOLOGY In addition to the eighteen paintings of Atala exhibited in the Paris Salon between 1802 and 1848 (Wakefield 1978, 18), numerous images invaded the popular arts (Delaney 1977, 209–10). Before examining Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson’s famous adaptation of Atala, we shall take a brief look at two less subtle renditions of the tale, one from serious art, the other from popular imagery, in order to examine the relationship between composition and ideology. The Dutch-born French painter Ary Scheffer (1795–1858), a relative contemporary of Chateaubriand and Girodet, painted The Death of Atala, now in a private collection, between 1820–30 (Delaney 1979, 241; Honour 1975, 噛 273) (fig. 3). Here the choice of scene, the sacrament of extreme unction being administered to Atala by Pe`re Aubry, already favors religion, a bias immediately evident in the painting’s composition. Scheffer has chosen the conventional form of the triangle to line up his three figures at each point and thus suggest their relative importance. Furthermore, Scheffer exaggerates each figure to reinforce its thematic meaning: Aubry, placed at the apex and given larger size and weight, takes on the appearance of a biblical patriarch: the formless, faceless, spineless Chactas, represented with the skin color and garb of a ‘‘savage,’’ is placed at the very bottom of the triangle to the left, where the opening of the cave looks out on ‘‘nature’’; the clearly European, even bourgeoise Atala rises higher, toward Aubry and salvation, on the right. The use of a dark tone relegates Chactas to the shadows, whereas the light suggests spirituality while linking Aubry and Atala, as does their mutual gaze. The patently religious message of the painting is punctuated by the prominence of the crucifix held by Atala, who has clearly ‘‘seen the light’’ that bathes her. Scheffer’s message, the triumph of religion over nature and death, matches closely that of the

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Figure 3. Ary Scheffer. La mort d’Atala (The Death of Atala), c.1820–30. Oil on board, 30.8 ⴒ 34 cm. London, private collection. Photo: M. Kehoe.

European narrator at the beginning of the epilogue to Chateaubriand’s novel. The image by P. Lambert, La mort d’Atala, adorns a postcard printed in Nancy in 1945, which illustrates the lasting presence of this tale in the French cultural consciousness (Delaney 1979, 240, 294) (fig. 4). Here, Lambert clearly uses the composition to reverse the ideology of Scheffer’s interpretation. Chactas, looking like a cross between Christ and a gladiator and surrounded by the glowing light and multicolored flowers of nature, towers over and thus seems to possess the asleep-like figure of Atala, while the diminutive figure of Pe`re Aubry is confined to the left sidelines, a mere spectator of the event, not its principal actor as in the Scheffer painting. Again the composition serves to anchor a clear ideological ‘‘statement,’’ here privileging nature and human passion over religion, as Chateaubriand’s imagery has been shown to accomplish. By far the most famous and most successful rendering of Atala was that of Girodet. This former pupil of David’s had met Chateaubriand in

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Figure 4. P. Lambert. La mort d’Atala (The Death of Atala), 1945. Post card, Nancy (France). Bibliothe`que nationale de France, Estampes et Photographie, TB-MAT1a BTE-BTE ARA-AT, Chemise: Atala. Photo: BnF de´partement de la reproduction.

1808, propelled by fascination for the tale, and was to paint the author’s portrait for the Salon of 1810. As Henry Lemonnier states, Girodet gravitated naturally toward Chateaubriand: ‘‘Girodet’s mind, curious for innovation, strangely divided between the daring already felt from romanticism and the timidity stemming from his education, must have been attracted more than others by the refined charm of Atala’’ (1914, 368). Indeed, as David Wakefield contends, it may well have been the very ideological conflicts and complexities characteristic of Chateaubriand’s tale that attracted Girodet: ‘‘The first artist of outstanding ability to tackle a subject from Chateaubriand was Girodet. He was in many ways Chateaubriand’s ideal interpreter. Brought up in the strict academic discipline of David’s studio, Girodet was profoundly unorthodox by nature and soon outgrew his master’s classical doctrines. Temperamentally, Girodet was moody and idiosyncratic, with a poetic strain in his nature which left him dissatisfied with David’s uncomplicated moral and artistic beliefs’’ (1978, 19). That Girodet saw the ideological implications of Chateaubriand’s story in more nuanced fashion than its other interpreters is evidenced, no doubt, by the number of different compositional sketches he undertook for his painting. At first (fig. 5) he seems attracted by a scene similar to Scheffer’s in which Atala would receive the final sacraments (The Communion of Atala, Honour 1975, 噛 265). Here Pe`re Aubry’s size and position in the middle would afford him the dominant position, clearly

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Figure 5. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. La communion d’Atala (The Communion of Atala), c. 1808. Pen and brown ink on white paper, 9.3 ⴒ 11.3 cm. 䉷 Muse´e des Beaux-Arts et d’Arche´ologie de Besanc¸on (France). Inv. D. 2796. Photo: Pierre Guenat.

reinforced by Atala’s gaze (studied in the inset), the prominence of the chalice, and the marginalization of Chactas, a crumpled form to the right to whom Aubry’s back is turned. A second sketch (fig. 6) places Atala between Chactas and Aubry, suggesting greater equilibrium in the antithetical pairing of nature and religion (The Death of Atala, Honour, 噛 266). If Aubry’s placement in the foreground and dominant raised arm seem to give him the ‘‘upper hand,’’ Chactas is nonetheless represented as a detailed form of good size, in full regalia and seen in full face. Indeed Atala, her sensuous side emphasized by the gossamer covering revealing her breasts, faces Chactas. The message has clearly begun to lose its ideological clarity. Another sketch focuses on the figures of Atala and Chactas, who now takes on the form of a Greek god (The Entombment of Atala, Honour, 噛 267). Since this sketch is the forerunner of the final painting, we will now turn there. In his finished painting, Atala au tombeau (see color insert), Girodet creates a scene that, as Schor notes, ‘‘does not in fact correspond to any

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Figure 6. Anne-Louis Girodet de Roussy-Trioson. La mort d’Atala (The Death of Atala), c. 1806–1807. Pen and brown ink over graphite on laid paper, 32.8 ⴒ 42.5. Photo 䉷 National Gallery of Canada (Muse´e des beaux arts du Canada), Ottowa. Purchased 1973.

single passage in the text, but rather synoptically and idiosyncratically interprets the entire section’’ (1992, 150), not unlike David’s choice of the oath (see chapter 1). To effect this conflation of scenes and themes, Girodet divides the background of the composition primarily into two antithetical spaces–the open space provided by the grotto’s entrance to the left and the closed space of the grotto itself to the right. The natural space incorporating exotic flowering trees, which Girodet had carefully studied (Bellenger 1999, 123), is enhanced by the complementary colors of red and green, a vibrant combination often used later by Delacroix in his romantic landscapes, and the light from the rising sun, which infuses much of the scene. The closed space is painted in a more uniform and drab coloring of brown, which is matched by the robe of the priest, who is inserted into that space, just as Chactas, his near nude body suggesting his natural state, is incorporated into the natural space. The figure of Atala, highlighted by contrast with the dull tone of the cave (Gue´gan 1999, 148), is divided equally between the spaces of the two men, as befits her dilemma, drawn naturally to Chactas yet bound by vow to religion.

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According to Ste´phane Gue´gan (1999) the trio serves a classical function: ‘‘namely the articulation of three poles, deploration at the left, expiring innocence in the center, meditative authority to the right in the figure of the old man entrenched in his interrogations’’ (130), while nonetheless breaking definitively with the narrative and didactic simplicity of classical painting, since ‘‘the painting is no longer the resolution of tensions but activates their conflict’’ (139–40). Indeed, unlike the unequivocal message of male patriotism highlighted by contrast with female weakness in David’s Oath, here the two male figures grasp Atala tightly in a physical representation of the ideological tug-of-war between nature and religion. Her feet, suggesting her earthly ties, are held by Chactas, whose athletic figure, much like that of a Greek god (Delaney 1977, 225), emerges from the earth, while her head, representing her spiritual side is held by the erect Aubry and illuminated by the sunlight, passing through a crucifix, whose form is repeated in that held by Atala and in the shape of the spade in the foreground. The dominance of religion is suggested by the repeated form of the crucifix, the size of Aubry’s figure, and an iconography of Christian martyrdom (Delaney 1977, 221). And yet, a religious interpretation is counterbalanced by the vividness of the natural setting, the beauty of Chactas’s body, draped in red to match the flowers and suggest his passion, and, especially, the erotic representation of Atala, as described by Susan Delaney: ‘‘Girodet offers the most subtle touch in this regard. He paints Atala’s drapery so thin that the contours of her breasts are clearly marked. Then he has allowed the top of the crucifix she holds to rest just behind her right breast, so that its light brown color and its texture emphasize the shape of her erect nipple’’ (1977, 230). Indeed, Atala is at once a Christian martyr and a sleeping beauty, whose representation amounts to an ‘‘erotic sanctifying of the dead woman’’ (Gue´gan 1999, 145). Her figure, dominating the main horizontal axis of the painting, is equally divided between the natural setting and the religious grotto, as is our interpretation of the painting. Indeed, the ambivalence inherent in the overall composition and reflected in the representation of Atala permeates the entire painting. Chactas is at once an Amerindian complete with earring and a Greek god; Pe`re Aubry is a cross between a biblical patriarch and a pagan Ossian (Wakefield 1978, 20; Gue´gan 1999, 141); and the lighting, which might suggest spirituality, also has a sensuous effect, as Gue´gan notes: ‘‘This eroticism stems from the light, which bathes Chactas’s back, Atala’s breasts and half-open mouth’’ (144). Furthermore, the writing on the wall of the grotto, which repeats two verses mentioned in the novel—‘‘J’ai passe´ comme une fleur ; j’ai seche´ comme l’herbe des champs’’ [I passed like a flower; I dried up like field grass]—used

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here to reflect Atala’s passage from life to death, comes from the Bible (Psalm 62), but at the same time is composed of similes borrowed from nature (fleur, herbe, champs), as are most of Chateaubriand’s. As with David’s interpretation of the Horaces, Girodet’s painting borrows directly from literature; yet here the message, like that of the novel itself, remains ambivalent, and consciously so, according to Gue´gan: ‘‘the painting proceeds, like the novel, with contradictory figures, willfully equivocal’’ (1999, 146). This very ambivalence, far from weakening the works, adds greatly to their semantic density and richness. Wakefield also finds that ‘‘Girodet’s painting, indeed, could hardly be more faithful to the spirit of the novel, with its peculiar blend of eroticism, death and religious piety’’ (1976, 20). Likewise, Sylvain Bellenger (1999) finds that ‘‘the entire meeting of Girodet and Chateaubriand is in this painting’’ (121) and even advances the notion that the verbal text is inseparable from its visual image: ‘‘Chateaubriand’s novel and Girodet’s painting were to be immediately and forever superimposed. . . . Here we have the rare case of an icon that almost completely exhausts a literary work to become its definitive image’’ (125). As startling as this notion of iconographical partnership may seem, virtually every study of the painting includes a discussion of the novel, and, more surprisingly (since influence is not involved), numerous discussions of the novel include analysis of the painting as a key component of the argument (see, for example, Barbe´ris 1974, 201–3; Gutwirth 1992, 221; and Schor 1992, 150). Perpetually ambivalent, the figure of Atala occupies an intermediate space on Girodet’s canvas between nature and religion, analogous to the ideological place she occupies in Chateaubriand’s novel, and, as Jean-Pierre Richard has argued, in the writer’s world view. Such ambivalence seems to suit Girodet, a painter raised in the tradition (and indeed the studio) of David, who retains the simplicity and polish of classical draftsmanship while gravitating toward the emotional tone and thematic content of romanticism. In this unlikely combination he parallels Chateaubriand, a professed advocate of Christianity and career politician, who nonetheless came to embody the lost self-centered, selfindulgent romantic spirit possessed by a hidden ‘‘demon’’ (see Butor 1964, 152). Perhaps both men reflect their generation, riding in the wake of the Revolution, a time of transition in politics and the arts, where the ideological clarity of classicism begins to yield to the ambivalence of romanticism, embodied in a renewal of imagery, which serves at once to energize and problematize ideology.

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3 The Modern Pygmalion: Balzac and Daumier BALZAC’S

LE CHEF-D’OEUVRE INCONNU IS A CURIOUS TALE FIRST

published in 1831, lightly revised that same year, heavily reworked in 1837, and included with the ‘‘E´tudes philosophiques’’ when the prolific author grouped his works in the Come´die humaine in 1845. The tale’s main characters are all drawn from the world of painting, and several are nonfictitious: the central protagonist is the young painter Nicholas Poussin (1594–1665), to whom David owed his inspiration for The Oath of the Horatii; Poussin is befriended by the established court painter Franc¸ois Porbus (1570–1622) and the latter’s mentor, the fictional painter Frenhofer, cast as a student of Mabuse, a.k.a. Jean Gossart (1470–1532). Poussin’s fictional model and mistress Gillette adds a dramatic element that produces the ideological dilemma at the tale’s center: all of the characters are aligned along a spectrum defined by the antipodes of art and love. Gillette fits firmly on the side of love (‘‘je ne t’ai jamais promis. . . . de renoncer a` mon amour,’’ 60) [I never promised you to renounce my love]; Porbus sits squarely on the side of art (‘‘Les fruits de l’amour passent vite, ceux de l’art sont immortels,’’ 67) [The fruits of love pass swiftly, those of art are immortal]; Frenhofer confuses the two since he is in love with his art (‘‘ma cre´ature, mon e´pouse,’’ 64) [my creature, my wife]; and Poussin, by asking his lover Gillette to pose for Frenhofer in exchange for seeing the older painter’s ‘‘unknown masterpiece,’’ perches himself precariously on the dilemma’s proverbial horns (‘‘Il devint plus amant qu’artiste, et mille scrupules lui torture`rent le coeur,’’ 66–67) [He became more lover than artist, and a thousand scruples tortured his heart]. Poussin’s ‘‘scruples’’ are shortlived, however, as he inevitably carries out the sacrifice of his lover, as does Frenhofer, who ends up burning his works and dying, after showing the painting to Poussin and Porbus, who see nothing but a confused mass of colors and lines, caused, in their view, by too much correction. Balzac’s depiction of Frenhofer’s anguished determination to breath love and life into his creation has influenced writers like Emile Zola in L’Oeuvre, the Goncourt brothers in Manette Salomon, and Henry James 70

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in The Madonna of the Future (Laubriet 1961a, 129–59), painters like Ce´zanne, Matisse, and Picasso (Ashton 1980, 9), and the filmmaker Jacques Rivette, who created two versions of the story, La belle noiseuse, a four-hour film that took top prize at the Cannes festival in 1991, and a shorter version, simply titled Divertimento (1993). Particularly surprising in Balzac’s tale, even for a ‘‘philosophical study,’’ is the amount of theoretical talk about painting (especially by Frenhofer), which takes up nearly half of the story in its definitive form. Furthermore, most of the theorizing was added in the 1837 revision of the tale, meaning that Balzac increased rather than pruned what is essentially a nondramatic and nonliterary element of the story. Many critics have puzzled over these additions: some see Frenhofer’s reworking of his ‘‘masterpiece’’ as a reflection of Balzac’s own revisions of the tale (Paulson 1991, 404) or find in Frenhofer’s theories nothing less than a ‘‘catechism of aesthetics’’ (Laubriet 1961a, 9); whereas others suggest that Balzac’s rewriting ruined his work much as Frenhofer did his or condemn Frenhofer’s theories as ‘‘nothing more than empty words severed from meaning’’ (Wettlaufer 2001, 243). Following William Paulson’s notion that ‘‘Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, revised, becomes the emblem of his own writing’’ (1991, 410), coupled with Yvette Went-Daoust’s identification of a ‘‘parallel . . . between a pictorial theory articulated by Frenhofer and the descriptive writing’’ (1987, 49), I contend that the talk about painting constitutes a latent literary manifesto, which Balzac then illustrates in the descriptive and dramatic aspects of the tale, much as Frenhofer puts his theories into practice by touching up one of Porbus’s paintings. Paulson bases his argument on Balzac’s elimination of metaliterary references from the 1837 version of the tale, thereby illustrating Frenhofer’s prerealist theory that painting should mirror life, not art (411–12), while WentDaoust emphasizes the importance of light, a key element of Frenhofer’s theories, in Balzac’s descriptive passages (50). To sustain and expand their hypotheses involving the literary implications of Frenhofer’s pronouncements on painting, we shall examine each of the dozen some principles involving painting postulated by Frenhofer in order to illustrate the extent to which they may apply to Balzac’s own literary style as exemplified in the chef-d’oeuvre inconnu.

FRENHOFER’S THEORIES Most of Frenhofer’s theories about art emerge through his criticism of Porbus’s painting, Marie e´gyptienne, presumably a fictional work added by Balzac to this real painter’s oeuvre. While critics debate the

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origin of the theories, some citing Diderot, others Gautier, Boulanger, or Delacroix (see Whyte 1999, 109–11), the principles seem rather straightforward. In the first of several long paragraphs added to the story in 1837 (beginning with ‘‘—Heu ! Heu ! Fit le vieillard . . . ,’’ 46), Frenhofer, as Paulson notes, accuses Porbus’s painting of lacking life (‘‘elle ne vit pas’’). Frenhofer further finds Porbus’s human figure to be one- (or at most two-) dimensional, a mere ‘‘silhouette qui n’a qu’une seule face’’ [single-sided silhouette], lacking in space and depth (‘‘l’espace et la profondeur manquent’’). Balzac repeatedly sprinkles Frenhofer’s theories on painting with metaphors borrowed from poetry, thus pointing the reader toward their application to literature. In this case, Frenhofer locates Porbus’s failure to engender life in the latter’s strict adherence to rules: ‘‘il ne suffit pas pour eˆtre un grand poe`te de savoir a` fond la syntaxe et de ne pas faire de fautes de langue!’’ [to be a great poet it isn’t sufficient to know syntax in depth and to not make mistakes with language]. Moreover, in describing the negative effect produced by the painting, Frenhofer notes that it stems from a lack of movement—‘‘c’est . . . une image qui ne saurait se retourner, ni changer de position. Je ne sens pas l’air entre ce bras et le champ du tableau’’ [it’s . . . an image that can’t turn around or change position. I don’t feel the air between this arm and the field of the painting]. In short, Porbus has failed to create the illusion of the third dimension (perspective) as well as the fourth dimension (time), the latter a property more fundamental to literature than to painting, which reinforces our overriding argument that each art form seeks to expand into the other’s domain and our immediate hypothesis that Frenhofer’s words apply as much to literature as to painting. In the following long paragraph (beginning with ‘‘—Ah! voila`, dit le petit vieillard . . . ,’’ 47), Frenhofer again points out Porbus’s defects, here through the conflict between line and color: ‘‘Tu as flotte´ inde´cis entre deux syste`mes, entre le dessin et la couleur, entre le flegme minutieux, la raideur pre´cise des vieux maıˆtres allemands et l’ardeur e´blouissante, l’heureuse abondance des peintres italiens’’ [You have floated indecisively between two systems, between drawing and color, between the minute composure, the precise rigor of the old German masters and the striking passion, the happy abundance of the Italian painters]. He goes on to include Hans Holbein and Albrecht Du¨rer in the first group of painters, proponents of line, praising ‘‘le charme se´ve`re de la se´cheresse’’ [the severe charm of the dryness], and the Venetians Titian and Paulo Veronese among the partisans of color and light in the opposite camp, lauding ‘‘les de´cevantes magies du clair-obscur’’ [the deceptive magic of the chiaroscuro], that is, their handling of light and shadow.

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We should note in passing, with the intent of returning to the point later, that the same debate between line and color was raging in Balzac’s time, the principal combatants being the neoclassical Ingres, a disciple of David’s, for line, and the romantic Delacroix, a friend of Balzac’s and possible source of Frenhofer’s theories, for color. Frenhofer’s advice to the wavering Porbus is as follows: ‘‘Si tu ne te sentais pas assez fort pour fondre ensemble au feu de ton ge´nie les deux manie`res rivales, il fallait opter franchement entre l’une et l’autre, afin d’obtenir l’unite´ qui simule une des conditions de la vie’’ [If you didn’t feel strong enough to meld the two rival manners together with the fire of your genius, you should have opted directly for one or the other to obtain the unity that simulates one of the conditions of life]. The message is clear—fuse or choose—but, since it involves the properties of visual expression—line and color—its application to literature seems less so, unless we consider line as related to ideas and color to emotion (Arnheim 1954/1974, 336) or until we undertake an examination of Balzac’s descriptive techniques, which often involve the interplay of line and color (see Kirkham 1998). A third long paragraph begins with yet another antithesis, the difference between imitation and expression: ‘‘—La mission de l’art n’est pas de copier la nature, mais de l’exprimer!’’ (48) [—The mission of art is not to copy nature, but to express it!]. Balzac immediately extends this notion to literature through the recurrent metaphor of poetry—‘‘Tu n’es pas un vil copiste, mais un poe`te’’ [You’re not a vile copyist, but a poet]—a significant parallel, since it causes the reader to question naive interpretations of Balzac’s so-called imitative ‘‘realism’’; that is, it again raises a literary issue as much as a painterly one. Frenhofer goes on to identify just what the painter is meant to express: ‘‘. . . le mouvement de la vie. Nous avons a` saisir l’esprit, l’aˆme, la physionomie des choses et des eˆtres . . . Une main . . . exprime et continue une pense´e qu’il faut saisir et rendre. Ni le peintre, ni le poe`te, ni le sculpteur ne doivent se´parer l’effet de la cause . . .’’ [. . . the movement of life. We have to seize the spirit, the soul, the physiognomy of things and beings . . . A hand . . . expresses and continues a thought that must be grasped and rendered. Neither the painter, nor the poet, nor the sculptor should separate effect from cause]. In insisting that a figure express the intangible qualities beneath the surface of visible reality, Frenhofer again draws the parallel between painter and poet, and, indeed, the qualities that great painting must express—movement, spirit, soul, thought, causality—linked as they are to the properties of verbal expression, seem equally applicable to all art, which Balzac saw as ‘‘nature idealized and spiritualized’’ (Laubriet 1961b, 42), and particularly to the poet or writer, who possesses ‘‘la faculte´ rare d’exprimer la nature par des

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images ou` il empreint a` la fois le sentiment et l’ide´e’’ (Splendeurs et mise`res . . . , 99) [the rare faculty to express nature by images that he imprints with feeling and thought]. This same paragraph continues with a lengthy and important discussion of another dimension requisite to great art but missing from Porbus’s painting: form. Frenhofer criticizes Porbus’s figures for lacking depth—‘‘Vos figures sont alors de paˆles fantoˆmes colore´s’’ [Your figures are thus pale colored phantoms]—because he remains on the surface— ‘‘vous vous contentez de la premie`re apparence’’ [you’re content with first appearances]—and does not explore the ‘‘intimite´ de la forme’’ [intimacy of form]. Frenhofer further notes, however, that great artists do not simply replicate and impose preestablished conventional forms on their figures, because Form, which Balzac capitalizes in the 1837 version to emphasize its significance, is an ever-changing phenomenon: ‘‘La Forme est un Prote´e’’ [Form is a Proteus]. Like Raphae¨l, the ‘‘king of art,’’ the great artist must seek to ‘‘briser la Forme’’ [break the Form] and create new forms derived from ones figures. Rather than insert a living figure into a lifeless form, the artist should find the form that lies within each figure: La Forme est, dans ses figures, ce qu’elle est chez nous, un truchement pour se communiquer des ide´es, des sensations, une vaste poe´sie. Toute figure est un monde, un portrait dont le mode`le est apparu dans une vision sublime, teint de lumie`re, de´signe´ par une voix inte´rieure. (49) [Form is, in its figures, what it is for us, a medium for communicating ideas, sensations, a vast poetry. Every figure is a world, a portrait whose model has appeared in a sublime vision, tinted with light, designated by an inside voice.]

In short, the artist must move from ‘‘figure’’ to ‘‘form’’ to ‘‘communicate ideas,’’ or, as Balzac frequently put it elsewhere, from ‘‘individual’’ to ‘‘type’’ to become ‘‘myth’’ (Laubriet 1961b, 52–63), or from ‘‘realism’’ to ‘‘abstraction’’ to produce ‘‘allegory’’ (Peterson 1997, 393), or, as we have been phrasing it, from ‘‘image’’ to ‘‘ideology’’ to produce ‘‘meaning.’’ This is a dynamic process, which, by definition, implies movement and thus suggests literature, as does here the expression ‘‘une vaste poe´sie.’’ The paragraph ends with Frenhofer’s proclamation that great artists display a combination of ‘‘couleur, sentiment et dessin, les trois parties essentielles de l’Art’’ [color, feeling, and drawing, the three essential parts of Art]. Here the previous antipodes of color and line are synthesized by feeling, that which lies beneath the surface and transforms a

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mere figure into a form that expresses an entire world (‘‘toute figure est un monde’’). Frenhofer then proceeds to put his theories into practice by successfully touching up Porbus’s painting, yet another episode added to the tale in 1837. In his own judgment, confirmed by that of the two rapt painters, Porbus and Poussin, Frenhofer is able to add movement and depth to the painting (‘‘faire circuler l’air autour de la teˆte de cette pauvre sainte’’) [make the air circulate around the head of this poor saint] by several touches of bluish glazing and to reestablish a ‘‘unity of tone’’ primarily through the addition of a sense of light (‘‘une peinture trempe´e de lumie`re’’) [a painting dipped in light]. Indeed, it is light that dominates the next long theoretical paragraph, beginning with ‘‘—Montrer mon oeuvre . . .’’ (54), almost all of which was added to the 1837 edition. Returning to the question of depth and perspective, or ‘‘relief and roundness,’’ posed in his initial criticism of Porbus’s painting, Frenhofer proposes a solution, found in the paintings of Titian, ‘‘ce roi de la lumie`re,’’ and the solution is in fact light, as WentDaoust emphasizes (1987, 50). Clearly going beyond his earlier formula of fusion between light and line, Frenhofer observes that ‘‘le corps humain ne finit pas par des lignes’’ [the human body doesn’t end in lines] and argues that ‘‘rigoureusement parlant le dessin n’existe pas’’ [strictly speaking drawing doesn’t exist]. For Frenhofer, ‘‘la ligne est le moyen par lequel l’homme se rend compte de l’effet de la lumie`re sur les objets, mais il n’y a pas de lignes dans la nature ou` tout est plein : c’est en modelant qu’on dessine, c’est-a`-dire qu’on de´tache les choses du milieu ou` elles sont’’ [line is the means by which man takes account of the effect of light on objects, but there are no lines in nature, where all is full; it’s by modeling that one draws, that is, one detaches things from their milieu]. It is light that not only unifies the painting but lends it the sense of depth and movement that Frenhofer has advocated from the outset, using here the same expression as earlier (‘‘faire circuler l’air autour,’’ 51): ‘‘le corps tourne, les formes deviennent saillantes, l’on sent l’air circuler tout autour’’ (55) [the body turns, the forms become prominent, one feels the air circulate all around]. The notion that light binds the figure to its surroundings or milieu, a key term for Balzac, provides yet another link between painting and literature, which is reinforced several sentences later by the reappearance of the word ‘‘milieu’’: ‘‘peut-eˆtre faudrait-il ne pas dessiner un seul trait, et vaudrait-il mieux attaquer une figure par le milieu en s’attachant d’abord aux saillies les plus e´claire´es . . .’’ [perhaps one shouldn’t draw a single line, and it would be better to attack a figure through its milieu by first concentrating on the best lit projections]. It is less light itself that provides the link to Balzac’s art (although we shall witness its

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use in his descriptive passages as Went-Daoust advocates) than the notion that the human figure should be derived from its surroundings, a practice Balzac uses in nearly every novel, which typically begin with a description of the milieu, into which the character is then inserted. In the only lengthy paragraph to feature Porbus’s thoughts on art, half of which was added in 1837, the previously picked-on painter reminds Poussin and the reader that Frenhofer has now exceeded his earlier advice of equilibrium between line and color and has gone overboard: ‘‘Dans ses moments de de´sespoir, il pre´tend que le dessin n’existe pas et qu’on ne peut rendre avec des traits que des figures ge´ome´triques ; ce qui est au-dela` du vrai’’ (58) [In his moments of despair, he claims that drawing doesn’t exist and that one can only render geometric figures with lines; which goes beyond what is true]. He notes the importance of maintaining the color/line dialectic, leaning slightly toward the latter: ‘‘Le dessin donne un squelette, la couleur la vie, mais la vie sans le squelette est une chose plus incomple`te que le squelette sans la vie’’ [Drawing gives the squeleton, color gives life, but life without the skeleton is more incomplete than a skeleton without life]. Porbus concludes by criticizing ‘‘theory’’ itself in the name of observation and practice and casting considerable doubt on Frenhofer’s sanity: Enfin, il y a quelque chose de plus vrai que tout ceci, c’est que la pratique et l’observation sont tout chez un peintre, et que si le raisonnement et la poe´sie se querellent avec les brosses, on arrive au doute comme le bonhomme, qui est aussi fou que peintre. Peintre sublime, il a eu le malheur de naıˆtre riche, ce qui lui a permis de divaguer, ne l’imitez pas ! Travaillez ! Les peintres ne doivent me´diter que les brosses a` la main. (58) [Finally, there’s something more true than all of this, it’s that practice and observation are everything for a painter, and that if reasoning and poetry quarrel with paintbrushes, one ends up with doubt, like our old friend, who is as crazy as he is a painter. A sublime painter, he had the misfortune to be born rich, which allowed him to wander, don’t imitate him! Work! Painters should meditate only with paintbrushes in hand.]

The passage again draws attention to writing (‘‘la poe´sie’’) and is all the more convincing in that the emphasis on hard work and acute observation echoes Balzac’s own theories of literary creation (see Laubriet 1961b, 152–74). Yet, while it serves to diminish Frenhofer in his ability to put theory into practice, it undermines neither the validity of the theories themselves nor, especially, their applicability to literature. To reiterate, then, the theories of Frenhofer, as amended by Porbus are as follows: a figure is constructed from the dialectical relationship between color and line; to come alive the figure must be linked to its

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milieu through light, which also lends it a sense of depth and movement; the outward appearance of the figure must also suggest thought and feeling in order to become a Form, capable of producing meaning. We can now explore the degree to which Balzac’s ‘‘figures’’ conform to Frenhofer’s edicts, by progressively ‘‘forming’’ over the chronological course of the literary text.

BALZAC’S PORTRAITURE Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu begins with a puzzling stylistic combination or even contradiction: two portraits constructed in completely different ways. In the first of two lengthy paragraphs, the narrator describes a young man, without naming him and lending him but a single physical trait, sufficient for suggesting only his poverty: ‘‘le veˆtement e´tait de tre`s mince apparence’’ (43) [his clothing was of very meager appearance]. Seen from an anonymous, omniscient viewpoint, the young man appears hesitant before entering a building in Paris, thus indicating to the narrator that he may be a lover courting his first mistress or a painter contacting his first master, a pair of conjectures that sets up the two themes, love and art, which will later dominate the tale, albeit antithetically. The young man, or rather his youthful hesitation, is described indirectly, through generalization (‘‘tous’’), exaggeration (‘‘toujours’’), and trite metaphor (‘‘fleur’’): ‘‘Il existe dans tous les sentiments humains une fleur primitive, engendre´e par un noble enthousiasme qui va toujours faiblissant jusqu’a` ce que le bonheur ne soit plus qu’un souvenir et la gloire un mensonge’’ [There exists in all human feelings a primitive flower, engendered by a noble enthusiasm that always declines to the point where happiness is no more than a memory and glory a lie]. The present tense interrupts the past tense narration, creating a freezeframe that temporarily arrests the forward motion of the plot and draws attention to the verbal nature, indeed the verbosity, of the text. The paragraph continues in similarly general terms, portraying a onedimensional, flat character or ‘‘type,’’ who has been rendered through a purely verbal portrait, easily read and interpreted by the omniscient narrator, whose presence dominates the first paragraph to the detriment of the character’s. The young man has been inserted into a general form and will never become individualized in the story, despite his future fame, even when he identifies himself, halfway through the tale, by writing his name on a sketch: Nicholas Poussin. The tale’s second paragraph is entirely different in its approach to portraiture. Having introduced the young man, however generally, the narrator now uses him as a personal viewer through whom he can de-

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scribe an old man who has appeared in the stairway of the house: ‘‘le jeune homme l’examina curieusement’’ (44) [the young man examined him curiously]. The young man’s viewpoint is complemented by the old man’s gaze (‘‘regards magne´tiques . . . un regard empreint de sagacite´’’ [magnetic gazes . . . a gaze imprinted with wisdom]), both typically modern literary techniques that mark the text as a visual phenomenon and compel the reader to approach it as such (see Went-Daoust 1987, 52). Indeed, the description of the old man, unlike that of the young man, is replete with precise physical detail: Imaginez un front chauve, bombe´, proe´minent, retombant en saillie sur un petit nez e´crase´, retrousse´ du bout comme celui de Rabelais ou de Socrate; une bouche rieuse et ride´e, un menton court, fie`rement releve´, garni d’une barbe grise taille´e en pointe, des yeux vert de mer ternis en apparence par l’aˆge, mais qui, par le contraste du blanc nacre´ dans lequel flottait la prunelle devaient parfois jeter des regards magne´tiques au fond de la cole`re ou de l’enthousiasme. (44–45) [Imagine a forehead that is bald, round, prominent, jutting out over a small, squashed nose, turned up at the end like that of Rabelais or Socrates; a cheerful, wrinkled mouth, a short chin, proudly turned up, garnished with a gray beard trimmed to a point, sea-green eyes, seemingly dulled with age, but which, through a contrast with the pearly white part in which the iris floated, cast magnetic gazes of anger or enthusiasm.]

While some of the details are linear, indicating the shape (‘‘taille´e en pointe’’), size (‘‘petit’’), and position (‘‘en saillie sur’’) of the old man’s facial features, others involve color (‘‘une barbe grise’’), often modified by expressions that suggest tone (‘‘des yeux vert de mer ternis’’) or relations to other colors (‘‘par le contraste du blanc nacre´’’). In short, Balzac constructs his portrait with the balance of line and color promoted initially by Frenhofer and later by Porbus. The description also descends beneath the surface to probe the depths of emotion and thought that the physical features suggest, as in the ‘‘anger or enthusiasm’’ mentioned above, or the ‘‘thoughts’’ which are the ‘‘causes’’ behind the effects perceived in the character’s appearance: ‘‘ces pense´es qui creusent e´galement l’aˆme et le corps’’ [these thoughts that dig into body and soul]. Furthermore, Balzac uses the technique of chiaroscuro, the contrast of light and shadow, to construct the space surrounding the character, into which he then inserts him: ‘‘ce personnage auquel le jour faible de l’escalier preˆtait encore une couleur fantastique’’ [this character to which the dim light of the staircase still lent a fantastic color]. Here the character’s appearance is transformed (‘‘une couleur fantastique’’) by

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the action (‘‘preˆtait’’) of the light (‘‘jour faible’’) emanating from the milieu (‘‘escalier’’); in short, the individual is determined by his milieu in a concrete perceptual way that echoes Frenhofer’s theories and prefigures Zola’s experiments in the Rougon-Macquart series fifty years later (see chapter 7). Finally, Balzac uses a comparison to a specific painter to emphasize the painterly quality of the portrait unfolding before the reader/spectator: ‘‘Vous eussiez dit une toile de Rembrandt marchant silencieusement et sans cadre dans la noire atmosphe`re que s’est approprie´ ce grand peintre’’ [You would have said a Rembrandt canvas walking silently without a frame in the dark atmosphere typical of that great painter]. While referring to a painting, the comparison reminds us of the literary space of the text, not only by the use of the rhetorical figure of simile but, by that simile’s anachronistic allusion to a painter who was only six years old in 1612, when the action of the tale is meant to take place, thus bypassing the characters and transporting us into the narrator’s world. Indeed, the use of direct address to the implied reader, regarding what might be said—‘‘vous eussiez dit’’—turns this visual portrait into a verbal exchange between narrator and reader and marks yet another case where the literary text seems to exhibit, expand, and exaggerate its inherent properties through exposure to those of painting. This portrait is far more detailed than the preceding one, and the figure far more individualized, even uniquely so—‘‘Le visage e´tait singulie`rement fle´tri par les fatigues de l’aˆge’’ [the face was singularly withered by the fatigue of age]—and yet the portrait remains incomplete: ‘‘une image imparfaite’’ [an imperfect image]. Again utlilizing the intermediary of the young man’s viewpoint, Balzac notes that the old man remains mysterious and indecipherable: ‘‘mais il aperc¸ut quelque chose de diabolique dans cette figure, et surtout ce je ne sais quoi qui affriande les artistes’’ [but he saw something diabolical in this face, and especially that indescribable something that attracts artists]. The image is detailed and clear, but its meaning is less so; we have yet to learn who the man is, what he does, and what he stands for. Does ‘‘diabolique’’ suggest evil and ‘‘fantastique’’ madness? Fortunately, the text has time at its disposal, and, as the theorizing and the plot develop, so does this imperfect figure progressively and dynamically acquire its complete Form. It is only after hearing Frenhofer (for the old man is he) speak (at considerable length) and watching him touch up Porbus’s painting (with considerable success) two-thirds of the way through the tale that Poussin, being an artist and thus a decipherer (see Peterson 1997), is able to define the ‘‘indescribable something’’ that had initially struck him in the old man’s appearance. In the next instance (52), the terms

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‘‘de´mon’’ and ‘‘fantastiquement’’ modify the earlier ‘‘diabolique’’ and ‘‘fantastique’’ to lay emphasis on Frenhofer’s energetic (not evil) behavior and supernatural (not mad) demeanor. The following instance completes these earlier modifications: A` ce mot, Nicholas Poussin se sentit sous la puissance d’une inexplicable curiosite´ d’artiste. Ce vieillard aux yeux blancs, attentif et stupide, devenu pour lui plus qu’un homme, lui apparut comme un ge´nie fantasque qui vivait dans une sphe`re inconnue. Il re´veillait mille ide´es confuses en l’aˆme. (56) [At this word, Nicholas Poussin felt himself under the power of an inexplicable artist’s curiosity. This old man with white eyes, at once attentive and stupid, seemed to him more than a man, appeared to him like a fantastic genius living in an unknown sphere. He awakened a thousand vague ideas in his soul.]

Poussin is able to break the stereotypical form that envelops the old man (‘‘attentif et stupide’’) and begins to open up the figure (‘‘plus qu’un homme’’) to discover (‘‘re´veillait’’) a new incarnation (‘‘un ge´nie fantasque’’). Indeed ‘‘un ge´nie’’ further modifies ‘‘un de´mon,’’ lending it a positive and profound dimension, while ‘‘fantasque’’ points to a higher, not lower sphere, in which Frenhofer lives (‘‘une sphe`re inconnue’’).With analytic dissection akin to that of Proust’s narrator, another artist-figure who is also trying to identify the secret behind the sensation, Poussin later sees Frenhofer begin to detach himself from his mortal figure (‘‘au dela` des bornes de la nature humaine’’ [beyond the bounds of human nature]) and move toward a higher meaning. Thanks to Poussin’s ‘‘rich imagination,’’ the imperfect ‘‘image’’ of Frenhofer begins to define itself and become ‘‘complete’’: ‘‘Ce que la riche imagination de Nicholas Poussin put saisir de clair et de perceptible en voyant cet eˆtre surnaturel, e´tait une comple`te image de la nature artiste’’ [What the rich imagination of Nicholas Poussin could seize clearly and perceptibly in seeing this supernatural being was the complete image of the artistic nature]. Although this ‘‘complete image’’ appears to be at odds with Alexandra Wettlaufer’s statement that ‘‘Balzac indicates that an image is an image and, whether painted or described, will always be imperfect, falling short of the reality of lived experience’’ (2001, 221), the dynamic process of completion clearly confirms her overall argument that Balzac sets out to demonstrate ‘‘the progressive nature of prose, which develops an image over time rather than in space’’ (221) and thus the ultimate superiority of literature over painting: ‘‘The superiority of the author’s art lies then in its acknowledgment of the fractured nature of perception and experience, while the painter’s efforts to present a static totality as the mimesis of ‘reality’ is a falsification of both art and

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life . . . This critical tension between the part and the whole is manifested in Frenhofer’s failure and the narrator’s success in creating a coherent work of art that can both recognize and transcend fragmentation, at least momentarily, through the active participation of an audience who can recompose what is necessarily decomposed in the process of representation’’ (243). Certainly, Balzac’s predefined types, who, like the titular character of Le Pe`re Goriot, receive their essence from the outset, are far less interesting than characters who become known progressively (like Vautrin), whose situation changes (like Madame de Beause´ant), or who grow, because they are caught on the cusp of adulthood (like Rastignac). Running the risk of anachronism, one might say that their existence precedes their essence. Finally, through this ‘‘recomposition’’ over narrative time, the ‘‘transfiguration’’ or ‘‘transformation’’ or process by which the figure becomes Form is complete, as is Frenhofer’s portrait: ‘‘Ainsi, pour l’enthousiaste Poussin, ce vieillard e´tait devenu, par une transfiguration subite, l’Art lui-meˆme, l’art avec ses secrets, ses fougues et ses reˆveries’’ (57) [Thus, for the enthusiastic Poussin, the old man had become, by a sudden transformation, Art itself, art with its secrets, its passions, and its dreams]. The capitalization of Art, added to the 1837 edition, confirms the link with the concept of Form (also capitalized in this edition) and completes the process of portraiture, which evolves over time, inductively, from the particular to the general in Balzac’s tale, in perfect accord with the principles promulgated in Frenhofer’s theories (‘‘toute figure est un monde’’). This elevation into the realm of Art also confers meaning on Frenhofer and explains (if not justifies) his excesses, contradictions, and ultimate failure, if, indeed, that is how we are to read his ‘‘unknown masterpiece.’’

THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE: SOURCES AND PARALLELS IN PAINTING Despite three lucid, detailed descriptions of his ‘‘masterpiece’’ by Frenhofer (65–66, 68–69, 70), when Poussin and Porbus finally view the painting, its appearance seems to indicate the artist’s failure: according to Poussin, ‘‘Je ne vois la` que des couleurs confuse´ment amasse´es et contenues par une multitude de lignes bizarres qui forment une muraille de peinture’’ (69) [I see there only colors confusingly amassed and contained by a multitude of bizarre lines that form a wall of paint.]. The two painters perceive one recognizable sequence in a mass of chaos: ‘‘En s’approchant, ils aperc¸urent dans un coin de la toile le bout d’un pied nu qui sortait de ce chaos de couleurs, de tons, de nuances inde´-

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cises, espe`ce de brouillard sans forme ; mais un pied de´licieux, un pied vivant! Ils reste`rent pe´trifie´s d’admiration devant ce fragment e´chappe´ a` une incroyable, a` une lente et progressive destruction’’ (69) [By approaching, they perceived in a corner of the canvas the tip of a nude foot emerging from this chaos of colors, tones, and vague nuances, a sort of formless fog; but a delicious foot, a living foot! They remained petrified with admiration before this fragment that had escaped an incredible, slow and progressive destruction]. Frenhofer, ‘‘plus poe`te que peintre’’ [more poet than painter], according to Poussin, has failed in practice where he succeeded in theory. Moreover, since Balzac has succeeded in creating a complete portrait (of Frenhofer) according to Frenhofer’s standards, one might argue that Frenhofer’s failure simply highlights Balzac’s triumph, while enabling the writer to showcase the superior properties of literature: vocal modulation, rhetorical figures, precise articulation of emotion and thought, development over time, and even typographical emphasis (the letter A). In this sense, Frenhofer’s painting is no more than a ‘‘pre-text’’ to highlight what Wettlaufer (2001) terms ‘‘the triumph of the author over the painter for representational superiority’’ (see also 243 quoted earlier; Went-Daoust 1987, 61; Majewski 2002, 18–19). We must note, however, that Balzac has purposely muddied interpretive waters by using the words and the viewpoint of his characters, not those of the more authoritative narrator, who is seldom at a loss for words elsewhere, as witnessed by his verbose portrait of Poussin at the tale’s outset or his careful conveyance of Frenhofer’s ultimate ‘‘meaning’’ as interpreted by Poussin. We note also that Poussin, a novice painter, who has never been constructed as a full character and who has sacrificed then neglected his lover, Gillette, is hardly a positive character, much less a reliable viewer and spokesman, despite his ‘‘riche imagination’’ in assessing Frenhofer. By the same token, Porbus’s talent as a painter has been overshadowed by the criticism, then the correction of Frenhofer, his recognized master. Thus when Poussin says that ‘‘il n’y a rien sur la toile’’ [there’s nothing on the canvas], and Porbus hesitates to comment, whereas Frenhofer describes the painting in great detail as a paragon of artistic attainment in the use of true light to achieve the illusion of true life (70), the reader, strategically unassisted by the narrator, remains in doubt. Could it be, as Rene´ Lesne´ wonders, that ‘‘the painting’s failure is the failure of the gaze cast on the painting?’’ (1985, 68); or, as Georges Didi-Huberman contends, that the painting ‘‘reveals itself to the viewer for whom seeing is seeing beneath the surface, into the depths’’ (1985, 85); and thus that Porbus and Poussin, despite their defenders (Massol-Be´doin 1986 and Peterson 1997, respectively), are just not up to the task? Michel Serres goes so far as to

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state that ‘‘Porbus and Poussin never had the right to look at the canvas’’ (1982/1995, 15), a point that Kevin Bongiorni develops in some detail: ‘‘Whereas many critics dismiss Frenhofer, the aging master, as a failure, in fact a close reading of the work indicates that it is not Frenhofer but those around him whose artistry ultimately falls short. Moreover, Frenhofer’s success hinges on his ability to surpass traditional boundaries by splicing those between painting and literature. Frenhofer’s success springs from his conception of the painter and painting as, respectively, poet and poetic text’’ (2000, 88). After a moment’s hesitation in reaction to his fellow painters’ doubts, Frenhofer again views the painting (‘‘Il contempla sa toile a` travers ses larmes’’) [He contemplated his canvas through his tears], and, with an unequivocal look (‘‘un regard e´tincellant’’) [a sparkling gaze] clearly confirms that ‘‘Moi, je la vois!’’ (71) [Me, I see her!]. While it is true that, in the tale’s final words, Frenhofer ‘‘e´tait mort dans la nuit, apre`s avoir bruˆle´ ses toiles’’ [died in the night, after burning his canvases], his action is not necessarily a sign of defeat; it can just as easily be read as contrition for allowing Poussin and Porbus to profane his ‘‘mistress.’’ Indeed, he had proclaimed earlier that ‘‘j’aurai la force de bruˆler ma Belle Noiseuse a` mon dernier soupir ; mais lui faire supporter le regard d’un homme, d’un jeune homme, d’un peintre ? Non ! non !’’ (65) [I’ll have the strength to burn my Beautiful Annoyance with my last breath; but make her put up with the gaze of a man, a young man, a painter? No! No!]. Since he does do the latter (let them see her), this may well explain why he also does the former (burn the painting with his last breath). An even more attractive interpretation, in my opinion, while respecting Balzac’s clear intent to leave the ending open, is that Poussin and Porbus simply represent the public, even the educated public, which often fails to understand artistic innovation, and Frenhofer’s death is merely Balzac’s way of depicting the frustration of the artist ahead of his time. As Balzac stated in a series of three articles entitled Des artistes, published in 1830, the year before the first version of Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, ‘‘Jamais l’oeuvre la plus belle ne peut eˆtre comprise. La simplicite´ meˆme repousse parce qu’il faut que l’admirateur ait le mot de l’e´nigme’’ (cited by Massol-Be´doin 1986, 44) [Never can the most beautiful work be understood. Simplicity itself resists, since the admirer must possess the enigma’s meaning]. Indeed, the five rows and thirtytwo columns of dots that precede the 1845 version of the tale can be read as Balzac’s reminder that any great work of art resists interpretation and thus remains an ‘‘unknown masterpiece’’ (See Le Men 1985, 33; Paulson 1991, 413; Massol-Be´doin 1986, 54–55; Wettlaufer 2001, 246–47; Lebensztejn 1985, 149–71; Schehr 1984, 67).

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After all and above all, we must remember that the tale’s title is not Le chef d’oeuvre . . . pre´tendu (would-be) or . . . manque´ (failed) or . . . inconnaissable (unknowable) but . . . inconnu and that ‘‘unknown’’ can carry the connotation in French of simply that which is ‘‘not yet known.’’ Indeed, Balzac points the reader toward just that connotation by characterizing Poussin himself as an ‘‘inconnu’’ in the tale’s opening paragraph and again just before the young painter makes his name known to the two older painters, long before his future renown in French painting. Just as surely as Poussin will become ‘‘known’’ so will any ‘‘masterpiece,’’ when the public eventually acquires the artist’s power to see beyond mere appearances and thus to ‘‘know.’’ One could go so far as to find in Frenhofer’s fiery finale an apotheosis of the artist, who elevates himself to another sphere: ‘‘—La`, reprit Porbus en touchant la toile, finit notre art sur terre. —Et, de la`, il va se perdre dans les cieux, dit Poussin’’ (71) [There, continued Porbus while touching the canvas, is the end of our art on earth. —And from there it will end in the heavens, said Poussin]. In fact, it is this latter view of Frenhofer as a visionary artist rather than a failure that claims equal space among literary critics (Serres 1982/1995; Bongiorni 2000) and that prevails among art critics. In A Fable of Modern Art, for example, Dore Ashton (1980) sees Frenhofer as a precursor of painters like Ce´zanne (who proclaimed himself to be Frenhofer) and Picasso (who did some ninety illustrations of the tale and chose a studio in the very building described by Balzac, 92); and as an emblem of ‘‘the modern artist,’’ who has ‘‘pushed beyond appearances’’ (29) and ‘‘beyond all boundaries’’ (75) toward ‘‘abstract art’’ (82–85). Didi-Huberman (1985) sees in Frenhofer’s canvas the incarnation of painting itself, as it moves from representational figure (the woman’s foot) to ideal Form (the quasi-tactile wall of pure color). Other studies find in the tangle of lines and chaos of color a prefiguration of impressionist painting, as evidenced by Laubriet’s judgment that ‘‘one could easily imagine Frenhofer’s painting like that luminous dust that is a Monet canvas’’ (1961a, 188). Other critics, like Nathalie Heinrich stay closer to home, Balzac’s France in the 1830s, and find, for example, ‘‘a representation at once coherent and new of the painter and painting, symptomatic of a change in regime in the status of art in the romantic period’’ (1985, 76). In this regard, it is difficult to not see in the fragment of the woman’s foot a parallel with Ge´ricault’s penchant for painting body parts, a romantic reaction no doubt against the classical notion of overall harmony (see Gue´dron 2003, 210). In postulating other possible parallels with the unknown masterpiece, Tom O’Brien (1995?), in an unpublished and thus ‘‘unknown’’ article, suggests Delacroix’s La mort de Sardanapale, whose innovations

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were similarly misunderstood by critics at the Salon of 1827, who, in words echoing those applied to Frenhofer’s painting, complained that ‘‘the eye can not disentangle the confusion of colors and lines’’ (E. J. Dele´cluze as cited by O’Brien), contended that ‘‘it is not enough to dazzle the eyes, it is still necessary . . . that the intellect be able to understand that by which the eyes are amused’’ (Louis Vitet, in Spector, 81, as cited by O’Brien), and concluded that ‘‘in the delirium of his creation, he has been carried away beyond all limits’’ (Auguste Jal, in Spector, 82, as cited by O’Brien). Besides, as O’Brien suggests, in order to avoid his enemies’ capturing his cherished possessions, including his palace and his concubines, Sardanapalus destroys them before lighting his own funeral pyre, perhaps reflecting Frenhofer’s apocalyptic conflagration. While all of these suggestions are intriguing (and, after all, our main goal is not to define a given painting or text, but to explore the interaction of imagery and ideology within and between them), the best source or parallel for Frenhofer’s unknown masterpiece, remains just that: unknown. We can, however, point to possible parallels for Balzac’s Unknown Masterpiece, to the tale itself, and we shall do so briefly here, by following one simple but significant lead from the text.

DAUMIER’S PYGMALION Just before Poussin arrives at his perception of Frenhofer as the Form of Art itself, Frenhofer describes his struggles in painting his unknown masterpiece: ‘‘Le vieillard fit une pause, puis il reprit:—Voila` dix ans, jeune homme, que je travaille ; mais que sont dix petites anne´es quand il s’agit de lutter avec la nature ? Nous ignorons le temps qu’employa le seigneur Pygmalion pour faire la seule statue qui ait marche´!’’ (56) [The old man paused, then continued:—This makes ten years, young man, that I’ve been working; but what are ten years when struggling against nature? We don’t know how much time Lord Pygmalion took to create the only statue ever to walk!]. Here Frenhofer’s comparison of himself with the mythological Greek king and sculptor Pygmalion, who carves then falls in love with a statue that Aphrodite brings to life as Galatea, leads us not only to Balzac himself (‘‘Pygmalion et sa statue ne sont plus une fable pour moi,’’ 1906–50, 238) [Pygmalion and his statue are no longer a fable for me], but to a painter who also evoked Pygmalion, a contemporary of Balzac whose own style of what we might call ‘‘caricatural realism’’ mirrors that of the writer: Honore´ Daumier. Whereas numerous critics have emphasized the parallel between

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Frenhofer and Pygmalion (Bloom 1993; Didi-Huberman 1985; Laubriet 1961a; Wettlaufer 2001) and many have noted the parallel between Balzac and Daumier (Baudelaire 1857/1968; Hautecoeur 1942/ 1963; Bonard 1969; Hanoosh 1992), to my knowledge, only Mechthild Schneider (1987) has examined Daumier’s Pygmalion along with Balzac’s Unknown Masterpiece, but less in terms of their interplay than in relation to the Pygmalion myth as it appears in a variety of works from mid eighteenth-century to late nineteenth-century French art. There is, in fact, a direct biographical link between Daumier and Balzac, both of whom contributed to Le Charivari, the satirical journal that replaced La Caricature in 1835, and both of whom were professional artists who had to work for money and against deadlines. We also know that Balzac was among the first to recognize Daumier’s talent, comparing him to Michelangelo (Adhe´mar 1954, 17) and asking him to illustrate several of his novels, including Le Pe`re Goriot and Euge´nie Grandet. Daumier even did a caricature of Balzac (see Ducourneau 1962, 128). Moreover, there is an overall flavor in Daumier’s work that evokes that of Balzac’s, as Louis Hautecoeur states: ‘‘Daumier resembles Balzac, who has the same power, abundance, and visionary mind’’ (1942/1963, 66). Among the first critics to suggest a profound link between Balzac and Daumier on the level of vision and style is the French symbolist poet Charles Baudelaire. In his ‘‘Quelques caricaturistes franc¸ais’’ (1857), Baudelaire contends that ‘‘the veritable glory and true mission of Gavarni and Daumier was to complete Balzac, who by the way knew it well and admired them as auxiliaries and commentators’’ (1968, 385), a statement he repeats in a work that has become the bible of modernity, Le peintre de la vie moderne (1863): ‘‘One [read Baudelaire himself] has rightly called the works of Gavarni and Daumier complements of the Human Comedy’’ (1968, 550). The very titles of Baudelaire’s essays imply the criteria for his comparison of the two artists—caricature and modernity—two traits intimately linked for Baudelaire, as Michele Hannoosh concludes: ‘‘These essays [De l’essence du rire, Quelques caricaturistes franc¸ais, Quelques caricaturistes e´trangers] thus propose not only an aesthetic of caricature, but also a caricatural aesthetic—dual and contradictory, grotesque, ironic, violent, farcical, fantastic, fleeting—which defines the painting of modern life, and in large part the discourse of modernity as well’’ (1992, 4). We shall return to the key notions of duality and contradiction in the final paragraph of this chapter, after examining Daumier’s caricatural style and its parallels with Balzac’s. In his Pygmalion, a lithograph published in the Charivari in 1842 as part of his Histoires anciennes series (fig. 7), in which, as Mongan notes, ‘‘familiar subjects from Greek myths are presented in a startling new

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Figure 7. Honore´ Daumier. Pygmalion, 1842. Lithograph. Image 䉷 2006, Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rosenwald Collection, 1943.3.2986 (B-6068) / PR.

way’’ (1979, 63), Daumier, like Balzac, brings the mythological figure into a more modern and French context, Balzac through a comparison with Frenhofer, Daumier through a caricature. While Daumier’s clearly comical depiction is radically different in tone from Balzac’s tale, we can nonetheless draw a number of points in common between them, on the levels of theme, technique, and message.

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As with Balzac’s tale, Daumier’s central theme is that of artistic creation, and both works explore the relationship between human love and art. In both cases, the artist depicted, though working in another medium, is also a reflection of his creator: Daumier was himself a sculptor, as well as a painter, and Balzac, as we have seen, describes his own techniques of writing through Frenhofer’s theories on painting. Just as Balzac, the writer, evokes the world of painting in his text, Daumier uses writing to accompany his engraving: under the image appear verses attributed to a certain ‘‘Comte Simeon’’: Oh triomphe des Arts ! Quelle fut la surprise, Grand sculpteur, quand tu vis ton marbre s’animer, et d’un air chaste et doux, lentement se baisser pour te demander une prise. [Oh triumph of the Arts! What was the surprise, Great sculptor, when you saw your marble come alive, and in a chaste and soft manner, slowly bend over to ask you for a snuff of tobacco.]

Here the seriousness of the verse ‘‘form’’ is ‘‘broken,’’ to use Frenhofer’s term, by the words ‘‘demander une prise,’’ just as Daumier’s treatment of the image breaks with the ideal classical forms usually applied to mythological figures like Pygmalion and Galatea. In this sense both Daumier and Balzac can be considered ‘‘realists,’’ as the eminent art historian John Canaday, uses the designation: ‘‘Freed from the restrictions and recipes of classicism, no longer goaded by the romantic obligation to theatricalize, they discovered that the world around them offered everything, that at last the individual was freed to speak as he chose about what interested him most, interpret the world according to his own convictions, instead of echoing another man’s formula. Classicism had shrunk like a dried pea; romanticism had swollen until it burst; realism offered the world of every day as the painter’s lodestone’’ (1959, 92). Although neither Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu nor Pygmalion is set at a time contemporary to that of Balzac and Daumier, a usual trait of realism, both works display elements of the realism that characterizes the overall oeuvre of each artist. Poussin’s poverty, evident in his worn clothing, marks him as a common man, and even the mysterious Frenhofer displays ordinary traits (‘‘ce vieillard aux yeux blancs, attentif et stupide’’); both characters are also inserted into their professional milieu through the detailed description of Porbus’s studio at the beginning of Balzac’s tale. Likewise, placed to the left of center and cut off at the knees, the

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figure of Pygmalion is hardly heroic; his protruding proboscis and jutting jaw mark him as a man of the lower classes, just as Galatea’s red nose and sagging breasts mark her as a common woman. Pygmalion’s scraggly hair, and Galatea’s receding hairline and bourgeois hairdo bring both characters out of ancient Greece and into early nineteenthcentury France. From her pedestal on the right, Galatea stoops not to conquer but to reach for a snuff of tobacco and thereby revel in reality. The two figures are also set squarely in their professional context, through the plaster mask and casts that hang from the studio’s wall and the hammer and chisel that lie casually at the base of the pedestal. Even though Daumier works here in a medium that does not involve color, his loose handling of line to suggest movement, his application of shading and cross-hatching to create a sense of volume and depth, and his use of pure white to render the ‘‘marble’’ that has not yet come to life, in contrast with the darker tones of Galatea’s upper body, more than meet Frenhhofer’s dictates for fusing line and color. Indeed, as Baudelaire noted, ‘‘what completes the remarkable character of Daumier, and makes him a special artist belonging to the illustrious family of masters, is that his drawing is naturally colored. His pencil contains something other than black for marking contours. He makes us feel color as well as thought; well, that’s the sign of great art, which all intelligent artists have seen clearly in his works’’ (1968, 384). In short, although Daumier works essentially with line, he breaks it down by rapid, fluid strokes and tonal gradations that suggest volume, light, color, and movement, thereby revolutionizing his medium. It is the composition, however, the spatial relationships among the figures and objects, that leads the reader to the image’s message. The text included at the bottom reminds the spectator to ‘‘read’’ the engraving also from left to right and from top to bottom, which leads us from the frowning mask to the smiling faces of the figures, which easily convey their inner feelings of joy, from the elegant plaster leg at the top to Galatea’s flat feet at the bottom, from the classical torso at lower left to Pygmalion’s scrawny body to its immediate right; in short, from classicism to realism. Indeed, Pygmalion turns his back on his classical models and breaks with their conventional forms to find new ones in the world around him. The engraving’s composition reminds us that the classical forms to the left must be rejected and reconfigured by the artist in the center to produce a living figure at the right. And if that figure is not beautiful, she is nonetheless, ‘‘human,’’ as are those of Balzac himself, who grouped his works, around the same time that Daumier executed his engraving, into a series entitled ‘‘The Human Comedy.’’ Like his vision, Balzac’s style also shares characteristics with Daumier’s and can be described as ‘‘caricatural.’’ Based on Baudelaire’s dis-

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cussions of Balzac, themselves derived from the poet’s analyses of Daumier and Gavarni, Michele Hannoosh extrapolates the visual characteristics of Balzac’s own art: ‘‘high relief, bold outline, deep color, sharp contrast of light and shade, contorted and convulsed forms rendering his vision of the world. His characters are exaggerated, hyperbolic, caricatural’’ (1992, 88). Also using exaggeration as the primary criterion of ‘‘le style caricatural de Balzac’’ (123), Olivier Bonard finds its main manifestations in Balzac’s animal, mineral and vegetable metaphors applied to human beings (1969, 136). Our earlier analyses of Balzac’s portraiture confirm the preponderance of caricatural traits in his style: The young Poussin was presented in the first paragraph through the narrator’s exaggerations (‘‘toujours’’), generalizations (‘‘tous’’), and trite metaphors, including the vegetable (‘‘fleur’’). In his subsequent depiction of Frenhofer, the narrator emphasizes extraordinary features (‘‘Imaginez un front chauve, bombe´, proe´minent, retombant en saillie sur un petit nez e´crase´,’’ 44), exaggerated feelings (‘‘extraordinaire,’’ ‘‘diabolique,’’ 44), and anachronistic comparisons such as that with Rembrandt (45). Indeed, Balzac’s comparisons of modern figures like Frenhofer to legendary heroes like Socrates and Rabelais, to mythological ones like Prometheus, Orpheus, and Pygmalion, or to allegorical ones like Art itself, jolt the reader in much the same way as do Daumier’s overly simplified features, figures, and gestures. Both artists use caricature to exaggerate and thus ‘‘break’’ conventions in order to create new forms that can espouse the contours of the lower classes and the rapid changes of modern life. In a general sense, both artists break with tradition to promote not Dante’s ‘‘divine comedy’’ but the ‘‘human comedy’’ of realism. In the particular case of Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu and Pygmalion, both artists distort the image to explore aesthetic issues—the relationship of artist to work and of art to reality. Indeed, caricature is a style that, through its very exaggeration, calls attention to representation itself, as Hannoosh argues: ‘‘as a metadiscursive form, caricature, like parody, offers a commentary on representation generally’’ (1998, 346). In a similar vein, Wettlaufer locates Balzac’s fascination with caricature in its aesthetic as well as social implications: ‘‘Balzac’s interest in caricature was multifold. Attracted by an art that both depicted and mocked the society of his day, he was also drawn to a form that presented its signs for a reader to interpret, composing and comparing eidetic images within the imagination to come to meanings implied, but not enunciated, by the signifiers’’ (2001, 148). Both judgments confirm our overall contention that invoking another art form, as

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do Balzac, Daumier, and Baudelaire, invariably calls one’s attention to the inherent properties of one’s own medium. Baudelaire repeatedly emphasized the dual nature of caricature— ‘‘caricature is double: drawing and the idea: violent drawing; the biting, veiled idea’’ (1968, 372)—an attribute he also finds in modern art, whether in painting or writing, whether in the works of Daumier or Balzac: ‘‘The genius of the artist who paints mores is a mixed genius, that is, into which enters a good part of literary spirit. Observer, stroller, philosopher, call him what you will . . . Sometimes he’s a poet more often he approaches the novelist or the moralist; he is the painter of circumstance and all that it suggests of eternity’’ (1968, 550). From ‘‘circumstance’’ to ‘‘eternity,’’ from ‘‘drawing’’ to ‘‘idea,’’ from ‘‘individual’’ to ‘‘type,’’ from ‘‘figure’’ to ‘‘form,’’ from ‘‘image’’ to ‘‘ideology’’; is this not the dynamic interplay that defines the art of Balzac and Daumier and the very nature of modern art as it continues to emerge from our study of nineteenth-century literature and painting?

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that constituted the July Revolution of 1830 in France, but the expression could well apply to three masterpieces that represent various facets of it: Stendhal’s Le rouge et le noir, Delacroix’s La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, and Hugo’s Les mise´rables. In France, the nineteenth century was inaugurated by the French Revolution in 1789 and punctuated by further revolutions in 1830 and 1848, an uprising in 1871, and sporadic insurrections throughout the century. Such cataclysmic events invariably crystallize ideological positions and thus find themselves ripe for representation in print and paint and, indeed, for artistic innovation (see Boime 1987, 42). This is especially true for the 1830 Revolution, which toppled the Bourbon Restoration and inaugurated the Bourgeois Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, itself destined to fall in 1848. Le rouge et le noir, written on the eve of the July Revolution, reflects the repressive regime that caused it; La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, painted during the Revolution, depicts the struggle itself; Les mise´rables, begun in the aftermath and published many years later, deals with the ensuing unrest under Louis-Philippe. All three works explore the role of the artist in resisting repression and representing freedom, and all three artists make use of color and light symbolism, fashioned through antithesis, to convey the ideological complexities and contradictions inherent in the problematic relationship between the individual and society, as mediated by politics. All three works can even be said to share essentially the same goal— asserting the freedom of the individual from repressive society—but their radically different conceptions of freedom (not to mention the individual and society) lead them to mobilize quite different forms of imagery to underscore their ideological positions.

STENDHAL’S LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR The very title of Stendhal’s masterpiece, Le rouge et le noir, suggests that, like most of his romantic contemporaries in painting, including 92

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Delacroix, Stendhal is a colorist and that he uses color symbolically and antithetically. Indeed, by reducing much of his description to a single visual component (color) and two variants within it (red and black), Stendhal is able to distill his imagery down to its basic ideological implications. The standard interpretation of the title goes something like this: red denotes the institution of the Army, where the social-climbing protagonist Julien Sorel would have chosen to forge a career if the government of Napoleon’s Empire were still in place; black designates the Church, whose drab garb he must reluctantly don in order to succeed in the politically repressive atmosphere of the Bourbon Restoration (see, for example, Ansel 2001, 21–22; Crouzet 1995, 15; Fowlie 1969, 99–100; Haig 1989, 25–26; Hemmings 1964, 115; Imbert 1967, 515; Wakefield 1984, 70); the two colors together suggest the social game board— ‘‘Ainsi va le monde, c’est une partie d’e´checs’’ (332 ) [That’s how society works, it’s a game of chess]—on which he will play out his choices and chances (see Talbot 1993, 53). After demonstrating convincingly the pitfalls involved in any such attempt to reduce the colors to specific meanings, Serge Bokobza (1986) concludes that it is, rather, the very principle of contradiction suggested by their juxtaposition in the title that best explains their application to the novel, particularly concerning the relationship between the individual and society: ‘‘In Le Rouge et le Noir, everything is binary, and the juxtaposition in the title of two color words in a relation of semantic opposition embodies the amalgamation of social and personal discourse’’ (123; see also Brombert 1968, 76). It is this intricate interplay, between the two colors, between the individual and society, and ultimately within opposing facets of the individual, that we try to trace throughout this lengthy and complex novel. Shortly after meeting Julien, we learn that in his early childhood he had seen Napoleon’s troops returning victorious from the Italian campaign and had become ‘‘fou de l’e´tat militaire’’ (44) [crazy about the military path]. At age fourteen, however, the construction of a new church in his Franche-Comte´ village of Verrie`res led him to perceive the present power and wealth of the church, and ‘‘tout a` coup Julien cessa de parler de Napole´on ; il annonc¸a le projet de se faire preˆtre’’ (45) [suddenly Julien ceased speaking of Napoleon; he announced his intention to become a priest]. Henceforth, Julien repeatedly describes his own fate in binary terms: ‘‘Sous Napole´on j’eusse e´te´ sergent ; parmi ces futurs cure´s, je serai grand vicaire’’(207) [Under Napoleon I would have been a sergeant; among these future curates, I’ll be a vicar-general], and Stendhal often depicts such contrasts visually. For example, after serving in the guard of honor during a procession for a visiting king and then accompanying

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his mentor, the kindly abbe´ Che´lan, to ceremonies at a nearby abbey, Julien’s duplicitous state, namely religious appearance masking military ideal, is represented graphically: ‘‘sous les longs plis de sa soutane on pouvait apercevoir les e´perons du garde d’honneur’’ (129) [under the long folds of his cassock could be seen his guard of honor spurs]. David Wakefield (1984), following the lead of Jean Seznec (1959) shows how this image derives from a specific work by one of Stendhal’s favorite Italian painters, Guercino (76). Indeed, given Stendhal’s extensive writings on painting (Histoire de la peinture en Italie, Salons of 1824 and 1827, and numerous sections of his travel accounts), the novel’s ‘‘colorful’’ title, and the author’s famous definition of the novel as a ‘‘mirror in the roadway’’ (398 and 100), one might expect Le rouge et le noir to be a highly visual novel. Such is not the case. When ‘‘this most un-visual of novelists’’ (Jefferson 1994, 192) borrows from painting, it is primarily the power of the salient, expressive detail that seizes him (Wakefield 1984, 75; Simons 1980, 120 and 136; Jefferson 1994, 193), rather than the overall visuality of a description. Moreover, the metaphor of the mirror proves highly ironic (Talbot 1993, 56–58; Sonnenfeldt 1980, 108), and we must remember that a mirror, while reflecting reality, does so in reverse: what is left appears as right, a visual mechanism eminently suited to Stendhal’s pervasive use of irony, a rhetorical figure that also reverses meaning. Throughout Le rouge et le noir the same two regimes (the Empire and the Restoration), and their implied career choices (soldier and priest respectively), are juxtaposed. When Julien learns to speak at length without saying anything meaningful, for example, the narrator notes that ‘‘Julien atteignit a` un tel degre´ de perfection dans ce genre d’e´loquence, qui a remplace´ la rapidite´ d’action de l’empire, qu’il finit par s’ennuyer lui-meˆme par le son de ses paroles’’ (165) [Julian attained such a degree of perfection in this type of eloquence, which replaced the Empire’s rapidity of action, that he ended up boring himself with the sound of his words]. It is significant that the narrator speaks directly of the Empire’s ‘‘action,’’ while merely implying its opposite, the Restoration’s ‘‘inertia,’’ which we intuit, nonetheless, through the narrator’s insistence on Julien’s boredom and his use of irony (nonsense referred to as eloquence). The contrast between regimes, the indirectness of the technique of irony, the occlusion of the name Restoration, and the inclusion of the word ‘‘parole,’’ which raises the issue of communication, serve together to reflect the lack of freedom of expression that Stendhal himself had to deal with in writing his novel and the artist’s role in representing and resisting repression, albeit obliquely (see Brombert, 1954). A key element in deciphering his cryptic message is his use and reversal of color symbolism.

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BLACK: REPRESSION True to the promise of the novel’s title, Stendhal consistently uses the color black to underscore Julien’s social situation. In all three of the increasingly large spheres of action in which he finds himself, Julien is made to dress in black, a color that underscores the repressive atmosphere of each place, particularly with respect to freedom of expression. When Julien enters the household of the conservative mayor of Verrie`res, M. de Reˆnal, and his devoted wife, to serve as tutor for their children, he must wear black to denote his seriousness and his piety. Naturally, the future seminarian is forbidden from speaking or writing about Napoleon and ends up burning an annotated portrait of his hero and destroying his own fervent writings in order to escape detection. When his subsequent affair with Mme de Reˆnal, spurred on by ideas of Napoleonic duty and glory, is denounced by an anonymous letter, he is forced to leave for the seminary in Besanc¸on. The black walls of the city foreshadow the garb of Julien and his fellow seminarians, including his future mentor, the abbe´ Pirard, described as ‘‘l’homme noir’’ (200), and censorship is even more stringent: Pirard finds a card hidden in Julien’s cell with a compromising address and intercepts letters from Mme de Reˆnal, which he promptly burns. Julien must disguise and repress not only oral and written expression, but also exert control over his gaze and his gestures, themselves highly coded languages in Stendhal’s universe: ‘‘De´sormais l’attention de Julien fut sans cesse sur ses gardes ; il s’agissait de se dessiner un caracte`re tout nouveau. Les mouvements de ses yeux, par exemple, lui donnaient beaucoup de peine’’ (210) [Henceforth Julien’s attention was constantly on guard; he had to simulate an entirely new character. His eye movements, for example, gave him a great deal of trouble]. This example illustrates the exertion of repression (‘‘attention . . . peine’’) on expression (‘‘annonce’’) that characterizes all of the settings and institutions in Le rouge et le noir, its very pervasiveness reinforcing the novel’s covert criticism of the Restoration. In the wake of abbe´ Pirard’s success, Julien is called to Paris to serve as private secretary to the powerful Marquis de la Moˆle. Although not a cleric, Julien is again obliged to dress in black, and, when he enters the magnificent hoˆtel (its name inscribed on black marble), he soon senses the prevailing attitude toward the expression of ideas: Pourvu qu’on ne plaisantaˆt ni de dieu, ni des preˆtres, ni du roi, ni des gens en place, ni des artistes prote´ge´s par la cour, ni de tout ce qui est e´tabli ; pourvu qu’on ne dıˆt du bien ni de Be´ranger, ni des journaux de l’opposition, ni de Voltaire, ni de Rousseau, ni de tout ce qui se permet un peu de franc-

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parler ; pourvu surtout qu’on ne parlaˆt jamais politique, on pouvait librement parler de tout. (287) [Provided one didn’t make jokes involving God, priests, the king, wellplaced people, Court artists, or anything established; provided one didn’t speak highly of Be´ranger, the opposition press, Voltaire, Rousseau, or anything slightly liberal; provided especially that one never spoke of politics, one could freely talk about anything.]

In identifying the subjects of discussion forbidden for the characters in the Hoˆtel de la Moˆle, Stendhal also inventories those forbidden for the novelist during the Restoration. One notes, however, that the author in fact manages to talk about these very subjects, by doing so negatively, through irony, the principal weapon in his ideological arsenal. Julien learns quickly that, as in Verrie`res and the seminary, he must especially avoid putting his thoughts into writing, as his idol Napole´on had once warned: ‘‘Et encore parler e´tait affreux, mais e´crire ! Il est des choses qu’on n’e´crit pas, s’e´crirait Napole´on’’ (368, Stendhal’s italics) [And speaking was already terrible, but writing! There are things one doesn’t write, Napoleon would write to himself]. Even when writing is specifically avoided, as when Julien is called upon to memorize a secret note written by the Marquis and his royalist conspirators to be delivered orally to a foreign potentate, the young secretary must still struggle to elude detection and detention by the religious police. Throughout his lengthy stay in the Hoˆtel de la Moˆle, Julien is conscious of his ‘‘sad black suit,’’ which he enviously compares to the soldier’s uniform that the young aristocrats around him are fortunate enough to wear: ‘‘Moi, pauvre paysan du Jura, se re´pe´tait-il sans cesse, moi condamne´ a` porter toujours ce triste habit noir ! He´las ! Vingt ans plus toˆt, j’aurais porte´ l’uniforme comme eux . . . Eh bien, se dit-il en riant comme Me´phistophe´le`s, j’ai bien plus d’esprit qu’eux ; je sais choisir l’uniforme de mon sie`cle’’ (363) [Me, poor peasant from the Jura, he repeated to himself constantly, me condemned to always wear this sad black suit! Alas! Twenty years earlier I would have worn a uniform like them . . . Oh well, he told himself laughing like Mephistopheles, I’m much more clever than they are; I know how to choose the uniform of my century]. In all three settings, Stendhal also extends the symbolic use of black beyond the political and professional arenas to the psychological and emotional states of his characters. The narrator notes of the atmosphere at the seminary that ‘‘peut-eˆtre ce qu’il vit au Se´minaire est-il trop noir pour le coloris mode´re´ que l’on a cherche´ a` conserver dans ces feuilles’’ (216) [perhaps what he saw in the Seminary is too black for the moder-

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ate coloration we seek to convey in these pages]. Black repeatedly recurs in references to Julien’s ambition (90, 122), his uncertainty (351), his sadness (385), and his imagination (435). (see also Pollard 1981, 329). In short, Stendhal consistently uses the color black to denote a regime (the Restoration), a profession (the clergy), and the repressed physical, emotional, psychological, and social states they entail. His use of the color red, however, is far more problematic.

RED: PASSION Contrary to what one might expect as a parallel to the use of black, in no case is the color ‘‘red’’ used directly to denote the Empire or the profession of soldier much less to suggest ‘‘revolution.’’ Julien’s one glimpse of Napoleon’s troops found them clad in white uniforms with black trim (44). When Julien is named to the guard of honor during the king’s visit, he wears a blue uniform with silver epaulettes (125), and he is later taken for a military man in his cross and blue jacket (433). After gaining M. de la Moˆle’s respect, he is allowed to abandon the black outfit that he wears by day, for a blue one that leads to his being treated as an equal each evening (310). When Julien gets the Marquis’ headstrong daughter Mathilde pregnant, and is given a pension, a title, and a lieutenant’s commission for appearances’ sake, the color of the uniform is never mentioned. However, royal blue, rather than revolutionary red, is the color Stendhal generally uses to suggest the roles, codes, and behaviors that are antithetical to those denoted by black. Red is used repeatedly, nonetheless, to designate emotional states and ideological positions that are consonant with the role of soldier, but the color almost always takes a disguised form, appropriately enough given the repressed values it represents. Red (‘‘rouge’’) is expressed indirectly by words of the same family in French, such as blushing (‘‘rougir’’ or ‘‘rougeur’’), which appear more than thirty times and invariably convey repressed emotions, such as physical attraction (51), agitation (195), passion (209), anger (161, 276), pleasure (293), pride (342), embarrassment (403), and surprise (528). (see also Bokobza 1986, 115). Red takes another submerged but highly significant form as the implied basis for conventional metaphors that suggest Julian’s military-like zeal, his devotion to honor, and his passion for glory. Henri Jacoubet has noted the implications of red blood in conjunction with Julien’s energy and even his fate: ‘‘Red, it’s in the splendid fires of energetic passions, violence, bloodshed—his as well as others’—and in addition to the glowing of glory, the vermillion splattering of the scaffold’’ (1933, 105;

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see also Bokobza 1986, 115). Indeed, these ‘‘fires’’ are conveyed directly by words like ‘‘feu,’’ ‘‘flammes, ‘‘enflamme´,’’ and ‘‘bruˆlant,’’ [fire, flames, enflamed, and burning], all of which imply red visually and passion metaphorically. The fire in Julien’s eyes, for example, frightens Che´lan—‘‘le feu mal cache´ qui e´clatait dans ses yeux alarmaient M. Che´lan’’(69) [the poorly concealed fire that flamed in his eyes alarmed Che´lan]—just as it impresses Mathilde, who notes that ‘‘son oeil est plein d’un feu sombre’’ (328) [his eye is full of dark fire], which the narrator interprets as passion for justice—‘‘ses yeux exprimaient le feu de la conscience’’ (332) [his eyes expressed the fire of his conscience]—and later links directly to his sense of military duty: ‘‘il se sentit enflamme´ par l’ide´e du devoir’’ (529) [he felt inflamed by the idea of duty]. It is this very sense of military duty, gleaned from Napoleon’s writings, that leads him to capture Mme de Reˆnal’s reluctant hand—‘‘il e´tait de son devoir d’obtenir que l’on ne retiraˆt pas cette main quand il la touchait’’ (75) [it was his duty to see that this hand was not pulled back when he touched it]—to speak to Mathilde—‘‘Il pensait qu’il e´tait de son devoir de lui parler’’ (369) [he thought it was his duty to speak to her]—to see seduction as a battle—‘‘Dans la bataille qui se pre´pare, ajouta-t-il, l’orgueil de la naissance sera comme une colline e´leve´e, formant position militaire entre elle et moi’’ (369) [In the forthcoming battle, he added, ancestral pride will be like a high hill, forming a military position between her and me]—and to compare his success to that of ‘‘un jeune sous-lieutenant qui, a` la suite de quelque action e´tonnante, vient d’eˆtre nomme´ colonel’’ (383) [like that of a young second lieutenant who, after some astonishing deed, is just named colonel]. Except for a quickly lost duel brought on by Julien’s sense of offended honor and the clandestine mission involving the secret note, his battlefield, like the fire in his eyes, is confined to the bedroom, and it is his prowess in that arena that leads to his eventual military commission. The color red in the novel’s title, which appears only indirectly in Julien’s blushing complexion and fiery eyes, reflects a repressed military passion that surfaces primarily in Julien’s amorous conquests. The color red is used directly in very few instances in Le rouge et le noir, and primarily when it is displaced onto various aspects of the setting, which Stendhal usually describes through salient details rather than through complete visual descriptions and images like those of his contemporary Balzac. In addition to the ball and the secret note episodes, the most significant scenes involving a red decor are those (ironically, given the use of black to designate religion) that are set in various churches, all of which are crucial for the development of the novel, not only in a psychological sense (see Mouillaud 1973, 112–31; and Mossman 1984, 112–19) but also in the social sense we are pursuing here.

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When Julien stops by the new church in Verrie`res on his way to assume the position of tutor for the Reˆnal household, he finds it ‘‘sombre et solitaire’’ [dark and deserted] but ‘‘a` l’occasion d’une feˆte, toutes les croise´es de l’e´difice avaient e´te´ couvertes d’e´toffe cramoisie’’ (46) [for a ceremony, all of the building’s arch ribs had been covered in crimson fabric]. Indeed, it is the reflection of the red curtains (‘‘le reflet des rideaux rouges’’) that creates the illusion of blood in the holy water fount and thus incites Julien to cry ‘‘aux armes’’ as if about to engage in battle. He also finds a piece of printed paper with the words ‘‘De´tails de l’exe´cution et des derniers moments de Louis Jenrel, exe´cute´ a` Besanc¸on, le . . .’’ [Details of the execution and last moments of Louis Jenrel, executed in Besancon, on the . . . ]. Although Julien notices that the name ends like his, he fails to realize that it is an exact anagram, and the initiated reader will remember, 500 pages later, that the words were a prefiguration of Julien’s own destiny, since, in this very church, again hung with red curtains, he will fire a shot that will wound Mme de Reˆnal, who has denounced him as a hypocrite to M. de la Moˆle, thus spoiling his success (see also Borgerhoff 1953). Indeed he will shed blood near the holy water fount, leading to his own execution at Besanc¸on. His fate has been written and sealed from the outset, which Stendhal underscores with both a visual clue (the color red) and a verbal one (the anagram). Julien’s failure to fully understand these signs inaugurates an apprenticeship in cryptography that is among the major themes of the novel and of Stendhal’s works in general (see Berg 1978). In the scene depicting the king’s visit to Verrie`res, not only is the local church again hung with crimson curtains, but also Julien’s sense of military duty leads him to speak to a youthful prelate clad in a ‘‘robe violette’’ and wearing his mitre like ‘‘un shako d’officier’’ [an officer’s cap], who turns out to be the bishop. When the king kneels before the young cleric, Julien ‘‘ne songeait plus a` Napole´on et a` la gloire militaire. Si jeune, pensait-il, eˆtre e´veˆque d’Agde !’’ (132–33) [no longer dreamed about Napole´on and military glory. So young, he thought, to be Bishop of Agde!]. In essence, Julien sees that power and glory are not limited to the profession of soldier but can be obtained within the church (see also Pollard 1981, 328), a combination represented visually by the statue of Saint Cle´ment, ‘‘en costume de jeune soldat romain’’(135) [dressed like a young Roman soldier]. Indeed the saint’s image repeats and reverses that of Julien, who wears his priestly garb over the once revered yet now-forgotten soldier’s uniform he had worn for the morning’s procession. This contamination of roles is highlighted by a reversal of the novel’s supposed color symbolism, destabilizing the ostensible antithesis of religious success and military glory. Another, even more telling, reversal of the novel’s color symbolism

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involves a further definition of the word ‘‘rouge,’’ which, as in English, can also mean a cosmetic, that is, a mask. The use of ‘‘rouge’’ in this sense becomes highly significant when it appears in the epigraph for a chapter (1, viv)—‘‘Une jeune fille de seize ans avait un teint de rose, et elle mettait du rouge’’ [A girl of sixteen had a rosy complexion, and she was wearing rouge]—and again in the ironic epigraph that precedes the entire second half of the novel: ‘‘elle n’est pas jolie, elle n’a point de rouge’’ [she isn’t pretty, she doesn’t have any rouge]. This use of rouge, dismissed by Pollard (1981, 327) and ignored by most other critics, acquires its full meaning when it is applied metaphorically to Julien himself and is accompanied by the narrator’s overt judgment: ‘‘C’est une jeune fille de seize ans, qui a des couleurs charmantes, et qui, pour aller au bal, a la folie de mettre du rouge’’ (112) [He’s like a girl of sixteen, who has charming coloring, and who, to go to a ball, is crazy enough to wear rouge]. The narrator goes on to explain his metaphor: ‘‘En un mot, rien n’euˆt manque´ au bonheur de notre he´ros, pas meˆme une sensibilite´ bruˆlante dans la femme qu’il venait d’enlever, s’il euˆt su en jouir’’ [In a word, nothing would have been lacking in our hero’s happiness, not even a burning passion in the woman he just won, if he knew how to enjoy it]. Here the consequences of Julien’s mask, are clear: it prohibits him from pleasure (‘‘jouir’’) and happiness (‘‘bonheur’’), and the narrator is quick to identify the causes in the neighboring pages: the idea of duty (111), the ideal model he was trying to follow (112), and his soldierly attitude (112). In short, Julien’s persona of soldier, like that of priest, is a role that masks the authentic self, which alone is capable of attaining freedom and happiness. His black tunic may hide his soldier’s uniform, but this uniform is in turn just another garment that covers his natural body. The repressive color black may disguise the fiery color red, but the latter in turn masks the natural tint of the real self, itself denoted consistently by a specific color, albeit one that does not figure in the novel’s title.

WHITE: AUTHENTICITY From the novel’s outset, descriptions of Julien have involved another color or tint in addition to red and black: the young man’s whiteness or paleness, a coloring that occurs some thirty times in the novel, nearly always associated with the pure, natural, or authentic self. In the very first description of Julien, where his ‘‘grands yeux noirs . . . annonc¸aient de la re´flexion et du feu’’ (39) [big black eyes . . . announced reflection and fire], the narrator also highlights Julien’s

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‘‘grande paˆleur’’ (39) [great paleness], which is precisely the trait that strikes Mme de Reˆnal on their first encounter: elle aperc¸ut pre`s de la porte d’entre´e la figure d’un jeune paysan presque encore enfant, extreˆmement paˆle et qui venait de pleurer. Il e´tait en chemise bien blanche . . . le teint de ce petit paysan e´tait si blanc, ses yeux si doux, que l’esprit un peu romanesque de Mme de Reˆnal eut d’abord l’ide´e que ce pouvait eˆtre une jeune fille de´guise´e . . . Mme de Reˆnal regardait les grosses larmes qui s’e´taient arreˆte´es sur les joues si paˆles d’abord et maintenant si roses de ce jeune paysan. (48–49) [she saw near the entry door the face of a young peasant, still nearly a child, extremely pale and fresh from crying. He wore a very white shirt . . . the complexion of this little peasant was so white, his eyes so soft, that Mme de Reˆnal’s slightly romanesque imagination gave her the initial idea that it could be a girl in disguise . . . Mme de Reˆnal looked at the big tears that had stayed on the young peasant’s cheeks so pale at first and now so pink.]

Stendhal emphasizes the impact of his description by the use of Mme de Reˆnal’s viewpoint (‘‘elle aperc¸ut . . . regardait’’), through which we twice perceive a color of extreme white (‘‘chemise bien blanche . . . le teint si blanc’’) and an exaggerated paleness (‘‘extreˆmement paˆle . . . si paˆles’’), seen by her as a sign of sensitivity, signaled by comparisons with a child (‘‘presque encore enfant’’) and a young girl (‘‘une jeune fille de´guise´e’’). Paleness and the color white, like Julien’s natural self, are especially associated with Mme de Reˆnal (81), whom Julien sees in her bedroom as a ‘‘fantoˆme blanc’’ (248, three times) and with whom he devises a signal, using a ‘‘mouchoir blanc,’’ which becomes a symbol of their short-lived happiness (158). Julien’s natural paleness continues to be noted during his stay in the seminary: both the daunting abbe´ Pirard and the kindly abbe´ ChasBernard, two father figures who call Julien ‘‘mon enfant’’ [my child] are impressed by his extreme paleness (199 and 224, respectively]. The regulars at the Hoˆtel de la Moˆle are initially struck by Julien’s paleness, set off by his black outfit: ‘‘ce jeune homme, paˆle et veˆtu de noir, semblait a` son tour fort singulier’’ (286) [this young man, pale and dressed in black, seemed in turn quite unique]. Mathilde reads Julien’s paleness as a sign of his aristocratic bearing (318), his fellow seminary students as an indication of merit (299), and his fellow officers as proof of his aloofness (493). For the narrator, however, aligned with Mme de Reˆnal, these fresh provincial colors are fast disappearing: ‘‘Ces diffe´rents travaux, saisis avec toute l’ardeur de l’ambition souffrante, avaient bien vite enleve´ a` Julien les fraıˆches couleurs qu’il avait apporte´es de la province’’ (299) [These different tasks, seized upon with all the passion

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of suffering ambition, had quickly deprived Julien of the fresh colors he had brought from the provinces]. This passage also reveals the cause of Julien’s change of coloration: his naturalness (‘‘fraıˆches couleurs’’) is threatened by his military role (‘‘l’ardeur de l’ambition’’), just as the beautiful young woman in the epigraph is threatened by applying rouge to her pale cheeks. The mask, like the makeup, not only threatens to disguise naturalness, but to destroy it. In truth, Julien’s emulation of Napoleon, his concept of duty, his desire for power, and his goal of glory, which lead to his determination to seduce and dominate first Mme de Reˆnal then Mathilde, are as repressive as the roles of tutor, priest, and secretary; and, just as political repression limits freedom of expression so does personal repression. Duty is depicted as an iron hand that seizes Julien’s heart (471), and the effort imposed by the ‘‘politics’’ of repression is painful (462). Julien has to hide his true feelings so that Mathilde can’t detect his love and thus disdain him (393); he learns to be vigilant with his words (462) and even his tone of voice (469). His happiness is reduced to triumph, and even that can be experienced only when it is not expressed: ‘‘Julien ne s’abandonnait a` l’exce`s de son bonheur que dans les instants ou` Mathilde ne pouvait en lire l’expression dans ses yeux’’ (474) [Julien abandoned himself to his excessive happiness only in those moments when Mathilde could not read its expression in his eyes]. When he does paint his emotions for Mathilde in ‘‘true colors’’ (472), he must quickly pretend he is lying. Worse, because language bears no relationship to inner reality, Julien fails to understand himself: ‘‘Ah ! se disait-il en e´coutant le son des vaines paroles que prononc¸ait sa bouche, comme il euˆt fait un bruit e´tranger’’ (465–66) [Ah! He said to himself while listening to the empty words coming out of his mouth, as he would a foreign noise]. The falseness and thus strangeness of his own words lead Julien to self doubt (459) and self punishment (404). The resultant loss of inner energy (‘‘ses yeux meˆmes . . . avaient perdu tout leur feu,’’ 447) [his very eyes . . . had lost all their fire] leads to an alienation of self, which unleashes the theme of madness that emerges toward the end of the novel (‘‘je suis fou !’’ 388) [I’m going crazy!]. Julien contemplates suicide (399), and in a sense accomplishes just that by his attempted murder of Madame de Reˆnal and subsequent sentencing. If the famous metaphor ‘‘la politique . . . est un coup de pistolet au milieu d’un concert’’ (419) [politics is a pistol shot in the middle of a concert] has an ironic application to Stendhal’s highly political novel, it has a direct (and is thus doubly ironic) meaning when applied to the individual immersed in society. The trick for Julien is to avoid being struck by the ‘‘coup de pistolet’’ (politics), which is accomplished by

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donning masks, and yet to enjoy the ‘‘concert’’ (life), despite the repressive nature of the masks themselves. Ironically, it is the ‘‘coup de pistolet’’ that Julien fires at Mme de Renal and his resultant prison and death sentences that lead our hero to discover his authentic self, buried beneath the layers of black and red masks. Isolation in his prison cell removes Julien from the presence of others and thus the necessity of playing roles (516, 521), which in turn leads him to ‘‘voir clair dans son aˆme’’ (500, 550) [see clearly in his soul], and ultimately, paradoxically, as Brombert points out, to freedom: ‘‘It is in prison that Julien discovers his freedom’’ (Brombert 1962, 14; see also Brombert 1968, 91–99; and Crouzet 1995, 166–67). Julien’s path of self-examination and self-discovery culminates with a full ‘‘prise de conscience’’ at the end of chapter 44 (547–50). After confirming the hypocrisy of Restoration society (547), Julien comes to also understand and acknowledge that of Napole´on (547) and, more significantly his own: ‘‘Parlant seul avec moi-meˆme, a` deux pas de la mort, je suis encore hypocrite . . . O dix-neuvie`me sie`cle !’’ (548–49) [Speaking alone with myself, two steps from death, I’m still a hypocrite . . . Oh nineteenth century!]. Stripped of the masks of self-delusion and armed with the tools of self-criticism, Julien is able to formulate clearly the lessons he (and hopefully the initiated reader) has learned: ‘‘1* Je suis hypocrite comme s’il y avait la` quelqu’un pour m’e´couter. 2* J’oublie de vivre et d’aimer, quand il me reste si peu de jours a` vivre’’ (549) [1* I’m still a hypocrite as if there were someone listening to me. 2* I’m forgetting to live and love, when so few days remain to be lived]. Julien understands that the true message of life is to ‘‘live and love’’ and, that it is the sensitive Madame de Reˆnal, not the role-playing Mathilde, who is his soul-mate: Ah ! Ceci est une antithe`se ! pensa-t-il, et, pendant un grand quart d’heure que dura encore la sce`ne que lui faisait Mathilde, il ne songea qu’a` Mme de Reˆnal. Malgre´ lui, et quoique re´pondant souvent a` ce que Mathilde lui disait, il ne pouvait de´tacher son aˆme du souvenir de la chambre a` coucher de Verrie`res. Il voyait la gazette de Besanc¸on sur la courte-pointe de taffetas orange. Il voyait cette main blanche qui la serrait d’un mouvement convulsif ; il voyait Mme de Reˆnal pleurer . . . Il suivait la route de chaque larme sur cette figure charmante. (537) [Ah! This is an antithesis! He thought, and, during the full quarter hour that the scene with Mathilde lasted, he thought only of Mme de Reˆnal. Despite himself, and although often responding to what Mathilde was saying, he couldn’t detach his soul from the memory of the bedroom in Verrie`res. He saw the Besanc¸on Gazette on the orange taffeta bedspread. He saw a

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white hand clutching it convulsively; he saw Mme de Reˆnal crying . . . He followed the path of each tear down her charming face.]

Here Julien’s newfound ability to think critically (underscored by the disappearance of epigraphs and the diminishing of the narrator’s irony), by grasping the notion of contradiction (‘‘une antithe`se’’), leads him beneath the surface, represented verbally by Mathilde (‘‘ce que Mathilde lui disait’’), to the depths of his soul (‘‘son aˆme’’), represented visually (‘‘il voyait’’ x 3) by Mme de Reˆnal, whose sensitivity is figured by tears (‘‘chaque larme’’) and whose purity is symbolized, here as elsewhere, by the color white (‘‘cette main blanche’’). Julien is able to find true happiness (553) and face his death with dignity (555) because he is able to transcend the antithesis of Empire and Restoration, to perceive in politics and the public sphere their common dangers and to find salvation, not in the July Revolution, to which Stendhal barely alludes in an Avertissement imputed to a fictitious editor, but in the private sphere of the authentic self or, as some critics characterize it (though not necessarily favorably): the ‘‘untouchable self’’ (see Place 1996, 377–78; Prendergast 1988, 127–28). In what amounts to a ‘‘moral,’’ added after the novel’s ending, Stendhal criticizes public opinion, even when it leads to freedom, because it invariably intrudes on the private self: ‘‘L’inconve´nient du re`gne de l’opinion, qui d’ailleurs procure la liberte´, c’est qu’elle se me`le de ce dont elle n’a que faire : la vie prive´e’’ (556) [The disadvantage of the reign of opinion, which by the way procures freedom, is that it gets involved in what it shouldn’t: private life]. Like Julien, Stendhal warns, the initiated reader should be wary of the public sphere, whatever ideological form it may take, because it threatens the private sphere, in which alone freedom and happiness can be attained. In learning to reject the ostensible (and conventional) contrast of red and black for the unstated (at least in the title) color white, the reader, like Julien, will find more fertile ideological ground, as Ferguson puts it, ‘‘beyond the politics that had played such a large role in his life’’ (1999, 31), beneath the surface of society in the depths of the soul, a configuration we might attempt to visualize as follows: Public sphere Red (Revolution)

Black (Restoration)

White (Soul) Private sphere

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Le rouge et le noir is not only a critique of the Restoration, but ultimately of politics itself, whose pistol shot threatens the concert of life, played out within the private sphere and accessible only to the artist or the artist figure that Julien has now perhaps become, as Bokobza contends: ‘‘Being an artist is also creating, and the only time that Julien is characterized as ‘poetic’ is at the time of his death . . . since the artist alone is the synthesis of the diverse elements that he nonetheless maintains in their divergence and their contradiction’’ (1986, 126–28; see also Day 1999, 66). And the modern artist, as we have seen with Chateaubriand and Balzac, is precisely someone who, by resisting resolution (and, in Stendhal’s case, revolution) maintains contradiction as a life principle in the dynamic interplay that is the very heart of Stendhal’s code of living, playfully called ‘‘Beylism’’ after his real name, the one beneath the mask of the pseudonym (see especially Blum 1914 1962, 109). In short, for Stendhal (Beyle) it is the coexistence and counter-exchange of the black mask (needed for protection), the red passion (needed for energy), and the white soul (needed for authenticity) that constitutes the well-balanced self. Writing within a repressive re´gime, Stendhal problematizes, then reverses color symbolism to produce a cryptic message of personal freedom in the face of prescribed political ideologies, whatever their color, regressive black or revolutionary red. If he barely alludes to the events of the July Revolution, it is because they will ultimately have little bearing on freedom, for Julien, the author, or the reader, among those ‘‘happy few’’ (as Stendhal terms his initiated readers) who find freedom where it resides . . . within. Delacroix, on the other hand, painting at the very moment of the Revolution, depicts it directly, externally, and enthusiastically, producing an image whose colors, symbols, and ideological implications are equally dynamic yet far more legibile and political than those of Stendhal.

DELACROIX: LA LIBERTE´ GUIDANT LE PEUPLE Unlike Stendhal’s complex and cryptic approach to politics, Delacroix’s positions in La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, 28 juillet 1830 could hardly be clearer (see color insert). If the precise party or form of government invoked by the painting appears ambiguous (see Spitzer 2001, 13), Delacroix’s attitude toward the Bourbon re´gime, the July Revolution that toppled it, the principles behind the Revolution, and the artist’s role in politics are remarkably straightforward. This ideological clarity stems from several sources: 1) Delacroix’s use of conventional visual symbols to the point of appearing ‘‘high-flown’’ to some (Canaday 1959, 89); 2)

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his systematic manipulation of the visual variables in a way so complete as to appear unique to others (Huyghe 1963, 201; quoted later); and 3) his ability not only to ‘‘paint thoughts’’ (Wright 2001, 1) but also to muster verbal means, such as the title, political slogans, literary allusions, and his very signature in order to make his multiple messages explicit. Among the many conventional visual symbols and recognizable forms, the most striking is, of course, the allegorical figure of Liberty herself, often represented as a woman during the French Revolution (see Hofmann 1975, 67; Agulhon 1979, 21–22), a link further reinforced by the Phyrgian bonnet of revolutionary times, donned here by Delacroix’s warrior woman. The tricolor flag also originated in 1789, became a symbol of the First Republic during the revolutionary period, and was embraced by the Empire in Napoleonic times, before being rejected by the Restoration in favor of a white one. The ‘‘tricolore,’’ hoisted over the towers of Notre Dame on the morning of July 28, the very day selected by Delacroix for his painting, was seen as an ‘‘amalgam of the various parties, united at least in a common hatred for the kings of the Holy Alliance’’ (Benjamin Pance, quoted in Spitzer 2001, 12) and ‘‘galvanized a populace which for fifteen years had seen only the royal white flag’’ (L. Johnson 1981, 146). Thus the figure of Liberty combines with the tricolor flag to sanction the July Revolution by association with the first, to complete the revolutionary mission by marking the true end of the ‘‘ancien re´gime’’ (see Toussaint 1982, 44), and to symbolize a fundamental unity within the people in the name of liberty, beyond any specific political party or form of government. This vision of popular solidarity is further reinforced by the human figures, whose iconographic garb enabled the viewing public in Delacroix’s time and informed modern critics like He´le`ne Toussaint (1982, 44–50) to identify various categories of the working class (‘‘le peuple’’), such as the man with the saber, whose beret and apron mark him as a factory worker, the kneeling wounded man, whose scarf and red flannel belt suggest a manual laborer, newly arrived from the countryside, and the street urchin brandishing confiscated pistols (a prototype for Hugo’s Gavroche). These representatives of the populace are joined in the rear by a student wearing the bonnet of the Ecole Polytechnique, whose members were a major force in the Revolution, and a bourgeois figure wearing a top hat and carrying a rifle, whose identity has proven more problematic. Toussaint sees in him another worker of higher standing, but most critics disagree, and many see him as Delacroix himself (Escholier 1926, 268; Huyghe 1963, 198) or at least as an artist figure (Johnson 1981, 148; Brown 1984, 249–50). Although I will later propose another manner in which Delacroix paints himself into the pic-

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ture, whether this figure is taken for an artist, a bourgeois, or a worker, the undeniable message of the painting is one of solidarity, either with or within the people. One remaining familiar visual icon is the Notre Dame Cathedral, whose twin towers loom in the background. It evokes at once the urban setting of the Revolution, the place where the tricolor was hoisted on July 28, the preference of romantic artists for gothic rather than classic architecture, and possibly a direct link with the novel Notre Dame de Paris, published by Victor Hugo, a friend of Delacroix’s, in the same year as the 1830 Revolution and La Liberte´ guidant le peuple (see Toussaint 1982, 47–52). As several critics have pointed out, however, the implied vantage point from which the cathedral is viewed was physically impossible at the time, suggesting the extent of Delacroix’s manipulation of visual phenomena for ideological purposes, a point to which we now turn. As Rene´ Huyghe (1963) claims of La Liberte´, ‘‘Rarely had there been seen a picture in which the various resources which art can bring into play had been so completely reconciled, associated and made to reinforce one another’’ (201), and, as even a mere glance by a casual viewer will reveal, all of these visual ‘‘resources’’ or ‘‘variables’’are directed at the flag-brandishing figure of freedom. The composition, like that of David’s Serment (see color insert), is based on a pyramid, formed by the lines of the rifle and the flagstaff on the left and the arms of the urchin and liberty at the right, which position the liberty figure at the apex and thus focal point of the triangle. Unlike the sense of static solidity engendered by David’s pyramid, however, Delacroix’s painting fosters a feeling of dynamism, articulated brilliantly by Huyghe: But it does not take long to see that this sort of jutting pediment is not as stable as it at first seems. It is pushed upwards by an irresistible movement which rises until it finds freedom in the floating veils of the standard. It is also carried to the right by the twist of the figure of Liberty, as though she were pressed upwards and round by the wounded man who heaves himself tensely up towards her. . . . The composition, then, is both architectural and dynamic. But it is also psychological: the geometrical framework seems to be merely the support, or rather the springboard, guiding and assisting the accelerating impetus that carries everything in the picture area. This impetus, likewise, simply mimes and expresses the moral meaning of the picture: life—proud, impulsive and creative—marching gradually from vanquished and lifeless remains, sucking upwards with it the impatient efforts of men and hurling these into an opening of brightness in which, like its outward and visible sign, colour bursts out. (200–201)

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To further enhance the impact of the Liberty figure, the size is increased to make her larger than life (Toussaint 1982, 46), the form is modified in comparison with preliminary drawings to make the figure less erotic and more maternal (Brown 1984, 246), and, during the actual painting of the picture, the direction of the head was turned from facing out at the public to facing back at the people, as radiographic studies reveal (Toussaint 1982, 38, 46). As Huyghe suggests at the end of the passage quoted above, along with the dynamic composition it is, especially, the powerful bursts of color and light that characterize the painting, and, indeed the romantic movement. While Huyghe notes the gradual warming of the colors from the bottom to the top of the painting (200), Toussaint describes the interplay of the white, blue, and red colors of the flag with other parts of the canvas (40; see also also Jobert 1997, 132 and Gaudibert 1963, 10). Toussaint goes on to describe the use of light (‘‘luminous smoke’’) to highlight the figures of Liberty and the street urchin, along with a sense of texture (‘‘the heavy paste of the brushwork’’) unique to Delacroix (40; for more on texture, see also 71; Chu 2001, 100–103 and Januszczak 1980, 82). A final factor in the striking ideological clarity of the painting is Delacroix’s use of several verbal cues and clues, which, like so many echos, reverberate throughout the painting and lend it its full meaning. Chief among these, of course, is the title La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, 28 juillet 1830. The painter provides not only the allegorical signification of the female figure (liberty) and the identity of her supporting cast (the populace) but the precise event and date involved, the middle of the three days, with the outcome still in doubt, after the fall of the previous re´gime but before the establishment of the new one. One might even detect, in the painting’s choice to personify the figure of Liberty, an allusion to its companions in the most famous slogan of the French Revolution—Equality and Fraternity—two qualities that clearly emerge from the painting and lend it its strong sense of what Rubin aptly terms ‘‘inclusive politics’’ (2001, 36). For those disappointed in not finding an allusion to a precise form of government or political party, we should note that the painting’s title is not La Re´publique guidant les Re´publicains, but rather an ideological statement that brings the notions of freedom, solidarity, and revolution itself to the fore, a reminder, perhaps, that any form of government or political party that strays from these ideals is subject to uprising. Many critics, beginning with The´ophile Gautier, a friend of Delacroix’s, have also suggested a literary source for Delacroix’s female figure in a contemporary poem, La Cure´e (1830), by Auguste Barbier:

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C’est une forte femme aux puissantes mamelles, A la voix rauque, aux durs appats, Qui, du brun sur la peau, du feu dans les prunelles, Agile et marchant a` grands pas, Se plaıˆt aux cris du peuple, aux sanglantes meˆle´es, Aux longs roulements des tambours, A l’odeur de la poudre, aux lointaines vole´es Des cloches et des canons sourds. (Quoted in G. H. Hamilton 1954, 60) [She’s a husky woman with powerful breasts, With a raucous voice and hard features, Who, with brown on her skin and fire in her eyes, Agile and walking with large strides, Takes pleasure in the people’s cry, in the bloody strife, In the long rolling of the drums, In the odor of gunpowder, in the far-away sounds Of the bells and the muffled canons.]

Whether the poem is a direct source or simply a similar sign of the times, its existence, for those familiar with it, brings a certain conception of freedom to the fore and thus lends clarity to Delacroix’s image. A final verbal indicator of ideology lies in Delacroix’s signature, included within the picture space, inscribed on the barricade’s logs, and painted in red! Delacroix’s statement about the painting in a letter to his brother, a former general under the Empire, that ‘‘si je n’ai pas vaincu pour la patrie, au moins peindrai-je pour elle’’ (L. Johnson 1981, 146) [if I didn’t fight for my homeland, at least I shall paint for her] has been used as an argument that Delacroix is himself the top-hatted bourgeois brandishing a hunting rifle. Whatever the case, through his very signature, Delacroix has clearly painted himself into the picture and identified himself as a revolutionary painter. Of all the revolutionary qualities attributed to La Liberte´ guidant le peuple throughout the ages, it is perhaps the mixing of genres, especially realism and allegory, that has drawn the most commentary (L. Johnson 1981, 148; Hofmann 1975, 68; Brown 1984, 248; Huyghe 1963, 201). The´ophile Thore´ was among the first to comment on the originality of Delacroix’s combination: ‘‘We can not adopt those banal mythological allegories who no longer represent the ideas for which they were created long ago. . . . It seems to us that the entities of contemporary civilization, like those of ancient civilization, can be personified with new forms that are living and original. . . . Here again, M. Delacroix is the first to employ a new allegorical language’’ (1837, in Jobert 1997, 132– 33). Thore´’s praise of ‘‘formes vivantes et originales’’ echoes Frenhofer’s

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call in Balzac’s Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu to ‘‘briser la Forme’’ and create new ones, derived from reality not convention (see chapter 3). Not only is Delacroix’s creative process, like Balzac’s, ‘‘inductive,’’ moving from concrete to general, from real to ideal, it is also ‘‘dialectical’’ in that it rejects previous oppositions to form new positions. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu in fact concludes that: ‘‘I suggest that we characterize his approach to art as Hegelian rather than eclectic in Cousin’s sense. For Delacroix did not pick and choose discriminatingly from all artistic options available to him. . . . Instead, he tried to create a synthesis between opposites. . . . an approach aimed at fusing sensuality and emotion with reason, freedom with rule, and science with art’’ (2001, 107). Delacroix’s art thus retains the hybrid quality characteristic of Baudelaire’s ‘‘painter of modern life.’’ As early as 1826, critics had begun to draw comparisons between the youthful Delacroix and Victor Hugo; Paul Dubois, editor of the liberal Globe, contended that ‘‘Monsieur Hugo is in poetry what Monsieur Delacroix is in painting; there is always a great idea, a profound sentiment, beneath their infelicities’’ (quoted in Spitzer 2001, 8–9). As with Delacroix in La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, Victor Hugo’s great ideas and profound sentiments, expressed in Les mise´rables, centered around the notions of freedom, revolution, and the people, and, like Delacroix, and Stendhal, he used vivid visual imagery in dynamic fashion to express them.

HUGO’S LES MISE´RABLES : LIGHT AND DARK It is hardly surprising that Victor Hugo, a prolific, even compulsive drawer, would make heavy use of visual imagery in his written works; as the art critic Pierre Georgel puts it: ‘‘Hugo not only consumed, produced, and elicited [images] with noted abundance: he thought by image, bringing perhaps to paroxysm the classic correlation of vision and intellect’’ (1989a, 5; see also Raser 2004; Thompson 1970). Georgel clarifies what he means by ‘‘image’’ by citing three definitions from the Littre´ dictionary of Hugo’s time: ‘‘representation of something in sculpture, in painting, in engraving, in drawing; representation of objects in the mind, in the soul; metaphor, likeness’’ (5). These three definitions match those of graphic, mental, and verbal images distinguished by W. J. T. Mitchell (1986, 10), quoted in our introduction, and all three are eminently applicable to our analysis of Les mise´rables. Nor is it surprising that Hugo’s imagery would be dominated by a contrast in light and dark, since, as Emile Verhaeren noted as early as 1888, ‘‘the antithesis—black and white—of superb, mysterious patches

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. . . characterize the hugolian imagination’’ (in Georgel, 1971–72, 27– 28). Furthermore, Hugo produced some three thousand drawings, most involving black ink on white paper (Phillips 1999, 4) and later turned to photography, largely through his attraction to light, as Heilbrun and Ne´agu contend: ‘‘What provoked this interest in the new medium were the expressive possibilities inherent in the play of light. Hugo specialists will not be surprised by this attraction for contrasts in dark and light, omnipresent in his poems, as in his drawings, but it must be stressed that this power of expression through light is one of the main characteristics of the esthetics of photography’’ (1989, 185). Indeed, writing itself involves putting black ink on white paper, and critics have noted the kinship of image and text in phenomena ranging from Hugo’s youthful ‘‘griffonage’’ (Georgel 1989b) [scribbling] to his later blending of images and words in what Jean-Jacques Thomas calls a ‘‘new calligraphy,’’ ‘‘not simply a co-presence of the word and the image side by side, not simply words, letters, made into an image but a contemporary new type of dynamic image where the physical shapes of the words interact fully through movement and morphing with the graphics of the illustration’’ (1999, xv–xvi). Both of the above examples involve special hybrid endeavors featuring a graphic mixture of letters and lines, but all of Hugo’s works, his drawings like his texts, betray a fundamental similarity based precisely on the contrast of light and dark imagery. Mario Praz declares that his ‘‘pen and ink drawings . . . and gouaches show contrasts of light and shade which have parallels in his literary technique (1970/1974, 52), and Michel Sicard proposes an interdisciplinary approach to all of Hugo’s work, ‘‘an adventure half-way between writing and painting’’ (1985, 141). This exchange between light and dark and indeed between genres is especially evident in Les mise´rables, which Papin calls ‘‘a novel of light’’ (1962, 23), and, of which Meschonnic concludes in his reading of the novel: ‘‘he wrote as one engraves an etching’’ (1995, 83). Les mise´rables is a lengthy novel, several times longer than Stendhal’s already weighty Le rouge et le noir. Furthermore, Hugo’s tome has a highly complex plot, numerous characters who reappear in various disguises, a parade of historical figures and events, and a ‘‘meditative constellation of reflections’’ (L. H. Porter 1999, vii) that call the reader’s attention away from the story. Any one of these characteristics—length, complexity, or heterogeneity—would be sufficient to create problems of organization: Hugo solves them, on the level of plot as well as on that of ideology, by utilizing the visual variable of light and dark tonality, the main structural and ideological implement in his technical toolshed, to simplify and solidify his immense masterpiece. Les mise´rables recounts the saga of Jean Valjean, an escaped convict

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who fulfills a vow to the dying prostitute Fantine to care for her daughter Cosette. When Cosette later falls in love with the would-be insurrectionist Marius Pontmercy, Valjean joins him on the barricades, where Valjean frees his own nemesis, the gendarme Javert, witnesses the deaths of the street urchin Gavroche and his sister Eponine, then avoids sure defeat and death at the hands of government troops by carrying the unconscious Marius to safety through the sewers of Paris. Reunited with his family, the now wealthy Marius marries Cosette and both assist at the death of Valjean, whom they see as a light in the darkness of life, as suggested by the words that grace his nameless grave and constitute the novel’s final sentence: ‘‘Comme la nuit se fait lorsque le jour s’en va’’ (1510) [How the night does fall when daylight disappears], just one of countless examples where the narrative is marked by light and dark imagery.

HISTORICAL FIGURES, EVENTS, AND REGIMES As with his narrative, his scenery (light against darkness), and his characters (from costume to conscience), Hugo makes extensive and blatant use of light and dark imagery to elucidate his view of history. During the reader’s initial inside view of Valjean, we learn that he sees civilization as a dark massive pyramid, with vaguely lit details culminating in Napole´on’s shining image at the summit: ‘‘Dans cette pe´nombre obscure et blafarde ou` il rampait . . . il voyait . . . cette prodigieuse pyramide que nous appelons la civilisation. Il distinguait c¸a et la` . . . quelque groupe, quelque de´tail vivement e´claire´, ici l’argousin et son baˆton, ici le gendarme et son sabre, la`-bas l’archeveˆque mitre´, tout en haut, dans une sorte de soleil, l’empereur couronne´ et e´blouissant. Il lui semblait que ces splendeurs lointains, loin de dissiper la nuit, la rendait plus fune`bre et plus noire’’ (122–23) [In the dark, wan half-shadows where he was lurking . . . he would see . . . that prodigious pyramid that we call civilization. He would distinguish here and there . . . some group, some vividly lit detail, here the jailer with his cudgel, there the policeman with his sword, over there the archbishop with his miter, and high up, in a sort of sun, the crowned and glowing Emperor. It seemed to him that these faraway splendors, far from dissipating the night, made it darker and more funereal]. Similarly the Restoration-reared and July-Monarchy-jilted Marius, his imagination fueled by the discovery of his father’s role in the Empire, sees history as an obscure background against which several ‘‘luminaries’’ stand out, the seeming contradiction (typical of liberal thought of the 1830s) between the revo-

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lutionary founders of the Republic and Napole´on, who abolished it, notwithstanding: La Re´publique, l’Empire, n’avaient e´te´ pour lui jusqu’alors que des mots monstrueux. La Re´publique, une guillotine dans un cre´puscule ; l’Empire, un sabre dans la nuit. Il venait d’y regarder, et la` ou` il s’attendait a` ne trouver qu’un chaos de te´ne`bres, il avait vu, avec une sorte de surprise inouı¨e meˆle´e de crainte et de joie, e´tinceler des astres, Mirabeau, Vergniaud, SaintJust, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Danton, et se lever un soleil, Napole´on. Il ne savait ou` il en e´tait. Il reculait aveugle´ de clarte´s . . . il vit sortir de la Re´volution la grande figure du peuple, de l’Empire la grande figure de la France. (669) [The Republic, the Empire had up to then been only monstrous words. The Republic a guillotine in the twilight; the Empire a saber in the night. He had just looked at them, and where he had expected to find only chaotic shadows, he had seen, with a sort of unheard of surprise mixed with fear and joy, shining stars—Mirabeau, Vergniaud, Saint-Just, Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins, Danton,—and the rising sun—Napoleon. He didn’t know what was happening. He recoiled from the blinding light . . . he saw emerge from the Revolution the great figure of the people, and from the Empire the great figure of France.]

Although neither of these two main characters, Valjean or Marius, is completely ‘‘reliable,’’ the former because of too little education, the latter excessive enthusiasm, the narrator persistently utilizes the same antithesis of dark and light to illuminate history, but he wields it less simplistically. Indeed, the narrator depicts historical analysis itself as a tool for shedding modulations of light on common misconceptions of figures, events, and regimes: ‘‘Cette clarte´, l’histoire est impitoyable ; elle a cela d’e´trange et de divin que, toute lumie`re qu’elle est, et pre´cise´ment parce qu’elle est lumie`re, elle met souvent de l’ombre la` ou` l’on voyait des rayons’’ (351) [This brightness, history is pitiless; it is strange and divine in that, although it is light, precisely because it is light it sometimes casts shadows where one once saw rays]. Although the French Revolution is depicted consistently as a luminous event—‘‘Depuis 1792, toutes les re´volutions de l’Europe sont la Re´volution franc¸aise ; la liberte´ rayonne de France. C’est la` un fait solaire’’ (407) [Since 1792, all the revolutions in Europe are the French Revolution; freedom shines from France. That’s a solar fact]—other regimes and figures are painted in more nuanced tones of light and dark. Napoleon, for example, seen as purely and intensely luminous by Valjean and Marius, is depicted as ‘‘mi-parti lumie`re et ombre’’ (364) [half light and shadow] by the authoritative narrator, who later notes of the

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Emperor: ‘‘Il avait re´pandu sur la terre toute la lumie`re que la tyrannie peut donner ; lumie`re sombre. Disons plus : lumie`re obscure. Compare´e au vrai jour, c’est de la nuit’’ (389) [He had shed on earth all the light that tyranny could give; somber light. Let’s go farther: dark light. Compared to true daylight, it is night]. Similarly, the first part of the Restoration is sketched as ‘‘a` la fois bruyant et morne, riant et sombre, e´claire´ comme par le rayonnement de l’aube et tout couvert en meˆme temps des te´ne`bres des grands catastrophes qui emplissaient encore l’horizon et s’enfonc¸aient lentement dans le passe´’’ (661) [both brilliant and gloomy, laughing and somber, at once lit by the light of dawn and covered by the shadows of the great catastrophes that still filled the horizon, slipping slowly into the past]. The July 1830 Revolution is an important step in the march of Progress, but it is only a partial success, described by dim light in contrast with bright light: ‘‘1830 est une re´volution arreˆte´e a` mi-coˆte. Moitie´ de progre`s ; quasi droit. Or la logique ignore l’a` peu pre`s, absolument comme le soleil ignore la chandelle’’ (868) [1830 is a revolution arrested midway. Half progress; quasi conservative. Now, logic ignores the almost, just as the sun ignores a candle]. The bourgeois regime of LouisPhilippe, from its leaders to its ideology, is cast in darkness: ‘‘De te´ne`breux amoncellements couvraient l’horizon. Une ombre e´trange, gagnant de proche en proche, s’e´tendait peu a` peu sur les hommes, sur les choses, sur les ide´es ; l’ombre qui venait des cole`res et des syste`mes’’ (883) [Dark drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow, drawing nearer, was spreading bit by bit over men, things, and ideas]. Into this dark picture, the insurrection of 1832, which provides the novel’s principal historical event, manages to introduce revolutionary light but only intermittently and momentarily: ‘‘Par intervalles on y voit luire la ve´rite´, ce jour de l’aˆme humaine’’ (861) [By intervals one could see the glowing truth, the daylight of the human soul]. Hugo later paints himself into this latter picture, using a pictorial metaphor (‘‘nous peindrons’’): ‘‘ce que nous raconterons, nous pourrons dire : nous l’avons vu. Nous changerons quelques noms, car l’histoire raconte et ne de´nonce pas, mais nous peindrons des choses vraies. Dans les conditions du livre que nous e´crivons, nous ne montrerons qu’un coˆte´ et qu’un e´pisode, et a` coup suˆr le moins connu, des journe´es des 5 et 6 juin 1832 ; mais nous ferons en sorte que le lecteur entrevoie, sous le sombre voile que nous allons soulever, la figure re´elle de cette effrayante aventure politique’’ (1105) [what we are about to recount, we can say: we saw it. We shall change a few names, since history tells but does not denounce, but we shall paint true events. In the conditions of the book we are writing, we shall show but one side and one episode, and surely the least known, of the days of June 5 and 6, 1832; but we’ll do

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such that the reader can see, under the somber veil that we’ll be lifting, the real face of this frightening political adventure]. In short, throughout Les mise´rables, Victor Hugo constructs a sustained metaphorical landscape, rendered by variations of light and dark tone (chiaroscuro), to enable the reader to virtually visualize (‘‘de sorte que le lecteur entrevoie’’) French history of the first third of the nineteenth century. Eschewing the bold bichrome antitheses of his youthful writings, the mature Hugo modulates combinations and variations of light and shade to paint a more nuanced picture of history. Moreover and more importantly, Hugo rejects the static view that would have stemmed from simple antithesis in favor of a more dynamic, dare we say dialectical, view of history.

POLITICAL AND MORAL VALUES For Victor Hugo, beyond history lies humanity; beyond politics lie principles: ‘‘Qu’on ne se me´prenne pas sur notre pense´e, nous ne confondons point ce qu’on appelle ‘opinions politiques’ avec la grande aspiration au progre`s, avec la sublime foi patriotique, de´mocratique et humaine, qui, de nos jours, doit eˆtre le fond meˆme de toute intelligence ge´ne´reuse’’ (75–76) [Let there be no mistake regarding our idea, we aren’t confusing so called ‘political opinions’ with the great aspiration for progress, with the sublimely patriotic, democratic, and human faith that, in our times, must be the very foundation for all generous thought]. He again musters variations in dark and light tone to present and concretize what he sees as the problems confronting humanity and the principles that must be followed to achieve progress. The main problem introduced in the novel is evident by its title. In French, ‘‘la mise`re’’ (misery) is a close neighbor of ‘‘pauvrete´’’ (731) [poverty], but ‘‘les mise´rables’’ are not just poor, they are poverty stricken, slaves of a system that leads them to vice and crime. Poverty may be dark, but ‘‘la mise`re’’ is a sea of jet black: ‘‘La mer, c’est l’inexorable nuit sociale ou` la pe´nalite´ jette les damne´s. La mer c’est l’immense mise`re’’ (126) [The sea, the inexorable social darkness where punishment has cast the damned. It’s the sea of immense misery]. The bleakest and blackest victims of misery are women and children: Marius, who lives in mere poverty, not misery, comes to see that ‘‘qui n’a vu que la mise`re de l’homme n’a rien vu, il faut voir la mise`re de la femme ; qui n’a vu que la mise`re de la femme n’a rien vu, il faut voir la mise`re de l’enfant. . . . La clarte´ du jour semble s’e´teindre au dehors, la lumie`re morale s’e´teint au dedans ; dans ces ombres, l’homme rencontre la faiblesse de la femme et de l’enfant, et les ploie violemment aux ignominies’’ (781) [seeing only

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the misery of men is nothing; the misery of women must be seen; seeing only the misery of women is nothing; the misery of children must be seen . . . The light of day seems extinguished outside, the light of morality is extinguished inside; in these shadows, man encounters the frailty of women and children, and bends them violently toward ignominy]. Thus, among ‘‘les mise´rables’’ are exploiters (usually men) and victims (usually women and children), all equally ‘‘in the dark.’’ In this bleak picture, there is, however, one means of improvement, of enlightenment, and, as the narrator states in the strongest terms, it is knowledge: ‘‘La vraie division humaine est celle-ci : les lumineux et les te´ne´breux. Diminuer le nombre des te´ne´breux, augmenter le nombre des lumineux, voila` le but. C’est pourquoi nous crions : enseignement ! science ! Apprendre a` lire, c’est allumer du feu ; toute syllabe e´pele´e e´tincelle’’ (1033) [The true human division is this one: the enlightened and those in the dark. Reduce the number of those in the dark, increase the number of the enlightened, that’s our goal. That’s why we cry out: education! knowledge! Learning to read is lighting a fire; every spelled out syllable is a spark]. Indeed, throughout its dark pages, Les mise´rables paints two sources of light: on an individual level, ‘‘la conscience’’ (at once conscience and consciousness in French); on a social level, ‘‘la science’’ (at once knowledge and education). The model of individual conscience is provided by the Bishop Bienvenu (Welcome), whose given name Myriel is a near anagram for lumie`re or light (see L. Porter 1999, 138) and whose moral values stem from intuition and meditation: ‘‘ce qui e´clairait cet homme, c’e´tait le coeur. Sa sagesse e´tait faite de la lumie`re qui vient de la`. Point de syste`mes, beaucoup d’oeuvres. . . . La me´ditation humaine n’a point de limite. A ses risques et pe´rils, elle analyse et creuse son propre e´blouissement’’ (84–85) [what lit up this man was his heart. His wisdom was made of the light that comes from there. No systems, many deeds . . . Human meditation has no limits. With its risks and perils, it carves out its own enlightenment]. Myriel then imparts it to the unwitting Valjean, at the very moment the escaped convict steals the bishop’s silver: ‘‘En regardant avec plus d’attention cette lumie`re qui aparaissait a` sa conscience, il reconnut qu’elle avait la forme humaine, et que ce flambeau e´tait l’e´veˆque’’ (145) [Looking closer at this light that appeared in his conscience, he recognized that it had a human form, and that this flame was the bishop]. The fire is passed on to Valjean, who becomes the principal torch bearer throughout the novel, first as he contemplates the fate of Champmathieu (258), unjustly accused of a crime committed by Valjean, then as he decides whether to tell the truth of his identity to Marius, an episode so frought with contrasts of light and shadow that the narrator feels compelled to introduce it as follows: ‘‘He´las, combien

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de fois avons-nous vu Jean Valjean saisi corps a` corps dans les te´ne`bres par sa conscience, et luttant e´perdument contre elle ! . . . Combien de fois, terrasse´ par la lumie`re, lui avait-il crie´ graˆce ! Combien de fois cette lumie`re implacable, allume´e en lui par l’e´veˆque, l’avait-elle e´bloui de force lorsqu’il souhaitait eˆtre aveugle´ !’’ (1431–32). [Alas, how often have we seen Jean Valjean wrestling desperately in the shadows with his conscience! . . . How often, brought down by the light, had he begged for mercy! How often had this implacable light lit in him by the bishop dazzled him irresistibly, when he wanted to remain blind!]. Valjean’s clear conscience leads him not only away from crime, but also towards other virtues and rewards, all depicted through metaphors of light, especially love—‘‘L’e´veˆque avait fait lever a` son horizon l’aube de la vertu ; Cosette y faisait lever l’aube de l’amour’’ (477) [The bishop had brought the dawn of virtue to his horizon; Cosette had brought the dawn of love]—and ultimately eternity: ‘‘La lumie`re du monde inconnu e´tait de´ja` visible dans sa prunelle’’ (1507) [The light of the unknown was already visible in his eyes]. Similarly, the light of knowledge is applied to the social problems induced by ‘‘la mise`re’’: ‘‘Toutes les ge´ne´reuses irradiations sociales sortent de la science, des lettres, des arts, de l’enseignement’’ (627) [All generous social radiations stem from knowledge, letters, arts, and education]. The narrator repeatedly makes his case for education through the starkest use and baldest repetition of the metaphor of light: ‘‘Revenons a` ce cri : Lumie`re ! et obstinons-nous-y ! Lumie`re ! Lumie`re ! —Qui sait si ces opacite´s ne deviendront pas transparentes ? les re´volutions ne sont-elles pas des transfigurations? Allez, philosophes, enseignez, allumez, pensez haut, parlez haut, courez joyeux au grand soleil’’(632; see also 757) [Let’s return to this cry: Light! And persist in it: Light! Light!—Who knows whether these opacities might not become transparent? aren’t revolutions transfigurations? Go on philosophers, teach, illuminate, think aloud, speak aloud, run joyfully toward the full sun]. For Hugo, expanded education is the key contribution of the nineteenth century, and mass education the light he sees in the twentieth century: ‘‘Oui, enseignement ! Lumie`re ! lumie`re ! tout vient de la lumie`re et tout y retourne. Citoyens, le dix-neuvie`me sie`cle est grand, mais le vingtie`me sie`cle sera heureux’’ (1239) [Yes, education! Light! Light! Everything comes from and returns to light. Citizens, the nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth century will be happy]. Knowledge lights the path for other social values, such as ‘‘ces trois pures lumie`res, la Ve´rite´, la Justice, la Charite´’’ (76) [these three pure lights, Truth, Justice, Charity] and their companion, freedom: ‘‘un rayon de vive lumie`re, un rayon de la vraie lumie`re . . . Jean Valjean

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avait e´te´ e´bloui de l’ide´e de la liberte´’’ (126) [a ray of intense light, a ray of true light . . . Jean Valjean had been dazzled by the idea of freedom]. Beyond all else, the primary social value and individual virtue that must be brought to light, indeed the main goal of civil strife and the true title of the novel, according to the narrator, is Progress: Cette maladie du progre`s, la guerre civile, nous avons duˆ la rencontrer sur notre passage. C’est la` une des phases fatales, a` la fois acte et entr’acte, de ce drame dont le pivot est un damne´ social, et dont le ve´ritable titre est : le Progre`s. Le Progre`s ! . . . Le livre que le lecteur a sous les yeux en ce moment, c’est, d’un bout a` l’autre, dans son ensemble et dans ses de´tails, quelles que soient les intermittences, les exceptions ou les de´faillances, la marche du mal au bien, de l’injuste au juste, de la nuit au jour, de l’appe´tit a` la conscience, de la pourriture a` la vie, de la bestialite´ au devoir, de l’enfer au ciel, du ne´ant a` Dieu. (1290–91) [This illness necessitated by progress, civil war, we had to encounter it on our way. It’s one of the fatal phases, at once act and intermission, in this drama whose pivotal figure is a social outcast and whose true title is: Progress. Progress! . . . The book before the reader’s eyes at this moment, is, from one end to the other, on the whole and in its details, whatever its irregularities, exceptions, or weaknesses, the progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from night to day, from desire to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God.]

The contrast of night and day (‘‘de la nuit au jour’’) does not constitute a static antithesis, but rather a dynamic and dialectical movement toward progress (‘‘la marche’’). If the reader has been able to follow this movement, through the lengthy, dark, and twisting passages of Les mise´rables, it is through the very metaphor of light set against dark tonality, which has provided the interpretative light so necessary for this complex and profound novel, itself a fitting metaphor for its century. Indeed, it is ultimately the text itself (‘‘le livre que le lecteur a sous les yeux en ce moment’’) that is the source of light that leads to progress, and it is the artist who holds the beacon for the responsive reader. Jacques Neefs pushes the metacritical implications of the light and dark juxtaposition even farther by seeing in it an emblem of representation itself, which, for Hugo, means wresting light—imagery and intelligibility—from the depths and darkness of society, whose subterranean structure is figured by the sewer or better as formless: ‘‘bas-fond’’ (lower depths) or ‘‘sans-fond’’ bottomless): ‘‘Such a scenography of the

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threshold of visibility allows for inscribing within the represented work itself the limits of representation. For Hugo, this means placing oneself on the threshold of meaning . . . But especially, within the unfolding plot, this involves dramatizing, through the chiasma of light and dark, the world and social space, along with their perceptibility, as well as the representation that can be constructed from them . . . as if the novel should be the attempt to open a fragile volume of light in the space of darkness’’ (1985, 84–5). Indeed the fragility of the light, the density of the darkness, and the tenuous relationship between the two threaten to destabilize the very principle of antithesis upon which they are constructed. Hugo, pastmaster of antithesis, criticizes directly the superficial nature of the figure itself in describing Jean Valjean’s good moments: ‘‘Elles viennent d’ordinaire apre`s les mauvaises, comme le jour apre`s la nuit, par cette loi de succession et de contraste qui est le fond meˆme de la nature et que les esprits artificiels appellent antithe`se’’ (1200) [They ordinarily come after the bad ones, like day after night, by that law of succession and contrast that is the very basis of nature and that artificial minds call antithesis]. Hugo further undermines his central contrast between light and dark, by reversing it in startling fashion, so that the ultimate image of darkness for human consciousness in its various forms, is, in fact, light: ‘‘Qu’est-ce que la conscience ? C’est la boussole de l’Inconnu. Pense´e, reˆverie, prie`re ; ce sont la` de grands rayonnements myste´rieux. Respectons-les. Ou` vont ces irradiations majestueuses de l’aˆme ? a` l’ombre ; c’est-a`-dire a` la lumie`re’’ (558) [What is consciousness? It’s the compass of the Unknown. Thought, dreaming, prayer; those are the great mysterious radiances. Let’s respect them. Where are these magnificent radiations of the soul going? toward darkness; that is, toward light]. In commenting on this same key passage Neefs points to the fundamental paradox inherent in the light-dark contrast that has come to characterize not only Hugo’s novel, but also the very processes of representation and consciousness: ‘‘The inclusive antithesis (‘toward darkness; that is, toward light’) summarizes with a sort of brusqueness the ultimately paradoxical relationship that the text has been modulating, up to this point that is reversible because untenable’’ (1985, 81). Lawrence Porter sees this reversibility as the hallmark of Hugo’s art, from the level of language (syllepsis) to that of plot (inversion), and attributes it to his ability to synthesize contrasts: ‘‘Hugo’s synthesizing imagination associates the material with the spiritual by using syllepsis as a signpost to mystery. This figure of speech uses the same word with two radically different meanings in different contexts; the archetype of Inversion, a more fully developed equivalent of syllepsis, suggests that

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apparently contrasting values are actually the same phenomenon viewed from opposite directions’’ (1999, 141; see also Phillips 1999, 80– 81). Porter cites as chief example the novel’s title, Les mise´rables, which denotes both the victims of poverty and the moral degenerates who victimize them, and at the same time, when applied to oneself, as does Jean Valjean, the possibility of redemption through self-knowledge. One might add to this case that of the revolutionary group the ABCs, whose name suggests both the downtrodden (abaisse´s) and the education necessary for their salvation. With such paradoxes and reversals, we are not far from the concept of contradiction uncovered at the core of Stendhal’s beylism or the figure of oxymoron characteristic of Chateaubriand; all of these cases seem to involve a resistence to resolution that is emerging from our study as the signature of the modern artist and the signpost of modernity. As France Vernier (1995) contends: ‘‘Modernity, when it had a driving role, had the fundamental characteristic of attempting—without by definition being able to overcome its ambiguity—to apprehend, and to confront, a contradiction’’ (46; her emphasis). Although denying Hugo (unjustly I would argue) the title of ‘‘modernist’’ on the above grounds, Vernier awards it to him according to a second criterion, since modern artists ‘‘dramatize the presentation implied by any re-presentation’’ (48); in short Hugo embodies the metacritical dimension of modernity that also characterizes the novelists and painters we have been exploring. But to what can we attribute this penchant for reversibility and resistance to resolution in Hugo’s case? Jean-Pierre Raynaud (1989) offers an intriguing possibility, linked again to the contrast of light and dark, in the nature of imagery itself. Raynaud notes the fundamental paradox that the image requires light and form but that Hugo’s essential vision of the world is one of darkness and formlessness: ‘‘Contrary to certain appearances, the image, as a luminous and structured representation of reality, is not an immediate given for Hugo. It is, rather, a fragile and uncertain conquest. For there to be an image, there must be both light and shape. Now what is immediate for the true gaze that tries to seize the very basis of reality, the very substance of things (that is the contemplative gaze of Hugo), is not light but darkness, not the distinguishing capacity of shape but the shadowy unity of night’’ (214). The image is a momentary and fragile conquest, because the very truth it represents is one of darkness and dispersion, buried in the romantic abyss, out of which the poet seeks to wrest the idea in the form of an image, as Raynaud elaborates: ‘‘This work of the abyss takes place in the mind of the genius. The idea, abstraction for the poet, becomes dazzling spectacle and reality in the poem. What darkness inside the earth, what

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swarming on the surface! . . . And darkness in turn produces the image, but at the same time it contests it, makes it relative, makes it unreal’’ (220). In short imagery (shape), which is finite, represents and concretizes an ideology of the infinite that ultimately negates it (220; see also Picon 1967, ix and Sicard 1985, 137). If Balzac’s general mode of creation can be described as a movement from figure to form, then Hugo’s can perhaps be characterized as a process from the formless to a figure, which paradoxically seeks to capture the form of the formless and thus negate itself. Neither is classical, which posits an ideal Form; both are remarkably dynamic and dialectical, and thus ‘‘modern.’’

LES TROIS GLORIEUSES AND THE QUESTION OF FREEDOM These three works set in and around the three glorious days of July 1830 explore the relationship of the individual to society, mediated by politics, and in all three cases, the titles tell the tale. Le rouge et le noir denotes the two political options open to Julien for success in society, the military and the clergy, each equally dangerous, however, for the discovery and preservation of the authentic self. La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, 28 juillet, 1830, identifies the event, the group, and the goal to which the artist must aspire. Les mise´rables, while identifying a social group, which must achieve progress through knowledge, focuses equally on the individual, who must achieve self-definition through self-knowledge. If Stendhal’s goal is to enjoy the concert (life) despite the pistol shot (politics), then Delacroix’s message is to shape the concert through the pistol (and rifle) shots of revolution. For Hugo, the pistol shot (grotesque) is part of the concert (sublime), as any theatergoer fortunate enough to see the musical version of Les mise´rables, can attest. For Stendhal, one must gain freedom from one’s repressive social self; for Delacroix from repressive societal regimes and institutions; and for Hugo from repressive value systems that promote poverty perpetuated by ignorance. If, for Stendhal, freedom is an aspect of writing; and for Delacroix a matter of fighting; for Hugo it’s a question of lighting.

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5 Idealizing the Image of the Peasant: Sand, Holbein, and Millet GEORGE SAND BEGINS THE FIRST CHAPTER OF LA MARE AU DIABLE, A roman champeˆtre (rustic novel) published in 1846, with a quatrain in old French depicting the pervasive presence of death in human existence, especially for the poverty-stricken peasant: A` la sueur de ton visage Tu gagnerois ta pauvre vie, Apre`s long travail et usaige, Voicy la mort qui te convie. (27) [By the sweat of your brow You would earn your poor living, After long work and wear, Here is death calling you.]

Not only is death (‘‘la mort’’) the inevitable term of life, the quality of life itself is decimated by poverty (‘‘pauvre vie’’), toil (‘‘long travail’’), and wear and tear (‘‘usaige’’). Nonetheless, in her novel Sand will counter this bleak vision of reality by an idealized portrait of peasant life, derived dialectically from the interplay of painting and literature, but leading, ultimately to an idealist vision of harmony as embodied by nature and translated by music.

HOLBEIN: ENGRAVING THE GRAVE The narrator of La Mare au Diable is quick to explain that the quatrain had been placed under an engraving by Hans Holbein, the younger (1497–1543), a painter identified by Frenhofer in Balzac’s Le chefd’oeuvre inconnu (chapter 3) as one of the main proponents and practitioners of line, as opposed to color. The engraving in question, enti122

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tled, Le laboureur [the laborer], was part of a series on death in all walks of life, originally published in Lyons in 1538 with the title Les simulacres de la mort [The Dance of Death] (fig. 8). The narrator goes on to describe in precise spatial terms the setting of the scene—‘‘La gravure repre´sente un laboureur conduisant sa charrue au milieu d’un champ. Une vaste campagne s’e´tend au loin, on y voit de pauvres cabanes ; le soleil se couche derrie`re la colline’’ (27) [The engraving shows a laborer guiding his plow through the middle of a field. The vast countryside stretches out in the distance, where one sees poor hovels; the sun is setting behind the hill]—in which the ragged old peasant tries to urge his team of four scrawny nags to plow through the rocky, resistant soil. The narrateur concludes by noting that ‘‘Un seul eˆtre est alle`gre et ingambe dans cette sce`ne de sueur et usaige. C’est un personnage fantastique, un squelette arme´ d’un fouet, qui court dans le sillon a` coˆte´ des chevaux effraye´s et les frappe, servant de valet de charrue au vieux laboureur. C’est la mort’’ (27) [A single being is lively and nimble in this scene of sweat and wear. It’s a fantastic figure, a skeleton armed with a whip, running in the furrow beside the frightened horses and hitting them, serving the old laborer as plowman’s helper. It is death]. The importance of the death figure is further underscored by its placement in the middle of the composition, between the peasant and his team of horses. The dominance of death, a common theme in Holbein’s times, is reinforced by a number of other visual symbols, the setting sun, the hourglass hanging from the skeleton’s neck, and the lines of furrows that narrow toward the horizon, drawing the viewer’s eye to the distance, just as human life inevitably moves toward its end point, the grave. The starkness of the black and white medium and the repetition of lines add to the bleakness of the picture, while the movement of the peasant and his horses from right to left and front to back into the picture space, against the grain of the image’s spectator (who tends to view from top left to lower right, as in reading a printed page), adds to the feeling of toil and travail, without escape. The converging lines of the furrows, are, however, counterbalanced by the expanding rays of the sun, which seem to emanate from the church in the right background and reach toward the heavens, thereby creating a contrast with the foreground and suggesting the promise of a happier afterlife, albeit unattainable in this world of misery. It would appear, then, that it is this image, upon which the narrator reflects for several paragraphs, that will generate the story told in the novel, and it does, but dialectically. George Sand flatly rejects Holbein’s vision of human existence: ‘‘Non, nous n’avons plus affaire a` la mort, mais a` la vie’’ (28) [No, we’re no longer dealing with death, but with

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Figure 8. Hans Holbein, the younger. Le laboureur (The Laborer), 1538. Les simulacres de la mort (The Dance of Death). Bibliothe`que nationale de France, Estampes et Photographie, RES Te-9 in 12-. Photo: BnF de´partement de la reproduction.

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life]. This key sentence, with its antonyms, death and life, having the same grammatical function (objects of the preposition a`) and syntactical position (at the end of each part of the sentence), takes the increasingly familiar form of an antithesis, hinged here by the conjunction ‘‘mais,’’ which signals the abrupt shifts of meaning so characteristic of Sand’s thought and style. Rejecting not only Holbein, but also painters and writers of her own time who depict poverty, crime, suffering, and death (themes that permeate the works of Balzac, Hugo, and Daumier despite, we contend, their overall uplifting view of human existence), Sand formulates her own artistic credo with another antithesis (marked here by a semicolon rather than by the conjunction ‘‘mais’’): ‘‘L’art n’est pas une e´tude de la re´alite´ positive ; c’est une recherche de la ve´rite´ ide´ale’’ (28) [Art is not a study of material reality; it’s a quest for ideal truth]. Rather than remaining caught in an unresolvable contradiction, however, Sand spurns realism in favor of idealism, which becomes the hallmark of her novels and thereby, according to Naomi Schor, confines the woman writer to ‘‘the margins of the canon’’ (1993, 4) in nineteenth-century literary history. By exploring Sand’s views and uses of painting and literature, we come to identify the key component of her idealism: harmony, which issues from nature and finds its fullest expression in music. Sand lays the groundwork for her idealism in the novel’s second chapter, the first three paragraphs of which take the dialectical form of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Recalling the image of Holbein’s laborer—‘‘Je venais de regarder longtemps et avec une profonde me´lancolie le laboreur d’’Holbein’’ (33) [I had just looked for some time at Holbein’s laborer with profound melancholy]—the narrator strolls through the countryside, reflecting upon its inhabitants. In the first paragraph, she considers the ‘‘man of leisure,’’ who sees the fields in terms of the money they will bring him: ‘‘L’homme de loisir n’aime en ge´ne´ral pour eux-meˆmes, ni les champs, ni les prairies, ni le spectacle de la nature, ni les animaux superbes qui doivent se convertir en pie`ces d’or pour son usage’’ (33) [The man of leisure generally likes for themselves neither the fields, nor the prairies, nor the spectacle of nature, nor the superb animals, all of which must be converted into pieces of gold for his usage]. In the following paragraph, she describes the man of leisure’s opposite number, his antonym, ‘‘the man of work’’: ‘‘De son coˆte´, l’homme de travail est trop accable´, trop malheureux, et trop effraye´ de l’avenir, pour jouir de la beaute´ des campagnes et des charmes de la vie rustique. Pour lui aussi les champs dore´s, les belles prairies, les animaux superbes, repre´sentent des sacs d’e´cus dont il n’aura qu’une faible part’’ (33) [On his side, the man of work is too overwhelmed, too unhappy, and

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too frightened of the future to enjoy the beauty of the countryside and the charms of rustic life. For him also, the golden fields, the beautiful prairies, the superb animals, represent sacks of money of which he’ll have only a small part]. In effect, these two men, who form a pair, although opposite in one sense (rich and poor), possess a common problem or defect for Sand, signaled by the adverb ‘‘also’’: they both see nature in terms of money. This common flaw will be transcended in the third paragraph by the introduction of a figure capable of seeing the ‘‘poetry and beauty’’ of nature: the artist: ‘‘L’artiste a des jouissances de ce genre, dans la contemplation et la reproduction des beaute´s de la nature’’ (34) [The artist has joys of this sort, in the contemplation and the representation of the beauties of nature]. Whereas the opposition between the man of leisure and the man of work was not ideological, since both saw nature in terms of money, this new opposition, between both men taken together versus the artist, is ideological, because it involves the introduction of a different system of values, a system based not on ‘‘market value’’ but on moral or artistic value, the two being synonymous for Sand. We can represent this shift as follows: Moral Values Artist Leisure

Work

Market Values

This new term, involving artistic beauty, is not in itself a solution, however, since the artist, although moved, does not alleviate, much less eliminate the suffering of the laborer or the insensitivity of the landowner, and this inadequacy is introduced by a semicolon, followed by ‘‘mais’’: ‘‘L’artiste a des jouissances de ce genre, dans la contemplation et la reproduction des beaute´s de la nature ; mais, en voyant la douleur des hommes qui peuplent ce paradis de la terre, l’artiste au coeur droit et humain est trouble´ au milieu de sa jouissance’’ (34) [The artist has joys of this sort, in the contemplation and the representation of the beauties of nature; but, seeing the suffering of the people who inhabit this earthly paradise, the artist whose heart is just and human is troubled in the middle of his/her enjoyment]. To achieve true happiness, all three social entities, each also affiliated with a part or function of the human body—the landowner (‘‘l’esprit’’ [the mind]), the artist (‘‘le coeur’’ [the heart]) and the laborer (‘‘le bras’’ [the arm])—must be brought together (‘‘une sainte harmonie’’ [a sacred

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harmony]) by a higher power (Providence): ‘‘Le bonheur serait la` ou` l’esprit, le coeur et le bras, travaillant de concert sous l’oeil de la Providence, une sainte harmonie existerait entre la munificence de Dieu et les ravissements de l’aˆme humaine’’ (34) [Happiness would be where the mind, the heart, and the arm, working in concert under the eye of Providence, a holy harmony would exist between the munificence of God and the raptures of the human soul]. But this harmonizing power of Providence, for Sand, can achieve immanence in the human and social spheres only through the intervention of the work of art, in the form here of allegorical painting: ‘‘C’est alors qu’au milieu de la piteuse et affreuse mort, marchant dans son sillon, le fouet a` la main, le peintre d’alle´gories pourrait placer a` ses coˆte´s un ange radieux, semant a` pleines mains le ble´ be´ni sur le sillon fumant’’ (34) [Then along side the pitiful and awful death, marching in his furrow, whip in hand, the allegorical painter could place a radiant angel, sewing handfuls of blessed wheat on the steaming furrow]. If Sand uses the conditional ‘‘could’’ in describing such a painting, it’s because she has no real model before her, and, since she is not herself a painter, despite her youthful watercolors and friendship with Delacroix (see Lubin 1973, 42, 44–45, 69, 110, 122), it is Sand the writer who must construct just such a painting, in the text, using first painting, then music, as a model. As the narrator continues strolling through the fields—‘‘Je marchais sur la lisie`re d’un champ’’ (35) [I was walking on the edge of a field]— she comes across a landscape that will serve as the background for this literary painting: L’are`ne e´tait vaste comme celle du tableau d’Holbein. Le paysage e´tait vaste aussi et encadrait de grandes lignes de verdure, un peu rougies aux approches de l’automne, ce large terrain d’un brun vigoureux, ou` des pluies re´centes avaient laisse´ dans quelques sillons, des lignes d’eau que le soleil faisait briller comme de minces filets d’argent. (35) [The arena was vast like that of Holbein’s painting. The landscape was vast also and framed in large lines of green, somewhat reddened with the approach of autumn, this wide field of vigorous brown, where recent rains had left in some furrows lines of water that shined in the sun like thin threads of silver.]

The description itself confirms the painterly quality of Sand’s eye and style, since she constructs the image not as a preestablished whole, which she could have easily done by simply recalling Holbein’s engraving, but through the particular properties of visual expression. Having located her position or viewpoint on the edge of the field, she first notes the overall dimensions of the space (‘‘le paysage e´tait vaste’’), then ‘‘frames’’ it through a metaphor borrowed from painting (‘‘encadrait’’);

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into this space she inserts both line and color, often combined (‘‘lignes de verdure’’), sometimes nuanced (‘‘un peu rougie’’) and even nominalized to enhance liveliness (‘‘d’un brun vigoureux’’). Indeed, the addition of color, absent in the Holbein engraving, lends the scene a sense of vitality, intensified by the interplay of the complementary colors, red and green, Delacroix’s favorite combination. Moreover, she demonstrates the effect of light on both line and color (‘‘des lignes d’eau que le soleil faisait briller comme de minces filets d’argent’’), not to mention the shimmer (‘‘briller’’) that further suggests life. This beautiful landscape remains incomplete, however, without its human figures, which Sand then sets about locating and describing. She first sights an old man and his team of animals, much like Holbein’s figures, but noble in appearance: ‘‘Dans le haut du champ un vieillard, dont le dos large et la figure se´ve`re rappelaient celui d’Holbein, mais les veˆtements n’annonc¸aient pas la mise`re, poussait gravement son areau de forme antique, traıˆne´ par deux boeufs tranquilles, a` la robe d’un jaune paˆle, ve´ritables patriarches de la prairie’’ (35) [At the top of the field an old man, whose wide back and severe look recalled that of Holbein, but his clothes not suggesting poverty, was seriously guiding his ancient plow, drawn by two tranquil steers with a pale yellow coat, veritable patriarchs of the prairie]. This possible model for the hypothetical landscape is quickly replaced, however, by another ‘‘spectacle’’ that falls before the narrator’s eye, a younger man with a team of eight, whom she immediately sees as a ‘‘subject for a painter’’: ‘‘Mais ce qui attira ensuite mon attention e´tait ve´ritablement un beau spectacle, un noble sujet pour un peintre. A l’autre extre´mite´ de la plaine labourable, un jeune homme de bonne mine conduisait un attelage magnifique’’ (36) [But what then attracted my attention was truly a beautiful spectacle, a noble subject for a painter. At the other end of the plowed field, a good-looking young man was guiding a magnificent team]. Moreover, this man is accompanied by a young child, whom the narrator envisions in terms of a religious painting: ‘‘Un enfant de six a` sept ans, beau comme un ange, et les e´paules couvertes, sur sa blouse, d’une peau d’agneau qui le faisait ressembler au petit saint Jean-Baptiste des peintres de la Renaissance, marchait dans le sillon paralle`le a` la charrue et piquait le flanc des boeufs avec une gaule longue et le´ge`re’’ (36) [A child of six or seven, beautiful like an angel, whose shoulders were covered with a sheepskin over his shirt, making him look like a little Saint John of Renaissance painting, was walking in the furrow alongside the plow, smacking the steers’ flanks with a long, light pole]. These are the figures that will become Germain and his son Petit Pierre in the novel that is to follow, but not before the narrator fires a parting salvo at Holbein, a rhetorical

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fusillade consisting of four antitheses, introduced by the rapid-fire repetition of the oppositional preposition ‘‘au lieu de’’: Il se trouvait donc que j’avais sous les yeux un tableau qui contrastait avec celui d’Holbein, quoique ce fut une sce`ne pareille. Au lieu d’un triste vieillard, un homme jeune et dispos; au lieu d’un attelage de chevaux efflanque´s et harrasse´s, un double quadrillage de boeufs robustes et ardents; au lieu de la mort un bel enfant; au lieu d’une image de de´sespoir et d’une ide´e de destruction, un spectacle d’e´nergie et une pense´e de bonheur. (38) [It happened then that I had before my eyes a painting that contrasted with Holbein’s, however similar the scenes. Instead of a sad old man, a fresh young man; instead of a team of raw-boned, harassed horses, a double foursome of lively, robust steers; instead of death a beautiful child; instead of an image of despair and an idea of destruction, a spectacle of energy and a thought of happiness.]

This image fully represents Sand’s ideology of energy and happiness, but the entities involved in representing it—the narrator, the laborer, and the landowner—remain incomplete and disjointed: the narrator remains physically unable to undertake hard labor—‘‘Heureux le laboureur ! Oui, sans doute, je le serais a` sa place, si mon bras, devenu tout d’un coup robuste, et ma poitrine devenue puissante, pouvaient ainsi fe´conder et chanter la nature’’ (38–39) [Happy the laborer! Yes I would doubtless also be so as well, if my arm, become suddenly robust and my chest powerful, could also fertilize and sing the praises of nature]; the laborer remains insensitive to beauty—‘‘Mais, he´las ! Cet homme n’a jamais compris le myste`re du beau!’’ (39) [But, alas! This man has never understood the mystery of beauty]; and the landowners (whose leisure now casts them as readers) remain unsympathetic to the poor—‘‘cette erreur effroyable ou` vous eˆtes prouve que votre esprit a tue´ votre coeur, et que vous eˆtes les plus incomplets et les plus aveugles des hommes !’’(39) [your frightful error proves that your mind has killed your heart, and that you are the most incomplete and blindest of men!]. The disjunction of social entities (the artist, the laborer, the landowner), and body parts (the heart, the arm, the brain) is now paralleled by that of the very components of communication (the artist, the character, the reader), set off by differences in pronouns ( je, lui, vous). In short, all three of these essential aspects of human experience— society, self, and art—are dysfunctional, because they are disjointed, out of harmony. Finally, at the end of this two-chapter prelude to her tale, George Sand turns to the ultimate solution: the text itself, brought to life through the act of recounting a story, through narration, a fundamental

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property inherent in literature: ‘‘Je connaissais ce jeune homme et ce bel enfant, je savais leur histoire’’ (40) [I knew this young man and this beautiful child, I knew their story]. Sand takes as her ultimate stylistic source, however, not the visual painting, but the worker’s audible ‘‘song,’’ which breaks with traditional rules to embrace its innovative subject: ‘‘Sa forme irre´gulie`re et ses intonations fausses selon les re`gles de l’art musical le rendent intraduisible. Mais ce n’en est pas moins un beau chant, et tellement approprie´ a` la nature du travail qu’il accompagne, a` l’allure du boeuf, au calme des lieux agrestres, a` la simplicite´ des hommes qui les disent, qu’aucun ge´nie e´tranger au travail de la terre ne l’euˆt invente´’’ (38) [Its irregular form and intonations contrary to the rules of musical art make it untranslatable. But it is no less a beautiful song, and highly appropriate to the nature of the accompanying work, to the pace of the steer, to the tranquility of agrarian places, to the simplicity of the men who sing it, that no genius unfamiliar with the work of the earth could have invented it]. Sand could well be describing her own style (‘‘sa forme irre´gulie`re’’), adapted to her agrarian subject matter, and, in fact, the notion of ‘‘simplicity’’ links the laborer’s song directly to her story: ‘‘Quand je l’eus regarde´ laboreur assez longtemps, je me demandai pourquoi son histoire ne serait pas e´crite, quoique ce fuˆt une histoire aussi simple, aussi droite et aussi peu orne´e que le sillon qu’il trac¸ait avec sa charrue’’ (40) [When I had been watching the laborer for some time, I asked myself why his story wouldn’t be written, even though it was a simple story, as straight and unelaborate as the furrow he was tracing with his plow]. In effect, for Sand, it is the text itself that marks the harmony between the hard work of Germain, the intelligence of the leisured but potentially hostile reader, and the sensitivity that Sand finds the artist alone to possess and communicate; and their future bonding is signaled by the inclusive pronoun ‘‘nous,’’ which traces new lines in the text (‘‘les sillons que nous avons creuse´s’’ (40) [the furrows that we have carved out], lifelines that replace the converging furrows leading to the grave in Holbein’s engraving. More than just an idealized rehabilitation of the laborer, La Mare au Diable represents the ideal goal of reconciliation among the various components of human existence on the personal, social, and communicative planes, as Marie-Anne Barbe´ris suggests in her annotated edition of the tale: ‘‘Germain, Marie, in other ways papa Maurice and his old wife (because they are understanding and good) constitute a sort of ideal of the peasantry, un ideal imaginable for a Parisian intellectual who pursues (acknowledged) goals concerning the reconciliation of classes and people’’ (1977, 66). The ‘‘sainte harmonie’’ that Sand seeks, however, the main compo-

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nent of her idealism, can be approximated only by a text that moves away from the visual and painting and toward the auditory and music, perhaps not surprising for a woman whose friend was Lizst and lover was Chopin. As David Powell reminds us: ‘‘By ‘harmony’ Sand surely refers to the balanced beauty of nature, but the allusion to music is indisputable’’ (2001, 242).

SAND: TOWARD MUSIC The main body of Sand’s novel, the ‘‘story,’’ begins with Pe`re Maurice, the father of Germain’s deceased wife, convincing him to remarry for the sake of his three young children and for the sake of the in-laws themselves, since Germain, long on work but short on wit, needs ‘‘une femme de teˆte pour me remplacer quand je n’y serai plus. Tu n’as jamais voulu voir clair dans nos comptes’’ (50) [an intelligent woman to replace me when I’m gone. You’ve never wanted to understand our accounts]. The narrator adds an explanation for Germain’s lack of lucidity, attributing it to his inability to formulate contrasting thoughts, that is, to think antithetically: ‘‘Et il s’en allait, songeant, comme songent les hommes qui n’ont pas assez d’ide´es pour qu’elles se combattent entre elles, c’est-a`-dire ne se formulant pas a` lui-meˆme de belles raisons de re´sistance et d’e´goı¨sme, mais souffrant d’une douleur sourde, et ne luttant pas contre un mal qu’il fallait accepter’’ (53) [And he left, thinking like those men who don’t have enough ideas to conflict with each other, that is, not formulating for himself good reasons for resistance and self-interest, but suffering with a dull pain and not struggling against a necessary evil]. Pe`re Maurice even proposes a match, a childless widow from the neighboring marketplace town. Germain, age twenty-eight, is to travel to meet her, and a neighbor asks him to accompany her sixteen-yearold daughter, Marie, who is going to a farm near the same town to serve as a shepherdess. The two set off on one horse and are quickly joined by Germain’s son, Petit Pierre, who begs them to take him along, which Marie convinces Germain to do. When they lose their way, then their horse, then their wits, in a mysterious place called La Mare au Diable, Germain is struck by Marie’s resourcefulness and kindness and begins to fall for her, despite their difference in age and social condition (though both are peasants, his family is considerably wealthier than hers). As day breaks he declares his love for her and proposes marriage, which she turns down, ostensibly for several reasons: he is too old; his in-laws wouldn’t approve; and it is, perhaps, the weird adventure, more than she, that has turned his head.

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After finding their horse, they arrive at their destinations, Pierre going with Marie to the farm, and the reluctant Germain going to town to meet the widow. It turns out that the latter, an attractive, independent, and wealthy bourgeoise, is playing several suitors off against each other, and despite her favoring Germain, he finds that she suffers in comparison with Marie, and leaves to find Petit Pierre. Arriving at the farm, he is amazed to discover that both Petit Pierre and Marie have already left, and he sets out to find them, instead, running into the ‘‘master’’ of the farm, whom he accompanies. When Marie and Petit Pierre emerge from hiding, Germain learns that the farmer’s advances led to their flight, and he punishes the ‘‘master,’’ unhorsing him, breaking his riding crop, and sending him away with the warning to never appear in their village, to which Germain, Marie, and Petit Pierre then return. As the weeks go by Germain grows depressed to the point that his motherin-law, Me`re Maurice, extracts his reasons and gives him permission to propose to Marie. Unlike Barbe´ris, who contends that ‘‘George Sand’s novel isn’t, as we shall see, very well constructed. She tacked on a preface here, an appendix there, somewhat hastily and in any case without worrying about a rigorous composition’’ (1977, 13), I find the novel to be subtly structured around a series of obstacles or oppositions that are buried in the storyline for the reader to unearth, without any overt articulation by the narrator. Differences in age (young and old) and social position (rich and poor) initially block the union of Germain and Marie (male and female). The town, operating on ‘‘market’’ values, stands in opposition to the countryside, with its system of moral values. Indeed, echoing the antitheses introduced by the narrator in chapter 2 of the ‘‘preface,’’ the farm ‘‘master’’ fills the role of ‘‘homme de loisir’’ in contrast to Germain’s ‘‘homme de travail,’’ just as the widow is a ‘‘femme de loisir’’ in contrast to Marie, a ‘‘femme de travail.’’ These latter antitheses depend on the reader’s interpretation of the story, not on the narrator’s intervention, but the reader is aided in this direction by Germain himself, who has now mastered the art of thinking by contrast, a mark of his maturity and readiness for marriage (see also Grant 1985, 219). He applies such thinking (down to the tell-tale ‘‘mais’’ in the first example) not only to the two women—‘‘Il pensa qu’une si jolie parure et des manie`res si enjoue´es sie´rait a` l’aˆge et a` l’esprit fin de la petite Marie, mais que cette veuve avait la plaisanterie lourde et hasarde´e, et qu’elle portait sans distinction ses beaux atours’’ (114–15) [He thought that such a pretty outfit and playful manners would suit the age and finesse of little Marie, but that this widow had a heavy, rash wit, and that she wore her finery without distinction]—but also to their contrasting social settings—‘‘ce luxe des villes, qui lui paraissait une infraction a` la dignite´

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des moeurs de la campagne’’ (122) [this city luxury which appeared to him as an infraction of the dignity of country mores]. Later, the potential obstacles between Germain and Marie are formulated antithetically by Me`re Maurice: ‘‘Si donc vous savez ou` la prendre, cette femme qu’il vous faut, prenez-la ; et qu’elle soit belle ou laide, jeune ou vieille, riche ou pauvre, nous sommes de´cide´s, mon vieux et moi, a` vous donner consentement ; car nous sommes fatigue´s de vous voir triste, et nous ne pouvons pas vivre tranquilles si vous ne l’eˆtes point’’ (141–42) [If you know where to get her, this wife you need, then get her; and whether she’s beautiful or ugly, young or old, rich or poor, we’ve decided, the old man and I, to give our consent; because we’re tired of seeing you sad, and we can’t live in peace if you can’t]. In effect, Me`re Maurice both raises the antitheses to consciousness and resolves them by moving to a higher level, a moral plane based on compassion and love, which surpasses the others, based as they are on mere appearances or superficial distinctions. When she learns that the object of Germain’s desire is Marie, the young girl’s value is again expressed in moral terms that go beyond mortal ones like her age: ‘‘c’est une enfant qui me´rite que nous l’aimions et que nous passions par-dessus sa jeunesse a` cause de sa grande raison’’ (143–44) [she’s a girl who deserves that we love her and go beyond her youth due to her great wisdom]. It turns out, in fact, that age was less an obstacle for Marie than her concern for the feelings of Germain’s family, and so, once matriarchal and patriarchal blessing is given, the marriage is on. The story itself is followed by a four-chapter ‘‘Appendix,’’ in which Sand documents regional marriage customs for posterity in order to preserve them from the onslaught of modernity. The highlight is a portrait of Marie in her wedding dress, which the narrator describes in some detail, praising local traditions and railing against modern changes in typical antithetical mode (set off by ‘‘mais’’): Elle portait un tablier de soie violet pense´e, avec sa bavette, que nos villageoises ont eu le tort de supprimer et qui donnait tant d’e´le´gance et de modestie a` la poitrine. Aujourd’hui elles e´talent leur fichu avec plus d’orgueil, mais il n’y a plus dans leur toilette cette fine fleur d’antique pudicite´ qui les faisait ressembler a` des vierges d’Holbein. (177) [She wore a silk smock of pansy violet, with her bib, which our villagers have been wrong to abandon since it lent such elegance and modesty to the chest. Today, they display their scarf with more pride, but their costume no longer has that fine flower of ancient discretion that made them resemble Holbein’s virgins]

The return and redemption of Holbein, through his paintings of virgins, not his engravings of death, seems to bring the novel around full

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cycle, through the allusion to the painter whose engraving had inspired it, as Sylvie Charron Witkin contends: ‘‘It’s no longer a matter of an engraving, but of a smiling painting, no longer of death, but of the Virgin. The author, while she doesn’t say so, is probably thinking of the Solothurn Madonna (1522) or the Bourgmestre Meyer Madonna (1526). Thus the story is framed by two images. Onto the pessimistic and dark scene of the first engraving, is superimposed the face of the Virgin, symbol of purity, simplicity, and fertility’’ (1986–87, 10). Yet this is the only further allusion to painting and, in fact, the only visual portrait in the novel. Other portraits, such as that of Marie’s mother, rely, rather, on moral qualities: ‘‘Mais c’e´tait une femme d’ordre et de volonte´. Sa pauvre maison e´tait propre et bien tenue, et ses veˆtements rapie´ce´s avec soin annonc¸aient le respect de soi-meˆme au milieu de la de´tresse’’ (57) [But she was a woman of order and willpower. Her poor house was clean and well kept, and her carefully mended clothes announced self-respect in the middle of distress]. In describing the house above, Sand also uses moral, rather than visual terms, and indeed the only visual landscape description within the confines of the story is that of the Mare au Diable by moonlight, whose suggestive qualities quickly go beyond the visual to the visionary (see Grant 1985, 217–18; Gruzinska 1992, 133–38; J. Hamilton 1978, 180–81; and Koberstein 1995, 91–92): Enfin, vers minuit, le brouillard se dissipa, et Germain put voir les e´toiles briller a` travers les arbres. La lune se de´gagea aussi des vapeurs qui la couvraient et commenc¸a a` semer des diamants sur la mousse humide. Le tronc des cheˆnes restait dans une majestueuse obscurite´ ; mais, un peu plus loin, les tiges blanches des bouleaux semblaient une range´e de fantoˆmes dans leurs suaires. Le feu se refle´tait dans la mare ; et les grenouilles, commenc¸ant a` s’y habituer, hasardaient quelques notes greˆles et timides, les branches anguleuses des vieux arbres, he´risse´es de paˆles lichens, s’e´tendaient et s’entrecroisaient comme de grands bras de´charne´s sur la teˆte de nos voyageurs ; c’e´tait un bel endroit, mais si de´sert et si triste, que Germain, las de souffrir, se mit a` chanter et a` jeter des pierres dans l’eau pour s’e´tourdir sur l’ennui effrayant de la solitude. Il de´sirait aussi e´veiller la petite Marie ; et lorsqu’il vit qu’elle se levait, il lui proposa de se remettre en route. (99–100) [Finally, toward midnight, the fog dissipated, and Germain could see the stars shine through the trees. The moon also freed itself from the vapors that covered it and began to sew diamonds on the humid moss. The trunks of the oaks remained in a majestic darkness; but, a little farther, the white stems of the birches seemed like a row of phantoms in their shrouds. The fire was reflected in the pond; and the frogs, beginning to get used to it, risked a few timid, shrill notes, the angular branches of the old trees, bristling with pale

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lichens, stretched out and criss-crossed like long, lanky arms over our travelers’ heads; it was a beautiful place, but so deserted and so sad, that Germain, tired of suffering, began to sing and throw stones into the water to deaden the frightful boredom of solitude. He also wanted to waken little Marie; and when he saw she was getting up, he proposed setting out again.]

At first glance, the function of this passage might seem primarily visual, setting a mood through an overall atmospheric effect (‘‘brouillard . . . vapeurs’’), governed by a contrast of dark (‘‘obscurite´’’) punctuated by spots of light (‘‘les e´toiles briller . . . la lune se de´gagea . . . les tiges blanches . . . de paˆles lichens . . . le feu’’), which enable the dramatized viewer (‘‘Germain put voir’’) to detect vague shapes of natural objects (‘‘les arbres . . . la mousse . . . le tronc des cheˆnes . . . les tiges blancs des bouleaux’’) and lines (‘‘les branches anguleuses des vieux arbres, he´risse´es de paˆles lichens s’e´tendaient et s’entrecroisaient’’). Indeed, the setting is seen as picturesque (‘‘bel’’), but (‘‘mais’’) so deserted and sad (‘‘si de´sert et si triste’’) that it is the emotional impact that dominates the scene for Germain and the description for the reader. Sand passes from the real (visual) to the ideal, by a humanizing and harmonizing of nature, achieved in part through the use of several forms of figurative language: symbol, metaphor, simile, and personification. The dissipation of the fog that allows Germain to see the moon clearly reflects his growing desire for Marie and his consciousness of it. The mixed (and therefore marked) metaphor depicting the moon casting its rays as ‘‘semer des diamants’’ further alludes to Germain in two ways: sowing, which denotes his trade, is also inherent in his name through the phoneme ‘‘germe’’ (seed) and diamonds suggest his relative wealth and his impending marriage. The comparison of the birch trees (like the moon often a symbol of young women) to a ‘‘range´e de fantoˆmes dans leurs suaires’’ alludes through the shroud both retrospectively to Germain’s deceased first wife and prospectively to his future one, since, during the prewedding ceremonies, Marie and her companions will be covered by a sheet to confound Germain: ‘‘Germain, se voyant en pre´sence de ces fantoˆmes enveloppe´s sous le meˆme suaire, craignait fort de se tromper’’ (173; see also Huet 1995, 846–47) [Germain, seeing himself in the presence of these phantoms wrapped in the same shroud, greatly feared making a mistake]. This reference back to the beginning of the story and forward to the end constitutes a striking example of the synthesizing or harmonizing power of Sand’s style, readily acknowledged for her friend Flaubert, but usually ignored with the woman writer. The fire, alluding to the devil, not only reflects the novel’s title but suggests its meaning, since this is the spot that kindles the desire of both protagonists, thereby fostering a Jungian reading of

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the passage by Grant (1985, 217–18) and a Lacanian one by Koberstein (1995, 91–92). The characters are caught by the magical force of nature, much as the tree branches ‘‘s’e´tendaient et s’entrecroisaient comme de grands bras de´charne´s sur la teˆte de nos voyageurs’’ (see Gruzinska 1992, 138). Germain is also represented by the frogs, personified as ‘‘timid’’ and ‘‘hasarding’’ a few sounds just as he will be in broaching his love for Marie, and, in the context of his future declaration, the sentence ‘‘il de´sirait e´veiller la petite Marie’’ takes on a second, symbolic meaning alongside its literal one. In short, the passage, which seems to describe a real landscape, depicts both the inner landscape of Germain’s desire and the symbolic landscape that at once stimulates it (brings him to awareness and action), reflects it (through the fire of the devil’s pond), and prefigures it (by its allusions to his future marriage). Beyond these personal dimensions, the passage also has an ideological impact in that it illustrates the transcendency of nature and the supernatural over societal obstacles, as Barbe´ris contends: ‘‘The fire, the pond, the trees form a setting as supernatural as the unknown feeling that has seized the brave laborer. This is probably the only true ideological point of George Sand’s story: in order to speak of sensuality, of desire between two young persons, one must do so through magic. Germain can become conscious of what is pushing him toward Marie only beside this Devil’s Pond where social constraints are overcome all the more easily (or difficultly) as they are conquered by others whose origin is even more mysterious’’ (1977, 50; see also Koberstein 1995, 91–92). The overall process of humanizing and harmonizing the landscape is typical of Sand’s passage from the real world, fraught by dissipation, disjunction, and death, to the ideal one, rich in harmonies, more like music than painting, as suggested here by the ‘‘notes’’ of the frogs. The musicality of the passage itself emerges through repetition: of sounds, like the ‘‘i’’ in ‘‘vers minuit le brouillard se dissipa’’ and the ‘‘ait’’ in the imperfect tense endings of the verbs; of words, like ‘‘Germain’’ and ‘‘si’’; of rhythms, like the similar lengths of segments marked by the patterns of commas and semicolons. As David Powell notes, ‘‘poets often have recourse to techniques that replicate, to a certain degree, the sounds and movements of music: onomatopoeia, alliteration, rhythmic movement’’ (2001, 14), a thought echoed by the equally perceptive Sand critic Simone Vierne (1994): ‘‘the question of meaning is at least in part subordinated to the transposition of the musical effect par the auditory means available in language: sounds and rhythm among others to put it briefly’’ (932). Vierne goes on to note that such an application of music to literature is limited for the novelist: ‘‘A novelist has in principle, outside of ‘passages’ where he or she wants to produce a particular effect, only minimal resources to

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rival that art considered by the entire XIXth century as the highest form or art: music. He or she can, to be sure, take music or a musician as subject or theme of a novel, which is, by the way the great merit of George Sand’’ (932). As Vierne states, the novelist can, like Sand, promote music thematically, if not phonetically, which is also the main thrust of Powell’s illuminating approach (see also Dayan 1998, 39). Our analysis of the above passage from La Mare au Diable, suggests, however, that Sand’s style may also be approached poetically: indeed, of the novelists we have examined (and perhaps of all nineteenthcentury novelists) only Chateaubriand pays comparable attention to phonetics and typography, and, for him, more in the service of visuality than of musicality as appears to be the case with Sand. In recounting the story, Sand seems less inspired by the painting she has constructed in opposition to Holbein’s than by the worker’s ‘‘song,’’ described at the end of the two-chapter ‘‘prologue,’’ and, in fact, she returns directly to the notions of orality (‘‘il me l’a raconte´e’’) and music (‘‘je chante’’) at the beginning of the Appendix: Ici finit l’histoire du mariage de Germain, telle qu’il me l’a raconte´e luimeˆme, le fin laboureur qu’il est ! Je te demande pardon, lecteur ami, de n’avoir pas su te la traduire mieux ; car c’est une ve´ritable traduction qu’il faut au langage antique et naı¨f des paysans de la contre´e que je chante (comme on disais jadis). (153) [Here ends the story of Germain’s marriage, just as he told it to me himself, clever laborer that he is! I beg your pardon, reader friend, to have not known how to better translate it; since a veritable translation is required for the pure, ancient language of the peasants of the region of which I sing (as one used to say).]

The ideal harmony Sand has strived to achieve between classes (‘‘des paysans’’), between regions (‘‘de la contre´e), and with the reader (now ‘‘lecteur ami’’), are possible only through a text that approximates music (‘‘je chante’’), a key to what Schor terms the ‘‘amical idealism’’ that characterizes at least La Mare au Diable (1993, 195). Each step of the marriage ritual documented in the Appendix is accompanied by music, and it is fitting that the final words of the Appendix and thus the novel end in song: ‘‘On entendait au loin les chants des jeunes garc¸ons des paroisses voisines, qui partaient pour retourner chez eux, et qui redisaient d’une voix un peu enroue´e les refrains joyeux de la veille’’ (187) [One could hear in the distance the songs of the young men from the neighboring parishes, who were leaving for home and recalling the joyful refrains of the previous evening in cheerful voices]. In commenting on this text, Powell again points out the importance of

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music in Sand’s conception of literature: ‘‘Thus song not only announces and accompanies the ceremony, it also serves afterwards to recall the joys of the celebrations, fixing them in the villagers’ collective memory. One notes the now-common Sandian use of the verb (re)dire (to restate) for singing, underscoring her notion of music as language’’ (2001, 246). In the Appendix, Sand not only suggests that the story is of oral origin and declares the importance of preserving the oral language of her region, she links it to music and attempts herself to lend her own style an oral, even musical, aspect, in a variety of ways. The story features an unusually high amount of dialogue, and at one point in the Appendix, even takes the form of a play or an opera, with the names of the speakers (LE FOSSOYEUR and LE CHANVREUR) [the gravedigger and the hempweaver] repeated in bold letters before each part of their lengthy dialogue, which culminates with a complete that tune contest, followed by a choral duet between the entire parties of the bride and groom (168–69). In these patterned verbal exchanges, Sand has the characters and even the narrator use idiomatic regional expressions, often in italics (‘‘Ils traverse`rent la grande brande’’ [they crossed the great heath), and the characters frequently display the incorrect grammar of informal peasant speech (‘‘Je vas’’ [I goes]), which, through its very simplicity, embodies musicality and the ideal for Sand, as Powell suggests: ‘‘As music is the divine language, the purest and most unornamented form reaches God directly’’ (1990, 96). In short, Sand emphasizes the oral nature of rustic language and gives the reader a taste for regional expressions and rural rhythm, ‘‘parfaitement combine´ avec la nature du terrain gras et des chemins ondule´s de la contre´e (156) [perfectly matched with the nature of the sticky terrain and uneven roads of the countryside]. One of Sand’s most striking oral, even musical effects in this novel involves alliterating proper nouns (Petit Pierre, Me`re Maurice, ma Marie) and repeating them in short order, which personalizes the characters’ speech and lends the tale an aura of incantation, like the worker’s song at the beginning. One such example, from the scene in which Germain rescues Marie and Pierre from the ‘‘master’’ farmer, suffices to give the reader a sense of the amount of dialogue, the number of times proper names are repeated, the use of alliteration (‘‘m’’), and the effect of these repetitions in personalizing relationships, in giving an oral flavor to the narrative, and in creating musical harmony: —Eh ! Sois tranquille ; je suis la` . . . Marie ! Marie ! C’est moi ! Marie approcha en rampant, et de`s qu’elle vit Germain, que le fermier

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suivait de pre`s, elle courut se jeter dans ses bras ; et, s’attachant a` lui comme une fille a` son pe`re : —Ah ! Mon brave Germain, lui dit-elle, vous me de´fendrez ; je n’ai pas peur avec vous. Germain eut le frisson. Il regarda Marie. . . . (129) [Be calm; I’m here . . . Marie! Marie! It’s me! Marie approached cringing, and as soon as she saw Germain, who the farmer followed closely, she ran and threw herself into his arms; and, attaching herself to him like a daughter to a father: —Ah! My brave Germain, she said, you’ll defend me; I’m not afraid with you. Germain shivered. He looked at Marie.]

Perhaps the most unique aspect of Sand’s style, however, again involving both the oral nature of language and the use of proper names, is the phonetic network that she constructs to structure the tale. Beginning with the toponym of the novel’s title, La Mare au Diable, the word ‘‘Mare’’ resembles and is contained within the name of the female protagonist ‘‘Marie,’’ which is both an anagram for ‘‘aimer’’ [to love], the main motivator of the story, and a homonym for ‘‘mari,’’ the husband Germain will become. The word ‘‘mari’’ leads us lexicographically to its family of words, including the important themes of ‘‘marier’’ and ‘‘mariage.’’ The word ‘‘mariage’’ is itself composed of ‘‘mari,’’ which Germain would gladly become for Marie, and ‘‘age,’’ the ostensible obstacle to their union. ‘‘Mariage’’ is in fact a near anagram for Germain (missing only the n, which is not pronounced in French), and both words contain Marie and thus Mare. This intricate network of names, characters, and themes, can be represented in a schema, to illustrate just how effective it is as a structuring or harmonizing device: Mare

Marie Aimer Mari Marier Mariage Mari age Germain

Deciphering a phonetic and graphic matrix of this type can be likened to reading musical notation (see Powell 1990, 98), a type of cryptic language accessible only to the initiated reader (‘‘lecteur ami’’). If the phoneme and the grapheme are the building blocks of verbal expression, just as color and line are those of painting, it is hard to imagine a novel more verbal, even musical, than La Mare au Diable, and it is this musicality that makes it an idealist novel, through the principle of har-

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mony. Indeed, the grid of phonetic associations lends a sense of necessity, order, stability, and reconciliation to a world seemingly threatened by dissolution and division. As Dora Wilson perceptively puts it in her discussion of Sand’s musical aesthetic, ‘‘Basically one must note that she was motivated by the conviction that music represents wholeness. . . . She turned to it for a variety of reasons. But the guiding principle seems to have been a search for the wholeness and unification it brings. . . . She sought to create aesthetic harmony out of the dissonance of human life’’ (1981, 103; for ‘‘wholeness,’’ but based on nature, see also J. Hamilton, 1978, 182). In this way, music for Sand can be said to rival myth, as Simone Vierne concludes: ‘‘For George Sand music is destined to play the role that other civilizations accorded to myth: translate and enable the resolution—the term is quite musical—of the essential contradictions of man and the world, by an ‘other’ language, which addresses the imagination and gives it, at least while hearing it, the conviction that these contradictions are abolished’’ (1994, 950). Indeed, according to Le´vi-Strauss, music, like myth, can be conceived in the form of an interpretational grid, not unlike that which relates the key elements of La Mare au Diable: ‘‘Myth coded in sounds instead of words, the musical work furnishes a grid for deciphering, a matrix of relationships that filters and organizes lived experience, substitutes for it, and procures the refreshing illusion that the contradictions can be overcome’’ (1971, 589, quoted in Vierne, 944). From this perspective, Sand can be said to differ from most of the authors we have been exploring, who seem rather to perpetuate contradiction and resist resolution; perhaps this is what makes her work ‘‘idealist’’ and why music, not painting becomes her model. As Schor argues, however, throughout her compelling reevaluation of idealism, all of the major nineteenth-century artists are dealing with the same set of issues in strikingly similar modes (1993, 42–43). It would be absurd to assume that Sand’s ‘‘idealism’’ is naive simply because it cannot be ‘‘realized,’’ anymore than to conclude that poetry is inferior to prose, that myths are ‘‘unrealistic,’’ or that Sisyphus is ‘‘impractical’’ in continuing to roll his rock despite certain failure. At any rate, her dramatization of the artistic process fully qualifies her as ‘‘modern,’’ including to the criterion proposed by France Vernier in relation to Hugo (1995, 48). The visual image, the painting, that inspired La Mare au Diable is merely, and quite literally, a pre-text, and quite possibly a pre-score, in the sense that the text itself is modeled on music, not painting. The visual model Sand was seeking, had yet to make its appearance in French painting, but would soon do so in the works of Jean-Franc¸ois Millet.

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MILLET: PAINTING THE PEASANT In a fascinating essay, Marie-He´le`ne Huet (1995) compares the presence of death and violence in the wedding rituals depicted in Sand’s La Mare au Diable and Courbet’s La toilette de la marie´e/morte. However, following Sand’s dictum ‘‘nous n’avons plus affaire a` la mort mais a` la vie’’ [we are no longer dealing with death but with life], I have chosen rather to explore the relationship between La Mare au Diable and Millet’s Le Semeur (see color insert), a parallel first proposed by The´ophile Gautier: J. F. Millet’s The Sower reminds us, in general, of the first pages of George Sand’s The Devil’s Pond, on plowing and rustic jobs, imprinted with melancholy grandeur and solemn sadness. Night is coming, spreading its gray veils on the brown earth. The Sower strides with a rhythmic pace, casting the seed in the furrow, followed by a flight of pecking birds. Dark rags cover him; his head is capped with a sort of bizarre bonnet; he is bony, haggard, and gaunt in this livery of poverty; and yet life reaches out from his large hand; and, with a superb gesture, he who has nothing spreads future bread on the earth. On the backside of the hill, a last ray of sunshine sketches a pair of steers at the end of their furrow, strong and gentle companions of the man, whose reward will one day be the slaughterhouse. This glow is the only light note in the painting, which is bathed in sad shadow and presents the eye, under a cloudy sky, only with fresh earth skinned by the plowshare. Of all the peasants sent to the Salon this year, The Sower is by far the one we prefer. There is something grandiose and stylish in this figure with its violent gesture and its proudly broken bearing, who seems painted with the earth he is sowing. (cited in Moreau-Ne´laton 1921, 87)

Yet, whereas Gautier uses Sand’s reading of Holbein’s engraving to read Millet, I propose, rather, to apply Sand’s reworking and revamping of Holbein to reevaluate Gautier’s interpretation of Le Semeur. To paraphrase Sand, instead of Gautier’s sadness, I see joy; instead of poverty, nobility; instead of passivity, action; instead of violence, calm; instead of death, life. The most famous version of the painting was exhibited at the Salon of 1850, shortly after the agricultural worker had been brought to the fore during the Revolution of 1848 (Clark 1973, 9–30; Nochlin 1971, 112). The composition announces immediately the heroic treatment of the subject, whose simplified, statuesque form occupies the entire frontal plane of the canvas, in a way Canaday finds ‘‘typical of Millet’s most ambitious work’’ (1959, 122). In the background, perched on the horizon line and lit by the sun, is a second laborer, engaged in plowing, much like Germain. Just as the sun probably setting in the west (left of

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the canvas) reminds us of the cycle of the day, so do the two figures, each accomplishing a different but complementary task, suggest their continuity and solidarity and the cycle of reproduction their work entails. While illuminating the background figure, the light source leaves the Sower in shadow, lending him weight and obscuring his features, also masked by a lowered hat. This anonymity imparts a universal quality that Millet often awards his figures through the same technique. Bent with work yet strong to the task, the figure is on the move, marching easily from left to right and down the slope in accord with the reader’s perception. The peasant is in the middle of the action of sowing, yet solidly planted in the earth, with which he is one. This unity with the land is reinforced by Millet’s use of earth colors for the peasant’s garb, a blue that matches the sky and various shades of brown, matching those of the land. Millet’s loose brushwork further contributes to the fusion of man and land, by obscuring boundaries, and, as one critic puts it, ‘‘Millet’s paint surfaces echo the soil which he painted . . . The brushwork is graphic and descriptive, evoking forms and textures’’ (Januszczak 1980, 88– 89). Indeed the thick layers of paint and heavy, visible brush strokes betray the hand and toil of the painter, himself a worker in the realist tradition contrary to the polished effect of classical art, in which the painter’s hand disappears behind his or her idea. The loose line also creates a functional ambiguity in the forms in the sky to the left of the sower, which may be the seeds, or the birds that will feed on them, then redistribute them as part of the regenerative process that engenders the continuity of nature. As Canaday concludes, ‘‘The Sower symbolizes the turn of the seasons, the cycle of growth, fruition, and return to the soil’’ (1959, 122). In short, Millet has constructed a noble image of the universal laborer, attached to the earth yet emerging from it with his heart and head above the horizon line and ensconced in the natural cycle of reproduction. As Robert L. Herbert (1976) so precisely puts it: On an autumn day, at sunset, a young peasant strides diagonally down a slope to our right. The sun comes from the left, catching the cheek, hand, waist and thigh, and seems to push him onward. This thrust of the form and the force of the light are counterbalanced by the rearward motion of outstretched arm and leg (parallel, to give geometry and hence stability) and by the harrow being dragged into the sun by the bulky oxen, in the right distance. The oxen are given the brightest tone of the picture so that our eye is drawn there, granting them their vital role of counterbalancing, at the same spatial angle, the diagonal thrust of the Sower, and of equaling the vi-

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sual weight of his extended arm, forming with it a large cross, with the body as the upright. The setting sun gives rich roses, lavenders and grey-blues to the sky, rendering the peasant’s face all the darker by contrast, and through that very contrast, evoking ideas opposite those of sunlight: approaching winter, brooding darkness, fatality. From the sky comes another sense of menace, the crows—symbols of darkness—which rattle down to steal the grain. (78)

Despite the hints of pessimism at the end of Herbert’s brilliant analysis, a concession perhaps to his determination to produce a reading as ‘‘seen by Millet’s contemporaries’’ (78), the critic goes on to note the ‘‘noble ideals’’ embodied by the figure, its incarnation as ‘‘a symbol of religious devotion to work,’’ and its value as an ‘‘archetype’’ based on its classical heritage (78). Indeed, in various discussions of the painting, one most frequently encounters terms like ‘‘hero of the soil’’ (Janson 1962/1977, 590), ‘‘nobility of the simple man’’ (Canaday 1959, 122), or ‘‘heroic grandeur’’ (Rosenblum and Janson 1984, 220); and Michelangelo is the ancestor most often mentioned for Millet (Sabatier-Ungher, quoted in Herbert 1976, 78; Canaday 1959, 122; Clark, 1973, 93; Focillon 1928, 22; Rosenblum and Janson 1984, 220). In a most suggestive comment, Herbert goes so far as to see the sower, in his devotion to work and productivity, as an artist figure: ‘‘He is walking down the hills of Gre´ville, his [Millet’s] native land, and in him we must find the artist’s alter ego and, through that, the special power of the figure’’ (1976, 78). In various histories of art, Millet is often classfied as a ‘‘realist’’ (Canaday 1959; Eisenman 1994, 211; Gardner 1926/1996, 965; Rosenblum and Janson 1984, 219), then measured negatively against this standard as ‘‘a diluted and sentimentalized version’’ (Janson 1962/1977, 589), whose figures are ‘‘a little too self-conscious of their symbolic importance’’ (Canaday 1959, 122). If, however, ‘‘idealism’’ is defined, as in Sand’s work, as a mythic representation of a universal figure in harmony with one’s self, others, nature, and the cosmos, then Millet must be labeled and measured as such (if indeed one must measure according to such labels). Joseph Sloane gives a more balanced view, closer to my own: The case of Millet was quite different [from Courbet’s]. In the contemporary view, he also turned to the real world for his themes, and was ‘‘realistic’’ in choosing to paint poor farm folk, but what he did thereafter was to turn them into symbols for his own deep-seated ideas about man’s place in the scheme of things. His people lacked the particularity of Courbet’s; the man breaking stones was a specific object, an individual model, but the Semeur was no one man, nor was he intended to be. Where Courbet seemed merely

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to observe, it was felt that Millet, in his own way, transformed and idealized. (1973, 144; see also Gardner 1926/1996, 965)

Henri Focillon further cites harmony as a key to Millet’s genius: ‘‘This harmony of man and milieu, these beings so well suited to their function and for so long that they seem to emerge from the earth like a tree or a rock, finally, these landscapes enlarged by their work, these peasant landscapes, therein lies Millet’s genius’’ (20). Robert Rosenblum (1984) also lauds ‘‘Millet’s genius at distilling figures, landscape, and architecture into a serene, interlocking organism’’ (221) and concludes ‘‘that Millet’s art could resonate so deeply into all kinds of mythic and psychological archetypes was testimony not only to his greatness but also to his ability to transcend the confines of the historical category, Social Realism, in which he is usually placed’’ (223). T. J. Clark finds the dialectical movement between myth and reality, typical of Millet’s work, to be epitomized in Le Semeur: ‘‘There are many stages to its growth: here as elsewhere Millet moved between myth and reality, went back to the bible or to memories of his childhood landscape, took up an old theme and changed it, pushed towards an image of open violence and then painted another, more still and more constricted. The Sower is typical of Millet at work’’ (1973, 82). Although Millet’s peasant is less personalized, and his rough-hewn image is more realistic and, quite literally more ‘‘down to earth’’ than Sand’s, both artists deploy techniques for aggrandizing, generalizing, and mythologizing the peasants, then harmonizing them with nature to move them toward the ideal. Despite their different conceptions of reality and imagery, both artists must ultimately be considered as embodying an idealist ideology. And, despite the seeming contradiction between realism and idealism, do we not detect in Sand and Millet the same dialectic between figure and form, imagery and ideology, that we identified in Balzac and Daumier as a sign of modernity?

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6 Salome’s Dance: Flaubert, Moreau, and Huysmans FLAUBERT PUBLISHED HIS SHORT STORY ‘‘HE´RODIAS’’ IN 1877 AS ONE OF the Trois contes, his final complete work. The three tales are ordered so that they recede in time: the well-known ‘‘Un coeur simple’’ depicts nineteenth-century bourgeois life in the French provinces; ‘‘La le´gende de Saint-Julien l’hospitalier’’ is set in the Middle Ages; and ‘‘He´rodias’’ is a historical reconstruction of life in ancient times, based on the biblical story of Salome’s dancing seductively in order to have Saint John the Baptist beheaded. All three tales have been described by Chantal Grosse in terms of the plastic arts: ‘‘Flaubert’s writing is essentially visual, pictorial, and cinematographic. In this sense, the Three Tales are an attractive album, a beautiful book of images: Epinal imagery or religious iconography, stained-glass window or painter’s canvas, visions or dreams of the artist himself’’ (1986, 185). And, as Adrianne Tooke, author of a recent book on Flaubert and the pictorial arts, states unequivocally: ‘‘Flaubert was extremely sensitive to the visual in general and to painting in particular’’ (2000, 4). We shall examine Flaubert’s ‘‘He´rodias’’ in relation to other highly visual interpretations of the Salome story by the painter Gustave Moreau and the novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans. All of the works ultimately foreground an unresolved antithesis between spirituality and sensuality that informs both the image of the artist and that of the woman in fin de sie`cle art.

FLAUBERT: ‘‘HE´RODIAS’’ Although ‘‘Un coeur simple’’ has the flavor of Epinal imagery and ‘‘Saint Julien’’ was inspired by a stained-glass window, the lengthy description of the Machaeros Citadel in Judea at the beginning of ‘‘He´rodias’’ is probably the most painterly passage in all of the Trois contes. Flaubert constructs his landscape from the ground up by evoking virtually every one of the visual variables identified in our introduction: 145

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viewpoint, composition, shape, size, direction, line, color, tonality, and texture. Moreover, each variable not only plays a role in building the overall image, it highlights some thematic aspect necessary for the story’s background: geographic, ethnic, political, or psychological; in short, the spatial translates the ideological (see especially Rastier 1992, 206–17 and Provenzano 2000, 761–67): La citadelle de Machaerous se dressait a` l’orient de la mer Morte, sur un pic de basalte ayant la forme d’un coˆne. Quatre valle´es profondes l’entouraient, deux vers les flancs, une en face, la quatrie`me au-dela`. Des maisons se tassaient contre sa base, dans le cercle d’un mur qui ondulait suivant les ine´galite´s du terrain ; et, par un chemin en zigzag tailladant le rocher, la ville se reliait a` la fortresse, dont les murailles e´taient hautes de cent vingt coude´es, avec des angles nombreux, des cre´naux sur le bord, et, c¸a et la`, des tours qui faisaient comme des fleurons a` cette couronne de pierre, suspendue audessus de l’abıˆme. (109) [The citadel of Machaeros stood to the east of the Dead Sea, on a basalt peak shaped like a cone. Four deep valleys surrounded it, two toward the flanks, one in front, the fourth beyond it. Houses huddled against the base encircled by a wall that undulated with the irregularities of the terrain; and a zigzag path cutting into the rock linked the city to the fortress, whose walls were a hundred twenty cubits high, with numerous angles, battlements on the edges, and, here and there, towers that were like finials on this crown of stone suspended over the abyss.]

In this opening paragraph, the general, unspecified viewpoint produces a panoramic composition that enables Flaubert to set the overall geographical and topographical disposition of his landscape: the Citadel perched on a peak surrounded by valleys near the Dead Sea. The composition is centered (‘‘l’entouraient’’) and even mathematical, as Flaubert situates the four valleys that flank the fortress. Shapes are geometric (‘‘coˆne . . . cercle’’), as several critics have noted (Brombert 1966, 256; Debray-Genette 1974, 339; O’Connor 1980, 813; Leal 1985, 810–11). Lines are well delineated (‘‘zigzag . . . angles’’), and, even when irregular, they espouse the hade of the land (‘‘un mur qui ondulait suivant les ine´galite´s du terrain’’). The unevenly spaced towers fall into line, ‘‘comme des fleurons a` cette couronne de pierres.’’ The pronominal verbs, ‘‘se dressait,’’ ‘‘se tassaient,’’ and ‘‘se reliait,’’ where the subject is also the object of the verb, directs the action back upon itself and lends the landscape a static, self-sustaining, even eternal quality. In short, the opening paragraph has the feel of David’s or Poussin’s classical style: linear, mathematical, geometric, static, and ordered (see chapter 1). In the tale’s third paragraph, however, the viewpoint changes, and

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with it the style and impact. The ruler of the fortress and main character of the story, Herod-Antipas, is introduced as viewer of the scene, which is presented this time from the counterpoint perspective of the fortress looking out at its surroundings: Un matin, avant le jour, le Te´trarque He´rode-Antipas vint s’y accouder, et regarder. Les montagnes, imme´diatement sous lui, commenc¸ait a` de´couvrir leurs creˆtes, pendant que leur masse, jusqu’au fond des abıˆmes, e´tait encore dans l’ombre. Un brouillard flottait, il se de´chira, et les contours de la mer Morte apparurent. L’aube, qui se levait derrie`re Machaerous, e´pandait une rougeur. Elle illumina bientoˆt les sables de la gre`ve, les collines, le de´sert, et, plus loin, tous les monts de la Jude´e, inclinant leurs surfaces raboteuses et grises. (109–10) [One morning, before daybreak, the Tetrarch Herod-Antipas came to lean on (the balustrade) and look around. The mountains, immediately below him, began to uncover their crests, while their masses, in the depths of the abyss, were still in shadow. A fog floated, broke open, and the contours of the Dead Sea appeared. Dawn, which was rising behind Machaeros, was spreading a reddishness. It soon lit up the sans of the shores, the hills, the desert, and farther along, all the mountains of Judea, inclining their rough, gray surfaces.]

The composition is equally vast, but the shapes are more amorphous (‘‘masse’’) than geometrical, due to the continued presence of fog and shadow, soon to be broken by the light of dawn, which gradually imparts color to the landscape (‘‘une rougeur’’) while illuminating its general features and emphasizing their grainy texture (‘‘surfaces raboteuses’’). Here, Flaubert creates a sense of movement through the rising sun, whose light acts on the landscape (‘‘e´pandait une rougeur . . . illumina bientoˆt les sables’’), and this mobility is reinforced, in the following segment, through the changing viewpoint (‘‘Le Te´trarque en de´tourna la vue pour contempler a` droite . . .’’): Engaddi, au milieu, trac¸ait une barre noire ; He´bron, dans l’enfoncement, s’arrondissait en doˆme ; Esquol avait des grenadiers, Sorek des vignes, Karmel des champs de se´same ; et la tour Antonia, de son cube monstrueux, dominait Je´rusalem. Le Te´trarque en de´tourna la vue pour contempler, a` droite, les palmiers de Je´richo ; et il songea aux autres villes de sa Galile´e : Capharnau¨m, Endor, Nazareth, Tibe´rias ou peut-eˆtre il ne reviendrait plus. Cependant le Jourdain coulait sur la plaine aride. Toute blanche, elle e´blouissait comme une nappe de neige. Le lac, maintenant, semblait en lapus-lazuli ; et a` sa pointe me´ridionale, du coˆte´ de l’Ye´men, Antipas reconnut ce qu’il craignait d’apercevoir. Des tentes brunes e´taient disperse´es ; des hommes avec des lances circulaient entre les chevaux, et des feux s’e´teignant bril-

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laient comme des e´tincelles a` ras du sol. C’e´taient les troupes du roi des Arabes, dont il avait re´pudie´ la fille pour prendre He´rodias, marie´e a` l’un de ses fre`res qui vivait en Italie, sans pre´tentions au pouvoir. (110) [Engedi, in the middle, traced a black bar; Hebron, in the hollow, rounded like a dome; Eschol had its pomegranates, Sorek its vines, Karmel its sesame fields; and the Antonia Tower, with its huge cube, dominated Jerusalem. The Tetrarch looked away from it to his right to contemplate the palm trees of Jericho; and he thought about the other cities of Galilee—Capernaum, Endor, Nazereth, and Tiberius—to which, perhaps, he might never return. Meanwhile, the Jordan was flowing on the arid plain. Completely white, it was dazzling like a sheet of snow. The lake now seemed made of lapis lazuli; and at its southernmost point, toward the Yemen, Antipas recognized what he feared seeing. Brown tents were dispersed; men with lances were moving about among the horses, and dying fires shone like sparks on the ground. They were the troops of the Arab king, whose daughter he had repudiated in order to take Herodias, married to one of his brothers, who lived in Italy, with no pretensions to power.]

The style in this portion of the description becomes more ‘‘romantic’’ or even ‘‘impressionistic,’’ with its suggestive use of movement, atmospheric conditions, color, and contrasting light and shadow to impart a general feel to the landscape. Flaubert continues to blend the two systems of line and color, while using the visual variables to highlight political and ethnic tensions embedded in the landscape: the combination of line and color (‘‘une barre noire’’) leads the reader to Engedi, the stronghold of the Esseniens; geometric shape (‘‘s’arrondissait en doˆme’’) brings forth Hebron, the oldest city of the Jews and birthplace of the soon-to-be-foregrounded John the Baptist; size and shape (‘‘son cube monstrueux’’) suggest the domination of the Antonia tower, a symbol of Roman presence and power in Judea; color (‘‘tentes brunes’’) and light (‘‘des feux s’e´teignant brillaient comme des e´tincelles’’) bring the eye to the encampment of the Arab king, miffed at Herod for having repudiated his daughter in order to marry Herodias, his niece and former sister-in-law! Herod’s elevated and distant viewpoint itself functions to suggest his position of power and inaccessibility, even in relation to the threatening Arab troops, who remain at a distance and ‘‘under him.’’ In short, Flaubert has used the visual details of his canvas to highlight (in some cases literally) political and ethnic forces that intersect precisely at the point occupied by Herod, who, despite the story’s title, is the central character in the story, the one on whom all forces— political, ethnic, familial, and psychological—will be brought to bear, through the agency, to be sure, of his wife Herodias (see Leal 1985, 812).

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The visual beauty and tranquility of the scene is soon shattered by a verbal interruption that seems to emanate from the bowels of the earth, beneath the sparkling surface that we have just seen: ‘‘Tout a` coup, une voix lointaine, comme e´chappe´e des profondeurs de la terre, fit paˆlir le Te´traque’’ (111) [Suddenly, a faraway voice, seeming to escape from the depths of the earth, made the Tetrarch go pale]. This disembodied ‘‘voice’’ belongs, in effect, to Iaokanann, whom the Romans call John the Baptist, imprisoned by Herod in an underground cell for having denounced his marriage to Herodias as incestuous. It is the future saint’s vocal curses and prophesies that both threaten and intrigue Herod, especially the cryptic expression: ‘‘pourqu’il grandisse, il faut que je diminue’’ (112) [For him to wax, I must wane]. After the intrusion of Iaokanann’s piercing cry, the previously peaceful landscape becomes threatening to Herod, whose viewpoint is again foregrounded, but here to emphasize his vulnerability: Tous ces monts autour de lui, comme des e´tages de grands flots pe´trifie´s, les gouffres noirs sur le flanc des falaises, l’immensite´ du ciel bleu, l’e´clat violent du jour, la profondeur des abıˆmes le troublaient ; et une de´solation l’envahissait au spectacle du de´sert, qui figure, dans le bouleversement de ses terrains, des amphithe´aˆtres et des palais abattus. (112) [All these montains around him, like layers of great petrified waves, the black gulfs in the sides of the cliffs, the immensity of the blue sky, the violent burst of daylight, the depth of the abysses disturbed him; and a desolation invaded him with the spectacle of the desert, whose upended terrains seemed like the ruins of amphitheaters and palaces.]

Immobility is now seen as petrification; valleys as black gulfs; light as violence; architecture as ruins. The expression ‘‘la profondeur des abıˆmes’’ is particularly significant, both for deciphering this story and for identifying the modes and mechanisms of Flaubert’s style. In effect, both words have occurred before in key passages (already cited here if the vigilant reader can recall). The word ‘‘abıˆme’’ is the final word of the first paragraph, where it is used in the simile comparing the citadel perched on the mountain to a ‘‘crown of stones suspended over the abyss.’’ Herod’s direct association with the word ‘‘abyss’’ and his role as ruler suggested by the word ‘‘crown’’ now cause us to reread the simile as a symbol of Herod’s precarious position, a monarch threatened by all sorts of destructive forces (see Leal 1985, 812). The word ‘‘profondeur’’ leads us to one source of Herod’s problems, Iaokanann, since it was his voice that came from the ‘‘depths’’ of the earth, which later ‘‘disturb’’ Herod. This link compels us to evaluate the significance of Iaokanann for Herod, particularly since the Tetrarch

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later admits that ‘‘sa puissance est forte! . . . Malgre´ moi, je l’aime!’’ (118) [his power is great!. . . Despite myself, I love him!.] Both of these links remind us that, in addition to reading Flaubert forward, for the plot, we must also read him backward, to grasp the networks of associations that create the story’s structure, define its themes, and lead to its interpretation. As is so often the case with Flaubert, the answer lies less in the conventional meanings we might read into the words ‘‘abyss’’ or ‘‘depths’’ than in those associations created by the recurrence of the words within the text, associations that produce a deeper meaning through the ‘‘internal force’’ of style. In short, as has been contended in a general study of Flaubert’s work: ‘‘For Flaubert the mot juste is not the word that best denotes a referent but the one that best serves as a nodal point in a web of intratextual connections’’ (Berg and Martin 1997, 23). Unlike the phonetic network of proper names that dominated his friend and correspondent George Sand’s La Mare au Diable (chapter 5), Flaubert’s is a semantic network that causes us to reevaluate the meaning of each point in light of the others associated with it. These points are also marked more subtly by Flaubert, by their position in key places (the end of a paragraph) and at key moments (the vocal interruption), rather than by sheer repetition of proper names, as is often the case with Sand. Two strands of associations are particularly noticeable and significant in ‘‘He´rodias,’’ a verbal strand associated with Iaokanann, and a visual one associated with Salome, the daughter Herodias has secretly brought in to seduce her husband and thus make him get rid of the troublesome Iaokanann. Each associational strand helps us to read the symbolic nature of these characters, while their combination, in the dance scene, enables us to pinpoint the nature of the network, Herod’s psychological dilemma. Iaokanann is depicted almost exclusively through his voice and, when later silenced by death, his head. His voice is mentioned in at least six separate instances, which we bring together here in order to consider their common points and consequences: 1) Tout a` coup, une voix lointaine, comme e´chappe´e des profondeurs de la terre, fit paˆlir le Te´trarque. (111) [Suddenly a faraway voice, seeming to escape from the depths of the abyss, made the Tetrarch go pale.] 2) Ce fut d’abord un grand soupir, pousse´ d’une voix caverneuse. (125) [It was first a great sigh, heaved by a cavernous voice.] 3) La voix s’e´leva. (125) [The voice rose up.] 4) Mais la voix se fit douce, harmonieuse, chantante. (126) [But the voice became soft, harmonious, musical.]

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5) La voix re´pondit. (127) [The voice replied.] 6) La voix grossissait, se de´veloppait, roulait avec des de´chirements de tonnerre, et, l’e´cho dans la montagne la re´pe´tant, elle foudroyait Machaerous d’e´clats multiplie´s. (128) [The voice was growing, developing, rolling with claps of thunder, and, with the echo of the mountain repeteating it, it struck Machaeros with multiple bursts.]

We note first and foremost, that every example has the same rhetorical form, a metonymical construction in which the voice (the effect) is detached from the person of Iaokanann (the cause), who never appears in the same sentence, even as a possessive pronoun (‘‘sa’’). We also note that in all cases but one (example 2), ‘‘la voix’’ is the subject of the sentence, thus emphasizing its power, and even the exception involves a passive structure (‘‘pousse´ d’une voix’’), which makes the voice the cause of the action. This power is emphasized in three cases by the use of pronominal verbs, in which the voice is at once the agent and recipient of the action: that is, self-sufficient. In two other cases, the voice is the subject of a transitive verb, which exacts its effect on a direct object: le Te´trarque in example one, all of Machaeros in example six. The adjectives that modify ‘‘la voix’’ further measure its effect on the listener, threatening to Herod and Herodias (‘‘lointaine . . . caverneuse . . . avec des de´chirements de tonnerre’’), consoling to the Jews when prophesying the coming of the Messiah (‘‘douce, harmonieuse, chantante’’). These techniques taken together have the effect of emphasizing the speech act more than its enunciater, who becomes a transmitter of a more universal message. Detaching the word from the appearance of its speaker further emphasizes the verbal, the power of the word, of the text. By removing Iaokanann’s body, Flaubert also gives him a purely ‘‘spiritual’’ value and thus defines his symbolic role in the story (see also Israel-Pelletier 1991, 93–94, 104–5; Frolich 1988, 87–93; and Robertson 1982/1989, 119–20). On the other hand, a second strand of associations, involving Salome, depicts only the body, deprived of its voice. Although she is not named until her dance in the third and final part of the story, the character appears twice before, strategically positioned near the end of parts one and two (see also Robertson 1982/1989, 117). The reader focuses on this unnamed ‘‘jeune fille’’ because of Herod’s fascination with her and because of the mystery surrounding her identity. Again I quote portions of the two separate examples in order to determine their common points and from them derive their symbolic value: 1) Il regardait la plate-forme d’une maison, ou` il y avait une jeune fille, et une vieille femme tenant un parasol a` manche de roseau, long comme la

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ligne d’un peˆcheur . . . L’ombre du parasol se promenait au-dessus d’elle, en la cachant a` demi. Antipas aperc¸ut deux ou trois fois son col de´licat, l’angle d’un oeil, le coin d’une petite bouche. Mais il voyait, des hanches a` la nuque, toute sa taille qui s’inclinait pour se redresser d’une manie`re e´lastique. Il e´piait le retour de ce mouvement, et sa respiration devenait plus forte ; des flammes s’allumaient dans ses yeux. (116) [He was looking at the terrace of a house, where there were a girl and an old woman holding a parasol with a reed handle, long like a fishing line . . . The parasol’s shadow moved above her, half hiding her. Two or three times Antipas glimpsed her delicate neck, the angle of an eye, the corner of a little mouth. But he saw, from her hips to her neck, her whole body bending the straightening in an elastic manner. He looked for this movement to return, and his breathing grew stronger; flames lit up in his eyes.] 2) Sous une portie`re en face, un bras nu s’avanc¸a, un bras jeune, charmant et comme tourne´ dans l’ivoire par Polycle`te. D’une fac¸on un peu gauche, et cependant gracieuse, il ramait dans l’air, pour saisir une tunique oublie´e sur une escabelle pre`s de la muraille. (130) [Under a facing curtain, a bare arm advanced, a young, charming arm like one carved in ivory by Polyclitus. In an awkward yet graceful way, it groped in the air to seize a tunic left on a stool by the wall.]

Both descriptions involve a focus on and fascination with parts of the body (‘‘son col de´licat’’) or even parts of parts of the body (‘‘le coin d’une petite bouche’’). The second example further involves a fullfledged synecdoche, in which the body part, the arm (‘‘un bras nu s’avanc¸a’’), appears independently of the whole body, which remains absent from the sentence. Masking the entire body (‘‘en la cachant a` demi’’) serves to emphasize what is hidden, turning the scene into a provocative striptease. Through the adjectives that he chooses to modify the particular parts on which he dwells, Flaubert foregrounds femininity (‘‘de´licat’’), sexuality (‘‘nu’’) and seduction (‘‘charmant’’). Other adjectives prefigure Salome’s ability to dance (‘‘e´lastique . . . gracieuse’’), also suggested by the use of nouns (‘‘le retour de ce mouvement’’) and especially verbs that suggest rhythmic motion (‘‘s’inclinait . . . se redresser . . . s’avanc¸a . . . ramait’’). By insisting on her body, silencing her, and removing her head (‘‘il voyait, des hanches a` la nuque, toute sa taille’’), Flaubert emphasizes Salome’s sensuality and deprives her of any spirituality. Utilizing Herod’s viewpoint enables Flaubert to bring out the Tetrarch’s voyeurism and point out his physical desire (‘‘sa respiration devenait plus forte ; des flammes s’allumaient dans ses yeux’’). Salome’s symbolic role couldn’t be clearer: she represents sensuality. The two separate strands, the verbal and the visual, the spiritual and the sensual, Iaokanann and Salome, are finally interwoven in the scene of the dance depicted in part 3 of the tale. This section begins with a

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description of the great hall of the palace, where hundreds of revelers have gathered to celebrate Herod’s birthday: Elle avait trois nefs, comme une basilique, et que se´paraient des colonnes en bois d’algumim, avec des chapiteaux de bronze couverts de sculptures. Deux galeries a` claire-voie s’appuyaient dessus ; et une troisie`me en filigrane d’or se bombait au fond, vis-a`-vis d’un cintre e´norme, qui s’ouvrait a` l’autre bout. Des cande´labres, bruˆlant sur des tables aligne´es dans toute la longueur du vaisseau, faisaient des buissons de feux, entre les coupes de terre peinte et les plats de cuivre, les cubes de neige, les monceaux de raisin : mais ces clarte´s rouges se perdaient progressivement, a` cause de la hauteur du plafond, et des points lumineux brillaient, comme des e´toiles, la nuit, a` travers des branches. (131) [It had three aisles, like a basilica, separated by columns of sandalwood, with bronze capitals covered with sculptures. Two open-work galleries rested on them; and a third one, in golden filigree, curved outward at the back, facing an enormous open arch at the other end. Candelabra, burning on tables aligned the entire length of the nave, were like flaming bushes, between cups of painted earthenware, the copper plates, the cubes of snow, the piles of grapes: but their red glow faded gradually, because of the height of the ceiling, and luminous points shone like stars, at night, through branches.]

True to his painterly manner, Flaubert begins by defining the overall composition, the organization of the vast hall with its spatial relationships (‘‘vis-a`-vis d’un cintre e´norme’’) and planes (‘‘au fond’’), before adding the ornate, nearly byzantine details (‘‘chapiteaux de bronze couverts de sculptures . . . en filigrane d’or’’). In the second paragraph, he notes lines (‘‘aligne´es’’) and shapes (‘‘cubes’’), before adding effects of color (‘‘ces clarte´s rouges se perdaient’’) and light (‘‘des points lumineux brillaient’’). Although the scene is sumptuously secular and artificial, Flaubert’s similes link it to nature on the one hand (‘‘comme des e´toiles, la nuit, a` travers des branches’’) and religion on the other (‘‘comme une basilique’’). Indeed talk soon turns to religion as the visual description yields to verbal exchange among those in attendance, especially concerning one Jesus of Nazareth, who is reported to be performing miracles and whom some claim to be the Messiah. When one of the speakers objects, on the grounds that the prophesies specify that Elijah must precede the Messiah, another counters that he has come and, when asked his name, cries out that of Iaokanann, whose name is also echoed, from time to time, by the crowd outside of the palace, thereby disturbing the feast.

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Thus, although Iaokanann’s voice is absent, his name is not (see Scrogham 1998), and its vocalization in conjunction with Elijah has an immense impact on Herod: ‘‘Antipas se renversa comme frappe´ en pleine poitrine’’ (134) [Antipas fell backward as if struck full in the chest]. Finally, the talk is interrupted, first by the appearance of Herodias, then by that of her look-alike daughter Salome, who begins her dance. Not surprisingly, Flaubert describes the same body parts mentioned earlier to emphasize her sensuality and to solder the structural links that complete his network of associations: ‘‘Ses bras arrondis appelaient quelqu’un, qui s’enfuyait toujours . . . Les paupie`res entre-closes, elle se tordait la taille, balanc¸ait son ventre avec des ondulations de houle, faisait trembler ses deux seins, et son visage demeurait immobile, et ses pieds n’arreˆtaient pas’’ (138) [Her rounded arms were calling someone, who kept fleeing . . . With half-closed eyes she twisted her body, undulating her belly with a heavy swell, making her two breasts tremble, and her face remained still, and her feet never stopped moving]. If focusing on the most sensual aspects of her body is not enough to convince the reader of her symbolic role, the narrator adds an explicit assessment (‘‘Puis ce fut l’emportement de l’amour qui veut eˆtre assouvi’’) [Then it was the frenzy of love that wants satisfaction] and measures her effect on the male spectators (‘‘enflammaient les hommes’’) [enflamed the men], especially on Herod (‘‘d’une voix que des sanglots de volupte´ entrecoupaient, il lui disait:—‘Viens ! Viens !’ ’’ 139) [with a voice broken by sobs of passion, he told her: —Come! Come!]. Salome is so thoroughly reduced to her body, and thus her sensuality, that she can barely speak: ‘‘en ze´zayant un peu, prononc¸a ces mots, d’un air enfantin: —‘Je veux que tu me donnes dans un plat, la teˆte . . .’ Elle avait oublie´ le nom, mais reprit en souriant: ‘La teˆte d’Iaokanann.’ ’’ (140) [lisping a bit, she pronounced her words in a childish manner: ‘—I want you to give me on a platter the head . . .’ She had forgotten the name, but began again smiling: ‘The head of Iaokanann’] Salome’s hesitation not only points to her verbal inarticulateness, it enables Flaubert to repeat the word ‘‘la teˆte,’’ which becomes the embodiment of the disembodied Iaokanann (see also Robertson 1982/ 1989, 112). Throughout the scene, Flaubert again uses a synecdochal structure where the part, the head, appears without reference to the person to whom it belongs—‘‘La teˆte entra . . .’’ [The head entered] ‘‘. . . la teˆte fut rapporte´e’’ (141) [the head was carried away]. Indeed the head belongs to the ages, and, severed from Iaokanann’s body, it signifies, just as the voice had previously, his spirituality. Herod’s reaction to the severed head (‘‘des pleurs coule`rent sur les joues du Te´traque’’) [tears flowed down the Tetarch’s cheeks] and the

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scene’s final image (‘‘il ne resta plus dans la salle qu’Antipas, les mains contre ses tempes, et regardant toujours la teˆte coupe´e,’’ 141) [only Antipas remained in the room, his hands on his temples, still staring at the severed head], a metaphysical standoff that reminds us that despite himself, he had loved Iaokanann, a remnant and reminder, perhaps, of his own long-lost spirituality, just as Salome is of his long-dormant sensuality. Indeed, the encounter of Salome and Iaokanann in the final scene raises both of these subterranean aspects of Herod’s psyche—sensuality and spirituality—to the surface, thus ‘‘dramatizing’’ a hidden conflict that remains unresolved: he neither obtains Salome nor retains Iaokanann (see Berg and Martin 1997, 25; Ginsburg 1986, 177). And, if Iaokanann’s voice from the depths of the abyss of Herod’s subconscious symbolizes the submerged spiritual side of his psyche, Salome’s body can be seen as symbolizing Herod’s pool of repressed libidinal energy, released by her dance and countering the last vestige of his spirituality, represented by Iaokanann. As Aime´e Israel-Pelletier contends, ‘‘In the contest between images and words, the visual triumphs: Salome´’s dance determines Herod’s choice and assures Iaokanann’s silence’’ (1991, 97); her words are echoed by Tooke’s conclusion that ‘‘in He´rodias, image, in the form of Salome, kills the Word, in the form of Iaokanann,’’ although she goes on to note that ‘‘images are the end of writing, though in He´rodias the Word does after all survive, as John’s head is carried to Jesus’’ (2000, 231). Indeed, for the reader, Iaokanann’s presence persists through his voice, his message, the significance of which is revealed in the final paragraphs of the tale, as the three believers in the Messiah carry to Galilee the dead saint’s head and ponder the cryptic utterance (again formulated in spatial terms) that had mystified Herod at the tale’s outset: ‘‘If He is to wax, then I must wane.’’ In effect, for Christ to rise, Iaokanann must die; for spiritual salvation to happen, sacrifice must occur, a lesson that sheds light on all three of the tales, as well as on the concept of creativity for Flaubert, for whom the author must suffer if the text is to take form. Ultimately, as Israel-Pelletier convincingly concludes, Iaokanann’s voice is related to Flaubert’s writing, itself often voiced in his gueuloir, a private yelling room in which he tested his texts (1991, 104; see also Brombert 1966, 257). In the end, it is the verbal message that prevails over the visual description: for Flaubert, the word is the Word.

MOREAU: SALOME´ At the official Salon of 1876, Gustave Moreau exhibited two works, which together form a narrative of Salome’s dance and its aftermath.

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The painting, Salome´ dansant devant He´rode (Salome Dancing Before Herod), shows the beginning of her dance; the watercolor, L’apparition, depicts the severed head of Saint-John floating above her. Flaubert had seen both of the paintings at the Salon before composing his ‘‘He´rodias,’’ and, according to Biasi, while Flaubert retained a sharp visual memory of them, he does not seem to have attempted to imitate them or incorporate them into his tale (1986, 37; see also Tooke 2000, 46). Tracing the extent of the two artists’ interaction with the legend and with each other is one of our goals, as is assessing the addition of a third perspective, that of the novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans, who has Des Esseintes, the main character of his novel A Rebours, interpret the paintings, which hang prominently in his fictional household. In the painting Salome´ (see color insert) Moreau uses the architecture, not of Herod’s banquet hall, but of a quasi-religious structure, to create a highly ordered composition, a highly organized space. Two columns rise in the vertically blocked canvas toward a central arch, with two half-arches to each side. The composition is thus closed, symmetrical, and centered, with the figure of Herod perfectly positioned on an altar between the two columns, doubled by an antique statue centered directly above him. The architecture is of ambiguous origin, suggesting at once a palace, a temple, and a basilica; as Julius Kaplan conjectures, then concludes: ‘‘The architectural setting of Salome´ includes Persian arches and a Moorish decorative motif directly above each main column. Yet the architectural setting is also reminiscent of the fourth style of Roman wall painting that Moreau may have see when he visited Pompeii. . . . Salome´ is not an archeological reconstruction but an eclectic combination of details from many different sources’’ (1982, 63–64; see also Cooke 2003, 88 and Contenson 1998, 29). This composite edifice is highly ornate, etched in gold and encrusted with precious stones, as if crafted by a master jeweler. As Kaplan puts it: ‘‘A rich play of light reinforces the evocative effect of the scene. Optical rendering and gleaming color create a sense of opulence within the firm linear structure of the painting’’ (1982, 58). The main figures are aligned from left to right in an order that reflects the story line: Herodias, the instigator, to the far left with the musician at her feet, her dutiful daughter Salome between her and her target Herod, with the executioner who will perform the requested deed to the right. The statuesque forms are garbed in the primary colors of red and blue and those of the precious metals, silver and gold. Peter Cooke (2003) notes how the use of luxurious colors contributes to the enigmatic quality of Moreau’s painting in general: ‘‘In effect, the unheard of luxuriousness of coloring used by Moreau in some of his Salon paintings operates as a type of chromatic veil, which, like the profusion of

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decorative and emblematic details, reinforces the enigmatic, impenetrable character of the symbolic content. Everything thus conspires, in the most elaborate works of Gustave Moreau, to disconcert the spectator’’ (74). The metaphor of the veil as a mask for meaning seems particularly apt for a painting involving Salome. Cooke later notes the equally disturbing effects of texture in the painting: ‘‘But the construction of Salome´ is as remarkable as its coloring. . . . In effect, the lively, nervous manipulation of the pictorial matter, which uses an extraordinary and indescribable play of glaze and thickening agents, is without parallel in the history of painting’’ (104). The light itself is ambiguous in origin, coming both from the background, where it pierces the distant apertures of the edifice, and from the front, where it highlights the main players of the drama, especially Salome, whose very pose seems precarious, as if suspended on her toes (see Kaplan 1982, 57). The seductive dancer, clad not in period garb but in a costume resembling a reliquary (see Cooke 2003, 86), holds aloft a lotus flower, perhaps symbolizing her voluptuousness, while to the extreme right, a reclining panther seems to suggest her cruel lust. At first look, the painting might seem classical in style, due to the subject matter borrowed from antiquity and the rigorous symmetry of the composition, but the background is too imposing, too detailed, and the detail too ornate. In a painting like David’s Serment, the architecture structures the composition, then fades into the background to highlight the drama, like the neutral settings prescribed by French classical theater that served as its model. David also exhibits a reduction in detail and figures that is more dramatic than narrative, that moves toward simplicity and suggestivity rather than complexity and comprehensiveness (chapter 1). At second look, the painting might appear romantic, given its exotic setting, its vivid colors, the movement inherent in the dance, and the emotional (not rational) impact of the story. But, in fact, there is no movement; the figures appear like frozen statues, their motion as blunted as their emotion, and the colors, like the light, are artificial rather than natural or passionate. At the same time, the setting is too exotic and the subject too worldly, especially in the absence of Saint John, to be spiritual, Salome too bejeweled and frozen to be sensuous, and Herod too emotionless to be of psychological interest. With the painting’s inclusion of the strange statue above Herod, the lotus flower in Salome’s hand, and the panther to the right, perhaps the best description of the style is ‘‘symbolic’’ (see Genova 2002, 179–90). As Julius Kaplan elaborates:

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Numerous symbols throughout the painting reinforce the idea of Salome as an enchantress. There is a panther, seated at the lower right, thought to lure men and beasts with the sweetness of its breath. Another alluring, feminine and deadly figure is the Sphinx. Drawn on the panel of the pedestal at the far left, she is shown with her male victim in her clutches. Above Herod is an antique statue of Diana of Ephesus flanked by images of the Persian god Mithras, both fertility symbols echoing the idea of Salome’s sexual power. So, too, does the ornamental column, a recurrent decorative element in painting of the 1860s with phallic overtones usually associated with a victorious male figure. This symbol of male sexual energy is now a minor decorative detail in a scene devoted to a female figure. With it Moreau exemplifies an essential feature of the fatal woman theme as it was used in the nineteenth century: the female’s assumption of the sexual dominance traditionally associated with the male. (1972, 34; for the femme fatale, see also De´caudin 1967, 111; Eigeldinger 1987, 208; Holten 1961, 72; Mathieu 1984/ 1985, 72; Meltzer 1987, 18; and Pierre 1972, 102).

As Moreau himself had stated: ‘‘tout l’homme peut s’exprimer dans cette langue du symbole, du mythe et du signe’’ (see 2002, 258) [all humanity can be expressed in this language of symbol, myth, and sign]. The meaning of such symbols can, nonetheless, remain elusive, as Cooke explains: ‘‘Where his contemporaries expected the unequivocal meaning of the allegory they found themselves confronted by the polysemy of the symbol’’ (2003, 120). The nature of the symbols themselves, the ideological position of the painter, remain ambiguous, inaccessible, perhaps to all but to the most erudite interpreters, like Kaplan or like Des Esseintes, whose reading we shall look at later and who, like the spectator, attempts to ‘‘unveil’’ the meaning of this semantic striptease, described by Cooke as this ‘‘unique painting where the semantic richness of the plastic sign veils the semantic sign, which in turn envelops itself in the mystery of oriental symbolism’’ (2003, 122). L’apparition (see color insert) has most of the same characteristics mentioned above, the vivid primary colors being especially striking in a watercolor, a medium where paler tones are the rule. As Marc Eigeldinger concludes: ‘‘In The Apparition, Moreau managed to take exceptional advantage of the resources of the watercolor by the richness and resplendence of the colors, the poetry of the arabesque, the invention of immobilized movement, and the luminosity of the forms seemingly seen as though through the transparency of a stained-glass window’’ (1987, 209–10). The architecture is equally ornate and dubious in origin, but it has changed, looking more like that of the Alhambra in Grenada or, as Mathieu contends, a ‘‘mosque in which one can make out the form of a Buddha with a crucifix in his halo’’ (1985, 70). Since keeping the same

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setting would have enhanced the narrative value of exhibiting the two images together, we must assume that the desire to destabilize the setting in order to remove it from reality was more in tune with Moreau’s intent. Indeed, chronology is also broken by the ambiguity of the moment chosen: Salome seems to be still dancing and sees Saint-John’s head as if it were still alive, yet the fact that it is severed seems to indicate that the deed is already done, as is suggested by the stained sword of the executioner and the blood on the floor. This ambiguity can be alleviated, if not resolved by a psychological or supernatural interpretation, whereby the head becomes an ‘‘inner vision’’ on Salome’s part, and indeed, none of the other figures—Herodias and Herod to the far left, the seated musician toward the center and the executioner to the right— appear to perceive the apparition. But is the vision an anticipated result of the dance, a remorseful reminder of the deed done (Selz 1979, 53; Holten 1961, 48), simple terror (Mathieu 1985, 70; Holten 1961, 49), or a mysterious attraction? Salome’s facial expression and body gesture seem to suggest the latter. Of greatest import is the thematic and symbolic crystallization of the two main figures in this work, brought on by the change in composition and lighting that foregrounds them, while pushing Herod aside. Now half nude, reaching toward Saint-John’s image, and grasping not the lotus but her own breast, Salome herself replaces the lotus as the symbol of sensuality and voluptuousness. Gone also is the panther, the severed head quite sufficient to suggest Salome’s seductive cruelty, as Holton notes: ‘‘the cruelty and terror of the woman are expressed with great intensity’’ (1960, 21). Saint-John, surrounded by a halo and emanating a light that illuminates even Salome, becomes the symbol of spirituality, ‘‘the victory of the spirit over the flesh, of poetry over death’’ (Pierre 1972, 102). It is interesting to note that Flaubert’s manuscripts indicate that he had intended to give his Ioakanann a similar luminosity: ‘‘Soleil levant mythe—La teˆte se confond avec le soleil dont elle masque le disque . . . des rayons ont l’air d’en partir’’ (see Debray-Genette 1974, 340) [Sun rising myth—The head blends with the sun whose disk it masks . . . rays seem to emerge from it]. He abandoned this plan, convinced no doubt that he had already conferred sufficient spiritual value on Ioakanann by his repeated use of the future saint’s voice, a verbal rather than visual symbol, and yet the head’s departure toward Galilee is accompanied by the rising sun (see Issacharoff 1976, 69). L’apparition achieves what Salome´ did not, an opposition or antithesis that enables Moreau, much like Flaubert, to create an ideological conflict between sensuality and spirituality. The appearance of Saint-

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John’s floating head, however, makes Moreau’s work more visionary and symbolic, while Flaubert’s remains more visual and thematic. Both artists retain, however, that quality of resistence to resolution that we have noted in so many nineteenth-century writers and painters. As Kaplan concludes: ‘‘In Salome´ these two different techniques [light and line] co-exist, creating a sense of oscillation between elements which are precise and those which are amorphous. Indeed, this oscillation, which fights the stasis of the figures, is the visual basis for the evocative, mysterious power of the painting’’ (1974, 35). Cooke echoes these words in concluding of Moreau’s art in general: ‘‘he thus creates true aesthetic ambiguity, which is clearly visible, for example, in the double function assigned to the details, oscillating for him between emblem and ornament, between sign and pictorial matter’’ (2003, 218–19).

HUYSMANS: DES ESSEINTES In 1884 Joris-Karl Huysmans, initially a disciple of Emile Zola and later a convert to Catholicism, published a transitional novel, A rebours [Upside Down or Against Nature]. In it, he describes a recluse and esthete, Des Esseintes, an aristocrat who rejects his religious upbringing and position in society for a life of debauchery before, world-weary, retiring to a country home, which he reconfigures as an artificial world in which he encloses himself, shut off at once from society, reality, and nature. He moves about by night, in rooms painted in artificial colors, decorated with luxurious fabrics, and appointed with rare objects. His dining room replicates the cabin of a yacht, with a porthole looking into an aquarium with colored water, fake plants, and mechanical fish, which serve to simulate and stimulate imaginary voyages. He has had his bedroom decorated with expensive fabrics to look like a monk’s cell, a fitting site for this contemplative yet luxury-loving hermit. For Des Esseintes, ‘‘la nature a fait son temps . . . il s’agit de la remplacer, autant que faire se pourra, par l’artifice’’ (80) [nature has had its moment . . . it’s a matter of replacing it, as far as possible, by artifice]. Not content, however, with merely rejecting reality, Des Esseintes attempts to degrade it and reverse it (hence the novel’s title) by imposing an artificial order on it. Thus, instead of a precious stone in the form of a turtle, he has the shell of his real tortoise gilded and incrusted with precious stones; instead of composing music directly, he constructs a ‘‘liqueur organ’’ and produces sounds through different tastes, a reflection of Baudelaire’s principle of synesthesia, the mixing of senses; similarly, he analyzes perfumes as if they were texts: ‘‘Des Esseintes e´tudiait, analysait l’aˆme de ces fluides, faisait l’exe´ge`se de ces textes’’

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(155) [Des Esseintes would study, would analyze the essence of these fluids, would do an exegesis of these texts]; instead of building a collection of artificial flowers, he purchases real flowers that look artificial; instead of making art his religion, he degrades religious objects by combining them with artistic ones, like the three Baudelaire poems that replace a missal on an altarpiece; he constantly rejects religion through sacrilege and women by domination and deformation: his favorite mistress had been a ventriloquist whom he had recite the dialogue between the Chimera and the Sphinx from Flaubert’s La tentation de SaintAntoine, while making love. Des Esseintes’ conscious program to replace and reverse nature through artifice, however, is consistently undermined throughout the novel by nature and even Des Esseintes’ own repressed natural side. Thus, the turtle dies; Des Esseintes’ liqueur symphony provokes an involuntary and unpleasant memory of a visit to the dentist, where his natural needs dominate his artificial plans; his experiments with perfumes lead to suffocation, hallucination, and fainting; a day of collecting artificial-looking flowers is followed by the nightmare of a seductive woman who turns into a threatening flower; his collection of religious chants produces memories of his education in a monastery school and a prayer in the final paragraph: ‘‘Seigneur, prenez pitie´ du chre´tien qui doute’’(241) [Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts]; his disdain for women turns to abstinence and eventually impotence; finally, his health threatened by his artificial life-style, Des Esseintes must follow his doctor’s advice to return to reality. In short, in A rebours, Huysmans depicts a man whose conscious determination to undo nature is at all turns thwarted by nature and his own unconscious, which manifests his natural side, including sexual urges and spiritual needs rejected on a conscious level. It is this clear conflict between the artificial and the natural, the conscious and the unconscious, that structures the novel, among the first perhaps to represent the unconscious so clearly as an organized entity at odds with conscious thought and capable of bringing repressed material to the surface through involuntary memories and dreams. This ‘‘travail souterrain de l’aˆme’’ (58) [subterranean work of the soul], as Huysmans put it in the famous ‘‘preface’’ to the novel, written twenty years after its initial publication, is manifest throughout the novel, as in Des Esseintes’ description of Baudelaire: ‘‘il e´tait descendu jusqu’au fond de l’ine´puisible mine, s’e´tait engage´ a` travers des galeries abandonne´s ou inconnues, avait abouti a` ces districts de l’aˆme ou` se ramifient les ve´ge´tations monstrueuses de la pense´e’’ (177) [he had descended to the depths of the inexhaustible mine, had entered into abandoned or unknown galleries, had ended up in these regions of the soul where the monstrous vegeta-

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tions of the mind ramify]; he even detects the vestiges of ‘‘filial caresses’’ and a feeling of ‘‘vague incest’’ (178) that prefigure Freud’s formulation of the unconscious desires that make up the Oedipus complex with its attendant Incest Motiv, also a recurrent theme in Flaubert’s work (see Berg, Grimaud, and Moskos 1982). In effect, Des Esseintes rejects both terms of the arch romantic antithesis opposing society and nature (see chapter 2), systematically replacing both with artifice; in dialectical fashion, Huysmans then constructs a further opposition between his character’s conscious program of artifice and a set of ‘‘unconscious’’ desires, interdictions, and fears that ultimately drive him toward religion . . . a complicated configuration that we can attempt to represent graphically as follows: Society

Nature Artifice (Conscious)

Religion (Unconscious)

In his fictional art gallery, Des Esseintes possesses both of Moreau’s paintings, Salome´ and L’apparition, his favorite works of visual art. His lengthy discussion of them, in the form of an interior monologue in chapter 5, provides us with some rare insights into the paintings, into the art of Huysmans himself, and into the image of the woman in fin de sie`cle art. Des Esseintes is impressed most by Moreau’s ability to create ‘‘un reˆve ancien, dans une corruption antique, loin de nos moeurs, loin de nos jours’’ (104) [an ancient dream, with antique corruption, far from our mores, far from our times]. In short, Moreau reflects Des Esseintes’ own desire to escape from reality and transform it into ‘‘un monde inconnu’’ (104) [an unknown world] dominated, of course, by the artificial settings, stones, colors, and lights that strike him in both works. Indeed, Des Esseintes’ interpretation of the paintings, erudite and suggestive, is dominated by a projection of his own love of artifice, but at the same time, it reveals hidden desires, repressed by the very vision he seeks to impose on reality. In Salome´, for example, Des Esseintes sees the setting as a ‘‘tabernacle’’ with Herod’s throne ‘‘pareil au maıˆtre-autel d’une cathe´drale’’ (104) [like the high altar of a cathedral], which adds a Roman Catholic dimension barely discernible in the painting itself, but reflecting Des Esseintes’ own project of reversing religion, to which, nonetheless he remains attracted (a phenomenon that Huysmans later analyses as a sign of his own budding return to religion). Des Esseintes’ desire to reverse the senses by practicing synesthesia is also evident in the odors and tactile feelings he adds to the painting’s

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visual setting, while referring to it again as a church and perverting it: ‘‘Dans l’odeur perverse des parfums, dans l’atmosphe`re surchauffe´e de cette e´glise . . .’’(105) [In the perverse scent of the perfumes, in the overheated atmosphere of this church]. He sees (or wants to see) in the Salome figure, ‘‘les charmes de´lirants . . . les actives de´pravations . . . elle devenait, en quelque sorte, la de´ite´ symbolique de l’indestructible Luxure, la de´esse de l’immortelle hyste´rie, la Beaute´ maudite’’ (106) [delirious charms . . . willful depravities . . . she became in a way the symbolic deity of indestructible Lust, the goddess of undying hysteria, the accursed Beauty], and in both paintings he sets the static seductress in motion through active verbs (see Cooke 2003, 134; Meltzer 1987, 20). One might question, however, whether these traits are present in the ornate and rather bland figure in Moreau’s painting, reminding ourselves that Des Esseintes himself has noted that she is ‘‘accessible seulement aux cervelles e´branle´es’’ (106) [accessible only to deranged minds]. The main point here is that Des Esseintes’ interpretation reveals as much about his own ‘‘cervelle e´branle´e’’ as it does about the figure of Salome. The erudite Des Esseintes is able to suggest several symbolic interpretations from different civilizations of the lotus held aloft by Salome: ‘‘cette signification phallique que lui preˆtent les cultes primordiaux’’ [this phallic meaning lent to her by primordial religions]; or ‘‘l’alle´gorie de la fe´condite´, le mythe hindou de la vie’’ [the allegory of fertility, the Hindu myth of life]; or the Christian Eve,‘‘la femme mortelle, au Vase souille´, cause de tous les pe´che´s et de tous les crimes’’ [the mortal woman, the sullied Vessel, cause of all sins and all crimes]; or the Egyptian embalming ceremony, where the priests gather about the female cadaver and ‘‘lui inse`rent, dans les parties sexuelles, pour les purifier, les chastes pe´tales de la divine fleur’’ (all 107) [insert into her sexual parts, to purify them, the chaste petals of the divine flower]. Not only does he not decide among these symbolic interpretations, however, all seem rather to reflect his own obsessions, including his professed hatred for, yet fascination with, women and sexuality. Des Esseintes prefers what he sees as the thematic and symbolic clarity of L’apparition to the ambiguity of Salome´. He describes the severed head in terms of its luminosity—‘‘une aure´ole s’irradiant en traits de lumie`re’’ (108) [a halo radiating strokes of light]—and notes that it imparts light to the entire scene: Sous les traits ardents e´chappe´s de la teˆte du Pre´curseur, toutes les facettes des joailleries s’embrasent ; les pierres s’animent, dessinent le corps de la femme en traits incandescents ; la piquent au cou, aux jambes, aux bras, de points de feu, vermeils comme des charbons, violets comme des jets de gaz, bleus comme des flammes d’alcool, blancs comme des rayons d’astre. (108)

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[Under the burning rays escaping from the Precursor’s head, all the facets of the jewels catch fire; the stones take life, outline the woman’s body in incandescent lines; prick her neck, her legs, her arms with points of fire, vermillion like coals, violet like gas flames, blue like alcohol flames, white like star light.]

We note, however, that there is no mention of spirituality, even in the similes generated by the colors, which again capture Des Esseintes’ fascination for the plastic and artificial appearance of the light (‘‘jets de gaz . . . flammes d’alcool’’) more than for any spiritual value Moreau may have wanted to give it and which the spectator readily reads in it. And, although Ge´rard Peylet is correct in noting a shift in power from one painting to the other—‘‘In The Apparition, it’s John the Baptist whose dead gaze petrifies the frightened femme fatale’’ (2000, 233)— Huysmans’s description focuses on Salome’s reaction rather than on the saint’s appearance. As Franc¸oise Meltzer demonstrates, Huysmans’s ‘‘hypotactic style, then, which emphasizes the sensual and the visual, makes Salome the focus of attention even when (as in the second painting described) the head of the Baptist ‘glows eerily,’ suspended in the air—all of this certainly amounts to the apparent diametric opposite of the equivalent biblical passages’’ (1987, 41–42). Des Esseintes remains far more fascinated with the figure of Salome, ‘‘plus troublante que la Salome´ du tableau a` l’huile . . . plus raffine´e et plus sauvage, plus exe´crable et plus exquise; elle re´veillait plus e´nergiquement les sens en le´thargie de l’homme’’(109) [more disturbing than the Salome from the oil painting . . . more refined yet more savage, more execrable yet more exquisite; she reawakened more energetically the dormant senses of the male]. The final point reveals the real source of Des Esseintes’ attraction for Salome, her ability to rekindle dormant sexual urges, and, once again, Des Esseintes speaks more about himself than about Herod, whom, as we have noted, has been removed to the periphery of L’apparition. Indeed, Huysmans makes the parallel between Herod and Des Esseintes crystal clear: ‘‘Tel que le vieux roi, Des Esseintes demeurait e´crase´, ane´anti, pris de vertige, devant cette danseuse’’ (109) [Like the old king, Des Esseintes remained overwhelmed, drained, dizzy before this dancing girl]. As Jeffrey Meyers points out in his analysis of Huysmans’s rendering of L’apparition: ‘‘There is a distinct and significant contrast between the studied, almost calm moment portrayed by Moreau—Salome is gracefully poised on her toes with her jeweled brodace extending elegantly behind her—and the excitement of Huysmans’ frenzied description of morbidity and sadism’’ (1975, 92). In truth, the painting of Salome and Saint-John by Moreau serves in actuality as a portrait of Des Esseintes

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by Huysmans. He masterfully uses the painting, like the turtle, the organ, and the flowers, to develop the character of Des Esseintes, the hermit’s conscious project along with his unconscious fears and desires. We must concur with Meyers’s assessment as well as with Cooke’s conclusion that ‘‘Embedded in the fictional network of the novel and activated by a hallucinatory ekphrasis, Moreau’s two works are the pretext for an erotic, decadent scene and a symbolic emblem of the hero’s sexual obsessions’’ (2003, 133). In A rebours, Huysmans has depicted the story of Salome and Saint John, yet several times removed by the layers imposed successively by the interpretation of Moreau, the reading of the painting by Des Esseintes, and the representation of both in the novel itself. The story itself fades before the ‘‘veils’’ of art and artifice through which it appears to the reader. The presentations of Flaubert and Moreau are three times more direct than that of Huysmans, since the former are deformed only by the hand of the novelist or the painter, not by those of novelist, character, and painter as in Huysmans’s rendering. In his privileging of art and artifice at the expense of reality, Huysmans must be characterized, at least in this particular novel, as a decadent rather than a spiritual or symbolic artist (see Ridge 1968, 61). Indeed, in addition to the ideological conflict between sensuality and spirituality shared by all three artists, and in each case unresolved, each artist implies an additional ideological dimension, an esthetic one, by his unique handling of the legend. Huysmans’s decadence leads to an artificial artistic paradise and Moreau’s symbolism to a supernatural realm, while Flaubert’s thematic conflict, more grounded in reality, might better be termed aesthetic realism. In all three cases, the relationship between image and word, like that between sensuality and spirituality for their characters, can best be described in terms of tension, a notion often linked, like ambivalence, to ‘‘modernity’’ (see Harvey 1990, 10– 11). And, much like the figure of Atala (see chapter 2), the figure of Salome, ‘‘uncontainable by the frame of any moral or ideological system’’ (Meltzer 1987, 15), embodies the essential ambivalence of the works themselves, which oscillate perpetually between the opposing poles of sensuality and spirituality.

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7 From Imagery to Ideology through Irony: Zola and Manet IN ADDITION TO THE MUTUAL TASTE FOR MODERNITY AND MOVEMENT that led Emile Zola to defend Edouard Manet in the press, then the painter to reciprocate with his famous portrait of the writer, exhibited at the Salon of 1868, Zola and Manet display curiously common methods of constructing art and crafting meaning. Examining the various stages from verbal notes or visual sketches, to outlines or compositional drawings, then to finished passages or paintings in Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris and Manet’s Rue Mosnier series provides a unique vantage point from which to witness the creative process by which images are fashioned in each medium, then juxtaposed ironically to produce ideological statements of a remarkably similar nature.

LE VENTRE DE PARIS: MARKET VALUES Le Ventre de Paris (1873), the third novel in Zola’s twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle, was the first in which the naturalist author explored a specific institution of modern industrial society: the vast central market of Paris, its ‘‘ventre,’’ the Halles. As part of Napoleon III’s revamping of Paris, the architect Baltard began in 1851 to replace the stone structures of Le Marche´ des Innocents with the modern steel and glass pavilions of the Halles. In order to describe fully its function and appearance, Zola, in keeping with the tenets of his experimental method, combined two types of research: background documentation and direct observation (see Berg and Martin 1992, 91–96). Zola’s documentation of the Halles consisted primarily of various municipal ordinances regulating police, porters, and other market workers and his extensive notes from books, including Flaubert’s friend Maxime du Camp’s Paris: Ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans la seconde moitie´ du XIXe sie`cle (1870). This type of background information pro166

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vided Zola with an informed understanding of the inner workings of the institution and its place within the overall municipal system. Zola’s direct on-the-spot observations gave him a sense of the look, smell, taste, and feel of the Halles and enabled him to bring the market alive in the novel for character and reader. The novelist visited the Halles on numerous occasions and took copious notes that led eventually to the magnificent series of ‘‘paintings’’ of the marketplace that appear throughout the novel, especially in the opening chapter. Zola went so far as to spend an entire night (probably in October 1872) observing the activity of the market, much of which was concentrated in the hours just before and after dawn. Transcribed here is one segment of the notes he took that night, which already takes the form of a pre-text, to which the novelist even gave a title—‘‘Les Halles la nuit’’ [The Halles at night]—and a subtitle—‘‘Les le´gumes’’ [Vegetables]—and which he divided into twenty-three paragraphs, each equivalent to a visual sketch of a particular aspect of the Halles. We shall then look at related parts of Zola’s outline for the novel’s first chapter and a paragraph from the finished text derived from the notes and the outline in order to see how he manipulated the visual data to produce meaning.

THE NOTES Zola scribbled down his impressions of activities, sights, and sounds before transcribing them later into more legible, though still sketchy form, as in the following paragraph: Peu a` peu cependant le jour grandit. Au fond de la rue Rambuteau, dans le ciel, des de´chirures blanches. Puis tout devient d’un gris tendre. Les gaz paˆlissent, Saint-Eustache est brun ; Saint-Eustache, de biais, avec ses rosaces, le fouillis de ses arcs-boutants, son clocheton supe´rieur, ses larges feneˆtres cintre´s, sa chapelle du fond. La rue Montorgueil s’enfonce noire ; la rue Montmartre est en pan coupe´. On dirait que les le´gumes sont une vaste aquarelle lave´e ; tre`s tendres, tre`s de´licats de ton. Le vert glauque des choux, dont les feuilles semblent en bronze ; les choux rouges, bronze violace´. Puis sur tous les le´gumes. Le jour grandit sur la foule. On de´balle toujours, on charge les hottes. Le jour sur les blouses bleues, les corsages noirs, les bonnets blancs. Les Halles sont bleu sombre. Les hommes en limousines, les hommes avec des sacs sur l’e´paule (porteurs), les hommes avec des hottes. Les choux volent. Des fruitiers et des revendeuses et des marchands des quatre saisons ache`tent. Les voitures arrivent toujours. Des hommes et des femmes, dans les voitures, au-dessus des teˆtes, qui de´chargent. Le tout dans cette claire lumie`re diffuse qui de´colore. (BN-NAF, ms. 10,338, fols. 173–74)

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[Little by little meanwhile daylight grows. At the end of the rue Rambuteau, in the sky, white rips. Then everything takes on a tender gray. The gas lamps grow pale, Saint-Eustache is brown; Saint-Eustache, on a bias, with its rose windows, the jumble of its flying buttresses, its upper pinnacle, its large, vaulted windows, its chapel in the back. The rue Montorgeuil descends, black; the rue Montmartre is cut off. One might say that the vegetables are a vast, washed watercolor; very tender, very delicate in tone. The dull aquamarine green of the cabbages, whose leaves seem bronzed; the red cabbages, violet bronze. Then on all the vegetables. Daylight grows on the crowd. They are still unpacking, loading bundles. Daylight falls on blue collars, black blouses, white bonnets. The Halles are dark blue. Men in cloaks, men with sacks on their shoulders (porters), men with baskets. Cabbages are flying. Fruit sellers and secondhand dealers and street merchants are buying. Wagons are still arriving. Men and women, in the wagons, above the heads, which are unloading. Everything in that clear, diffuse morning light that discolors.]

Since they are pre-textual, the notes provide interesting verbal evidence of Zola’s visual tendencies, which bear remarkable resemblance to those of the ‘‘new painters,’’ both Manet and his immediate successors, the impressionists. The choice of subject—a modern, urban economic institution, peopled by the lower classes, depicted as anonymous members of a crowd, with focus on everyday, mundane yet life-sustaining activities, rendered out-of-doors, with numerous sources of movement, from the growing crowd to the rising piles of vegetables—is already typical of impressionist innovations and interests. Indeed, having vegetables as a literary subject would have been nearly unheard of before Zola’s time, but some painters—Manet and Monet among them—were beginning to show everyday foods, such as stalks of asparagus or slabs of raw meat, not in the harmonious context of traditional still life but in social settings being readied for consumption, rather than display. As with numerous neighboring paragraphs, Zola begins this sketch by noting the quality of light produced by the rising sun (‘‘Peu a` peu cependant le jour grandit’’), whose progression then dominates the temporal composition of the entire paragraph (‘‘Le jour grandit . . . Le jour sur . . .’’). Here, as with the entire block of notes, we witness in slow motion the interdependence of space and time, as the sun rising in the sky creates a temporal progression, which in turn leads to the perception of accumulating objects that come to clutter the initially empty space. Zola next proceeds to block out the spatial dimensions of the canvas with locative expressions like ‘‘au fond de’’ and ‘‘dans’’ before filling it with objects, the first of which, the Saint-Eustache cathedral, is pre-

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sented from an oblique angle of vision (‘‘Saint-Eustache de biais’’), which leads to cropped perspectives (‘‘la rue Montmartre en pan coupe´’’) and a sense of depth, even recession (‘‘la rue Montorgeuil s’enfonce’’), rendered through the use of an active verb attributed to an inanimate object (the street). Although Zola does not indicate his precise viewpoint, it is strictly implied by the grid of reference points provided by the buildings and streets, since the only position that would enable him to simultaneously see Saint-Eustache, la rue Montorgeuil, and the rue Montmartre in cross-section is the pointe Saint-Eustache on the rue Rambuteau. The hypothetically straight lines and geometrical forms of the market and the church yield to the visual confusion of a momentary impression (‘‘le fouillis de ses arcs boutants’’), dominated completely by powerful effects of light and color, the principal characteristics of impressionism. Zola notes both violent contrasts of tonality (‘‘dans le ciel des de´chirures blanches’’), typical of Manet, and a general effect of lighting (‘‘Le tout dans cette claire lumie`re diffuse du matin qui de´colore’’), more characteristic of Monet. Here perception of the entire scene is modified by the light, which spreads (‘‘diffuse’’) and lightens the tonality of the hues (‘‘de´colore’’), again underscored by the active verb. As in impressionist painting, individuals are reduced to salient features, emphasized by their color (‘‘les blouses bleues, les corsages noirs, les bonnets blancs’’). Similarly, groups of objects display a range of color nuances (‘‘Le vert glauque des choux, dont les feuilles semblent en bronze; les choux rouges, bronze violace´’’), rendered by the nominal form, whereby a color, normally represented by an adjective (‘‘vert’’) takes the form of a noun (‘‘le vert’’), which is then modified by an adjective (‘‘glauque’’). In other cases, objects lose their so-called local colors and acquire those produced by the immediate conditions of light and atmosphere (‘‘Saint-Eustache est brun’’), while the entire scene takes on an overall coloration (‘‘Puis tout devient d’un gris tendre’’), which later becomes a ‘‘bluish cast’’ (‘‘Les Halles sont bleu sombre’’). Zola’s debt to painting is further evident in the striking simile controlling the scene, which is compared to a ‘‘vast washed watercolor’’ (‘‘on dirait que les le´gumes sont une vaste aquarelle lave´e’’). Here, as usual with Zola, both the literal expression (‘‘les le´gumes’’) and the figurative expression (‘‘une aquarelle’’) are visual phenomena whose comparison is motivated by the visual phenomenon of light (see Berg 1992, 214–16). The light has an overall tonality (‘‘tre`s tendres, tre`s de´licats de ton’’), which suggests a general sense of liquidity that emerges in this paragraph in expressions like ‘‘lave´e’’ and culminates in the dominant metaphor of a ‘‘sea of vegetables’’ in the following paragraph (‘‘une mer de le´gumes’’ [a sea of vegetables]). This liquification first of

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light, then of the material objects it touches has the effect of creating a general unity among the various states of matter, as in a Monet painting like Impression: Soleil levant, where land, sea, and sky are unified by atmosphere, color, and light. Even in his pre-textual notes, then, Zola’s vision and his style display traits that are not only ‘‘painterly’’ but decidedly ‘‘impressionist’’ (see Bally 1920, 261–79). I should state that by ‘‘style’’ I simply mean the manner of verbal representation, not the conscious effort to render a verbal effect more literary, more poetic; thus, we may well speak of style in a text that is not (yet) literary, such as the notes. In addition to the visual metaphors, for example, the above paragraph is replete with examples of metonymy, where figurative effects suggest their illogical but visually true causes (‘‘la rue Montorgeuil s’enfonce’’); synecdoche, where the whole entity is reduced to its parts or salient visual features, often colors (‘‘les blouses bleues, les corsages noirs, les bonnets blancs’’); its companion, the nominal form, where colors, usually rendered by adjectives in French, take the form of modified nouns (‘‘un gris tendre . . . le vert glauque’’); juxtaposition of sentences and clauses without conjunctions and transitions (‘‘Les choux volent’’); and ellipsis, where even subject nouns and verbs disappear before the overall impression (‘‘Puis sur tous les le´gumes’’). For Zola, figurative language is more than ornamentation grafted onto a literary text; rhetoric captures a way of seeing prompted spontaneously by visual phenomena (see Berg 1992, 262). We can hardly say, of course, that Zola modifies his style to reinforce certain visual effects, since this passage is preliterary, but rather that the verbal features enable us to sense the immediacy and power of certain visual effects as they strike the writer and that there is a profound correlation, often underestimated and overlooked, between vision and style. One might argue, however, that the ‘‘telegraphic’’ aspect of Zola’s style represented in the notes by juxtaposition and ellipsis is mainly due to the necessity of rapid, shorthand note taking; however, these contingencies do not make the style any less impressionistic, and, in fact, they prepare us, whatever their explanation here, for the essential questions of what happens to such stylistic traits in the outline and the finished novel and of how they are mobilized to underscore or undermine ideological positions.

THE OUTLINE Having collected his visual notes for the setting and defined his characters in terms of hereditary background, job status, and thematic function, Zola lays in the outlines for various chapters, in which he begins

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to interweave characters and setting, as with the blueprint for chapter 1, the beginning of which is given here: Le chapitre de´cide´ment, c’est l’arrivage de tout dans les Halles. La nourriture affluant, un matin, et montant comme une mare´e, noyant Florent a` la fin du chapitre. Il en a jusqu’aux genoux, puis jusqu’au ventre, puis jusqu’aux le`vres, puis jusque par-dessus la teˆte. Les le´gumes servent de the`me principal et reviennent pendant tout le chapitre comme la note centrale, mais je montre l’arrive´e de tout, laissant les marchandises a` l’heure des crie´es (mare´e, viande, beurre, volaille). A la fin ‘‘Et perdu dans les le´gumes, voyant encore arriver des camions, devinant des profondeurs de nourriture inconnue, entendant le grondement de joie qui grandissait au loin des crie´es . . .’’ En un mot faire deviner ce que je ne dis pas, et ce que je dirai plus tard. (BN-NAF, ms. 10,338, fols. 14–16, excerpts) [The chapter definitely is the arrival of everything in the Halles. The food flowing in, one morning, and rising like a tide, drowning Florent at the end of the chapter. He has it up to his knees, then up to his belly, then up to his lips, then over his head. The vegetables serve as principal theme and return throughout the chapter as the central note, but I show the arrival of everything, leaving the merchandise until the time their names are shouted out (fish, meat, butter, poultry). At the end ‘‘And lost in the vegetables, watching more wagons arrive, imagining depths of unknown food, hearing the rumbling of joy from the distant shouts . . .’’ In a word suggest what I don’t say, and what I’ll say later.]

Of particular note is Zola’s attention to compositional concerns, the logical and chronological organization of his material: the chapter conceived of as a whole (‘‘le chapitre de´cide´ment, c’est l’arrivage’’), whose unity is provided by the vegetables, which serve as ‘‘the`me principal’’ and ‘‘note centrale’’; the progression of merchandise arriving throughout the chapter, becoming overwhelming at the end; the reflection of the novel’s title in the expression ‘‘jusqu’au ventre’’; the hidden layers of meaning that suggest ‘‘ce que je ne dis pas’’; and the prefiguration of ‘‘ce que je dirai plus tard.’’ Solidity of composition and organization is a salient feature of Zola’s art, as is the sense of progression throughout the passage and in individual sentences, which are often divided into several separate actions, each a step in a process. We see especially that the setting no longer comprises neutral (albeit striking) visual data, as it did in the notes. The milieu is activated to become a primary determinant in the life of the main character in the novel, Florent, an escaped political prisoner who returns to his neighborhood after seven years (1851–58) to find it completely altered by the Halles, the new market of towering steel pavilions housing enormous amounts of food. The three gerunds in the second sentence of the out-

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line convey the progressive effect of the milieu on the individual: ‘‘la nourriture affluant’’ captures the dynamic growth of the merchandise, ‘‘montant comme une mare´e’’ its transformation into a powerful metaphor, and ‘‘noyant Florent’’ its negative effect on the character. This extended aquatic metaphor, which had already struck Zola as he collected his notes (‘‘mer de le´gumes’’), is no longer a benign visual impression stimulated by effects of light, color, and atmosphere but is developed through allied terms (‘‘mare´e . . . noyant’’), translated by active verbs (‘‘affluant . . . montant’’), and deployed through a transitive syntax (‘‘noyant Florent’’) that binds the character irrevocably and fatally to his surroundings. The act of drowning itself is seen as a process reflected in the progressive series of upwardly rising body parts (‘‘genoux . . . ventre . . . le`vres . . . teˆte’’). The character is also rooted into the setting through his sense impressions, again rendered through a set of three gerunds that convey ongoing actions (‘‘voyant . . . devinant . . . entendant’’), followed by an overall impression of what we might term ‘‘urban alienation’’ (‘‘perdu . . . inconnue’’). In short, Zola has begun to manipulate the visual data, including its figurative resonances, to structure his work and, especially, to emphasize the negative relationships of alienation from and determinism by the physical and social milieu that surrounds the character. Furthermore, by using the restructured and reemphasized visual material to constitute a social commentary, Zola is able to ‘‘faire deviner ce que je ne dis pas’’ and thus fulfill the tenets of impartiality and scientific objectivity that are the cornerstones for the experimental method, the key component, along with determinism, of Zola’s doctrine of naturalism (Berg and Martin 1992, 9–13). Put into the terms of our study, Zola invariably conveys ideology through visual imagery rather than through direct verbal intervention.

CHAPTER 1 Throughout the lengthy opening chapter, Zola inserts his visual notes into the action, maintaining the chronological order dictated by the rising sun and growing piles of vegetables along with the script of character introductions and interactions from the outline. The section from the notes examined earlier appears about two thirds of the way into the chapter; by this time Florent has been joined by his newfound friend, Claude Lantier, who is, significantly, a struggling modernist painter, and both characters share the viewpoint with the narrator: Mais Claude e´tait monte´ debout sur le banc, d’enthousiasme. Il forc¸a son compagnon a` admirer le jour se levant sur les le´gumes. C’e´tait une mer. Elle

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s’e´tendait de la pointe Saint-Eustache a` la rue des Halles, entre les deux groupes de pavillons. Et, aux deux bouts, dans les deux carrefours, le flot grandissait encore, les le´gumes submergeaient les pave´s. Le jour se levait lentement, d’un gris tre`s doux, lavant toutes choses d’une teinte claire d’aquarelle. Ces tas moutonnants comme des flots presse´s, ce fleuve de verdure qui semblait couler dans l’encaissement de la chausse´e, pareil a` la de´baˆcle des pluies d’automne, prenaient des ombres de´licates et perle´es, des violets attendris, des roses teinte´s de lait, des verts noye´s dans des jaunes, toutes les paˆleurs qui font du ciel une soie changeante au lever du soleil ; et, a` mesure que l’incendie du matin montait en jets de flamme au fond de la rue Rambuteau, les le´gumes s’e´veillaient davantage, sortaient du grand bleuissement traıˆnant a` terre. Les salades, les laitues, les escaroles, les chicore´es, ouvertes et grasses encore de terreau, montraient leurs coeurs e´clatants ; les paquets d’e´pinards, les paquets d’oseille, les bouquets d’artichauts, les entassements de haricots et de pois, les empilements de romaines, lie´s d’un brin de paille, chantaient toute la gamme du vert, de la laque verte des cosses au gros vert des feuilles ; gamme soutenue qui allait en se mourant, jusqu’aux panachures des pieds de ce´leris et des bottes de poireaux. Mais les notes aigue¨s, ce qui chantait plus haut, c’e´taient toujours les taches vives des carottes, les taches pures des navets, seme´es en quantite´ prodigieuse le long du marche´, l’e´clairant du bariolage de leurs deux couleurs. (626–27) [But Claude was standing up on the bench, bustling with enthusiasm. He made his companion admire the daylight rising on the vegetables. It was a sea. It extended from the Saint-Eustache point to the rue des Halles, between the two groups of pavilions. And, at both ends, in both intersections, the stream was still growing, the vegetables were submerging the cobblestones. Daylight was rising slowly, with a very soft gray, washing everything with the pale tint of a watercolor. These piles rolling like driven waves, this river of greenery that seemed to flow hemmed in by the street, like the torrent of autumn rains, took on delicate shades of pearl, tender violets, pinks with milky tints, greens drowned in yellows, all the pale tones that make the sky like changing silk at sunrise; and, as the morning fire rose with jets of flame at the end of the rue Rambuteau, the vegetables awakened more, emerged from the great blueness lingering on the ground. The leaves, the lettuces, the escaroles, the chicories, open and still laden with compost, showed their bursting hearts; the bundles of spinach, the bundles of sorrel, the bunches of artichokes, the mounds of beans and peas, the piles of romaines, tied with a bit of straw were singing the entire range of greens, from the lacquered green of the pods to the deep green of the leaves; a sustained range which was diminishing toward the motley colors of the bunches of celery and leeks. But the high notes, singing higher, belonged to the lively spots of the carrots, the pure spots of the turnips, sewn in prodigious quantity along the market, lighting it up with the medley of their two colors.]

The triple perspective is functional: in addition to the overview provided by the narrator, Zola uses the personal viewpoint to reflect the

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presence of both characters in this lengthy paragraph (see Prendergast 1993, 67–69; Scarpa 2000, 31–32; Tunstall 2004, 179–81). The painter, a perpetual pretext for presenting scenes from interesting angles, as in an earlier passage—‘‘Claude cherchait le point de vue afin de composer le tout dans un bon ensemble’’ (624) [Claude sought out the viewpoint in order to compose the entire scene in a good arrangement)—again assumes that role here (‘‘Claude e´tait monte´ debout sur le banc, d’enthousiasme’’). The elevated vantage point flattens the space and affords the painter (and thus the reader) a panoramic perspective from which to view the vast composition, whose broad symmetrical lines are laid in through parallel locative expressions: ‘‘entre les deux groupes . . . aux deux bouts . . . dans les deux carrefours.’’ The painter’s eye is present in the comparison of the entire scene to a watercolor, transcribed directly from the notes (‘‘lavant toutes choses d’une teinte claire d’aquarelle’’), and especially in the heightened sensitivity to effects of color and light. As in the notes, the scene passes from a general shade of grey (‘‘d’un gris tre`s doux’’) to a bluish cast (‘‘du grand bleuissement’’). The overall green of the vegetables (‘‘verdure’’), takes on numerous nuances of tone (‘‘prenaient des ombres de´licates et perle´es’’) and color (‘‘des violets attendris, des roses teinte´es de lait, des verts noye´s dans des jaunes’’), all of which are rendered through the nominal form (see Berg 1992, 175, 224; Matthews 1961, 202; Tunstall 2004, 180, n. 11). The scene culminates in another artistic metaphor (‘‘une soie changeante’’) motivated by the tones (‘‘paleurs’’) created by the action of the rising sun (‘‘au lever du soleil’’). A range of greens (‘‘la gamme du vert, de la laque verte des cosses au gros vert des feuilles’’) gives rise to a musical personification (‘‘chantaient . . . chantait’’), a change in register from the visual to the auditory that mirrors the technique of synesthesia pioneered by Baudelaire. The greens then serve as a backdrop for the spots of color (‘‘taches’’) produced by the carrots (orange) and the turnips (white) that add luster to the entire scene (‘‘l’e´clairant du bariolage de leurs deux couleurs’’). Both of the scene’s boundaries, delineated at the outset, are similarly defined by violent contrasts in colors: the rue des Halles intersection by shades of red (‘‘lie de vin . . . carmin . . . pourpre’’) set against white (‘‘choux blancs’’); the pointe Saint-Eustache by orange (‘‘potirons orange´s’’), bronze (‘‘le vernis mordore´’’), red (‘‘le rouge saignant’’), yellow (‘‘l’effacement jaunaˆtre’’), and violet (‘‘le violet sombre’’) punctuated by the deep shadows (‘‘trous de te´ne`bres’’) cast by the dark radishes (‘‘radis noirs’’). The metaphor of the sea, also borrowed directly from the notes and expanded in the outline (‘‘c’e´tait une mer’’), engenders here a series of liquid images (‘‘le flot . . . submergeaient . . . lavant . . . flots . . . fleuve . . . couler . . . de´baˆcle . . . pluies . . . lait . . . noye´s’’ [stream . . . submerg-

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ing . . . washing . . . waves . . . river . . . flow . . . torrent . . . rains . . . milk . . . drowned]) whose accumulation, also typical of Zola’s style, reinforces the impression of the ‘‘rising tide’’ alluded to in the outline. This extended liquid metaphor becomes recurrent as it appears some seventeen times throughout the chapter and eventually culminates in Florent’s ‘‘drowning’’ (633). As the paragraph continues, emphasis shifts from Claude’s viewpoint and vision to effects and expressions that betray Florent’s perspective and preoccupations: Au carrefour de la rue des Halles, les choux faisaient des montagnes ; les e´normes choux blancs, serre´s et durs comme des boulets de me´tal paˆle ; les choux frise´s, dont les grandes feuilles ressemblaient a` des vasques de bronze ; les choux rouges, que l’aube changeait en des floraisons superbes, lie de vin, avec des meurtrissures de carmin et de pourpre sombre. A l’autre bout, au carrefour de la pointe Saint-Eustache, l’ouverture de la rue Rambuteau e´tait barre´e par une barricade de potirons orange´s, sur deux rangs, s’e´talant, e´largissant leurs ventres. Et le vernis mordore´ d’un papier d’oignons, le rouge saignant d’un tas de tomates, l’effacement jaunaˆtre d’un lot de concombres, le violet sombre d’une grappe d’aubergines, c¸a et la`, s’allumaient ; pendant que de gros radis noirs, range´s en nappes de deuil, laissaient encore quelques trous de te´ne`bres au milieu des joies vibrantes du re´veil. (627) [At the intersection of the rue des Halles, the cabbages formed mountains; enormous white cabbages, compressed and hard like bullets of pale metal; curly cabbages, whose large leaves resembled bronze bowls; red cabbages, which the dawn changed into superb floral arrangements, wine colored, with bruises of carmin and deep purple. At the other end, at the SaintEustache intersection, the opening of the rue Rambuteau was blocked by a barricade of orange pumpkins, laid out in two rows, enlarging their bellies. And the vanishing bronze of a basket of onions, the bloody red of a pile of tomatoes, the yellowing dimness of a group of cucumbers, the deep purple of a bunch of eggplant, lit up, here and there; while fat black radishes, laid out like mourning sheets, still left several shadowy holes amidst the vibrant awakening joy.]

Florent’s presence is suggested phonetically by the word floraison (floral)—which recalls ‘‘his name so vegetation-like in resonance,’’ as Marie Scarpa puts it (2000, 181)—and symbolically by the figurative terms (nearly all potentially negative) associated with the vegetables. Early in the chapter we learned that Florent had been arrested and deported when he was captured on the barricades with blood on his clothing during the uprising against Louis Napoleon’s coup d’e´tat on December 4, 1851. In truth, he had wandered there in a stupor after having found in the streets the body of a young woman bloodied by

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bullet holes (‘‘trous’’); he carries her image with him obsessively. Along with a general human fascination with death (see Jousset 1998, 342; Tunstall 2004, 185), it is Florent’s past personal history and continuing obsession that are reflected in this final flourish of figurative vocabulary, none of which is to be found in the notes: the cabbages are compared to ‘‘boulets de me´tal’’ (bullets of metal) with ‘‘meurtrissures de carmin’’ (bruises of carmine); the pumpkins form a ‘‘barricade’’; the tomatoes are ‘‘saignant’’ (bloody red); the radishes, arranged like ‘‘nappes de deuil’’ (mourning sheets), leave ‘‘trous de te´ne`bres’’ (shadowy holes). These images contrast sharply with the overall impression of ‘‘joies vibrantes du re´veil,’’ no doubt a reflection of Claude’s visual pleasure rather than Florent’s negative visionary projections of his own obsessions onto the scene. Such metaphors are the most striking of literary figures, since they introduce alien elements into the context of the scene (bullets, bruises, and blood into the marketplace) rather than effect a simple (often unnoticeable) shift within that context, as do synecdoche and metonymy. With the exception of narrator commentary (which Zola eschews) and character commentary (which he uses all too frequently), metaphors are the strongest of textual markers, signaling significant segments of the text and suggesting relationships with other segments. Good to his word in the outline to ‘‘faire deviner ce que je ne dis pas,’’ Zola uses the metaphorical network not only to further structure the chapter but also to lay bare Florent’s obsessions, without the privileged perspectives of an inside view or psychological analysis of the character, either of which would have betrayed the narrator’s presence and thus violated the tenets of the experimental method. In short Zola lays a network of intersecting visual metaphors on top of the visual data from his notes in order to highlight character traits and especially the incompatibility of the character and the setting into which he has been inserted.

LES MAIGRES ET LES GRAS If metaphor involves the comparison of different contexts (the market and the sea) or different elements (cabbages and bullets), irony thrives on the contrast between a given element and its context (here character and setting). Zola consistently takes the visual starting points—the accumulation of vegetables, the swelling of the crowd, the day rising—and infuses them with contradictory elements, thus producing an ironic coupling. Into a scene marked by the accumulation of food in gigantic proportions, Zola injects Florent, who is skinny, hungry, and, in fact, adverse to eating, even when afforded the opportunity. And

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if, as Scarpa notes, Florent’s presence has the effect of emphasizing the food—‘‘how better to stage the alimentary plethora than through the gaze of someone starving to death?’’ (2000, 31)—the abundance of food also has the correlative effect of alienating Florent. From the outset Florent is depicted as clashing with his milieu, or, as Anna Gural-Migdal puts it: ‘‘Florent constructs himself as a subject against the milieu in which he lives’’ (2000, 156). Zola repeatedly juxtaposes Florent’s hunger on the one hand, the piles of vegetables on the other—‘‘La faim s’e´tait re´veille´e, intole´rable, atroce . . . L’odeur fraıˆche des le´gumes dans lesquels il e´tait enfonce´, cette senteur pe´ne´trante des carottes, le troublait jusqu’a` l’e´vanouissement’’ (607) [Hunger had awoken, intolerable, atrocious . . . The fresh odor of the vegetables in which he was buried, this penetrating aroma of the carrots, were troubling him to the point of fainting]—Florent’s skinniness on the one hand, Paris’s corpulence on the other—‘‘Il e´tait devenu sec, l’estomac re´tre´ci, la peau colle´e aux os. Et il retrouvait Paris, gras, superbe, de´bordant de nourriture’’ (612) [He had become dry, his stomach shrunken, his skin stuck on his bones. And he found Paris fat, superb, overflowing with food]. As a result of these incompatibilities, Florent is treated with suspicion and hostility from start to finish and thus becomes what Gural-Migdal terms ‘‘the disturbing element who upsets the tranquility as well as the plenitude of the world of les Halles’’ (2000, 158). When he passes out from hunger and fatigue, the wagon drivers who discover him assume, ironically, that he has overindulged in food and alcohol and use food metaphors, no less, to say so (see Scarpa 2000, 187, 220): ‘‘Il en a plein son sac, le sacre´ porc!’’ (604) [He’s got a sack full, the blessed pig!]. Although he is starving, new acquaintances offer him not food, but a glass of punch: ‘‘Il le sentit qui tombait dans son estomac vide, comme un filet de plomb fondu’’ (621) [He felt it falling into his empty stomach, like a stream of melted lead]. Lest the irony escape the reader, Zola reverts to his usual use of character commentary to point it out, as Claude (‘‘porte-parole’’) Lantier says, ‘‘C’est droˆle, vous avez duˆ remarquer cela vous? . . . On trouve toujours quelqu’un pour vous payer a` boire, on ne rencontre jamais personne qui vous paye a` manger’’ (625) [It’s funny, as you must have noticed? . . . One can always find someone to pay for a drink, one never meets someone who pays for food]. Florent’s skinniness makes him unrecognizable to his old friends (635), just as his brother’s fatness makes him hard to recognize for Florent (639). At chapter’s end, the family reunion finishes with his in-laws eyeing Florent suspiciously: ‘‘ils le regardaient avec l’e´tonnement de gens tre`s gras pris d’une vague inquie´tude en face d’un maigre’’ (639) [they eyed him

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with the astonishment of very fat people beset by vague worry when they face a skinny person]. This technique—inserting an incompatible element into the context defined by the visual data—also occurs with the sun rising and the crowd swelling. The rising sun serves to magnify Florent’s poverty and increase the danger of his being spotted by the police: ‘‘Le jour grandissait, on pouvait le voir maintenant ; et il regardait son pantalon et sa redingote lamentables’’ (629) [The daylight grew, one could see him now; and he looked at his lamentable pants and coat]. And, as the crowd grows, Florent paradoxically feels more solitary: ‘‘Florent e´tait seul’’ (629) [Florent was alone]. This juxtaposition of character and milieu culminates toward the end of the first chapter, where Zola implements the overriding metaphor of Florent’s drowning from the outline: ‘‘Aveugle´, noye´, les oreilles sonnantes, l’estomac e´crase´ par tout ce qu’il avait vu, devinant de nouvelles et incessantes profondeurs de nourriture, il demanda graˆce, et une douleur folle le prit, de mourir ainsi de faim, dans Paris gorge´’’ (633) [Blinded, drowned, his ears ringing, his stomach crushed by all that he had seen, imagining new and endless depths of food, he cried for mercy, and a mad pain overcame him, to die this way of hunger, in a gorged Paris]. Florent is drowning and starving in a sea of food; and, as Christopher Prendergast puts it, ‘‘the ‘pictorial’ frame of the description ends up breaking down: the view of the merchandise as still life can no longer be sustained—either physically by Florent or morally by Zola—before an empty stomach; and if the image of the ‘sea’ emerges once again here, if it enters into the ‘painting,’ effectively, it’s in order to drown it out’’ (1993, 66; see also Tunstall 2004, 182). Indeed, as Prendergast implies, this incompatibility of character and context carries ideological (moral) implications: a single person dying of hunger amid an excess of food calls into question the myths of productivity and well-being promulgated by bourgeois society. The Second Empire is the ultimate consumer society; and Florent is among the ‘‘consumed,’’ or, as Claude puts it, the ‘‘have nots’’ or ‘‘skinny ones’’ (les maigres), as opposed to the ‘‘haves’’ or ‘‘fat ones’’ (les gras), an antithesis that will dominate the development and outcome of the entire novel. Only one character escapes Claude’s classification—the kindly marketgardener Madame Franc¸ois, who gives Florent a ride into Paris on this fateful first day of his return and later proposes that he come live with her in the countryside, a setting that is precisely what sets her beyond the antithesis of maigres and gras, which is rooted in Paris and society, a milieu from which Florent cannot escape (see Johnson 2002, 40–41). The third major character in the novel, Lisa Macquart, Claude’s aunt (and like him part of the Rougon-Macquart family), the delicatessen

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owner and ‘‘epitome of the idealized Haussmannian (post-renovation) female-bourgeois merchant’’ (Johnson, 39), who is married to Florent’s brother Quenu, is definitely a ‘‘fat one,’’ as is Quenu and most of the characters who populate the Halles and who reflect the dominant mode of the Second Empire. The link between Lisa and society in general is clear from Zola’s preparatory notes on the characters, included by Henri Mitterand in his edition of the novel, where the symbolic value of ‘‘belly’’ also appears: ‘‘Devant l’E´tat, elle a le respect des sergents de ville, des candidats officiels ; elle appuie le gouvernement qui triomphe, le soutient quand il branle, lui garde la reconnaissance du ventre, de tous les morceaux de boeuf qu’elle a mange´s ou qu’elle a vendus, et sous le pre´texte de maintenir l’ordre, de de´fendre la socie´te´, elle pousse son mari a` toutes les laˆchete´s sociales’’ (1960, 1615) [As for the State, she has respect for the municipal police, for official candidates; she upholds the government when it triumphs, supports it when it is shaken, expresses gratitude on behalf of her belly, for all the pieces of beef she has eaten or sold, and, in the guise of maintaining order, defending society, she pushes her husband to all sorts of cowardly actions]. Zola alludes here to the plot of the novel, which, on a certain level, is fairly simple. Florent takes a room in his brother’s household, accepts a position as an inspector in the fish market, dabbles idealistically in politics, then takes part in an ill-fated insurrection, and is arrested and deported once again after having been informed on by numerous ‘‘friends,’’ including his sister-in-law Lisa. In effect, Florent is a sacrificial scapegoat, whose arrest purges and heals the community (see Schor 1978, 22; Scarpa 2000, 234), a victim of both the market and, especially, of market values. Upon Florent’s arrest in August 1859, one year after his return to the Halles, Claude Lantier is left to observe the triumph of the ‘‘fats’’ and formulate, antithetically and ironically, the novel’s social lesson: ‘‘Quels gredins que les honneˆtes gens !’’ (895) [‘‘What scoundrels honest people are!’’]. Whereas irony stems from a contrast between content and context (here character and setting, or the word ‘‘honest’’ used to designate its opposite), antithesis involves a contrast between elements from the same context (here two sets of characters and their characteristics). Both techniques, however, are based on sharp contrast enhanced by juxtaposition, and in neither case is there clear resolution: certainly Florent’s skinniness does not cause us to forget or devalue the sumptuous descriptions of vegetables. To the contrary, as Tunstall contends: ‘‘These textual tableaux require our attention because they create a tension in the novel by seeming to indulge the conspicuous consumption of the Second Empire which the narrative condemns’’ (2004, 177–78). Such seeming contradictions contribute, no doubt, to the ‘‘competing

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ideologies’’ identified by Johnson (2002, 54), the overall sense of ‘‘ambiguity’’ seen by Scarpa (2000, 263), and the fundamental ‘‘ambivalence’’ and ‘‘dialectical interplay’’ identified by Jousset: ‘‘Intended to bring a charge against the Empire and its silent majority, but intended also to bear witness to a vital experience that transcends this political argument, Le Ventre remains radiantly ambivalent. . . . The great success of Le Ventre de Paris lies in this dialectical interplay between the Still Life and the Political Project’’ (1998, 339 and 349). While one might question Jousset’s term ‘‘still life,’’ in a description rife with movement, the inherent contradiction between art and politics effected by Zola’s use of antithesis and irony is undeniable. Both techniques, antithesis and irony, along with their dialectical interplay and attendant ambivalence, also characterize Manet’s Rue Mosnier paintings.

LA RUE MOSNIER: STREET PEOPLE In 1877 and 1878, Manet did numerous sketches of the rue Mosnier (now rue de Berne), many of these from the balcony of his studio, 4 rue Saint Pe´tersbourg. These sketches constitute not only a record of modern urban activity, paralleling the documentary nature of Zola’s notes, but also a personal souvenir, since Manet was about to leave that studio for a new one (see Tabarant 1947, 323). In addition to the sketches of individual motifs (croquis), two compositional drawings (dessins) precede two unfinished oil paintings and three finished ones (tableaux). This elaboration in three stages—sketch, drawing, painting—is not unlike Zola’s progression from notes, to outline, then to novel. At each of these stages we shall examine Manet’s handling of light and color, time and movement, composition and viewpoint, much as we did for Zola. Moreover, by focusing on the process of elaboration of the work, we can witness how each artist, in his own form, manipulates visual material to structure the work of art and produce meaning through the interplay of its individual elements.

THE SKETCHES Two sketches depicting hackney carriages (fiacres) seen from the front are typical of Manet’s impersonal, even documentary approach to his subject. The carriages have none of the dramatic qualities of a Ge´ricault race scene, much less the social commentary of a painting like

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Daumier’s Third Class Carriage (c. 1862). Manet’s carriages are simply examples of the modern, urban transportation system, the drivers no more than representatives of their trade. In fact, in both cases, the features of the face are subordinated to the play of sunlight and shadow. In Fiacre (Rouart and Wildenstein 1975, RW 噛325), for example, Manet uses a broken line to suggest the shimmer of the buggy whip in full sunlight. The same incomplete line, a visual equivalent of verbal ellipsis, is repeated in the body of the carriage, where the openness of the forms suggests their penetration, even obliteration by the powerful light. This summary rendering carries over into the depiction of the rear wheel by only a segment of a curve, which in turn allows Manet to suggest the front wheel even more partially. Rather than draw in the entire form—which his mind knows to be there—Manet records the parts that his eye seizes in an instant of perception. This visual synecdoche has the effect of subordinating the whole to a part, the object to a quality, the form to light and movement. Moreover, the economy of the strokes displays a rapidity of execution suggesting at once the movement of the object and the transience of its perception. Nor can we dismiss this summation as simply visual ‘‘note taking,’’ as we see from the variety of stages of definition in the other sketches. The buggy in another sketch, figure 9, Le fiacre (RW, 噛323), is rendered more fully, defined more clearly, thereby acquiring a sense of mass and volume, but we detect the same interest in depicting the play of light and shadow and suggesting movement in this ‘‘nervous little sketch’’ (Cachin et al. 1983, 402). Here Manet uses a zig zag stroke, where the varying closeness of the lines produces different tones. The overall image displays a contrast of light and dark, but even in the ‘‘dark’’ areas, the lines are not completely closed: the forms, such as the carriage body, remain open to light and suggest the reflection of light off its surface. Both images reveal Manet’s fondness for the diagonal placement of the subject, and each image has an overall unity based on the type of stroke and the atmospheric quality thus conveyed. These same traits hold true for the sketches where the carriages are seen from a back view. In figure 10, Un fiacre (RW, 噛326), a ‘‘rapid brush drawing’’(Cachin et al. 1983, 403), we find yet another type of stroke—cross-hatching— where the alternate directions of the oblique lines create different planes defined by the play of light off them. The strokes running from upper left to lower right, the traditional source of light in painting, suggest here the planes lying in light, while the contrasting strokes suggest those surfaces protected from light, hidden in shadow. Again the lines (strokes) are not meant to suggest ‘‘line’’ but are in the service of light, color, and texture notation. The strokes (pencil lead) are also accompa-

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Figure 9. E´douard Manet. Le fiacre (Hackney Carriage and Coachman), 1878. Graphite on grey paper, 16.8 ⴒ 17 cm. Louvre, Paris, France, Cabinet des Dessins, RF30350 recto. Photo: Re´union des Muse´es Nationaux / Art Resource, NY (Ge´rard Blot).

nied here by a wash (India ink in varying stages of dilution). This allows Manet to work by areas, which adds to the atmospheric unity of the image: that is, the wash is not limited to a specific form but covers objects as well as surrounding air and supporting ground. Alain De Leiris, in his invaluable work, The Drawings of Edouard Manet, notes a further consequence of the wash: ‘‘The reduction of the image to a limited vocabulary of strokes and broad spottings of wash is analogous to the process of graphic simplification which we have observed in the

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Figure 10. E´douard Manet. Un fiacre (A Hackney Carriage), c.1877. Lead and wash. 11.2 ⴒ 8.3 cm. Bibliothe`que nationale de France, Paris. Estampes et Photographie RES DC-300d BTE 2, No. 12. Photo: BnF de´partement de la reproduction.

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pencil-drawn copies. In both, the effect of instantaneity results’’ (1969, 52–53). The quality of instantaneity certainly applies as well to figure 11, Fiacre et bec de gaz [street light] (RW, 噛324). The forms at the top left are so open, so incomplete, so rapidly rendered as to be unidentifiable. The puzzling tilt of the wheel of the carriage suggests the jolting movement caused no doubt by the uneven stones of the street and further reflected in the zigzag strokes of the ‘‘shock waves’’ emanating from the wheel. Again this metonymy of effect for cause recalls Zola, and the visual strokes could be said to constitute an equivalent of the verbal use of action verbs attributed to inanimate objects. In both cases, the reader/ viewer is caught by a logical impossibility (a tilted wheel, stationary objects moving), which nonetheless constitutes visual truth. In the previous sketches ‘‘movement’’ was confined to the transience implied by instantaneity and reinforced by the economy (and thus implied rapidity) of execution, along with the shimmering and radiating effects of sunlight. Here the objects themselves are set in motion, jolting at that, on the static space of the paper. Figure 11 is also distinguished by the suggestion, albeit sketchy, of the objects and space surrounding the carriage. We can thus begin to speak of relationships, that is, composition. The elevated viewpoint (from Manet’s balcony) flattens the space and accentuates the directional lines in the sketch. The road bisects the space diagonally, while the lamppost does so vertically, lending the sketch a definite geometry, despite its instantaneous and ‘‘accidental’’ impression. This awakening of compositional concerns leads us to Manet’s composition drawings, where we witness the refining and combining of motifs.

THE COMPOSITION DRAWINGS Figures 12, La rue Mosnier au bec de gaz (RW, 噛327), and 13, La rue Mosnier (RW, 噛328), demonstrate Manet’s attraction to urban activity, further justifying our comparison to Zola’s Le Ventre and illustrating Manet’s ‘‘sociological’’ dimension in the rue Mosnier series. Here, as with Zola, people are depicted as anonymous members of a moving crowd. Identity is limited to trade—the street menders (lower left) and vendor (with cart) in figure 12, the ‘‘re´mouleur’’ (knife-sharpener) on his tricycle at upper middle and the delivery boy (with basket) at lower middle in figure 13. The construction site to the left in figure 12 also highlights urban activity, as does the locomotive below it (see Cachin et al. 1983, 401). Although these works are more complete than the sketches, Manet’s style remains similar. The lack of detail, the openness

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Figure 11. E´douard Manet. Fiacre et bec de gaz (Hackney Carriage in a Street with a Streetlight), 1878. Graphite, 14.6 ⴒ 10.2 cm. Louvre, Paris, France. Cabinet des Dessins, RF30455 recto. Photo: Re´union des Muse´es Nationaux / Art Resource, NY (Ge´rard Blot).

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Figure 12. E´douard Manet. La rue Mosnier au bec de gaz (The Rue Mosnier [with a Streetlight]), c.1878. Brush and tusche, over graphite on papier ve´ge´tal transfer paper, laid down on cream wove paper, 27.9 ⴒ 44.2 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Mrs. Alice H. Patterson given in memory of Tiffany Blake, 1945.15. Reproduction 䉷 The Art Institute of Chicago.

of the forms, the accentuation of the paper’s whiteness for certain figures (primarily the men) in figure 12 make them highly luminous, penetrable by light, and suggest their movement (see Cachin et al. 1983, 401). Even the dark strokes representing the women’s dresses are left partially open by the use of broad zigzag strokes to convey the luminosity of light reflected off the stiff fabric. The summary rendering again combines ellipses (amorphous forms) and synecdoches (partial forms) to create a broad impression of certain figures, as with the segment of a circle, suggesting a wheel, denoting a cart, which hints at a vendor in figure 12. Ann Coffin Hanson comments on the use of lead and wash in figure 12: ‘‘The sketch is made in pencil with touches of dark wash, and the contrast between the two media gives us the effect of different light conditions in the bustling street’’ (1967, 157). We might add that the liquidity of the wash adds to the rainy atmosphere in figure 13 and remember that light, movement, and atmospheric unity were also the salient features of Zola’s notes. Indeed, the overall effect of liquidity in figure 13 can be seen as comparable to Zola’s use of water as the unifying principle for his outline of the opening chapter of Le Ventre. The composition of both drawings recalls features of the earlier

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Figure 13. E´douard Manet. La rue Mosnier, c.1878. Lead and wash, 19 ⴒ 36 cm. Budapest Museum of Fine Arts. Collection P. Von Majovszky, Inv. No.: 1935–2735.

sketches. This very constancy underlines the importance of certain techniques for Manet’s conception of the subject—the rue Mosnier— just as their utilization and/or manipulation will allow us to gauge their significance in the later paintings. As with the sketch in figure 11, the elevated viewpoint used in both compositional drawings flattens the space and lessens the difference between foreground and background forms, unlike a street-level drawing, where perspective would prevail, causing the distant objects to become smaller and thus appear to ‘‘recede.’’ Furthermore, in figure 12, the diagonal line of the street is again played off against the vertical lamppost, as it was in figure 11, and, as Cachin and colleagues point out, in figure 13, ‘‘Manet also accentuated this view of the street by the wide format, as if experienced by a passerby moving rapidly, head down in the rain, retaining only rapid, fleeting visions’’ (1983, 400). Further compositional characteristics that will persist in the later paintings emerge here. The cropping of the carriages in figure 12, midright (based on fig. 9) and in figure 13, lower right (based on figure 11) again underscores the impressionist tendency to represent parts of objects. The effect here is to lend the scene the accidental, uncomposed quality of real life, which is further reinforced by the apparently random arrangement of the people and carriages as well as the open space to the left of figure 12. As Theodore Reff aptly notes: ‘‘Neither drawing, however, is a study in the strict sense for any of the paintings; at most they are a kind of reconnaissance of the motif made in preparation for the final assault, but in a much freer, more calligraphic style. It is a style

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of remarkable verve and spontaneity, in which representation is reduced to the notation of a few salient features—the buildings and the lampposts, the carriages and the pedestrians, the sweepers and their brooms—and recorded with a few swift strokes of the brush’’ (1982, 238). Rather than speak of ‘‘compositional drawings,’’ perhaps we ought to follow De Leiris’s lead and refer to them as ‘‘vistas’’ (1969, 33–34). Nonetheless, we definitely detect several organizing and unifying principles in both drawings. In figure 12, especially, Manet makes studied use of contrast or counterpoint: there is a pair of carriages, one dark, one light, one seen from the front, the other from the rear. With the exception of the three street sweepers and the single cropped figure in the upper right, the figures, though separate, are treated in pairs, one figure light and open, the other (usually the women) dark and more closed. In fact, we can speak of a ‘‘tonal harmony’’ in both drawings. The distribution of marks of the same tone forms a pattern that organizes the drawing: for example, all of the dark marks in figure 12 form a pattern in relation to the light ones, or, in figure 13, the intermediate tones relate to each other, by similarity, and to neighboring forms and the surrounding space, by contrast. De Leiris compares this effect to the configuration of black musical notes on a white page (1969, 78). On this level, as signifiers, the marks form a circular, sweeping pattern that reinforces the bustle of the street that is signified. A final unifying principle for each drawing is the atmosphere. Figure 12 represents a bright day; the open composition to the left, the use of open space to the middle right, the openness of some forms, the incompleteness of others, the cropping of still others accentuate the whiteness of the paper and suggest the penetration and thus unification of the entire space by light. The intermediate values in figure 13, the closing of the composition, the convergence of the lines forming the street, the turning of all of the figures away from the viewer, the liquidity of the wash, all suggest the somber conditions and mood of a rainy day. Since we are about to move to the larger paintings of the rue Mosnier series, in oil and, of course, in color, two general statements may serve to conclude our discussion of Manet’s sketches and drawings. De Leiris stresses the importance of ‘‘luminosity’’ in Manet’s pencil work: ‘‘After glancing at, and even studying at length, any number of the drawings, one retains a lasting impression of their luminosity—a particular brightness which results from the positive interaction of a flowing but firm open line with the areas of the white sheet itself. Shading of form, which is always used sparingly, is never opaque or impervious to light. Whether it is obtained with loose line hatchings or transparent washes it enhances the play of light on the planes and its free flow between the

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lines’’ (1969, 4). John Rewald see these value differences, rather, as a type of color notation: His colour-sensitive eye clearly found it impossible to capture impressions as black strokes and the studies with which he filled his sketch books are reminiscent of short hand notes. Movements and expressions were hastily set on paper, very often with a vague outline, whereas light and dark are boldly indicated by rough shading, i.e. reproducing colour sensations at least in a reduced form. This applies particularly to his unusual brush and ink drawings. The brush permitted him to work in areas, instead of only in lines, and with black spots thrown on paper with masterly spontaneity he built up forms of remarkable plasticity. No one else understood quite so well how to enliven the deepest black and give it the quality of a colour. (1947, 42)

The convergence of these two quotations draws us back to a starting point of this chapter—light and color—and to the affinity between Zola and Manet in terms of their mutual impressionism. It would be legitimate to argue that Manet’s sketches, like Zola’s notes, are not ‘‘impressionistic’’ but simply ‘‘sketchy,’’ which is because they are ‘‘sketches,’’ and, in that sense all sketches are merely ‘‘impressions’’ that have yet to be solidified. However, comparison of the rue Mosnier sketches to those of other artists or even to Manet’s of other periods reveals distinct differences in style. Here the interest in light, color, atmosphere, movement, instantaneity, surprising viewpoints, diagonals, cropping, summary rendering, and so on takes us back to Zola and, between the two artists, to impressionism. But to return to the main line of our discussion—the manipulation and transformation of the visual material from the sketches to create structure and meaning—we now turn to Manet’s oil paintings of the rue Mosnier.

THE PAINTINGS Manet began, but left unfinished, two full-size oil paintings set in the rue Mosnier; they are interesting here because they bear witness to a struggle with composition and theme, which, according to De Leiris (1969, 2), was not at all typical of Manet and thus suggests the significance of the rue Mosnier paintings for him. These unfinished works also show the persistence of certain motifs and techniques and thus underscore their importance for Manet’s conception of the as yet undefined subject. In Le coupe´ (RW, 噛269), the carriage seen diagonally from the front is derived from figure 9, while its placement to the middle right recalls that of the carriage in figure 12. The knife-grinder in Le re´mouleur

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(RW, 噛268), borrowed from figure 13, is promoted to main subject and, as such, placed in the lower left, as were the road sweepers in figure 12. It would seem that Manet found the lower left corner particularly pregnant for representing the working-class subjects in the rue Mosnier series. In both unfinished works Manet sticks with the elevated viewpoint furnished by his balcony, which leads, in Le re´mouleur, as it did in figures 11 and 12, to an accentuation of the diagonal street line and the vertical lamp post, very prominent here, where it divides the entire painting. All of these characteristics recur in La rue Mosnier aux paveurs [street menders] (see color insert), the first, and perhaps best known, of the three finished paintings (RW, 噛272). La rue Mosnier aux paveurs substantiates our earlier claim of Manet’s documentary and sociological intent, confirmed by the comment of Cachin and colleagues that ‘‘Paris is not a landscape, but a place of life, surprise, interest’’ (1983, 398). The painting is a record of modern urban street activity. There are several varieties of carriage—the open coupe´ from Le coupe´ appears again here at mid right, along with a covered cab in mid left and a moving van to the right. Farther along on the right the knife-grinder has been demoted from his prominent position in Le re´mouleur and is back where we first found him in figure 13. To the upper left a sign advertises ‘‘Coin de rue/veˆtements sur mesure’’ [Street Corner/Clothing Made to Measure] (see Tabarant 1947, 323), adding documentary specificity to the scene, while the buildings to the right appear in greater detail than in any sketch or drawing (although they were first represented in fig. 13). And, of course, the central subject of the painting, dominating the foreground, is the crew of street menders, portrayed as anonymous members of a group engaged in manual labor. They are neither individualized, as in Courbet’s Stonebreakers, nor mythologized, as in Millet’s Sower. Here no ideological statement is made nor even suggested. As Linda Nochlin notes: ‘‘In Manet’s Road Menders, no point is made of the social significance or even the physical effort demanded of the labourers: It is the street view as a totality, with all its visual incident, of which the road-menders are simply an element among many, that is the true theme of the painting’’ (1971, 175). Although ‘‘visual incident,’’ more than hard labor, is the real subject of the painting, virtually all the elements stem directly from the earlier sketches and drawings; the ‘‘totality’’ perceived by the viewer was not given ‘‘instantaneously’’ to the artist, but constructed over time. The carriages are more stable (less tilted), but here the blurred brushwork also suggests movement, particularly in the foreground figures (the coupe´ and the workers). The circular composition of the group of workers leads to eye movement, while the different positions suggest stages in the task, much as in serial imagery. In addition to creating a sense of

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movement, the summary rendering, the loose brushwork, is also in the service of light, where the bright gleam of the white shirts, the shimmer of the buggy whip, and the gold crescent suggesting a pick lend the painting a luminosity reminiscent of Monet. Indeed, Phoebe Pool finds La rue Mosnier aux paveurs to be Manet’s ‘‘most delicious, airy, Impressionist work’’ (1967, 141). Manet uses a very light palette; even the dark colors like the driver’s purple coat or the blue shadows seem laden with light. The painting also displays a unity of coloration, a ‘‘bluing,’’ emanating from the depths of the street and resonating in the workers’ garb, the moving van, the shadows, and the facade of the building. A green patch on the fence at left is picked up by the green top of the cab, and then the foliage itself is set off by the complementary red of the woman spectator’s dress. Another color resonance stems from the rich browns, which run from the sign, through the chestnut horse, to the lamp post, while the gold crescent of the pick recurs in the knife-grinder’s cart. The overall unity spawned by tonality (light) and color (bluing), as well as the airiness mentioned by Pool, are undoubtedly enhanced, even engendered, by Manet’s opening the perspective to include the sky in the background. Since this occurs in none of the sketches, we may well speak of visual manipulation, but it is still in the service of visuality, not ideology. In fact, the painting seems to have two viewpoints, one looking down, the other looking out—or, rather, a modulating viewpoint suggesting scanning and thus the viewers’s presence or ‘‘embodiment,’’ which casts the entire painting as an image or impression, more than a replica of reality (see Fried 2002, 19). This recalls Hanson’s comment concerning the ‘‘compositional difficulties’’ (1977, 197) often attributed to Manet and the ‘‘visual experience’’ (1977, 202) that she finds at its root: ‘‘It is extremely difficult, even experimentally, to stabilize the human eye, but recent experiments confirm what medieval opticians asserted, that the eye is literally blind when not in motion. It cannot take the static position of the camera or mathematical theory and still function’’ (202). Scanning or modulation of viewpoint, then, becomes another source of movement in Manet’s painting, along with that of light play, object motion, and time passage, all captured by rapid, here blurred, brush strokes. In addition to the perspective problem, another ‘‘difficulty’’ emerges from this painting—the miniature size of the midground figures (particularly the couple talking near the fence at the left) in relation to the foreground figures, especially the workers. Again, though not ‘‘logical,’’ this effect seems visually accurate; that is, the visual impact of the workers ‘‘dwarfs’’ what is behind them, causing them to appear to recede. Perspective is, after all, a logical but artificial construct that must be

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mastered mathematically in order to be accurate. Manet is more interested in visual truth, which, as Nochlin contends, may be the real subject of La rue Mosnier aux paveurs. Manet undertook another visual record of the rue Mosnier on June 30, 1878, when, for the first time since August 15, 1869, the city was decked with flags, to celebrate the universal exposition and the feˆte de la Re´publique (July 14 did not become the national flag day until 1880). The first result is La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux (see color insert) (RW, 噛270). Although the painting is a ‘‘document’’ of that specific event and day, the brougham at bottom right looks suspiciously like the one in figure 13, itself based on figures 10 and 11. The spacing of the carriages along the diagonal representing the right side of the road recalls the arrangement of forms in La rue Mosnier aux paveurs. Such discoveries lead us to the rather banal conclusion that a painting is not a photographic record of an incident or event but a composite governed by certain models, memories, or schemata stored by the artist and activated, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Nor could it be otherwise; there is a quantum difference between the shutter speed of a camera and the execution time of a painting. However, given these obvious differences, it is nonetheless true that Manet conveys the illusion of instantaneity in this painting (see Reff 1982, 236). The blurred brushwork suggests the movement of the carriages down the street, the rippling of the flags in the wind, the reverberation of light off the buildings. Another effect of the loose brushwork is, of course, to suggest that the lines, the forms, the volumes of the objects are obliterated by the power of the midday light enveloping them. The zigzag strokes on the facade of the building on the far right suggest rays, reflections, even bursts of light. The luminosity is enhanced by the considerable amount of pure white and the extremely light tone of all the colors in the painting. The colors themselves are greatly reduced in number, to emphasize the tricolore of the flags—blue, white, and especially red—reflected in the pink street and contrasted by its complement—green—in the foliage. Indeed the foliage is no more than its color—greenery—just as certain flags are no more than a spot of red. The quality replaces the object, the part stands for the whole, which reinforces the impression of instantaneous perception. The viewpoint remains elevated, and the composition again accentuates the diagonal, not only in the road but also, of course, in the flag dominating the lower left corner, covering nearly a third of the canvas. As Jane Mayo Roos notes, ‘‘the inclusion of the flag, which is placed close to the painting’s surface and nearly aligns with the curb on the opposite side of the street, collapses the receding space through the close parallelism of surface and spatial elements’’ (1988, 375). This highly abstract design reinforces the impression of visual pyrotechnics in keeping with the cel-

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ebration—in fact, rather like Monet’s handling of the same theme in his Rue Montorgueil Decked with Flags executed the same day—but, in truth, rather unlike Manet. The palette is so light, the brushwork so loose, the colors so limited, the design so strange, that the authenticity of the painting was questioned at the time of Manet’s death but certified by Madame Manet (see Tabarant 1947, 325). Our present discussion of the sketches, drawings, and other paintings of the rue Mosnier series would seem to substantiate this painting’s authorship: the persistence of the carriages, their arrangement, the elevated viewpoint (from Manet’s balcony after all), the diagonal of the road bisecting the painting geometrically are constant features in Manet’s handling of the street. By the same token, the position and dominance of the flag are extremely puzzling, all the more so since this corner had seemingly been reserved for the ‘‘subject’’ of the work—the street sweepers (fig. 12), the knifegrinder (Le re´mouleur), or the street menders (La rue Mosnier aux paveurs) (see color insert). The flag seems to hide a gap, cover a void, signal an absent theme, not yet articulated but haunting Manet. Later that same day, Manet was to discover that missing subject, ironically in the person of a resident of the neighborhood (see MoreauNe´laton 1926, 46), who must have been familiar to the painter but whose link to the theme of the decorated street apparently emerged rather suddenly and forcefully. This sketch of the invalid from eye level, L’homme aux be´quilles, au moment de la feˆte (fig. 14), ignored by most critics (I could find it only in Mathey 1963, 噛71), contains the significant though barely visible annotation: ‘‘au moment de la feˆte’’ (at the time of the celebration). This annotation suggests that Manet saw the relationship between the man and the event as essential and that he probably did not discover this link until that very day. It might cause Ronda Kasl, in an otherwise convincing article, to reevaluate her contention that ‘‘the caricature-like cripple in Manet’s view of the rue Mosnier was originally conceived as an illustration for the cover of an album of music composed in 1878 by Jean de Cabannes, known as Cabaner’’ (1985, 54, more on the album cover later). The properties of the sketch are interesting in their own right, but I will discuss them in terms of their transformation, as the invalid comes to be inserted into another of the rue Mosnier paintings, as alluded to by Kasl. La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, l’homme aux be´quilles (see color insert; RW 噛271) is probably the final painting in the series, and certainly, as Robert Herbert notes, ‘‘a more finished and more interesting composition [than the preceding one], not least because of its use of irony’’ (1988 30). The real tour de force stems, of course, from the ironic coupling of a national, militaristic celebration with a military victim, partic-

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Figure 14. E´douard Manet. L’homme aux be´quilles, au moment de la feˆte (Man on Crutches), 1878. Drawing, graphite with red pen and black ink on fine-textured white paper, 26.6 ⴒ 18.7 cm. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England, WA1935-131.

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ularly since this was the first flag display since the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). As Bradford Collins points out in his ground-breaking article, ‘‘Manet’s ‘Rue Mosnier decked with Flags’ and the Flaˆneur concept’’: ‘‘As a reminder of the human cost of war, of the price of life and limb exacted by such conflicts, the presence of this man expresses an awareness of la vie militaire in direct opposition to the contemporary standard. [This figure] not only deflates the festive spirit but, more importantly, the beliefs identified with it’’ (1975, 713; his emphasis). In short, the invalid invalidates the celebration, already fraught with numerous ambiguities, as Roos (1988) carefully demonstrates. In addition to this initial irony—obvious at first glance and beautifully articulated by Collins—comparison with the earlier sketches, drawings, and paintings reveals Manet’s further manipulation of visual material in order to bring this irony to the fore and, in fact, to create subsequent and more subtle ironies throughout the painting (see also Reff 1982, 240). We note, for example, the placement of the figure at the lower left, the point where the eye enters the painting, the place Manet had reserved for the working-class subjects of his earlier sketches, drawings, and paintings, and a problem area in La rue Mosnier aus drapeaux (see color insert). Furthermore, by comparing La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, l’homme aux be´quilles with the drawing in figure 14, we witness the impact of Manet’s modifications of the invalid in the painting. In the earlier sketch we are closer to and at the same level as the figure, who looks us straight in the eye. The angle of his eyebrows, the firmness of the mouth, the rake of the hat matched by that of the tunic all suggest a certain force, as does the fact that he is tilted toward the viewer. The figure is far from pathetic. By turning the figure around in the painting, Manet makes the hole of the missing leg visible. More importantly, the facial features are hidden; in fact, the head disappears into the body, which is squared off to make it appear more tired, less human, even grotesque. This reduction of human qualities is enhanced by our distance and elevation: in short, the viewpoint becomes functional in controlling our emotive response to the subject. Instead of emerging from the painting to enter our space, the victim heads back into the space of the canvas; the journey is not yet accomplished, and Manet further manipulates the space in order to characterize the journey. By comparison with La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, we see that Manet has drastically reduced the number and size of the flags. He has removed the carriage from the foreground and reduced the number of figures in the midground, where the carriage is clearly at rest. The clutter and bustle of the earlier painting disappear. The space is opened, emptied, to accentuate the isolation of the invalid. Here the conver-

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gence of both lines of the street suggest its length and close up the space. This long, lonely journey of the crippled man takes on monumental proportions and constitutes a commentary on the alienation and duress of modern urban existence. As Roos contends, ‘‘the one-legged figure in worker’s blue becomes a conveyer of precariousness, in both its intimations of a scarring past and its uneasy relation to the street that lies ahead’’ (1988, 391–92). The invalid is not just a military victim, but everyman, thus adding a further layer of meaning onto the initial irony. Although Peter Gay’s assessment that ‘‘not even the cripple who looms so prominently in Manet’s painting of the flag-bedecked rue Mosnier imposes pathos on it in any way’’ (1976, 102) is convincing, this painting, unlike its predecessors in the rue Mosnier series, seems far more than a mere part of what Gay terms ‘‘a picture gallery of modern life observed with affection and transcribed without pathos’’ (102). The carriages, visual, documentary elements in all of the earlier sketches and drawings, take on new meaning here when juxtaposed with the invalid. The mobility of the carriages and the economic standing of those who can afford to use them serve as poignant counterpoints to the physical and economic struggles of the invalid. The suggestion of economic division is reinforced by the figures of the well-dressed bourgeois placed well away, but nonetheless at the eye’s next stopping point, from the poorly garbed invalid, who, as Kasl (1985) rightly notes, wears ‘‘the blouse and casquette of a laborer’’ (49) and clearly belongs to ‘‘that race of mise´rables’’ (59). Even the sign, which, we remember from La rue Mosnier aux paveurs (see color insert), advertises ‘‘coin de rue/veˆtements sur mesure,’’ acquires an ironical dimension here. Not because the invalid (who is at the coin de rue) has abnormal ‘‘measurements’’ (the urbane Manet is above such a sick joke), but because he could not afford clothing made to measure, which would appeal, rather, to the wealthy, fashionable bourgeois across the street. This economic division adds yet another layer of meaning to the painting, again produced by the ironic coupling of the invalid with what had previously been purely visual material. An additional effect of the use of irony is its iconoclastic nature. Once it occurs, as it does obviously in this painting, it causes us to question other phenomena that might have otherwise not seemed problematic. The ‘‘fact’’ that the construction site has now encroached upon the sidewalk, not true in La rue Mosnier aux paveurs and masked by the huge flag in La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux forces the cripple off the sidewalk and into the cobbled street, where walking is more difficult. Manet seems to suggest that he is a ‘‘displaced’’ person, physically, socially, and economically. Furthermore, the construction site is a sure sign of ‘‘progress’’ and a

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direct reminder of Haussmann’s restructuring of Paris during the Second Empire. Does Manet, like Zola, want us to recall the financial speculation and accumulation of wealth by the bourgeoisie, the destruction of the picturesque and displacement of the poor that accompanied such progress? It is certain that placing the invalid next to the construction site does little to reinforce the notion of progress and, in fact, deflates it much as it did the military myths associated with the flying flags. And what of the puzzling ladder, moving halfway in (or out?) of the picture, borne by a headless person whose hat, identical to that of the invalid, down to the ‘‘sprig,’’ identifies him as a worker? Has he come to remove the flags? Is the ladder a purely visual touch, guiding the viewer into the painting, toward the invalid, weighing down the lower left corner? It has the visual form of the fence pickets to the left or the railroad tracks of the nearby Gare Saint Lazare. It carries the connotations of social climbing (English), escape (French), and crucifixion (particularly in traditional art depicting the removal of Christ from the cross). One thing is certain: the invalid can’t climb it, literally or figuratively. The point here is that none of the individual visual components of the scene—carriages, bourgeois, sign, sidewalk, flags, ladder, or even invalid—constitutes in and of itself a social commentary. It is by their manipulation, their highlighting, through the handling of space and point of view, and especially their convergence, their combination, their confrontation, their interplay, that they acquire meaning. Here it is their ironic coupling that undermines the values of society and deflates the myths perpetuating them. This is precisely what we saw in Zola’s text, and it was not, perhaps given Zola’s propensities for polemics and proselytizing, surprising there. But some, including Zola himself (see Mauner 1975, 1, 7, 166), might question whether Manet, noted for ‘‘photographic,’’ objective, unbiased recording of visual truth without statement (and working in a medium where statement is limited) was capable of such ideological intent. Collins attempts to justify his perception of irony and ensuing social commentary in La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, l’homme aux be´quilles by comparing it to Manet’s lithograph, Le ballon [The Balloon], in which a crippled boy appears, thus ‘‘deflating’’ the balloon and its symbolism of progress. There are difficulties inherent in this type of analysis and argument, however valid its conclusions, since it involves external evidence stemming from an earlier and tangentially related work; it seems to me that there are more direct means of substantiating Manet’s social intent in the La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, l’homme aux be´quilles. One method is to follow the subsequent (not prior) treatment of the

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invalid (in this case the very same figure) in Manet’s work. A subsequent rendering of figure 14, L’homme aux be´quilles (RW, 噛279), housed in the Met, has been admired by such critics as George Heard Hamilton (1966), Hanson, who deems it ‘‘an excellent example of Manet’s ability to suggest color and form with a few strokes’’ (1967, 157), and Theodore Reff, who notes the invalid’s ‘‘monumental stature here through the largeness of form and simplicity of line’’ (1982, 240). Except that the tilt of the beard now matches that of hat and tunic, it is very like the earlier direct sketch, and we must draw from it the same conclusions: the figure is highly positive, and consequently it provides no justification of Manet’s social criticism. As Cachin and her fellow editors of an important Manet exhibition catalog conclude, ‘‘Nothing picturesque, no particular facial expression, but the concise, strong line, the monumental layout, suggest a powerful image of the figure’’ (1983, 404). This drawing was generally assumed to be the one intended for Manet’s friend Cabaner, an opinion promulgated by Moreau-Ne´laton and adopted until recently by many Manet critics (see, for example, Tabarant 1947, 325; Hanson 1967, 157). If this were true, the argument would end here. However, figure 15, L’invalide de la rue Mosnier, e´tude pour ‘‘Les Mendiants’’ (RW, 噛278), shows the actual sketch done for Cabaner; at least it is the one Cabaner chose for the cover of a song for which he wrote the music based on poems by Jean Richepin, La Chanson des Gueux (see J. Wilson 1978, 82, 噛14; Herbert 1988, 301 n. 43). And, as we see, it is the figure as depicted in the painting—turned away, tilted down, squared off, faceless, tired, victimized. Once again it is the context into which the invalid is placed that enables us to assess social intent, and this time the context is irrefutably clear—verbal language. The invalid appears on the title page for a song entitled Les Mendiants (the beggars), spelled out in Manet’s own hand and crowned, ironically, with ribbons. It is clear here that Manet (or at least his friend Cabaner) conceived the invalid as a victim, not only of war but also of poverty, a social outcast. Furthermore the subtitle of the song—‘‘les grands’’ (the rich)—and the overall title of the series—‘‘les gueux’’ (the poor)—definitely indicate that the invalid’s economic situation is perceived in terms of class difference, even class struggle. As Kasl points out, ‘‘the beggars of La Chanson des Gueux were considerably more violent and aggresive than was conventional’’ (1985, 54). Indeed, the antithesis of ‘‘les grands’’ et ‘‘les gueux’’ is remarkably close to Zola’s juxtaposition of ‘‘les gras’’ and ‘‘les maigres,’’ a parallel that further reinforces Manet’s social intent. However, to my mind, the most solid proof stems from the internal evidence of the painting, brought to light by our study of the steps leading up to it. It is Manet’s conscious manipulation of visual material that

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Figure 15. E´douard Manet. L’invalide de la rue Mosnier, e´tude pour ‘‘Les Mendiants’’ (The Invalid of la rue Mosnier, study for ‘‘The Beggars’’), 1878. Brush and ink (Pinceau et encre de Chine sur une esquisse a` la mine de plomb, sur velin), 34 ⴒ 26.5 cm. Courtesy of Madame A. Montanari, Paris, France.

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enables us to witness his concerns and thus assess his intent by assisting at the production of meaning within the work. The injection of the invalid into a flag-decked street, the reduction in size and number of neighboring figures and flags, the emptying of surrounding space, the inclusion of half a ladder, simply cannot be see as so many accidents, so many coincidences, so many examples of ‘‘visual difficulties’’ on Manet’s part. The sheer numbers of potential ironies that emerge from these transformations serve to reinforce each other and justify our interpretation. Even if we reject one or two of these hypotheses—the carriages don’t necessarily suggest mobility; the sign may not stand for luxury clothing—the others—the celebration of military defeat and its victims, the loneliness of the street, the juxtaposition of rich and poor, the puzzle of the ladder—remain too numerous and too obvious to defeat the overall argument. Herbert’s judgment of this painting, ‘‘It would be naive to think that his mutilated, blue-frocked worker is an accidental image in his decoding of the holiday’’ (1988, 31), provides a fitting prelude to Reed’s contention that ‘‘Manet is ‘literary’ because his painting displays a complex relation to narrative’’ (2003, 11) and to Lethbridge’s conclusion about Manet’s art in general—‘‘Manet’s ironic and oblique intonations speak of the politics of his art’’ (2003, 35). Furthermore, by following the elaboration of the work, we have been able to see that in painting, as in literature, meaning does not derive from the addition of individual elements but from their relationships— their combination, conjunction, confrontation, and, in Le Ventre de Paris as in the La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, l’homme aux be´quilles, their ironic coupling. A work of art is always greater than the sum of its parts. It is not Florent plus the vegetables, any more than it is the invalid plus the flags, that produces meaning; it is their dynamic interplay. To remove one aspect, that is, to resolve the contradiction, is to change (and thus reduce) the work’s meaning, which depends on sustaining contradiction. As John House aptly contends, ‘‘after about 1866, Manet was exploring an imagery of the contemporary world that embodied the ambiguities and uncertainties about social order and identity that characterised a particular view of ‘modernity’ (2004, 158). Indeed, as T. J. Clark (1984) elaborates, in his exploration of the elusive notion of modernity, ‘‘Art seeks out the edges of things, of understanding; therefore its favourite modes are irony, negation, deadpan, the pretense of ignorance or innocence’’ (12), before concluding that ‘‘modernist painting accepted and reworked a myth of modernity in which the modern equaled the marginal. Shifting and uncertainty were thus taken to be the truth of city life and of perception, the one guaranteeing the other’’

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(259). For Arden Reed, ‘‘modernism happens, in part at least, when painting and literature interfere with each other’’(2003, 5). Based on these notions, all of which involve ambivalence, few artists could be seen as more ‘‘modern’’ than Manet and Zola, but none of the artists examined in this book would be excluded.

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8 Impressionist Ideology: Maupassant, Monet, and Renoir pe`re et fils BENEATH THE SEEMING SIMPLICITY OF IMPRESSIONISM’S SUNLIT SURfaces lies a nexus of social and philosophical issues that reflect the conflicts and values of an entire generation. Indeed, in the suburban countryside—as represented in the works of the writer Guy de Maupassant, the painters Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, as well as the latter’s son, the filmmaker Jean Renoir—reside many of the main antitheses that form and inform nineteenth-century ideology: nature/society; freedom/constraint; modern/traditional; female/male; self/other; sensation/reason; visual/verbal. These fundamental oppositions are represented aesthetically by dynamic tensions between light and line, juxtaposition and superimposition, impression and identification, reception and projection, which endow the imagery itself with a sense of movement, vibrancy, and oscillation that are characteristic of impressionism and key to ‘‘viewing’’ its works, whatever the medium. The setting for Maupassant’s short story Une partie de campagne (1881) is the countryside near Paris along the meandering Seine river, an area that would become known as the cradle of impressionism. Monet, for example, took up residence in late 1871 at Argenteuil, where Renoir as well as Sisley, Caillebotte, and even Manet joined him to paint, often choosing the same motifs. Of Monet’s approximately 175 paintings done at Argenteuil (Herbert 1988, 229), we shall examine his Effet d’automne a` Argenteuil [Autumn Effect at Argenteuil] for characteristics of impressionist style and vision, before relating his manner and matter to those of Maupassant in Une partie de campagne and then drawing links between that short story, a painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and a film adaptation of the Maupassant tale by Jean Renoir. So closely linked with impressionism has Maupassant’s story become that a celebrated exhibition of impressionist works in 1984–85 was named A Day in the Country, the English translation of the tale’s title (see Brettell et al. 1984). 202

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MONET’S EFFET D’AUTOMNE A` ARGENTEUIL: IMPRESSIONIST TECHNIQUE Monet’s Effet d’automne a` Argenteuil (see color insert), painted in 1873, a year before the derisive coining of the term ‘‘impressionism’’ in relation to the painter’s Impression : Soleil levant, is the embodiment of impressionist technique and vision. In a landscape painted entirely out of doors, Monet sought to capture the fleeting effects of light and color brought on by given atmospheric conditions (here a bright, slightly cloudy sky) at a particular moment in time (the midday light of an autumn day). The painting shows the village of Argenteuil from the small branch of the Seine, with the Ile Marante on the left and the Colombes bank on the right (see Wildenstein 1996, 123–24). The hypothetical viewpoint of the implied spectator is not only at some distance from the village but it is also not located on solid ground, but rather seems to hover over the water itself, two features that enhance the importance of nature, rather than human activities, be they industrial or leisurely. Furthermore, as Gordon and Forge note in speaking of this painting, ‘‘Monet’s floating studio allowed him to mingle with the traffic on the water; but it was also a retreat from that traffic, his private observatory’’ (1983, 66). Although the composition is noticeably decentered, with the church steeple, the focal point, set slightly to the right and the two large masses of foliage of unequal size, it remains stable and harmonious for several reasons: the repeated forms of the foliage in the reflections; the emphasis on the horizontal dimension of the shoreline highlighted in blue, intersected by the strong vertical line of the steeple and its reflection in white; and the overall unity of atmosphere, color, and light. Monet attempts to capture the fleeting, flickering movement of light on the static canvas through a variety of techniques: applying a pale ground to the white canvas, which allows the white grain of the canvas to remain visible; spreading layers of paint across the surface in such a way as to allow previous layers to show through in a latticework effect; using the wooden end of the brush to scratch through accumulated layers of paint, back to the ground and the canvas itself; mixing white with other colors on the palette; and dragging white pigment along the surface with another color (see Januszczak 1980, 102). It is, indeed, this combination of techniques, all oriented toward light, that lends the painting its fundamental unity, as Copplestone contends: ‘‘it all seems to have come together under the all-pervasive light’’ (2003, 50). As Bernard Dunstan observes, ‘‘the great mass of golden trees shows a remarkable variety of color, placed in small touches; these include a

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golden yellow, which varies towards gold-green, a pink, gradating to a pink-violet, sometimes modified with a rub or glaze of yellow; a cold, pale blue-green; and a cobalt blue’’ (1976, 49). Seen at a distance, however, the colors cluster in groups of orange, white, and blue, which repeat themselves in the reflections, thereby suggesting the diffusion of light and color over the entire scene. Joel Isaacson identifies ‘‘a scale of hues almost completely derived from the spectrum, concentrating on a restricted coupling of warm and cool and of complementary colours, in this case yellows and blues’’ (1978, 206). Furthermore, since the complementary colors, blue and orange, enhance and intensify each other, Monet’s choice of colors adds significantly to the vibrancy of the image, much as is the case in Impression: Soleil levant (see Berg 1992, 165). The water is rendered in large, flat strokes that mimic the movement of waves, and the clouds are formed by fluffy strokes to suggest their passage across the sky. Waldemar Januszczak and his colleagues describe in detail Monet’s use of varied textures in this painting: Monet’s brushwork is extremely varied and descriptive of the forms and textures he wished to describe. Rough, crusty strokes are used to depict foliage; longish, horizontal ones for reflections of sky on water, and the sky itself was created with thinner paint and broad strokes. Clouds are represented by churned brushwork with stiff paint used to evoke puffiness, and buildings are created with form-following strokes of thick, smooth paint. Monet’s brushwork was also used to create spatial effects as seen in the water which recedes with diminishing touches as it moves into the distance; the sky and water are rendered paler near the skyline to recreate the distant, hazy, natural scenery. (1980, 103; see also Copplestone 2003, 50–52)

It goes without saying that Monet’s emphasis on light, color, and texture comes at the expense of line; and architectural forms, such as those of the church and the steeple, are merely suggested by strokes of paint across the surface. Indeed, the buildings and even the village would be unrecognizable were it not for the single salient feature of the steeple, itself a mere dash of white paint. One might say that the man-made objects are dominated by their natural surroundings, and that the natural objects themselves are subordinated to their attributes or qualities of color and light. By blurring the lines of demarcation between the sky, the land, and the water, and by repeating ‘‘solid’’ forms in their reflections in the water, Monet ‘‘liquefies’’ and even ‘‘vaporizes’’ them, or rather reduces all the elements of reality to the state of visual images, that is, impressions.

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MAUPASSANT’S UNE PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE: IMPRESSIONIST TECHNIQUE Despite Philippe Bonnefis’s claim about Maupassant that ‘‘it’s clear that Impressionism is absent from his novels. One hardly sees it present elsewhere’’ (1981/1993, 81; see also Gauteur et al. 1995, 133–35), Maupassant’s affinities with the impressionists, particularly Monet, have been well documented by numerous critics, among them Louis Forestier, who describes Maupassant as ‘‘sharing with the impressionists the taste for modern subjects and motifs, drunk with colors and seeking by many means to retain the fugacity of things’’ (1993, 31, see also Bailbe´ 1993, 58; Bury 1994, 112–13; and MacNamara 1986, 149). Nowhere is the writer’s appreciation of the painter better articulated than in his 1886 article ‘‘La vie d’un paysagiste’’: Last year, in this same area, I often followed Claude Monet as he sought out impressions. He was no longer a painter, in truth, but a hunter. He would set off, followed by children carrying his canvasses, five or six canvasses treating the same subject at various times and with different effects. He would take them and leave them in turns, according to changes in the sky. And the painter, before his subject, would wait, watch for the sun and shadows, capture the falling ray or the passing cloud in a few brush strokes, and, disdainful of the false and the conventional, he would place them rapidly on the canvas. I saw him thus seize a sheet of light sparkling on the white cliff and fix it with running yellow tones that rendered uniquely the surprising and fugitive effect of this elusive and blinding spectacle.

Although the encounter described above occurred at Etretat, in Normandy, in the eighties, Maupassant, an avid oarsman and notorious leisure-lover in the seventies, was well familiar with the same spots along the Seine that Monet and the impressionists celebrated in their paintings, and often chose them as settings for his own stories, including Une partie de campagne. At the tale’s outset, the Dufour family undertakes a long-awaited outing in the countryside in a cart borrowed from the milkman, presumably a fellow Parisian tradesman. The family consists of Monsieur Dufour, the authoritative and authoritarian patriarch, Madame Dufour, the robust wife whose saint’s day is being celebrated, a grandmother, and a young woman and a young man, the latter two identified only by gender not family role, a detail that becomes significant at the end of the story, which, typical of Maupassant’s patented endings, turns out to be inevitable although initially surprising. Sharing a feeling of awe regarding the approaching countryside, the

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entire group is designated by the collective pronoun ‘‘on,’’ through which ‘‘one’’ views the scenery, including a lengthy description that takes up paragraphs 3 through 9, which we shall look at in some detail: 3) Apre`s avoir suivi l’avenue des Champs-E´lyse´es et franchi les fortifications a` la porte Maillot, on s’e´tait mis a` regarder la contre´e. 4) En arrivant au pont de Neuilly, M. Dufour avait dit : ‘‘Voici la campagne enfin !’’ et sa femme, a` ce signal, s’e´tait attendrie sur la nature. 5) Au rond-point de Courbevoie, une admiration les avait saisis devant l’e´loignement des horizons. A droite, la`-bas, c’e´tait Argenteuil dont le clocher se dressait ; au-dessus apparaissaient les buttes de Sannois et le Moulin d’Orgement. A gauche, l’aqueduc de Marly se dessinait sur le ciel clair du matin, et on apercevait, de loin, la terrasse de Saint-Germain ; tandis qu’en face, au bout d’une chaıˆne de collines, des terres remue´es indiquaient le nouveau fort de Cormeilles. Tout au fond, dans un reculement formidable, par-dessus des plaines et des villages, on entrevoyait une sombre verdure de foreˆts. 6) Le soleil commenc¸ait a` bruˆler les visages ; la poussie`re emplissait les yeux continuellement, et, des deux coˆte´s de la route, se de´veloppait une campagne interminablement nue, sale et puante. On euˆt dit qu’une le`pre l’avait ravage´e, qui rongeait jusqu’aux maisons, car des squelettes de baˆtiments de´fonce´s et abandonne´s, ou bien des petites cabanes inacheve´es faute de paiement aux entrepreneurs, tendaient leurs quatre murs sans toit. 7) De loin en loin, poussaient dans le sol ste´rile de longues chemine´es de fabriques, seule ve´ge´tation de ces champs putrides ou` la brise du printemps promenait un parfum de pe´trole et de schiste meˆle´ a` une autre odeur moins agre´able encore. 8) Enfin, on avait traverse´ la Seine une seconde fois, et, sur le pont, c¸’avait e´te´ un ravissement. La rivie`re e´clatait de lumie`re ; une bue´e s’en e´levait, pompe´e par le soleil, et l’on e´prouvait une quie´tude douce, un rafraichissement bienfaisant a` respirer enfin un air plus pur qui n’avait point balaye´ la fume´e noire des usines ou les miasmes des de´potoirs. 9) Un homme qui passait avait nomme´ le pays : Bezons. (184–85) [3) After having followed the Champs-E´lyse´es and crossed the fortifications at the Maillot gate, one had begun to look at the countryside. 4) Arriving at the Neuilly bridge, M. Dufour had said: ‘‘Here’s the country, at last!’’ and his wife, at this signal, had gotten emotional about nature. 5) At the Courbevoie roundabout, an admiration had seized them before the distancing of the horizons. To the right, over there, was Argenteuil whose steeple stood out; above appeared the Sannois hills and the Mill at Orgement. To the left, the Marly aqueduct sketched itself on the clear morning sky, and one could see, in the distance, the terrace at Saint-Germain; while ahead, at the end of a chain of hills, excavations indicated the new fort at Cormeilles. Way back, with astonishing remoteness, beyond the plains and villages, one

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could make out the dark green of the forests. 6) The sun began to burn their faces; dust filled their eyes continuously, and, on both sides of the highway, unrolled a countryside that was interminably bare, dirty, and smelly. One might have said that leprosy had ravaged it, gnawing even the houses, since skeletons of battered, deserted buildings, and small cabins, unfinished by unpaid developers, showed their four walls, without roofs. 7) Here and there, growing in the sterile soil were long factory chimneys, the only vegetation in these putrid fields where the spring breeze wafted an aroma of oil and shale mixed with an other odor, even less pleasant. 8) At last, one had crossed the Seine a second time, and, on the bridge, it had been an enchantment. The river was bursting with light; mist rose up from it, pulled up by the sun, and one felt a soft quiet, a salutary refreshment in finally breathing purer air, which hadn’t swept up the black factory smoke or the fumes from the dumps. 9) A passerby had told them the name of the place: Bezons.]

Ample critical commentary has been lavished on one part or another of this description (Berthe 1988, 34–35; Deitz 1994, 3–10; Gauteur et al. 1995, 64, 116, 120–21; Janssen 1960, 100; Perez 2000, 130–31; Pierrot 1981, 177, 193), probably because of the ambivalent position of the Parisian ‘‘banlieue,’’ as described by Jean-Michel Berthe: ‘‘The suburbs constitute a border place, neither truly countryside nor quite city: they crystallize differences, attract dissonances, register fluctuations, and reveal them in a play of mirrors in which images of the city and of nature reflect each other’’ (1988, 33). Throughout the passage, the collective personalized viewpoint is repeatedly emphasized (‘‘on s’e´tait mis a` regarder . . . on apercevait . . . on entrevoyait’’), reminding the reader that the scene does not stand alone, but is a phenomenon filtered through human perception, an ‘‘impression.’’ The viewpoint is also mobile, following the group’s trip towards the countryside (‘‘Apre`s avoir suivi . . . En arrivant . . . Enfin, on avait traverse´ la Seine une seconde fois . . .’’), a technique that goes beyond the limits of painting and points anachronistically yet tellingly, given the tale’s later adaptation by the pioneer filmmaker Jean Renoir, toward the moving picture. Indeed, it is the mobile viewpoint, tracking the travelers’ progress, that defines the composition of the passage in the literary sense of the term: the arrangement of elements across time, from word to word, sentence to sentence, and paragraph to paragraph. Maupassant also seeks, however, to convey in the strongest way the notion of ‘‘composition’’ in the painterly sense: the arrangement of elements in space. The fifth paragraph alone has more than a dozen spatial indications, including locative adverbs and adverbial expressions like ‘‘A droite, la`-bas . . . audessus . . . A gauche . . . de loin . . . en face, au bout . . .’’ The spatial indications, though remarkably numerous and explicit, are also accom-

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panied by specific place names. These reference points give the description the gridlike quality of a map and provide clear links with the places so prominently associated with impressionist painting: notably, Argenteuil (Monet, Renoir, Caillebotte, Manet), Marly (Sisley, Pissarro), and Courbevoie (Seurat). Into this highly organized spatial configuration, Maupassant systematically inserts qualities that suggest the properties of visual expression. A salient architectural or topographical feature often designates a given locality, as with ‘‘Argenteuil, dont le clocher se dressait’’ and ‘‘la terrasse de Saint-Germain.’’ Such linear features are complemented by effects of color and light, as in ‘‘l’aqueduc de Marly se dessinait sur le ciel clair du matin.’’ Here the metaphorical verb (‘‘se dessinait’’) is borrowed directly from painting, to assist those who may not have yet made the connection between this description and an impressionist landscape, and the linear aspect of ‘‘drawing,’’ not a particularly impressionist feature, is balanced by the precise notation of light (‘‘sur le ciel clair du matin’’), which is a hallmark of the art of Monet and the impressionists, as we have seen. Indeed, the entire passage seems to waver between the two systems: line and light. Paragraphs 6 and 7 focus on architectural features: ‘‘maisons . . . des squelettes de baˆtiments . . . des petites cabanes . . . de longues chemine´es de fabriques.’’ Paragraph 8 brings out natural elements of the landscape with an impressionist emphasis on the effect of atmosphere (‘‘une bue´e s’en e´levait’’) and light (‘‘la rivie`re e´clatait de lumie`re’’) emphasized by the active verbs that lend movement to nature and create strong impressions for the Parisian travelers (‘‘l’on e´prouvait une quie´tude douce’’). It is this latter mode, the impressionist, that characterizes Maupassant’s own style as he manipulates the properties of verbal expression to imitate those of visual impression. Take, for example, the final sentence of paragraph 5: ‘‘Tout au fond, dans un reculement formidable, par-dessus des plaines et des villages, on entrevoyait une sombre verdure de foreˆts.’’ The sentence is typical of the entire passage in its indication of the viewpoint (‘‘on entrevoyait’’) and spatial location (‘‘Tout au fond . . . par-dessus’’). More subtle, however, is Maupassant’s use of the sentence’s syntax to convey the order of visual perception. To assess the impact of his style, we might imagine another more standard sentence that conveys similar information, such as Une foreˆt verte reculait tout au fond du paysage, par-dessus des plaines et des villages. In Maupassant’s version, the actual object of perception, forests, is removed to the final position in the sentence, identifiable only after the perception of the qualities that dominate and define it: those of spatial location mentioned above and those of light (‘‘sombre’’) and color (‘‘verdure’’) that immedi-

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ately precede it. Moreover, since adjectives of color normally follow the noun in French (des foreˆts vertes), we can see that, by promoting the color to the grammatical status of a noun (‘‘verdure’’), Maupassant is able to modify it by indicating its tone (‘‘sombre’’) and to place it before the object noun (‘‘foreˆts’’). In short, by manipulating grammar and syntax, Maupassant is able to emphasize the qualities of light and color, the effects, the impressions, more than the objects to which they are usually subordinated. By nominalizing the color green he is able to achieve on a verbal level what the impressionists had on a visual level. Such an example provides just cause to question the statement of the authors of Une partie de campagne, Maupassant. Partie de campagne, Renoir that ‘‘Maupassant’s intention was never to transpose in literature impressionist painters’ manner’’ (Gauteur et al. 1995, 135). Furthermore, both techniques, the use of the nominal form for qualities usually rendered through adjectives and the adoption of a progressive sentence structure or syntax characterize Maupassant’s style throughout the passage. The nominal form is utilized in another instance in the same paragraph (5) to emphasize a spatial effect: the noun ‘‘reculement’’ instead of the more common adjective ‘‘recule´’’ lends a more vibrant, even vibrating, impression to the spatial effect of distancing. A similar effect is found in the first sentence of the paragraph in the use of ‘‘l’e´loignement,’’ in place of the more commonly found adjective ‘‘e´loigne´,’’ and the depiction of the reaction of the spectators with ‘‘une admiration les avait saisis,’’ instead of the common verbal structure ‘‘ils avaient admire´.’’ In each case the impression becomes more self-standing, even dominant, as the subject of the action, the rareness of the expression’s form itself serving to further highlight it. Again, in the key paragraph 8, when the family finally reaches a landscape more in tune with impressionist effects of atmosphere and light, their impressions are captured and highlighted by the nominal forms ‘‘un ravissement’’ (instead of ‘‘ravis’’) and ‘‘un rafraıˆchissement’’ (for ‘‘rafraıˆchis’’). In his apt analysis of Maupassant’s works, including Une partie de campagne, Matthew MacNamara describes the effects of this technique: ‘‘These stylistic values of nominal constructions are used by Maupassant to endow his paysages with qualities of mobility, and of picturesque and plastic density, and to represent subjective aspects of his characters’ perception of them’’ (1986, 18). Indeed, like Zola (chapter 7), Maupassant seems to favor this technique in order to capture perceptual phenomena rather than for primarily esthetic purposes, as with the Goncourt brothers’ development of their famous ‘‘e´criture artiste’’ (see Sabatier 1920). Throughout the entire passage, sentence structure also serves to mirror the progression from impression to identification. The penultimate sentence of paragraph 5, ‘‘tandis qu’en face, au bout d’une chaıˆne de

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collines, des terres remue´es indiquaient le nouveau fort de Cormeilles,’’ has the same structure as its successor, analyzed earlier: spatial effects (‘‘en face . . . au bout . . .’’) are followed by a salient feature of the landscape (‘‘terres remue´es’’) and finally by the identification of the object of perception, removed to the end of the sentence (‘‘le nouveau fort de Cormeilles’’). The temporal nature of the sentence enables Maupassant to first suggest an impression, then assure a precise identification, often achieved in impressionist art only through the verbal title of the painting. This visual rather than rational order is reinforced in several other instances by the inversion of verb and subject. In the clause ‘‘au-dessus apparaissaient les buttes de Sannois et le Moulin d’Orgemont,’’ for example, the locative adverb (‘‘au-dessus’’) is followed first by the perceptual verb (‘‘apparaissaient’’) and only finally by the objects preceived (‘‘les buttes de Sannois et le Moulin d’Orgemont’’), which, as subjects of the sentence, would have come first in normal French syntax. The same holds true for ‘‘des deux coˆte´s de la route, se de´veloppait une campagne’’ (6), which also uses a reflexive verb to lend movement to nature, as in ‘‘se dressait’’ and ‘‘se dessinait’’ elsewhere in the passage. Of particular interest is the first sentence in paragraph 7: ‘‘De loin en loin, poussaient dans le sol ste´rile de longues chemine´es de fabriques, seule ve´ge´tation de ces champs putrides’’ (7). This example follows the same pattern of a locative expression (‘‘de loin en loin’’) preceding a verb (‘‘poussaient’’), then another locative expression (‘‘dans le sol’’), and finally the verb’s subject (‘‘de longues chemine´es de fabriques’’), the actual object of perception. The sentence also moves from the visual toward the verbal through an extended metaphor that ironically highlights the ambivalent nature of the entire description of the countryside. In effect, the literal and dominant objects, the long factory chimneys, are qualified by figures borrowed from a natural vocabulary (‘‘poussaient . . . sol . . . ve´ge´tation’’), which is ironic, since the only growth in this countryside is industrial not natural. Indeed, other negative metaphors (‘‘une le`pre . . . des squelettes’’) and outright judgments (‘‘sale et puante . . . ste´rile . . . putrides’’), reflecting the industrialization of this portion of the countryside (‘‘batiments de´fonce´s . . . petites cabanes inacheve´es faute de paiement aux entrepreneurs . . . chemine´es de fabriques . . .’’) and even its pollution (‘‘parfum de pe´trole et de schiste . . . la fume´e noire des usines ou les miasmes des de´potoirs’’), form a negative counterpoint to the beautiful impressionist landscape described in paragraph 8. Thus, C. Scott’s judgment, in an otherwise perceptive article, that ‘‘what is missing from this story, therefore, and what is present in ‘La Femme de Paul,’ is a sense of locational opposite-

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ness, of confrontations across space’’ (1980, 277) does not match the evidence in this passage. As the authors of Une partie de campagne, Maupassant. Partie de campagne, Renoir state, ‘‘description fulfills an ideological function when it brings a value judgment to bear on the entity described. That’s the case here with the description of the outskirts of Paris’’(Gauteur et al. 1995, 116). In their analysis of the tale, they emphasize the essential conflict between the countryside and the city in Maupassant’s story: ‘‘Maupassant’s entire tale is underpinned by an opposition between the urban space of daily constraint and the natural space of the countryside, linked to leisure, freedom, and desire’’ (98). It seems to me, however, that this opposition is already embedded within the countryside itself, which is seen by Madame Dufour, for example, as equated with nature (‘‘s’e´tait attendrie sur la nature,’’ 184) and yet by unspecified others (‘‘les yeux’’) as ravaged by industry (‘‘une campagne interminablement nue, sale et puante,’’ 185). In short, the conflicting images of the countryside are superimposed rather than juxtaposed, and this distinction is fundamental to our reading of the text: rather than being constructed of separate strands of meaning, the thematic threads are interwoven in layers to produce a richer fabric, which in turn creates an interplay of social spaces within the same textual space rather than a simple chronological succession. The text must thus be read in the bivalent mode, nature and society seen in tandem and together producing meaning, much as we have viewed the interaction of visual and verbal media throughout this book. Readings of this passage range from the impressionist to the industrial, from the pastoral (C. Scott 1980) to the prostitutional (S. Johnson 2000). Such a conflict between nature and society is clearly a descendant of Rousseau’s contrast between nature and civilization, which we witnessed in Chateaubriand’s Atala (chapter 2), although its manifestation in Maupassant’s tale takes on an urban and economic cast that is the legacy of the industrial and bourgeois revolutions of the nineteenth century. This same antithetical representation of the countryside holds true in the works of impressionist painters: Monet tends to paint it as a natural landscape and Renoir in terms of its leisure activities, whereas Caillebotte, Sisley, Pissarro, and Seurat often emphasize its industrialization. In canvases such as Effet d’automne a` Argenteuil, however, the human landscape is superimposed on the natural one to produce a more complex and dynamic image. I would emphasize that in Une partie de campagne both parts of the picture are likewise inherent in the description of the countryside and that both are equally essential elements in determining the story’s outcome.

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The Dufour family finally arrives in paragraph 9 at their destination, Bezons, a village that Maupassant could hardly resist, not only for its visual qualities, but also for the phonetic resonance of its name with the verb ‘‘baisons’’ (let’s screw). The countryside immediately has a liberating or natural effect on the family members: the men take off their jackets, and the women take to the swings, which seem to whisk them away from everyday reality: as Mlle Dufour (identified by now) swings, ‘‘son chapeau, emporte´ par un coup de vent, e´tait tombe´ derrie`re elle’’ (187) [her hat, blown off by a gust of wind, had fallen behind her]; while Mme Dufour ‘‘jouissait d’eˆtre e´tourdie par le va et vient de la machine’’ (187) [enjoyed being made dizzy by the back and forth movement of the machine]. The swing scene takes us on another detour into impressionist painting, since it recalls a well-known painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR’S LA BALANC¸OIRE AND THE THEME OF THE GAZE Renoir painted La balanc¸oire (The Swing), shown in color insert, in the garden of his rented home in Montmartre in 1876 and exhibited it at the third ‘‘Impressionist’’ show in 1877, along with the better known Bal au Moulin de la Galette (Rewald 1946/1973, 384). Both paintings depict scenes of leisure out-of-doors in conditions of flickering light and are thus characteristic of Renoir’s ‘‘impressionist’’ mode. If Maupassant did not actually see the work, he would have been well aware of it through his reading of his Medan master Emile Zola’s Une page d’amour (1878), which also features a scene based on Renoir’s painting (see Newton 1967, 137 and Lethbridge 1999, 131). Perhaps Renoir, like Zola and Maupassant after him, sensed the artistic oscillation and playfulness of the swing scene identified by Robert Lethbridge: ‘‘the balanc¸oire is, in fact, the appropriate semantic and pictorial sign of the movement and play . . . between text and image, and image and text’’ (1999, 142). At any rate, Robert L. Herbert sees in Renoir’s choice of a leisure scene, his light palette, and, especially, his loose brushwork an ideological statement typical of the painter’s time: ‘‘Renoir’s free brushwork, therefore, is an expression of his society’s longing for signs of those values that were threatened by the organization of the urban-industrial world: spontaneity, individualism, and the freedom to find consolation among natural things’’ (1988, 193). In La balanc¸oire, Renoir chooses a relatively close viewpoint, which, unlike the distant panoramic perspectives often favored by Monet, allows us to focus on the group of human figures that dominates the

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foreground of the canvas, eclipsing the garden setting, which is nonetheless strongly suggested in the background. This foregrounding of the human figures is enhanced by the vertical blocking of the canvas, which also serves to suggest the vertical movement of the swing. The composition appears casual, particularly since the main male figure has his back turned to the spectator and the primary female figure, on the swing, is placed to the right of center. Taken together, however, the two figures, which stand out because of their size, counterbalance each other, particularly since the woman’s predominately white dress with blue trimming is the obverse of the male figure’s blue suit over a white shirt. The spectator is struck no doubt, as were the critics of the time, by the spots of color and light that dapple the canvas. Clearly, Renoir attempts to convey the flickering rays of the sun by the light spots that dot the shadowy parts of the garden and the man’s suit, while the blue ones that appear against the sunlit foreground and the woman’s dress are meant to suggest the shadows cast by parts of the foliage, perhaps even individual leaves. The pervasiveness of the spots and the loose brushwork, not always typical of Renoir, lend a certain unity to the canvas, as does the overall light palette, dominated by the color blue. As was noted by the ever witty critic Louis Leroi, he who had derisively coined the term ‘‘impressionist’’ at the first group showing in 1874: ‘‘More blue! But this one is frighteningly intense. It has been applied to the picture of a young girl on a swing covered with azure pom-poms. I hope you like pom-poms, for the painter has scattered them all over, in the sky, the trees, and on the ground. And everywhere the same ferocious blue’’ (Le Charivari, April 11, 1877 in Moffett et al. 1996, 234). It is not Renoir’s impressionist technique that interests us here, however, but another facet of impressionism that has drawn less commentary from art critics but has had a great impact on nineteenth-century fiction: the theme of the gaze. Indeed it is primarily the intersection of the various figures’ gazes that serves to unify the group and to suggest their relationships. The main male figure, turned away from the spectator and toward the young woman, stares directly and boldly at her, suggesting his interest in her and his desire to occupy her attention and thus ‘‘possess’’ her. In contrast with this male aggressiveness, and in keeping with proper female behavior, the young woman avoids his gaze (thereby implying its intense impact), while nonetheless appearing to glance sideways at him in a gesture of female coquettishness. In his excellent book, Eyes of Love: The Gaze in English and French Culture 1840– 1900, Stephen Kern notes the ambiguities of this figure: ‘‘Her minimal activity is full of subtle resistance. She leans against the swing’s rope and away from the determined gesture of the man’s right hand. Her left thigh and backside gently stretch the rope away from him, suggesting a

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mixture of her own self-stimulation, inner tension, and instinct to pull away. She seems lost in reverie, and her partly opened mouth indicates a distracting thought, a hint of evasion. The touch of sadness in her eyes is similar to that of the woman in The Umbrellas [also Renoir, 1883]. She is not looking at the man and is scarcely listening to him’’ (1996, 40). The man standing beside the tree, his body barely visible, has his face and eyes turned squarely toward the main male figure, for which Lethbridge contends, he serves as a reflection, while commenting on ‘‘the painting’s jeu de regards in the hatted spectator hidden from us, whose implied gaze is registered through that of the other man peering, or leering, round the tree, with thoughts at least less innocent than the uplifted gaze of the child’’ (1999, 140). I would further read in the second man’s gaze a certain envy and male rivalry, as if he recognizes that this territory has already been claimed by his bolder comrade. The little girl to the left, perhaps a young sister or cousin of the young woman on the swing, gazes in awe at the entire scene, trying to decipher the codes of courtship and store them away for future reference. It is the repeated theme of the gaze that compels us to read the possible emotions behind them, although such readings are hypothetical, and indeed must be so given the nature of visual representation, which can suggest emotions but not articulate them. One further senses the circulation of desire through the gaze, whether it takes the form of outright sexual attraction as with the foregrounded male figure, or of denial as with the young woman, or of admiration mixed with fascination as with the young girl, or its negative counterpoint envy, as with the man beside the tree. What is certain is the sense of interaction among the characters and the clear differences in male and female roles suggested by the network of gazes. Certainly this is the aspect of the painting that seems to have most affected Maupassant, as he set out incorporating a similar swing scene in his tale, and later Jean Renoir as he adapted it for the screen.

MAUPASSANT’S UNE PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE AND THE THEME OF THE GAZE Maupassant’s rendering of the swing scene features a minute physical description of Mlle Dufour, whose ‘‘robe dessinait nettement les ple´nitudes fermes de sa chair qu’accentuaient encore les efforts des reins qu’elle faisait pour s’enlever’’ (187) [dress clearly sketched the firm fullness of her flesh, further accentuated by the thrusts of her lower back in an effort to go higher]. Just who is meant to be ogling her, however, is left uncertain. In a phrase like ‘‘montrant a` chaque retour ses jambes fines jusqu’au genou’’ (187) [showing her shapely legs up the knees

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with each swoop], the person to whom she is ‘‘showing’’ her legs is unspecified. Later, the gaze of her father and the young man are mentioned—‘‘jetant a` la figure des deux hommes qui la regardaient en riant, l’air de ses jupes, plus capiteux que les vapeurs du vin’’ (187) [flinging in the faces of the two men laughing as they watched her the air of her skirts, more intoxicating than wine fumes]—but their family relationship seems more in tune with the laughter than with the aroma of her skirts. Ultimately it is the voyeurism and desire of the masculine reader that is called into question when Maupassant uses the pronoun ‘‘you’’: ‘‘une de ces femmes dont la rencontre dans la rue vous fouette d’un de´sir subit, et vous laisse jusqu’a` la nuit une inquie´tude vague et un soule`vement des sens’’ (187) [one of those women whose encounter in the street whips you with sudden desire and leaves you until nightfall with vague uneasiness and heightened senses]. Madame Dufour is described in a similarly physical, even edible manner—‘‘Ses formes secoue´es, tremblotaient continuellement comme de la gele´e sur un plat’’ (187) [Her shaken features trembled continuously like jelly on a plate]—but again no one seems to be gazing at her except for a handful of young boys: ‘‘elle apercevait vaguement une garniture de teˆtes polisonnes que des rires faisaient grimacer diversement’’ (187) [she vaguely perceived a set of mischievous heads in various degrees of leering]. As with Mlle Dufour’s father and the young man, laughter is their response; to introduce desire and the drama it entails will require more mature onlookers. Less than two pages later, Maupassant brings two local rowers into the picture, and with them the intensification and sexualization of the theme of the gaze: ‘‘Ils e´change`rent rapidement un sourire en voyant la me`re, puis un regard en apercevant la fille’’ (189) [They rapidly exchange a smile upon seeing the mother, then a gaze upon perceiving the girl]. The smile and the gaze constitute a communication system, a silent visual exchange, which marks their unspoken but clear determination to make a move on the two women. In the following paragraph, however, it is the gaze of the two women that is brought to the fore: ‘‘Leurs bras nus, qu’ils montraient sans cesse, geˆnaient la jeune fille. Elle affectait de tourner la teˆte et de ne point les remarquer, tandis que Mme Dufour, plus hardie, sollicite´e par une curiosite´ fe´minine qui e´tait peut-eˆtre du de´sir, les regardait a` tout moment’’ (189) [Their bare arms, that they displayed incessantly, bothered the girl. She pretended to turn her head so as not to see them, whereas Mme Dufour, bolder, pushed by a feminine curiosity that perhaps suggested desire, stared at them continously] Here Mlle Dufour, though clearly struck by the rowers (‘‘geˆnaient’’), feels compelled, as a female of her time, to avoid their gaze, but, at the same time, like the young

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woman on Renoir’s swing, she only pretends (‘‘affectait’’) to turn her head the other way and thus presumably continues to watch them out of the corner of her eye (the negative verb ‘‘ne point les remarquer’’ has itself been negated by the verb ‘‘affectait’’). Mme Dufour, on the other hand, older and bolder (‘‘plus hardie’’), makes no pretext of not ogling them (‘‘les regardait a` tout moment’’). The narrator’s feigned hesitation (‘‘peut-eˆtre’’) in identifying one of the reasons for her fascination simply solidifies the likeliness of his interpretation that her gaze belies more than mere feminine curiosity and in fact indicates desire. As Sharon Johnson has aptly noted, ‘‘especially, the ‘pleasure of looking,’ which Freud calls ‘scopophilia,’ imbues Maupassant’s text. . . . Throughout, the reader is affected by an erotically charged narration, as the characters’ libidinal excitation is conveyed through penetrating, voyeuristic gazes’’ (2000, 136). Throughout the scene of the encounter with the rowers, Maupassant highlights the gaze, especially that of Mlle Dufour, and at particularly noticeable positions in the text. At the beginning of one paragraph, the young woman’s emotions (‘‘e´mue’’) are aroused by one of the rower’s tales, causing her to raise her previously lowered eyes to look at him, the gaze thus becoming a sign of emotion: ‘‘La jeune fille, e´mue, leva les yeux et regarda le canotier’’ (190) [The girl, moved, raised her eyes and looked at the rower]. At the beginning of another paragraph, she surreptitiously studies the rowers—‘‘La jeune fille les examinait de coˆte´ maintenant’’ (190) [The girl was now examining them obliquely]— while at the end of another, despite her demure demeanor, her gaze again betrays her growing desire: ‘‘Quant a` la jeune fille, elle ne laissait rien paraıˆtre, son oeil seul s’allumait vaguement’’ (191) [As for the girl, she showed nothing, only her eye lit up slightly]. It is noteworthy that in all three examples, the narrator refers to her as ‘‘la jeune fille’’ not Mlle Dufour, thus emphasizing her gender role and the rowers’ perspective, since they don’t know her name. It is even more significant that the gaze is attributed to a female subject, a feature of Maupassant’s representation of women that is strikingly different from other writers and painters of his era, including Renoir pe`re et fils. As Micheline BesnardCoursodon states ‘‘only the woman’s eye is evoked; the eye is one might say sexualized in Maupassant’s treatment’’ (1977, 423; see also Raim 1986, 123–27; and Hartig 1991, 81–107). When the rowers obtain permission from the men to take the women for a boat ride, the emotion of one of the rowers, whose name is Henri, matching that of the young woman, Henriette, is again signaled by his gaze: ‘‘Le rameur regardait tellement sa compagne qu’il ne pensait plus a` autre chose, et une e´motion l’avait saisi qui paralysait sa vigueur’’ (191) [The rower was staring so much at his companion that he could

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think of nothing else, and he was seized by an emotion that paralyzed his strength]. Faced with his gaze and the gliding of the boat, Mlle Dufour experiences a similar paralysis, ‘‘Elle se sentait prise d’un renoncement de pense´es, d’une quie´tude de ses membres, d’un abandonnement d’elle-meˆme, comme envahie par une ivresse multiple’’ (191–92) [She felt herself taken by a renouncement of thought, a relaxation of her limbs, an abandonment of herself, as if invaded by thorough drunkenness], which is emphasized by the multiple use of the nominal form (‘‘un renoncement . . . une quie´tude . . . un abondonnement . . . une ivresse’’), as MacNamara points out (1986, 57–58). Maupassant is quick to note the causes for her troubled state: ‘‘elle e´tait aussi trouble´e dans ce teˆte-a`-teˆte sur l’eau, au milieu de ce pays de´peuple´ par l’incendie du ciel, avec ce jeune homme qui la trouvait belle, dont l’oeil lui baisait la peau, et dont le de´sir e´tait pe´ne´trant comme le soleil’’ (192) [she also felt troubled in this encounter on the water, in this scene depleted by the burning sky, with this young man who found her beautiful, whose eye kissed her skin, and whose desire was penetrating like the sun]. As much as by nature (‘‘sur l’eau . . . ce pays . . . l’incendie du ciel’’) she is affected by the rower’s gaze, which is personified to make its sexual nature more explicit (‘‘l’oeil lui baisait la peau’’) and linked directly to desire, then to nature through a simile comparing it to the sun’s rays: ‘‘dont le de´sir e´tait pe´ne´trant comme le soleil.’’ The young man’s desire, the young woman’s receptive state, and sexually suggestive words like ‘‘penetrating,’’ repeated twice more during the next few pages, leave little doubt as to the outcome of their outing when they stop at a secluded spot, which the rower calls his ‘‘private den.’’ Maupassant’s description (or lack thereof) of the seduction scene will be analyzed forthwith and in such delectable detail as to make the wait worthwhile.

JEAN RENOIR’S PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE AND THE THEME OF THE GAZE In his 1936 film adaptation (not released until 1946), Jean Renoir emulates not only the writer, Maupassant, but his own father, the painter; the filmaker, as Allombert notes, ‘‘knew how to find his father’s palette: Auguste Renoir’s impressionism explodes on his son’s palette’’ (1969, 212). At the same time, as Perez contends, ‘‘rarely have the movies moved, the camera and its subjects wandered about, with the openness of Renoir’s work of the thirties; in his different medium, he accomplished a liberation from the conventional enclosures similar to that of his father and the other Impressionists’’ (2000, 130). More specifically, in Partie de campagne, the son is able to capture at once the role

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of the gaze in the swing scene that had characterized his father’s canvas and the desire of the rowers that creates the drama in Maupassant’s tale by introducing the rowers early in the film and then filtering the swing scene through their gaze (see Reboul 1995, 127–28). In fact, Renoir fils introduces a whole host of gazers to ogle Henriette, as his film-script shows: De nouveau, Henriette se balanc¸ant. Panoramique pour suivre la grandme`re s’e´loignant. En fin de panoramique, apparaissent des se´minaristes que l’on reprend en plan ame´ricain. S’arreˆtant et jetant un long regard vers les balanc¸oires. Plan ge´ne´ral des balanc¸oires. Le supe´rieur les fait avancer, jetant lui-meˆme un regard inte´resse´ vers le portique. Vue en plonge´e d’Henriette se balanc¸ant, venant et s’e´loignant de la came´ra. Dans le mouvement, son chapeau tombe a` terre. Plan rapproche´ de visages de gosses qui observent la sce`ne de derrie`re un mur. La came´ra de nouveau accompagne Henriette sur sa balanc¸oire. A la feneˆtre du restaurant, plan moyen sur Rodolphe qui, accoude´, se lisse les moustaches en regardant intense´ment vers la balanc¸oire. (L’Avant-sce`ne 1962, 33–34) [Again, Henriette swinging. Panorama to follow the grandmother walking away. At the end of the panorama, appear the seminarians taken with an American shot (three-quarter view). Stopping and casting a long gaze at the swings. General shot of the swings. The father superior makes them move on, casting an interested gaze himself toward the apparatus. View from above of Henriette swinging, coming and going from the camera. In her movement, her hat falls to the ground. Close shot of the kids’ faces observing the scene from behind a wall. The camera again accompanies Henriette on her swing. At the restaurant window, halfway shot of Rodolphe who, leaning on the sill, strokes his mustache while staring intensely toward the swing.]

First the young seminarians, for whom the worldly spectacle of a woman swinging is forbidden and thus a sure source of fascination, take a long look (‘‘un long regard’’); then the father superior, whose job it is to help the seminarians overlook and thus overcome such temptations, interrupts their gaze before taking a good gander himself (‘‘un regard inte´resse´’’); next the camera catches a group of local lads (in whom one recognizes the ‘‘garniture de teˆtes polisonnes’’ from the tale) surreptitiously watching the scene from behind a wall; and last, but far from least, one of the rowers, named Rodolphe in the film, stares ‘‘intensely’’ at the young woman who is framed by the window, the intensity of his gaze emphasized by the lecherous way he strokes his mustache and the drool forming on his lips (fig. 16).

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Figure 16. Jean Renoir. Partie de campagne (Day in the Country), 1936/1946. Photo: W. Berg.

Clearly, Jean Renoir not only emphasizes but exaggerates the gaze by multiplying its occurrence and calling attention to each instance in the most blatant of ways. Perhaps he is motivated by the ‘‘cult of the gaze’’ that the critic Andre´ Bazin finds in his work (L’Avant-sce`ne 1962, 42); perhaps he feels the need to highlight this essential theme in a medium whose very visuality might mask it, unlike the text where its intrusion makes it highly noticeable; more likely, he uses the exaggeration to create a comic, even caricatural effect like that of Balzac and Daumier (chapter 3). Indeed, in the film version of the story, virtually every character is portrayed in caricatural fashion, except for Henriette and the second rower, Henri, her eventual lover, which serves to set off the seriousness of their encounter. Renoir’s playfulness with the gaze is again evident when Henri tells the bug-eyed Rodolphe, who praises the swing as ‘‘une belle invention’’ that ‘‘Tu vois tout et tu ne vois rien du tout !’’ [You see everything, and you see nothing at all!]. Immediately after Rodolphe’s response that ‘‘si elle pouvait s’asseoir le paysage deviendrait beaucoup plus inte´ressant’’ [if she were to sit down the landscape would become much more interesting], Renoir has the young woman and the camera obey Rodolphe’s every wish: ‘‘On revient sur les balanc¸oires pour voir Henriette s’as-

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seoir, et, en contre-plonge´e serre´e, passer devant la came´ra. Rodolphe continue de lisser sa moustache’’ (L’Avant-sce`ne 1962, 34) [One returns to the swings to see Henriette sit down, and, in a close-up from below, pass in front of the camera. Rodolphe continues to stroke his mustache]. The unlikely coincidence that Henriette would sit down, thus revealing her petticoats, at the very moment that Rodolphe would wish it is more than matched by the improbable camera angle, a close-up from below, which matches no possible human vantage point. Rather, it seems to mark the projection of Rodolphe’s desire along with that of the film’s spectator, by now fully implicated in the voyeurism of the scene and being teased by Renoir’s comically impossible camera placement (see also Lethbridge 1999, 141). Amid this gaggle of male gazes, the spectator can easily overlook the one that is missing: that of the young woman. We never look at her looking, much less see the scene through her viewpoint, and yet one can easily imagine a camera installed on the swing, since Renoir is renowned for his use of innovative viewpoints. Although the camera approaches Henriette so that we experience her ‘‘emotional point of view,’’ as Seymour Chatman puts it (1980, 132), this humanizing of her simply serves to emphasize the extent to which Renoir is determined to suppress her visual point of view and thereby mark her as an object and thus a victim of male desire and scheming, both signaled by the gaze. As Gilberto Perez asks (rhetorically) of Chatman: ‘‘And yet, natural and spontaneous though she may feel, when observed from Rodolphe’s point of view she can be seen as theatrical, as vulnerable to theatre. How real is her freedom? we may ask ourselves. How significant is her naturalness? Rodolphe’s point of view is introduced not to convey Henriette’s sexuality, but to qualify it’’ (2000, 136). The scene is a perfect example of the two sources of male pleasure identified by Laura Mulvey in her pioneering discussion of Hollywood cinema: scopophilia or the pleasure of viewing the female sexual object and narcissism stemming from identification with the male viewer (1975, 10). This scene and the film itself are ultimately about male and female roles and gender power, issues that also factor heavily in the outcome of Maupassant’s tale.

THE ENDING(S) OF MAUPASSANT’S UNE PARTIE DE CAMPAGNE Despite the highly visual description of the countryside at the beginning of the story and the systematic use of the gaze in the middle, for the seduction scene itself, Maupassant abandons the visual in favor of the auditory, primarily in an eighteen-paragraph segment that features the song of a nightingale, which Maupassant playfully manipulates to

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reflect the seduction occurring in the bushes below. Through this ploy of depicting a potentially erotic scene obliquely, Maupassant can at once avoid censorship, tease the voyeuristic reader with suggestive allusions, spoken but unseen, display his plentiful arsenal of literary techniques, and thus occupy legions of critics. Henriette is moved by the nightingale’s song because it reminds her of the romantic love of Romeo and Juliet, but its use in the tale implies a far more physical attraction. As she abandons herself to Henri’s caresses, the narrator shifts his focus toward the bird’s song: ‘‘Tout e´tait calme aux environs. L’oiseau se mit a` chanter. Il jeta d’abord trois notes pe´ne´trantes qui semblaient un appel d’amour, puis, apre`s un silence d’un moment, il commenc¸a d’une voix affaiblie des modulations tre`s lentes’’ (194) [Everything was calm all around. The bird began to sing. He first let out three penetrating notes, which seemed like a cry of love, then, after a moment’s silence, he began very slow modulations with a softer voice]. Maupassant establishes an unmistakable parallel between the song and the lovemaking by a host of techniques: the use of ‘‘double entendre,’’ whereby a suggestive word like ‘‘pe´ne´trante,’’ applied to one domain, is even more applicable to the other; the incorporation of similes like ‘‘semblaient un appel d’amour,’’ where the figurative term is borrowed from the domain of love; the ambiguity of the pronoun ‘‘il,’’ which refers grammatically to ‘‘l’oiseau’’ but can be used for any masculine subject, including Henri; the personification of the bird entailed by making the pronoun the subject of active verbs like ‘‘jeta’’ and ‘‘commenc¸a’’; and the suggestion of the rhythm of lovemaking through expressions such as ‘‘modulations tre`s lentes.’’ Maupassant achieves the same effect through the same techniques in several paragraphs, one more of which is included here to convince the doubtful reader and entertain the convinced one: Une ivresse envahissait l’oiseau, et sa voix s’acce´le´rant peu a` peu comme un incendie qui s’allume ou une passion qui grandit, semblait accompagner sous l’arbre un cre´pitement de baisers. Puis le de´lire de son gosier se de´chaıˆnait e´perdument. Il avait des paˆmoisions prolonge´es sur un trait, de grands spasmes me´lodieux. (194) [Drunkenness invaded the bird, and his voice, accelerating bit by bit like a fire catching flame or a passion growing bigger, seemed to accompany a crackle of kisses under the tree. Then the ecstasy of his throat was unleashed frantically. He had a prolonged swooning note, then great melodious spasms.]

Here again the lovemaking is suggested through the use of the masculine subject pronoun (‘‘il’’), double entendre (‘‘de´lire . . . paˆmoisons . . .

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spasmes’’), simile (‘‘comme un incendie . . . ou une passion’’), personification (‘‘une ivresse’’), and rhythm (‘‘s’acce´le´rant’’), further highlighted by Maupassant’s patent use of the nominal form (‘‘une ivresse . . . un cre´pitement . . . le de´lire . . . des paˆmoisons . . . de grands spasmes’’; see MacNamara 1986, 33). In this case the suggestion of human passion is underscored by the reprise of ‘‘une ivresse’’ along with the verbe ‘‘envahir’’ (see 192) and ‘‘s’allume’’ (see 191), all three used earlier to mark Henriette’s growing desire. When the couple finally leaves its ‘‘lit de verdure’’ [bed of greenery], visual description and indeed all physical sensation, are noticeably absent—‘‘le ciel bleu leur paraissait obscurci ; l’ardent soleil e´tait e´teint pour leurs yeux ; ils s’apercevaient de la solitude et du silence’’ (195) [the blue sky seemed darker to them; the hot sun was extinguished for their eyes; they perceived the solitude and silence]. Their reaction is due no doubt to the magnitude of their adventure but perhaps as well to the necessity of separating, which Maupassant describes with a minimum of detail, using a metonymy (‘‘un soupir’’) and a synecdoche (‘‘une larme’’) to suggest the reactions of Mme and Mlle respectively: ‘‘ ‘Au revoir !’ ’’ criaient les canotiers. Un soupir et une larme leur re´pondirent’’ (196) [Goodbye! Cried the rowers. A sigh and a tear answered them]. Maupassant begins the story’s ending (or endings since there are two stages) two months later, when Henri visits the Dufour’s hardware shop in Paris, only to discover that Henriette is now married to the inconspicuous and inept young man with yellow hair who had accompanied the family on their outing to the countryside and whose identity is only now revealed in the story (unlike the movie where it is ill-advisedly given at the beginning in an inset added by Renoir’s editorial team). When Henri learns that it is the young man who is taking over the business (‘‘prenait la suite,’’ 196), he understands ‘‘perfectly’’ that the girl was part of the deal and leaves the shop. The following year Henri returns to ‘‘leur chambre’’ (196) [their bedroom] in the woods, now shared with Henriette’s memory as the plural possessive pronoun leur indicates, only to find Henriette there with her fast-asleep husband. When Henri tells her he comes there often to relive his best memories, she tells him that ‘‘Moi, j’y pense tous les soirs’’ (197) [Me, I think about it every evening], a confession punctuated by an insistent gaze: ‘‘elle le regarda longuement dans les yeux’’ (197) [she looked him straight in the eyes at some length]. The natural attraction expressed by the visual is immediately obliterated by the intrusion of the verbal, however, as her waking husband has the last words of the story: ‘‘Allons, ma bonne, reprit en baıˆllant son mari, je crois qu’il est temps de nous en aller’’ (197) [Let’s go, my good woman, continued her

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yawning husband, I believe it’s time for us to leave]. Here the husband’s pronouncement that it is time to leave, his use of the imperative (‘‘allons’’), coupled with Maupassant’s use of the irrevocable title ‘‘son mari’’ and the double entendre involving ‘‘ma bonne,’’ which in this context means ‘‘my good woman’’ but could also mean ‘‘my maid,’’ leave little doubt as to who is now the boss, an effect underscored by Jean Renoir when he has Henriette row the boat carrying the reclining husband back to civilization, away from the pining Henri (see Gauteur et al. 1995, 155–56). The two men, like the two places they represent, Paris and the countryside, stand in opposition: the husband represents a permanent attachment based on economic necessity and enforced by verbal law; Henri a momentary liberation based on natural attraction expressed through the visual beauty of nature and the passion communicated through the gaze. For Maupassant, in human affairs, it is Paris, with the economic factors and social restrictions it entails, that triumphs over nature, site of momentary, but no doubt illusory, freedom and passion, just as the beautiful impressionist countryside described at the tale’s outset already bore the stamp of industrialization. In an elegant appraisal of Jean Renoir’s debt to his father, Andre´ Bazin identifies a fundamental link between visuality, nature, and love: One great lesson Jean Renoir owes to his father’s work, more than an infallible appreciation for the quality of the image, is the cult of the gaze and more generally of everything that comes from the senses. Renoir’s entire work is a morality of sensuality, the affirmation not of an anarchistic dictatorship of the senses, of breakaway hedonism, but the assurance that all beauty obviously, all wisdom surely, all intelligence even, matter only when witnessed by our senses and guaranteed by their pleasure. Understanding the world means first gazing at it and making it yield to your love through the caress of that gaze. (L’Avant-sce`ne 1962, 42]

Here again ideology (morality) is expressed through the formulation of antithesis, as visuality occupies a middle ground between the antipodes of unbridled hedonism and incontestable wisdom. Mariane Bury senses a similar sensuality at the heart of Maupassant’s vision and style: ‘‘We see in the elaboration of this poetics of reality the quest for a beauty stripped of lyricism, exclusively subordinated to the material world and revealed in those instants of sensorial ecstasy in contact with nature: at the heart of the eternal illusion, where we can find the universal vanity of Ecclesiastes, they appear as moments of grace reserved for the artist, even if as with Maupassant, his soul is damned’’ (1994, 271; see also Bailbe´ 1993, 39–67). For all his love of nature and

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leisure, however, Maupassant seems to me far too pessimistic, far too convinced of the encroachment of society into human and natural affairs to elevate such a fleeting feeling to the height of an ideological position or philosophy of existence. If Renoir pe`re et fils and impressionism in general imply an ideology of love and liberation based on visuality (‘‘la caresse de ce regard’’), then Maupassant can be said to oppose that view antithetically with a pessimism grounded in the intrusion into natural and human affairs of society and self-love through the verbal, the written law of precise, imposed, enforced codes. In a fleeting moment one may access nature, freedom, and love through the visual, but in reality it is rank and money that ultimately speak, as occurs in Une partie de campagne, through the yawning mouth of the yellow-haired male, now endowed with authority through his social position as ‘‘husband.’’ Without naming it as such, Jean Renoir himself offers a quintessential description of impressionist vision: ‘‘I am persuaded that we must take a sort of bath of receptivity enabling us to absorb the world, to join the world. We must move more and more toward the world; we must see people; we must see beings; we must touch them; we must feel them; we must love them or detest them, but we must absorb them and, by this process that has been art’s throughout the ages, digest them and restore them in a form modified by our own personality’’ (L’Avant-sce`ne 1962, 42). This doctrine (‘‘I am persuaded’’) of immersion (‘‘bath’’) in the visual, leading to a dialectic of impression (‘‘receptivity’’) and projection (‘‘move toward the world’’) allows the artist to achieve original expression (‘‘modified by our own personality’’). On a personal level, this oscillation between self and other enables the individual to elude the twin traps of self-absorption and self-effacement that ultimately ensnared Maupassant, who spent his last days confined in an insane asylum. If realism can be said to emphasize the object, and romanticism the observer, then impressionism embraces observation itself, the dynamic interplay between the individual and the world that fosters an ideology of freedom and friendship that permeates the palettes of Monet, Renoir, and their contemporaries and continues to please the palates of legions of their descendants. This privileging of the visual and mistrust of the verbal brings us full cycle from Corneille (chapter 1) and thus near to the end of our book.

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9 Kaleidoscopic Images of Algerian Women: Delacroix, Picasso, and Djebar MUCH AS THE INITIAL CHAPTER OF THIS BOOK LOOKED BACKWARD from the nineteenth century to Corneille and David, this final chapter moves forward to the contemporary Algerian writer, Assia Djebar, the first Maghrebian writer elected to the French Academy (and a woman at that!). Since her collection of novellas and short stories, Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement [Woman of Algiers in Their Apartment] itself evokes the nineteenth century through its allusion to Delacroix, since it uses painting to inform literature, since her approach involves the interaction of imagery and ideology within the text, and since her ideological positions are formulated by unresolved antitheses, her work also provides a fitting finale for our book.

DJEBAR ON DELACROIX AND PICASSO In the Postface of her work, Djebar explains the origin of the title of both the collection and its first, elusive novella—‘‘Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement’’—which stems from two famous paintings by Delacroix. Djebar undertakes a detailed and informed analysis of both paintings, which are quite similar; a portion of her discussion of the three women in the first and foremost one (see color insert) is given here: ‘‘Prisonnie`res re´signe´es d’un lieu clos qui s’e´claire d’une sorte de lumie`re de reˆve venue de nulle part—lumie`re de serre ou d’aquarium—, le ge´nie de Delacroix nous les rend a` la fois pre´sentes et lointaines, e´nigmatiques au plus haut point’’ (148)[Resigned prisoners in a closed place that is lit by a kind of dreamlike light coming from nowhere—a hothouse light or that of an aquarium—Delacroix’s genius makes them both near and distant to us at the same time, enigmatic to the highest degree. WA, 135–36]. Within this closed space (‘‘lieu clos’’) with its iridescent colors and artificial light (‘‘lumie`re de reˆve’’), trapped in their passivity (‘‘prisonnie`res re´signe´es’’), the women are isolated from na225

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ture, from their own bodies, from the other women, and from the spectator, for whom they resist meaning (‘‘e´nigmatiques’’). The permanence of their situation is suggested by the stability of the composition established by the pyramidal form of the central figure matched by the diagonal lines in the lower-left and upper-right corners (see Huyghe 1963, 287–88) and by the unity of light and general harmony of colors (see Jobert 1997, 151), while the sense of male domination and intrusion is confirmed by the elevated viewpoint, especially of the first painting (see Steinberg 1972, 130). Although critics ranging from Delacroix’s contemporary Gustave Planche (see M. Se´rullaz 1963, 149–50) to our contemporary Barthe´le´my Jobert (1997, 151–56) have stressed the formal aspects of the painting, others have emphasized its documentary nature (Lambert 1937; L. Johnson 1986, 167–69), and, especially, its implications as an emblem of French colonialism: Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, for example, echoes Djebar’s interpretation by pointing out the ‘‘correspondence between sexual and political conquest,’’ whereby ‘‘the painter made available to every Frenchman the space previously under the lock and key of the solitary Oriental despot, now disempowered’’ (2001, 79; see also C¸elik 1999–2000, 72; Mortimer 1996, 860; and Porterfield 1998, 138– 40). For Djebar, the supreme solitude of the figures (‘‘pre´sentes et lointaines’’) is underscored by their lack of gaze and voice. Indeed, the subtitle of the Postface is ‘‘Regard interdit, son coupe´’’ (Forbidden Gaze, Severed Sound), which she sees as the substance of the Algerian women’s condition throughout history, as reflected especially in the imposed wearing of the veil. She then traces this history throughout the Postface, from the French invasion in 1830, shortly before Delacroix’s visit, up to the time of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–63), which also coincides, as she notes, with a series of fifteen paintings and two lithographs by Picasso, based on Delacroix’s works. Djebar goes on to analyze in some detail one of Picasso’s paintings from the Femmes d’Alger series. Although she doesn’t specify a particular work, her citing of Pierre Daix leads us to version O (according to the Zervos classification), the painting reproduced and discussed in Daix’s La vie de peintre de Pablo Picasso, published two years before the Postface and containing the very statement cited by Djebar that ‘‘Picasso a toujours aime´ libe´rer les belles du harem’’ [Picasso has always liked to set the beauties of the harem free] (Daix, 359 and illustration 噛144). Moreover, since the entire series embodies the spirit of experimentation and liberation that struck Djebar and since version O is the final and most famous painting of the lot, we include it here (see color insert) along with Djebar’s commentary:

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Libe´ration glorieuse de l’espace, re´veil des corps dans la danse, la de´pense, le mouvement gratuit. . . . Comme une morale propose´e, ici, d’un rapport a` retrouver entre se´re´nite´ ancienne et pare´e (la dame, fige´e auparavant dans sa tristesse maussade, est dorne´vant immobile, mais comme un roc de puissance inte´rieure) et l’e´clatement improvise´ dans un espace ouvert. Car il n’y a plus de harem, la porte est grande ouverte et la lumie`re y entre ruisselante. . . . Enfin les he´roı¨nes—a` l’exception de la reine dont les seins e´clatent ne´anmoins—y sont totalement nues, comme si Picasso retrouvait la ve´rite´ du langage usuel qui, en arabe, de´signe les ‘‘de´voile´es’’ comme des ‘‘de´nude´es.’’ Comme s’il faisait aussi de cette de´nudation non pas seulement le signe d’une e´mancipation, mais plutoˆt celui d’une renaissance de ces femmes a` leur corps. (162–63) [Glorious liberation of space, the bodies awakening in dance, in a flowing outward, the movement freely offered. . . . Like a suggested moral, here, of a relationship to be found again between the old, adorned security (the lady, formerly fixed in her sullen sadness, is motionless from now on, but like a rock of inner power) and the improvised bursting out into an open space. For there is no harem any more, its door is wide open and the light is streaming in. . . . Finally the heroines—with the exception of the queen, whose breasts, however, are bursting out—are totally nude, as if Picasso was recovering the truth of the vernacular language that, in Arabic, designates the ‘‘unveiled’’ as ‘‘denuded’’ women. Also, as if he were making that denuding not only into a sign of an ‘‘emancipation,’’ but rather of these women’s rebirth to their own bodies. WA, 149–50]

Here, unlike in Delacroix’s painting, Djebar sees space as open (‘‘un espace ouvert’’), forms liberated (even from the constraints of visual perception), lines vigorous, colors vibrant, and light flowing naturally (‘‘la lumie`re y entre ruisselante’’). To Djebar the women seem mobile (‘‘la danse, la de´pense, le mouvement gratuit’’), and even the stationary one is immense and powerful (‘‘comme un roc de puissance inte´rieure’’). Although some critics read the female figures’ nudity as a sign of erotic desire (Galassi 1996, 137–39; O’Beirne 2003, 47), Djebar interprets their disrobing (‘‘de´nudation’’) as a visual pun signaling their casting off of the veil (‘‘de´voile´es’’) and consequent liberation (‘‘un signe de leur e´mancipation’’). Through their ardent gaze, the women are engaged with their bodies, with each other, and with the spectator, before whom they do not cower. The result, according to Djebar, is an overall and overwhelming feeling of emancipation and renaissance. Not that Picasso’s vision holds true for reality; it is simply a possibility. Djebar goes on in the Postface to point out the repressed position of women in the wake of the Algerian War, at which point colonialism was simply replaced by patriarchy. The situation in 1979, at the time of the tales’ writing, still reflects that depicted by Delacroix: ‘‘Le son de

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nouveau coupe´, le regard de nouveau interdit reconstruisent les ancestrales barrie`res. . . . Il n’y a plus de se´rail, mais la ‘structure de se´rail’ tente d’imposer, dans les nouveaux terrains vagues, ses lois : loi de l’invisibilite´, loi du silence’’ (164) [Sound severed once again, the gaze once again forbidden, these are what construct the ancestral barriers. . . . There is no seraglio any more. But the ‘‘structure of the seraglio’’ attempts to impose its law in the new wasteland: the law of invisibility, the law of silence. WA, 151]. She concludes with the belief that Delacroix’s vision persists and the hope that Picasso’s will ultimately prevail: ‘‘Je ne vois que dans les bribes de murmures anciens comment chercher a` restituer la conversation entre femmes, celle-la` meˆme que Delacroix gelait sur le tableau. Je n’espe`re que dans la porte ouverte en plein soleil, celle que Picasso ensuite a impose´e, une libe´ration concre`te et quotidienne des femmes’’ (164) [Only in the fragments of ancient murmuring do I see how we must look for a restoration of the conversation between women, the very one that Delacroix froze in his painting. Only in the door open to the full sun, the one Picasso later imposed, do I hope for a concrete and daily liberation of women. WA, 151]. In writing these tales, then, Djebar is caught in a dilemma: she is determined both to represent the entrapment of the Algerian woman as depicted by Delacroix and to suggest the sense of liberation envisioned by Picasso. She does so by utilizing a configuration of antithetical elements derived from her juxtaposition of the two paintings, which we can attempt to depict graphically as follows: Djebar thus invites the reader to apply these antithetical categories Delacroix

Picasso

space

closed

open

forms

fixed

free

lines

soft

bold

colors

iridescent

vibrant

light

artificial

natural

gaze

absent

engaged

garb

veil

nude

sound

silent

vocal

activity

immobility

movement

relationships

solitude

solidarity

ideology

entrapment

emancipation

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to her stories, a welcome interpretative device given the complexity of the tales, which stems in part from the ambivalent mission of Djebar: showing entrapment while suggesting freedom.

DELACROIX AND PICASSO IN DJEBAR In the first novella, which borrows its title from that of the collection, for example, Djebar introduces a series of seemingly episodic and enigmatic scenes that unfold in kaleidoscopic fashion, its elements, like so many beads, scattering and reassembling at the twist of the tube, rotating around the situation of the Algerian woman, oscillating between the poles of freedom and entrapment. In an enlightening study, Laurence Huughe comments on the obtuseness of Djebar’s style and on her use of juxtaposition as a rejection of conventional vision and representation: Beginning with Women of Algiers in Their Apartment, Djebar thus rejects transparent writing in favor of a narrative that is purposefully elliptical and polyphonic. The juxtaposition of different types of narrative—dialogue, conversation, description of reverie, anecdote, allusion, detail, a grandmother’s memories, a diwan, or a flashback—makes it possible to piece together, like a puzzle, an authentic image of the life of Algerian women of the past and the present . . . The pictorial representation which privileged an order and a unity that was easily penetrated by the gaze is replaced in Djebar’s creation by the informal, by the dispersion of the fictional tableau, which enables the author to fracture or deflect what she calls ‘‘the spying eye.’’ In the same way, Djebar opposes mobility in space and time to the fixity of Delacroix’s painting. (1996, 872; see also Huughe 2000, 94–95)

As Huughe suggests in her final comment, among the keys to solving the riddles and piecing together the ‘‘puzzle’’ are the elements derived from the juxtaposition of the two paintings. In effect, just as we have used Djebar to read Delacroix and Picasso in tandem, we can now use Delacroix and Picasso in tandem to read Djebar. About fifty pages long, the tale is divided into four parts, each containing several scenes or ‘‘tableaux,’’ some of them subtitled ‘‘interlude’’ or ‘‘diwan’’ (lyric poem), thus producing a total number roughly equivalent to Picasso’s series of fifteen paintings, each one exploring the changing relationships among various groups of figures, especially women. The story opens with a surrealistic dream sequence in which Ali, a surgeon, sees a patient resembling his wife Sarah but fails to identify her (‘‘serait-ce Sarah ?’’, 11) [might it be Sara?, WA, 5], as fog hides her hair color, she is confused with childhood memories, and her face is initially concealed (‘‘aux yeux bande´s,’’ 11) [blindfolded, WA, 5], then

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partially revealed in a bipolar image, which is strikingly similar to those of Picasso’s women seen simultaneously from front and in profile (‘‘La moitie´ gauche de la face au bandeau . . . l’autre partie du visage, profil de pierre, statue lointaine qui va flotter en arrie`re,’’ 11) [The left half of the blindfolded face . . . the other part of the face, profile of stone, distant statue that’s going to float backward, WA, 5]. This amalgam of Algerian women and perhaps emblem of Algeria (see Faulkner 1996, 852) is about to be operated on or ‘‘sacrificed,’’ as the bleating of a goat suggests, by a team of athletic male nurses, who stand (in) for the absent Ali. As her surroundings move from closed to open space (‘‘la pie`ce e´troite . . . la lucarne ouverte . . . la lucarne s’est e´largie,’’ 11–12) [the narrow room . . . the open skylight . . . the skylight has grown wider, WA, 5–6], the white sky itself, as in a painting (‘‘comme peint,’’ 12) [as if painted, WA, 6], opens up and threatens to annihilate those in the operating room: ‘‘un ciel tout blanc, comme peint, un ciel neuf . . . qui s’aggrandit au-dessus des infirmiers, non, des techniciens, ciel qui va les ane´antir’’ (12) [a pure white sky, as if painted, a new sky . . . growing larger above the male nurses, no, the technicians, sky that will annihilate them, WA, 6]. The images of unveiling visages and opening spaces, suggesting those of Picasso’s painting, serve to underscore at once Sarah’s thrust toward liberation, Ali’s desire to control her, and the ambivalent nature of their relationship. Ali awakens to a sunlit apartment with a balcony opening onto the city and a bustling Sarah, who then receives a call that propels her to the dark, enclosed apartment of her friend Anne, who has attempted suicide. In a gesture that recalls directly that of the black servant in Delacroix’s painting Sarah pulls back the curtains (15), but here, as in Picasso’s work, she injects light and life into the scene, by opening the space. When Anne, her back to the wall, cries: ‘‘Je ne supporte pas la lumie`re’’ (15) [I can’t bear the light, WA, 9], the reader is able to equate her gesture and statement with entrapment thanks to Djebar’s interpretation of space and luminosity in the two paintings. After a series of visits to households occupied by women of varying degrees of independence, revealed by visual signs from the paintings (primarily luminosity, mobility, the gaze, and negotiation of space), Part 2 opens with a variant on the initial dream scene, in which Nazim watches his masked father Ali operating on a television screen in an atmosphere ‘‘d’une irre´alite´ tragique’’ (18) [tragically unreal, WA, 12]. The runaway Nazim faces issues of liberation not unlike those of his stepmother, Sarah. Moreover, his fleeting images of emancipated peasant women sitting outdoors (21) match hers of a young mother dancing with her infant on a balcony about whom she asks: ‘‘est-elle enferme´e a` clef pour qu’elle se venge ainsi, par cette crise gratuite de danse gaie . . .

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ou est-ce l’enfant qui re´clame l’espace, la liberte´ ?’’ (29–30) [Is she locked up that she thus takes revenge, by this gratuitous burst of frivolous dancing . . . or is it the child who demands space, freedom? WA, 22–23]. The reader readily recognizes elements from Picasso’s painting—the open space, the lively colors, and the dance, not to mention Sarah’s own mobility and gaze—and translates them along with Sarah into signs of potential emancipation (‘‘la liberte´’’). The final scene in Part 2 brings Ali and Sarah back together, and, despite Sarah’s actions in opening the shutters and practicing gymnastics, Djebar uses spatial imagery to point out the ambivalence of the married woman: ‘‘Elle l’avait e´pouse´. Ses errances du jour avaient garde´ leur dessin de cercles vagues, improvise´s, dans l’espace de lumie`re intarissable. Mais elles revenaient de´sormais au meˆme point de de´part : ce lit a` deux, ce corps d’homme’’ (35) [She had married him. Her daytime wanderings had maintained their vaguely circular design, improvised in the vibrant space of inexhaustible light. But from now on they would always return to the same point of departure: this double bed, this man’s body. WA, 28]. Part 3 begins with a scene in the public bath, where the principal women characters are brought together, their bare breasts, as in the Picasso painting, a sign of their freedom (37). Throughout the tale, water, like liquid paint, has progressively joined the elements of Picasso’s painting as a sign of women’s freedom and solidarity: ‘‘Retrouver l’eau qui court, qui chante, qui se perd, elle qui libe`re mais peu a` peu, chez nous toutes’’ (41) [To get back to the water that streams, that sings, that gets lost, that sets us all free, if only bit by bit, WA, 32], as the women, again at various stages of emancipation, share gazes and conversations (see Huughe, 871–72). When the water-bearer suffers an accident, her story is recounted in the form of a ‘‘diwan’’ (lyric poem), structured by alternating dream scenes involving closed (‘‘encage´e,’’ 48) [caged in, WA, 39] and open space (‘‘cre´ant mon espace neuf,’’ 48) [creating my new space, WA, 39]; immobility and movement (‘‘Dore´navant, ainsi nue, je circule en planant,’’ 47) [From here on in, naked like this, I circulate, I soar, WA, 38]; dark (‘‘les yeux noircis,’’ 50) [eyes blackened, WA, 41] and light (‘‘A l’aube,’’ 52) [At dawn, WA, 42]; veiled and unveiled (‘‘je suis la de´voile´e,’’47) [I am the unveiled one, WA, 38]; silence (‘‘silence de voile blanc,’’ 48) [silence of the white veil, WA, 39] and sound (‘‘mots libe´re´s,’’ 46) [Liberated words, 37]; subservience and freedom (‘‘je me crois libre,’’ 52) [I think I’m free, WA, 43]. The story of the water-bearer (‘‘porteuse d’eau’’) is then juxtaposed with that of the fire-bearers (‘‘porteuses de feu’’), a name given to female liberation fighters, let down by their male counterparts in the wake of the war (54). As she begins to draw closer to Leila, her former

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fellow fighter, Sarah is interrupted by Ali’s friend the painter, who had previously declared himself to be the only male who didn’t need to dominate women (28) but who now appears quite protective as he stands stubbornly at the gate until Sarah leaves (56). Although Hoffer reads him as representing Picasso (163), his role here seems less welcoming and suggests perhaps that true women’s liberation is a matter of solidarity among women. In the opening scene in Part 4, yet another reversal of an earlier scene, Anne induces Sarah to speak of her past imprisonment and relationship with her mother (‘‘elle se de´livra,’’ 58), during which the latter notes that ‘‘Je ne vois pour nous aucune autre issue que par cette rencontre ; une femme qui parle devant une autre qui regarde, celle qui parle raconte-t-elle l’autre aux yeux de´vorants, a` la me´moire noire ou de´crit-elle sa propre nuit, avec les mots torches et des bougies dont la cire fond trop vite ?’’ (57) [I see no other way out for us except through an encounter like this: a woman speaking in front of another one who’s watching; does the one who’s speaking tell the story of the other one with the devouring eyes, with the black memories, or is she describing her own dark night with words like torches and with candles whose wax melts too fast? WA, 47]. Their still uncertain yet growing steps toward female solidarity are advanced by their common speech and gaze (see Faulkner 1996; Huughe 1996 and 2000; Mortimer 1996; O’Beirne, 2003), along with the notion of open space (‘‘issue’’) and the light and dark imagery (‘‘noire . . . nuit . . . mots torches . . . bougies’’), whose meaning is again elucidated by the juxtaposed paintings of the Postface. The next to final paragraph is similarly revealing . . . to those who hold the visual clues provided by the Delacroix and Picasso paintings: ‘‘—Un jour, nous prendrons ensemble le bateau ! dit la premie`re [Anne]. Non pour partir, non, pour contempler la ville quand s’ouvriront toutes les portes. Quel tableau alors ! Jusqu’a` la lumie`re qui en tremblera !’’ (62) [‘‘One day we’ll take the boat together,’’ the first one (Anne) said. ‘‘Not to go away, no, to gaze at the city when all the doors are opening . . . What a picture! It will make even the light tremble!’’ WA, 51–52]. (See Faulkner 1996, 855; Hoffer 2001, 163). Here the verbal mode (conversation) and verbal keys to solidarity (the collective pronoun ‘‘nous’’) and engagement (the exclamation points) are accompanied by the visual mode (‘‘contempler’’) and visual keys denoting mobility (‘‘le bateau’’), openness (‘‘s’ouvriront toutes les portes’’) and luminosity (‘‘la lumie`re qui en tremblera’’), all of which stem from the Picasso painting, itself alluded to in the passage (‘‘tableau’’). In her perceptive analysis of the tale, Pamela Hoffer (2001) shows how Djebar suggests movement through musicality by techniques rang-

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ing from the repetition of phonemes based on ‘‘eau’’ (water) in words like ‘‘tableau’’ (painting) and ‘‘bateau’’ (boat) to the juxtaposition of scenes recalling the Delacroix and Picasso paintings to suggest counterpoint: ‘‘Another musical technique consists in juxtaposing Delacroix’s painting with Picasso’s, in textual counterpoint, for example, she juxtaposes dark passages with sunny ones’’ (164). Djebar’s ideological intent in juxtaposing the two paintings may well lead her, according to Emer O’Beirne (2003), to overlook a juxtaposition within each painting between the Algerian women and the black servant, seen by Djebar as a mere ‘‘accessory’’ in Delacroix’s work and as missing in Picasso’s. O’Beirne concludes her fascinating study of Djebar by noting that ‘‘what her readings of Delacroix and Picasso suggest is that cultural intimacy can produce more blindness to the other within one’s own world than does the distancing lens of cultural divergence which stands to gain in breadth of vision what it may lack in depth of empathy’’ (48). But foregrounding the contrast between the Algerian women and the black slave would have weakened the antithesis between the liberation and entrapment of the Algerian women that Djebar is determined to explore, just as O’Beirne’s own antithesis between different forms of ‘‘otherness’’ would have been undermined by considering, for example, the visually handicapped (in referring to Djebar’s ‘‘oversight’’ O’Beirne uses the terms ‘‘blind’’ and ‘‘blindness’’ no fewer than six times). The point is that both Djebar and O’Beirne are engaged in ideological readings, whose efficacy depends on the sharpness of the antitheses that define them and thus causes both readers not to ‘‘misread’’ but simply to overlook alternative readings. It is the superimposition of all of these readings that adds to the richness of our appreciation of any text or painting. Throughout her collection of enigmatic tales, Assia Djebar does not paint portraits of liberated women; rather, against a background of repression she projects flickering images of freedom that gradually burn themselves into the consciousness of her protagonists and her readers. For Djebar, as for the nineteenth-century writers and painters whose works we have been looking at in this book, it is imagery that begets ideology, not statically but dynamically. In her analysis of Djebar’s tale, Hoffer (2001) uses Cixous’s distinction between ‘‘une oeuvre d’art’’ [a work of art], fixed in its beauty and designed for admiration like Delacroix’s painting, and ‘‘une oeuvre d’eˆtre’’ [a work of being], provisionary, malleable, always in progress toward some elusive truth, like Picasso’s series. Hoffer concludes that ‘‘it is possible that Djebar is presenting a textual ‘work of being,’ a promising vision of the future with no definitive solution, a temporary and malleable painting’’ (166). Hans Jaffe finds a similarly unresolved quality in Picasso’s series: ‘‘It would

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be erroneous to look upon this last version as the ‘‘definitive’ one. Picasso has given us his interpretation of Delacroix’s work in fifteen paintings which are interrelated, and what characterizes Picasso’s manner of seeing and creating is his many-sidedness, his rejection of a definitive solution’’ (1983, 148).

RESISTANCE TO RESOLUTION IN PICASSO AND DJEBAR This rejection of a solution in Picasso’s work is enhanced, as it is in so many of the texts and paintings we have been exploring, by the use of juxtaposition, as Susan Galassi notes in speaking of the painting at hand: This final canvas . . . is slightly smaller and more vibrant than the previous one. Every faceted plane is now embellished with patterns and color. The dialogue between representational systems played out on various levels throughout the series, comes to rest in the dramatic juxtaposition of the volumetric smoker and the Cubist sleeper. Contrasts between colors, between surface and depth, and color and texture are also intensified. Moreover, the composition in this final work reverses that of the original. Here, the frontal, seated smoker at the left fills the space in the vertical dimension and towers over the other figures. In Delacroix’s painting, the servant played a similar role at the opposite side. The evocative transparency of the previous works, opening on to layers of depth, is replaced by an emphatic assertion of the material quality of paint on canvas. (1996, 146)

In one of the most brilliant essays ever written on Picasso, also strikingly applicable to Djebar’s art, Leo Steinberg (1972) identifies further ‘‘incompatible presences’’ that constitute the dynamic interplay of this canvas: ‘‘Everything comes together in Canvas O, the last of the Algiers series, a synthesis on many levels. It reunites the exercise of simultaneity with its erotic impulse, and the multi-aspected figure with a responsive space. And it makes both these forms of union dependent upon a third: the billeting of incompatible presences—i.e. divergent ‘styles’— under one roof’’ (223). Steinberg goes on to explore the nature of these divergent styles—representational and Cubist—and especially the paradoxes inherent within each one, before identifying further contradictory forces within the canvas: The picture is built on a symmetry of cancellations. On the right, Servant and coffee pot, together with the striped curtain coulisse at the margin, restore to the Cubist space the suggestion of stage-like depth. On the left, a stated perspective of depth is annulled by flat contradiction. While the left

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half of the picture shows an essential illusionism confounded by elements of forbidding flatness, the opposite half invites elements of disruptive illusionism to break up an essential abstraction. A concord of contradictions; it is the principle of reciprocal counterchange—now expanded to a symphonic scale—which had been with Picasso ever since his composite front-and-side faces, wherein the profile portion was charged with a facing eye, and the en face with the eye in side view—a mutual exchange of competences designed to make the parts lock. (233)

Steinberg’s monumental essay not only summarizes Picasso’s vision but also captures the nature of Djebar’s novella, where the role reversal of Sarah and Anne, the contrast of light and dark settings, the alternation of diwan and dialogue, the confrontation of closed and open space, the counterpoints of silence and sound, the juxtaposition of water-bearers and fire-bearers, the conflict of traditional and modern, all seem suspended in a state of ‘‘reciprocal counterchange’’ to produce a ‘‘billeting of incompatible presences,’’ a ‘‘symmetry of cancellations,’’ a ‘‘concord of contradictions,’’ ‘‘a mutual exchange of competences.’’ This quality of resistance to resolution, of dynamic interplay, which characterizes the works of Picasso and Djebar, as well as those of the numerous nineteenth-century writers and painters examined in this book, is at the very core of the notion of modernity, to which we now (re)turn in our conclusion.

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Conclusion: Reading in the Modern Mode LEO STEINBERG CONCLUDES HIS MONUMENTAL ESSAY ON PICASSO, cited at the end of chapter 9, by characterizing the painter’s work as ‘‘a concord of contradictions’’ (1972, 233), which also seems an apt description of the art of the painter’s admirer, the contemporary Algerian writer, Assia Djebar. Steinberg’s phrase further resonates with several definitions of modernity cited in the course of our study, most directly, perhaps, with that of France Vernier in her discussion of Victor Hugo: ‘‘Modernity, when it had a driving role, had the fundamental characteristic of attempting—without by definition being able to overcome its ambiguity—to apprehend, and to confront, a contradiction’’ (1995, 46, her italics; see also Harvey 1990, 10–11; Clark 1984, 12). Indeed, such resistance to resolution along with a sense of mobility and an affirmation of artistic activity seem to distinguish the ‘‘modern’’ works we have been examining from their classical predecessors.

MODERNITY Throughout our discussion of various writers and painters of nineteenth-century France (along with a few ancestors and descendants), the notion of contradiction, often expressed through antithesis, has been prevalent: duty and love for Corneille and David; nature and civilization for Chateaubriand and Girodet; art and love for Balzac and Daumier; individual liberty and societal repression for Stendhal, Delacroix, and Hugo; the peasant and the bourgeois for Sand and Millet; spirituality and sensuality for Flaubert, Moreau, and Huysmans; the individual and society for Zola and Manet; city and country for Maupassant, Monet, and Renoir pe`re et fils; women’s emancipation and entrapment for Djebar and Picasso. Furthermore, few if any of these artists attempt to resolve contradiction, or in Vernier’s terms, ‘‘to overcome its ambiguity,’’ maintaining, rather, a dialectical relationship of dynamic tension and ambivalence that causes the meaning of their works to oscillate between the two con236

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flicting poles rather than to gravitate toward one or the other. For Hugo, for example, the sublime is enhanced by the grotesque (1827/ 1900?, 303); one without the other would degenerate into the twin traps of sentimentality or horror, respectively; beauty and evil form a similar partnership for Baudelaire, whose major collection of poems bears the paradoxical title The Flowers of Evil. Realism is intimately and intricately bound to allegory for Delacroix, to caricature for Daumier, to idealism for Millet; nature and civilization are conjoined for painters as divergent as Girodet, Millet, and Monet. Even when one pole of a pair is clearly favored, as with liberation for Djebar, she must continue to represent entrapment in order to maintain consciousness of the full issue at hand: the ambivalent condition of the Algerian women; in short, their struggle. Moreover, many of the writers in our study appear to use imagery in contradiction with established ideology: Chateaubriand’s sensuous depiction of nature conflicts with his overt endorsement of religion; Balzac’s ‘‘figures’’ surpass traditional ‘‘forms’’; the ideal replaces the real for Sand; the spiritual word is counterbalanced by the sensual image for Flaubert and Huysmans; light is used to express darkness for Hugo; Picasso’s painting undermines colonialism for Djebar. In some cases, imagery (often in the form of figurative language, whether antithesis, oxymoron, metaphor, syllepsis, or irony) seems to overcome the limits of verbal language that stem from societal censorship for Stendhal, from psychological repression for Huysmans, from aesthetic principles for Zola, or simply from a mistrust of language for Flaubert or a preference for indirect expression for Maupassant. Similarly, some painters use words to create ambivalence: unlike the verse that reinforces the message of death accompanying Holbein’s premodern engraving, Girodet includes verse with natural imagery next to his figure of a priest, and Daumier uses broken verse under his lithograph to poke fun at classical orthodoxy. Other painters destabilize the very texts or myths that generate their paintings: David and Girodet by choosing scenes not in the works they illustrate in order to conflate and crystallize complex meanings into a single image; Moreau by iconoclastically rendering traditionally intelligible myths ambivalent in order to elevate them beyond temporality and reason, into the realm of the imagination. In most cases, however, ambivalence seems to emerge from conflicting elements in the painting, like light and line in Manet and Monet, or even competing forms of representation, as Steinberg notes of Cubism and illusionism in Picasso (1972, 233), and as we have witnessed in the classical and the romantic with Girodet; in the real and the caricatural with Daumier; in the real and the allegorical with Delacroix, whose very synthesis enables him to forge a living alternative to the

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static allegories of death in Holbein; just as Moreau then proceeds beyond romantic allegory to the more equivocal symbolic. In addition to contradiction, another key phrase in defining the notion of modernity, related nonetheless to the dynamic tension between conflicting forces, comes from Baudelaire’s famous formula in The Painter of Modern Life: ‘‘La modernite´, c’est le transitoire, le fugitif, le contingent, la moitie´ de l’art dont l’autre est l’e´ternel et l’immuable’’ (1862/1968, 553) [Modernity is the transitory, the fleeting, the contingent, one half of art, whose other half is the eternal and the immutable]. Modern art itself, as Baudelaire’s definition implies, harbors the conflicting partners of transitory movement and eternal immutability. As a result, as T. J. Clark puts it, ‘‘modernist painting accepted and reworked a myth of modernity in which the modern equaled the marginal. Shifting and uncertainty were thus taken to be the truth of city life and of perception, the one guaranteeing the other’’ (1984, 259; see also 49). Again this sense of mobility is embodied in nearly all the writers whose works we have explored, and it is exemplified in Stendhal’s definition of the novel, not as a ‘‘mirror in the roadway,’’ as commonly (mis)quoted, but in its complete form as a ‘‘mirror that is moving along a highway’’ [Un roman est un miroir qui se prome`ne sur une grande route (1830/1964, 398)]. Chateaubriand’s sun forms in the sky and the eye; Huysmans’s Salome dances, while Des Esseintes squirms; Sand’s Germain sows, Maupassant’s Henriette swings, and Djebar’s Sarah wanders; Balzac’s portraits develop over time, from figure to form; just as Zola’s and Maupassant’s sentences progress from impression to identification. At all levels, the modern novel exploits the very movement inherent in verbal language and in literature (see Lessing 1766/1910, 109). And in painting, even before Monet attempted to capture temporal effects in his series of canvasses depicting the same scene at different moments, movement was evident in mobile figures like Millet’s striding sower and Daumier’s stooping Galatea (herself emblematic of static classical form coming alive in modern art), in the dynamic composition of Delacroix’s Liberty Guiding the People, thrusting upward and onward (see Huyghe 1963, 24), in the modulation of viewpoint in Manet’s Roadmenders (see Fried 2002, 19), in the free brushwork of Monet and Renoir, in the vibration of complementary colors in Girodet and Delacroix, and in the tension between light and line, leading to an ‘‘oscillation, which fights the stasis of the figures’’ in Moreau’s Salome´ (Kaplan 1974, 35). A third and final aspect of modernity, again related to both contradiction and movement, stems from the sense of art as a process, leading to a self-consciousness of art, artistic activity, and the artist for modern

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writers and painters, who, as Vernier notes, ‘‘dramatize the presentation implied by any re-presentation’’ (1995, 48). Indeed, both text and painting seem to expand, exaggerate, and exhibit their inherent properties precisely through exposure to those of the other art form. Literary texts abound with painters like Frenhofer, whose theories constitute an ‘‘emblem’’ of Balzac’s writing (Paulson 1991, 410), and Claude Lantier, whose views on modernity echo Zola’s; dancers like Salome, whose sensuality points to that of Flaubert’s and Huysmans’s writing; musicians like those of Sand whose simple rustic style mirrors her own; writers like Father Aubrey who engraves biblical sayings on nature’s trees, as does Chateaubriand in his descriptive passages; and artist figures (modern at that) like Julien Sorel—‘‘Being an artist is also creating, and the only time that Julien is characterized as ‘poetic’ is at the time of his death . . . since the artist alone is the synthesis of the diverse elements that he nonetheless maintains in their divergence and their contradiction’’ (Bokobza 1986, 126–28)—also a telling description of his creator, Stendhal. Hugo paints himself into his revolutionary picture through firstperson narration and direct discussion of the function of his novel, as does George Sand who relates her work to both painting and music. Chateaubriand’s descriptions ‘‘exhibit a prose that presents itself as a spectacle and frees itself from reality to become an essentially esthetic object. Attention is displaced from the referent to the codes of representation’’ (Antoine 1997, 279). Caricature itself, practiced by Balzac and Daumier and analyzed by Baudelaire, implies a conscious exposure and exposition of art itself, as Hannoosh argues: ‘‘as a metadiscursive form, caricature, like parody, offers a commentary on representation generally’’ (1998, 346). Painting, a medium traditionally marked by metacommentary through self-portraits and depictions of studios, becomes even more so in modern painting, through the presence of artist figures like Balzac’s Pygmalion, Delacroix’s revolutionary, Millet’s sower, and Moreau’s dancer; and, especially, through the dramatization of the artist’s hand, detectable by heavy texture in Delacroix and Millet, by visible brushwork in Monet and Renoir, by competing styles in Girodet and Picasso, all of which shift focus toward the frontal plane and style itself, artistry, and thus betray the presence of the artist, while showcasing the process of art. In short, nearly all the artists we have explored can be considered as representatives of ‘‘modernity’’ in all three related senses—contradiction, dynamism, and self-consciousness—and consequently, in the course of our study, certain principles began to emerge from (and thus for) reading their works. As a conclusion to this book, I shall attempt to review,

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reassemble, and reformulate some of these notions in order to suggest briefly a few ways of ‘‘reading in the modern mode,’’ willfully running the risk of appearing simplistic to experts in a given field, in the hope that such simplifications may prove useful for students or for experts from another field.

READING TACTICS First and foremost, the ambivalent artifacts of modernity, whatever the medium, call for a reading in the bivalent mode, their mutually contradictory positions seen in tandem and together producing multiple layers of interactive meaning. Rather than seeking to abolish contradiction as a reading problem, the reader is invited by these works to maintain and promote contradiction as a primary interpretative principle. Rather than insisting on closure, the reader is encouraged to accept openness, ambivalence, and reversal. Indeed, interpretation can often mean walking a middle ground and seeing both alternatives conjointly, as we did for David’s choice of an oath scene to embody the tale of Horace, or superimposing several critical views to arrive at a global interpretation rather than adhering to one or another, as we did by exploring different forms of otherness in relation to Djebar. As Jean-Pierre Richard puts it on Chateaubriand’s behalf, ‘‘better then to try to choose at once both terms of the confrontation. . . . to embrace both sides simultaneously’’ (1967, 143; his emphasis). And, as Chateaubriand himself suggested, better to muddy interpretative waters than to miss seeing the ‘‘crocodile in the bottom of the pool’’(1801/1962, 149). The most obvious means of reading contradiction is through juxtaposition, where two conflicting elements are seen side by side; this technique is most evident in painting, where, for example, the presence of a nude savage on the left and of a hooded and cloaked priest on the right of Girodet’s painting immediately raises the conflict between nature and religion to consciousness. The reading becomes more complicated when the conflict is not between figures, but between figure and setting (as with the invalid and the festooned street in Manet), between setting and setting (as with village and nature in Monet), between subject and style (as with caricature in Daumier), or between competing styles (as with Girodet, Delacroix, Daumier, and Picasso, to name but a few). The trick is to consider simultaneously the various relationships among the multiple layers of a painting to fully grasp its meaning and, especially, experience the pleasure of its viewing (see Berger 1972, 26). In a text, however, the tool of juxtaposition can be particularly un-

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wieldy, since conflicting elements are often separated chronologically and passages must be superimposed in the reader’s mind in order to see them simultaneously. Instead of seeing the text as composed of separate strands of meaning, a consideration of the thematic threads as interwoven in layers invariably produces a richer reading. Thus it is often imperative to read a text ‘‘backward’’ for its structure as well as forward for its plot, as has been proposed for Flaubert (see also Berg and Martin 1995, 138–39). Similar scenes are often soldered together over time by specific words whose recurrence helps us to grasp the networks of associations that create the story’s structure, define its themes, and lead to its interpretation, which often lies less in the conventional meanings we might read into given words than in those associations created by the recurrence of the words within the text, associations that produce a deeper meaning through the ‘‘internal force’’ of style. In short, the mot juste for Flaubert and the mot clef for other modern writers is not the word that best denotes a referent but the one that best serves as a nodal point in a web of intratextual connections, a semantic network that causes us to reevaluate the meaning of each point in light of the others associated with it. This process of association can sometimes be facilitated by grouping similar passages, as with the four interpretations of the lotus by Des Esseintes in Huysmans’s novel, which, despite their differences, together reveal a hatred for, yet obsession with, women and sexuality. Similarly, grouping the six occurrences of Iaokanann’s voice spread out over the time of Flaubert’s story enables the reader to see the common points among them and thus their meaning: spirituality. Complex relationships can also be approached by converting them into visual images, in the form of simple diagrams that enable us to visualize the dialectic process (Corneille, Chateaubriand, Stendhal), a phonetic grid that joins together key characters and themes (Sand), or even a double-entry table, which enables the reader to visualize variables with multiple components (Delacroix and Picasso) and thus lay out potential tools of interpretation for a particularly difficult text (Djebar). Although in constructing such diagrams I have tried to make them at least bivalent (columns) and multidimensional (rows), their use admittedly increases the ever-present risk of reducing meaning and rendering the work static, and thus conflicting with the second principle of modernity: dynamism. Dynamism seems like a natural approach to literature because of the chronological nature of the plot and the temporal nature of the reading process. It is important, however, to consider not just plot, but character construction (reading various portraits not as similar and thus simple, as we did for Iaokanann’s voice, but as complex and changing, as

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we did for Balzac, whose major characters evolve and thus acquire their meaning[s] over time). Similarly, landscape description, which seems to promote simultaneous spatial reading by emulating the properties of a canvas, can also be approached by the reader’s eye wandering back and forth over the page, as Philippe Antoine suggests for reading Chateaubriand—‘‘The written landscape seems to lend itself, like a canvas, to the back and forth movement of the gaze’’ (1997, 278–79)—and as we practiced for Flaubert, Maupassant, and Zola as well. Even the sentence, which can be grasped as a nearly simultaneous unit of meaning (as must often be the case in skimming the vast novels of the nineteenth century), can also be dissected into its chronological segments in order to seize the progression from impression to identification that is the very core of the phenomenal style emblematic of the late nineteenth-century prose of Zola and Maupassant. Finally, the principle of dynamism can be applied to the construction of the text itself, which we have attempted to do by following the progress, from notes to outline to novel, for the first chapter of Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris. This type of genetic criticism, as practiced by Henri Mitterand (1998) and others, emphasizes the effect of such progress on the works’s production of meaning more than its reliance on sources. This same genetic approach can also be applied to painting, as we have done by looking at the preliminary sketches for Girodet’s Atala in relation to the final work, or by following the progress from sketches to compositional drawings to paintings for Manet’s rue Mosnier series. Certainly, the brilliance of Steinberg’s work on Picasso lies, in part, in the critic’s effort to see each canvas in the Women of Algiers series in relation to each other and to study the painter’s entire production globally, over time. Even on the level of the individual painting, modern art appears particularly dynamic as one moves beyond the figures to the means of representation. Thus, the static figure of Salome oscillates between light and line, Delacroix’s colors vibrate, as much as his figures are set in motion through the composition; seeing the brushwork of Delacroix, Millet, or Monet (often impossible, alas, in a mere reproduction) leads the viewer to feel the movement of the artist’s brush across the space of the canvas. This very sense of progress also leads the reader to grasp the process of creation and thus the presence of the self-conscious modern artist, who seems determined to exhibit his or her artistry to the initiated reader, one willing to concentrate on means as well as meanings. And what better way to do so than to read two works of vastly different means—verbal and visual—in tandem, which is, of course, the main reading tactic practiced in this book. If, as Arden Reed argues, ‘‘modernism happens, in part at least, when painting and literature interfere

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with each other’’ (2003, 5), then reading both media together is itself a key to grasping either one, or better both. In short, the reader forms iconographical partnerships or even conglomerates, as we did in considering paintings by Monet and Renoir, as well as a film by Renoir fils, in relation to Maupassant’s Une partie de campagne and in suggesting the contribution of music to painting and writing in Sand’s La Mare au Diable. In short, reading in the modern mode involves embracing, not erasing contradiction; reading in depth for layers of interactive meaning; reading figuratively as well as literally; moving from juxtaposition to superimposition; seeing issues dialectically as well as antithetically; interpreting through interplay, not isolation; seeing figures, objects, and scenes emblematically, in relation to the whole work; reading dynamically as process, not statically; reading works in tandem, not just individually; forming iconographical partnerships and even conglomerates; assessing means as well as meanings; considering imagery along with ideology. It is doubtless the very ambivalence of modern works, their resistance to resolution, that promotes dynamic interplay and a sense of artistic process, keys not only to the notion of modernity but also, perhaps, to the pleasure and persistence of great art, whatever the medium.

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Index Page numbers of black-and-white illustrations are in italics; insert directs the reader to the color illustrations, between pages 64 and 65. abstract art, 84 Acade´mie Franc¸aise, 31, 225 Adhe´mar, Jean, 86 Agulhon, Maurice, 106 Algeria, 226, 227, 230 allegory, 74, 90, 106, 108, 109, 127, 158, 236, 237, 238 Allombert, Guy, 217 Althusser, Louis, 19 Amelinckz, Frans, 52 ancien re´gime, 44, 106 Ansel, Yves, 93 Antal, Friedrich, 49 antithesis: of art vs. love and imitation vs. expression in Balzac, 70, 73, 74, 77, 236; of bourgeois vs. peasant in Sand, 125, 132–33, 236; of city vs. the countryside in Maupassant and Renoir pe`re et fils, 211, 223–24, 236; of duty vs. love in Corneille, 32, 36, 38, 42, 43, 48, 62, 236; and duty vs. love in David, 47, 49, 236; and the haves and have nots in Zola, 178–80; and ideology generally, 20, 27, 62, 202, 243; of individual liberty vs. repression in Hugo, 92, 110, 113, 115, 118–19, 236; of individual liberty vs. repression in Stendhal, 92, 93, 97, 103–4, 236; and the nineteenthcentury, 202; and society vs. nature in Chateaubriand, 52–54, 162, 236; and society vs. nature in Girodet, 66, 67–69, 236; of spirituality vs. sensuality in Flaubert, Moreau, and Huysmans, 145, 152–55, 159, 162–65, 236; and women’s entrapment and liberation in Djebar, 228–29, 233, 236 Antoine, Philippe, 52, 59, 239, 242 Apollinaire, Guillaume: ‘‘La Tour Eiffel,’’ 16, 18

architecture, 28, 107, 156, 157, 158, 204, 208 Argenteuil, 202, 203, 208 Arnheim, Rudolf, 73 Ashton, Dore, 84 Audubon, John James, 58 Bailbe´, Joseph-Marc, 205, 223 Bailey, Caroline, 56 Bally, Charles, 170 Baltard, Victor, 166 Balzac, Honore´ de, 70–91, 125, 144; antithesis in, 70, 73, 74, 77, 236; and Daumier, 85–91; imitative ‘‘realism’’ of, 73; influence on other artists of, 70–71, 84; and light, 71, 72, 75, 77, 78–79, 82, 90; love vs. art in, 70, 77, 82, 88, 236; and theories of painting and literary style, 71–85, 88, 109–10, 237, 239; and use of milieu, 75–76, 79, 88; visual portraiture/caricature and description of, 16, 28, 73, 77–82, 85, 86, 88–90, 98, 219, 239. Works: Le chef-d’oeuvre inconnu, 28, 70–91, 109–10; La come´die humaine, 70, 86, 89, 90; Des artistes, 83; Euge´nie Grandet, 86; La peau de chagrin, 16; Le Pe`re Goriot, 81, 86; Splendeurs et mise`res, 74 Barbe´ris, Marie-Anne, 130, 132, 136 Barbe´ris, Pierre, 57, 61, 69 Barbier, Auguste: La Cure´e, 108–9 Barnett, Richard Laurent, 44 baroque, 30 Barthes, Roland: S/Z, 22 bas-relief, 46, 47 Baudelaire, Charles, 27, 91, 160, 161, 174; Les fleurs du mal, 237; Le peintre de la vie moderne, 86, 89–90, 110, 238; ‘‘Quelques caricaturistes franc¸ais,’’ 86, 89–90, 239

259

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Bazin, Andre´, 219 Beaufort, Jacques-Antoine: Le serment de Brutus, 46 beauty, 20, 223, 237 Belle et la Beˆte, La, 20 Bellenger, Sylvain, 51, 52, 61, 67, 69 Berchet, Jean-Claude, 57, 59 Berg, William J., 27, 99, 150, 155, 162, 166, 169, 170, 172, 174, 241 Berger, John, 19, 23, 240 Berthe, Jean-Michel, 207 Bertin, Jacques, 19, 23 Besnard-Coursodon, Micheline, 216 Biasi, Pierre-Marc de, 156 Bloom, Michelle E., 86 Blum, Le´on, 105 Boime, Albert, 92 Bokobza, Serge, 93, 97, 98, 105, 239 Boldt, Leslie Anne, 18 Bonaparte, Napole´on, 44, 45; in Hugo, 112–114; and Stendhal’s Julien, 93, 95, 96, 98, 99, 102, 103 Bonard, Olivier, 86, 90 Bongiorni, Kevin, 83, 84 Bonnefis, Philippe, 205 Borgeroff, E. B. O., 99 Boulanger, Gustave, 72 Bourbon monarchy, 44, 92; and the Restoration, 44, 92, 93, 94, 97, 103, 104, 106, 112, 114 Brettell, Richard, 202 Brombert, Victor, 93, 94, 103, 146, 155 Brookner, Anita, 39–40, 44, 46, 48 Brown, Roy Howard, 106, 108, 109 Bryson, Norman, 47 Bury, Mariane, 205, 223 Burke, Edmund, 43 Butor, Michel, 53, 69 Cabaner (Jean de Cabannes), 193, 198 Cachin, Franc¸oise, 181, 184, 186, 198 Caillebotte, Gustave, 202, 208, 211 Canaday, John, 88, 105, 141, 141, 143 caricature, 28, 85, 86, 89–91, 219, 237, 239, 240 Caricature, La, 86 Carlin, Claire, 31, 39 Carroll, Stephanie, 46 Caws, Mary Ann, 27 C¸elik, Zeynep, 226 Ce´zanne, Paul, 27, 71, 84

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Charivari, Le, 86, 213 Chateaubriand, Franc¸ois-Rene´ de, 51–63, 241; antithesis in, 52–54, 236; exile of, 51; and hybridity, modernity, and ambivalence, 53, 56, 62, 63, 69, 120, 236, 239, 240; impact on visual arts and material culture of, 51, 63–65; influence on Girodet of, 51–52, 59, 65–69; misreading of, 56; popular success of, 51; religion and ideological impasse in, 28, 54–56, 59, 61–62, 65, 69, 237, 239, 240; visual writing and pictorial metaphors of, 16, 51–52, 54–62, 137, 242. Works: Atala, 28, 51–63, 211, 236–39; Rene´, 51, 56 Chatman, Seymour, 220 chiaroscuro, 78, 115 Chopin, Fre´de´ric, 131 Christianity. See religion Chu, Petra ten-Doesschate, 108, 110 civilization, 52–56, 62, 236, 237 Cixous, He´le`ne, 233 Clark, Timothy J., 141, 143, 144, 200, 236, 238 class, social, 28, 89, 106–7, 115, 130, 137, 168, 178–79, 190, 195–98 classicism, 84, 88, 89, 107, 142, 238; and Corneille and David, 28, 30, 44, 45, 50, 57, 65, 69, 73, 146, 157; Girodet’s break from, 65, 68, 69, 237 Collins, Bradford, 195 Contenson, Marie-Laure de, 156 Cooke, Peter, 156, 157, 158, 160, 163, 165 Copplestone, Trewin, 203, 204 Corneille, Pierre, 30–44, 241; antithesis in, 32, 36, 38, 42, 43, 48, 62, 236; and gender distinction, 32–33, 36, 37, 39–41; ideology in, 30, 32–34, 39–41, 44, 45; influence on David of, 30, 44–50; and order of verse form, 33–34, 35–36, 38–39, 41, 48; and principles of tragedy, 31, 41; use of Titus Livius by, 31; and visual vs. verbal power, 31, 42– 44, 224. Works: Le Cid, 39; Horace, 28, 30–44 Courbet, Gustave: Stonebreakers, 190; La toilette de la marie´e/morte, 141, 143 Courbevoie, 208 Coupin, V.-A., 47 Crouzet, Michel, 93, 103 Crow, Thomas, 47, 48, 49 Cubism, 234–35, 237

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Daix, Pierre, 226 Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy, 90 Daumier, Honore´, 85–91, 125, 144; and Balzac, 85–91, 236; ironic titles, the written word, and the viewing process, 16, 27, 88, 237; line technique of, 89; and portraiture/caricature, 28, 85–91, 219, 236, 239, 240. Works: Pygmalion, 28, 85–91, 87, 238; Third Class Carriage, 181 David, Jacques-Louis, 44–50, 73, 146; allusions to literature and legend in, 16, 27, 30, 44–50, 237; antithesis in, 47, 49; and broken unity/organization, 47–49; choice of visual oath scene by, 30, 45– 46, 67, 240; and Girodet, 64, 65, 69; inspired by Corneille’s Horace, 30, 44–50; and other visual sources, 46, 50, 70, 157; politics and chameleon-like career of, 44, 45, 49; and visual expressiveness of human body, 49. Works: Sabines, 44; The Oath of the Army to the Emperor after the Distribution of the Eagles, 45; The Oath of the Tennis Court, 45; Le serment des Horaces (Oath of the Horatii), 16, 28, 30, 44– 50, insert, 68, 69, 70, 107, 157 Da Vinci, Leonardo: Treatise on Painting, 23, 26 Day, James D., 105 Dayan, Peter, 137 Debray-Genette, Raymonde, 146, 159 De´caudin, Michel, 158 Degas, Edgar, 16 Deitz, Merritt S., 207 Delacroix, Charles, 109 Delacroix, Euge`ne, 15, 93, 105–10, 127; and Balzac, 72, 73, 84–85; and freedom and the ideology of Revolution of 1830, 28, 92, 105–10, 121, 239; and light/ color, 28, 67, 73, 92, 105, 106, 108, 128, 225, 238, 239, 242; mixing of genres by, 109–10, 237, 240; and Picasso, 28, 226, 229, 234; used by Djebar, 28, 225–30, 232–33; verbal strategies of, 106, 108–9. Works: Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, 28, 225–30, 232–33; Journal, 20–21, 23, 26; La Liberte´ guidant le peuple, 28, 92, 105–10, 121, insert, 238; La mort de Sardanapale, 84–85 Delaney, Susan J., 51, 63, 64, 68 Dele´cluze, E. J., 85

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De Leiris, Alain, 182, 188, 189 dialectic: and antithesis and irony in Manet and Zola, 180; as approach to art, 20, 30, 52, 144, 236–37, 241; and Delacroix’s process, 110; and Des Esseintes in Huysmans, 162; and disorder/constancy in Corneille, 43; and doubleness of nature and civilization in Chateaubriand, 62–63; and Hugo’s views of history and art, 115, 118, 121; and line/color in Balzac, 74, 76; and Sand’s harmony, 122, 123, 125, 144; of self and other in impressionism, 224 Diderot, Denis, 72 Didi-Huberman, Georges, 82, 84, 86 Djebar, Assia, 225–35; and colonialism, 226, 227, 237; and Delacroix and entrapment of women, 28, 225, 227–30; dynamic interplay and resistance to resolution in, 234–35, 236, 237, 240; and the gaze, 226, 227, 230–33; and Picasso, open space, and liberation of women, 28, 226–35, 237; and strategy of antithesis/juxtaposition, 28, 228–29, 233, 235; and the veil, 226, 227, 231. Work: Femmes d’Alger dans leur appartement, 28, 225–35 Dondis, Donis A., 23 Doubrovsky, Serge, 32, 39 du Camp, Maxime, 166 Ducourneau, Jean, 86 Ducrot, Oswald, 24 Dunstan, Bernard, 203–4 Du¨rer, Albrecht, 72 Eigeldinger, Marc, 158 Eisenman, Stephen F., 143 ekphrasis, 27, 165 Empire, 94, 97, 104, 106, 109, 112–13 Escholier, Raymond, 106 Ettlinger, Leopold, 49 Faulkner, Rita, 230, 232 Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst, 104 film, 28, 202, 207, 217–20 First Republic, 106, 113 Flaubert, Gustave, 135, 145–55, 162; antithesis of sensuality vs. spirituality in, 28, 145, 152, 154–55, 159, 165, 236, 237, 239; and inadequacies of verbal language, 22, 237; influenced by Mo-

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reau, 156; landscapes of, 16, 145–48; power of vocal expression and intratextual connections in, 149, 150–51, 153– 55, 159, 241; and visual writing of, 16, 145–48, 152–55, 159–60, 242. Works: ‘‘Un coeur simple,’’ 16, 145; ‘‘He´rodias,’’ 28, 145–55, 156, 159, 165; ‘‘La le´gende de Saint-Julien l’hospitalier,’’ 145; La tentation de Saint-Antoine, 161; Trois contes, 145 Focillon, Henri, 143, 144 Forestier, Louis, 205 Forge, Andrew, 203 Fourny, Diane R., 36, 38, 43 Fowlie, Wallace, 93 France: and World War I, 16; and ideologically charged postrevolutionary period, 26, 50, 56, 69; and Richelieu’s attempts to consolidate power, 41; and series of revolutions, 92, 114–15 Franco-Prussian War, 195 Frank, Joseph, 16 Freed, Marianne T., 54 French Revolution, 28, 44, 45, 49, 51, 69, 92, 106, 108, 113 Freud, Sigmund, 162, 216 Fried, Michael, 191, 238 Friedlander, Walter, 50 frieze, 47 Frolich, Juliette, 151 Fromentin, Euge`ne, 27 Fumaroli, Marc, 52 Galassi, Susan Grace, 227, 234 Gardner, Helen, 143 Gaudibert, Pierre, 108 gaze, 28, 95, 164, 212–20, 226, 227, 230– 32, 242 Gauteur, Claude, 205, 207, 211 Gautier, The´ophile, 27, 72, 108, 141 Gavarni, Paul, 86, 89 Gay, Peter, 196 gender/women: in Chateaubriand, 61, 63; in David, 45, 48, 68; and Djebar’s use of Delacroix and Picasso, 28, 225–35, 236, 237; and the gaze and power in Renoir pe`re et fils and Maupassant, 28, 213–20, 224; and masculine-feminine distinction in tragedy and Corneille’s Horace, 32–33, 36, 37, 39–41; and nineteenth-century ideology, 202; and pov-

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erty in Hugo, 115–16; and sensuality vs. spirituality in portrayals of women by Flaubert, Moreau and Huysmans, 145, 151–52, 154, 157–58, 159, 161–64, 239, 241 Genova, Pamela A., 157 Georgel, Pierre, 110, 111 Ge´ricault, The´odore, 84, 180 Ginsburg, Michal Peled, 16, 155 Girodet de Roussy-Trioson, Anne-Louis, 65–69, 237–40, 242; antithesis in, 66, 67–69, 236; and Chateaubriand’s ideological conflicts, 28, 51–52, 59, 65–69, 236, 237, 239; as David’s student, 64, 65, 69; movement toward literature of, 51–52, 69. Works: The Communion of Atala, 65–66, 66; The Death of Atala, 66, 67; The Entombment of Atala, 28, 66–67, insert; Atala au tombeau, 51, 66–69, insert Goncourt, Edmond de, 209; Manette Salomon, 70 Goncourt, Jules de, 209; Manette Salomon, 70 Goodkin, Richard, 40, 41, 46 Gordon, Robert, 203 Gossart, Jean, 70 Gossip, C. J., 41 Grant, Richard B., 132, 134, 136 Greenberg, Mitchell, 32, 41, 44, 46 Grevisse, Maurice, 24 Grigsby, Darcy Grimaldo, 226 Grimaud, Michel, 162 Grosse, Chantal, 145 grotesque, 20, 86, 121, 195, 236 Gruzinska, Aleksandra, 134 Gue´dron, Martial, 49, 84 Gue´gan, Ste´phane, 67, 68, 69 Guercino, 94 Gural-Migdal, Anna, 177 Gutwirth, Madelyn, 69 Hagstrum, Jean, 27 Haig, Stirling, 93 Hamilton, Gavin: The Oath of Brutus, 46 Hamilton, George Heard, 198 Hamilton, James F., 56, 134, 140 Hannoosh, Michele, 25, 86, 90, 239 Hanson, Ann Coffin, 186, 198 Hartig, Rachel, 216 Harvey, David, 27, 165, 236 Hatzfeld, Helmut, 27

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Haussmann, Baron Georges-Euge`ne, 179, 197 Hautecoeur, Louis, 27, 30, 45–48, 49, 86 Hazlehurst, F. Hamilton, 45, 46 Heilbrun, Franc¸oise, 111 Heinrich, Nathalie, 84 Hemmings, F. W. J., 93 Herbert, Robert L., 142, 143, 193, 198, 200, 202, 212 Herland, Louis, 37 Hoffer, Pamela, 232, 233 Hofmann, Werner, 106, 109 Holbein, Hans, the younger, 72; Le laboureur, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 133–34, 141, 237, 238; Les simulacres de la mort, 123 Holten, Ragnar von, 158, 159 Honour, Hugh, 57, 63 House, John, 200 Howard, Seymour, 45, 47 Huet, Marie-He´le`ne, 141 Hugo, Victor, 16, 110–21, 125, 140; antithesis in, 92, 110, 113, 115, 118–19, 236; and light/darkness, 28, 92, 110–21, 237; and problems of representation, 118–20, 239; and progress, 118; and regimes and revolution, 28, 92, 110, 112– 14, 118, 121, 239; and syllepsis, 119–20; as writer-drawer/painter, 27, 110–11. Works: Les mise´rables, 28, 92, 106, 110–21; Notre Dame de Paris, 107; La pre´face de Cromwell, 20, 237 Huughe, Laurence Christine, 229, 230, 232 Huyghe, Rene´, 106, 107, 108, 226, 238 Huysmans, Joris-Karl: as art critic, 27; and artifice vs. reality and nature, 160– 62, 164, 165; and incorporation of Moreau’s paintings into text, 27, 156, 162–65; and repressed psychological phenomena, 22, 161–65, 237; and sensuality vs. spirituality, 28, 145, 163–65, 236, 237, 239, 240. Work: A rebours, 28, 156, 160–65, 238 idealism, 122, 125, 135, 137, 139–40, 143– 44, 237 ideology: and artistic response to Revolution of 1830, 28, 92; in Balzac, 70; easily explored in literary medium, 20–22, 25, 241; in Chateaubriand, 52, 54, 56, 59,

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61–63, 65, 69; in Corneille, 30, 32–34, 39–41, 44, 45; in David, 45, 47–50; in Delacroix, 92, 105–10; in Djebar, 233; in Flaubert, 165; in Girodet, 52, 65, 68, 69; in Hugo, 92, 111; in Huysmans, 165; and imagery 15, 18–20, 22, 27–29, 45, 47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 59, 63, 69, 74, 85, 91, 93, 121, 237, 243; in Manet, 28, 166, 190, 191, 197; in Moreau, 165; in multiple layers of meaning, 26; of the nineteenth century, 202; in Renoir pe`re, 202, 212, 223; in Renoir fils, 223; and representation of difference through antithesis or contrast, 20, 28, 32, 36, 38, 43, 47–49, 62, 69, 70, 202, 233, 243; in Sand, 126, 129, 136; in Stendhal, 92– 93, 104–5; as system of ideas embedded in a work, 19; in Zola, 28, 166, 170, 178 imagery/images, 15, 18–19; imbued with or interacting with ideology, 19, 22, 25, 27–29, 45, 47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 59, 63, 69, 74, 85, 91, 93, 121, 237, 243; as insufficient copy of reality, 80; and movement of impressionism, 202; and the paradox of images of darkness, 120–21; prerevolutionary distrust of, 43; romantic renewal of, 69; types/definitions of, 19, 23, 110 Imbert. H.-F., 93 impressionism: conventional enclosures of, 217; cradle of, 202; and Flaubert’s landscape, 148; intermingling of writers and painters in, 27; and light, 169, 189, 191, 203, 204, 208, 209, 212, 213; Maupassant’s relation to, 202, 205–12, 223, 238; and Monet’s technique, 202–4; movement and vibrancy in, 189, 191, 202–4, 207–9; and the show of 1877, 212; social and philosophical issues of, 202, 224; and unknown masterpiece in Balzac, 84; and Zola and Manet’s affinity, 168–70, 187, 189, 191 industrialization, 203, 210–11, 212, 223 Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique, 73 irony, 20, 237; in Baudelaire, 86; in Manet, 28, 166, 193, 195, 200; in Maupassant, 210; in Stendhal, 94, 96, 102; in Zola, 28, 166, 176–80 Isaacson, Joel, 204 Israel-Pelletier, Aime´e, 151, 155 Issacharoff, Michael, 159

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Jacoubet, Henri, 97 Jaffe, Hans, 233 Jakobson, Roman, 26 Jal, Auguste, 85Janson, H. W., 143 James, Henry: The Madonna of the Future, 70–71 Janssen, C. Luplau, 207 Janusczak, Waldemar, 108, 142, 203, 204 Jefferson, Ann, 94 Jobert, Barthe´le´my, 108, 226 Johnson, Dorothy, 45–46 Johnson, Lee, 106, 109, 226 Johnson, Sharon, 178, 179, 211, 216 Jousset, Philippe, 180 juxtaposition, 20, 30, 240, 243; in Chateaubriand, 62; in Corneille, 38; in Djebar, 28, 228, 233–35; in Girodet, 240; in impressionism, 202; in Manet, 28, 196, 198, 200; in Stendhal, 93; in Zola, 170, 177, 179, 198 Kadish, Doris Y., 57 Kaplan, Julius, 156, 157–58, 160, 238 Kasl, Ronda, 193, 196, 198 Kern, Stephen, 213 Kirkham, Kristin, 73 Knapp, Bettina, 44, 46 Koberstein, Kathy, 134, 136 Krieger, Murray, 27 Lambert, E´lie, 226 Lambert, P.: La mort d’Atala, 64, 65 landscape, 16, 22, 52, 58, 59, 61, 127–28, 134–36, 144, 203, 208, 210–11, 242 language, 20–22, 24–26; images as, 16–19; inadequacy of, 22, 58–59, 237; orality of, in Sand, 138–39; power of, in Corneille, 40–44; and vocal power in Flaubert, 149, 150–51, 153–55, 237, 241 Lassere, Franc¸ois, 37 Laubriet, Pierre, 71, 73, 74, 76, 84, 86 Leal, R. B., 146, 148, 149 Lebensztejn, Jean-Claude, 83 Lee, Renselaer, 27 Lee, Simon, 45 Lehtonen, Maija, 52, 57 Le Men, Se´gole`ne, 83 Lemonnier, Henry, 57, 65 Leroi, Louis, 213 Lesne´, Rene´, 82

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Lessing, Gotthold, 43; Laocoon, 15, 25–26, 27, 50, 238 Lethbridge, Robert, 200, 212, 214, 220 Le´vi-Strauss, Claude, 140 literature: as black-and-white medium, 17, 111; and heightened awareness of sign system and form in relation to other media, 17–18, 22, 90–91; and painters/models as characters in novels, 16, 27, 70–85, 232, 239; and Parisian literary and visual artistic culture, 26–27; and psychology and abstraction in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, 30; as rival ‘‘sister art’’ to painting, 15, 20–21, 23, 25–26, 27, 47, 50, 73–74, 82; suited to expressing ideological complexity, 20–22, 25, 241; temporality, movement, and narrativity in, 15–16, 24, 25, 26, 72, 74, 80, 81, 82, 147–48, 168, 180, 207–10, 238, 241–42; visual and spatial representation in, 15– 17, 22, 24–25, 27, 51–52, 54–59, 78, 93–94, 111, 145, 168–72, 174, 207–8, 242; voices in, 26; and writers as art critics, 27 Lizst, Franz, 131 Louis Napole´on. See Napole´on III Louis-Philippe, 92, 114 Lubin, George, 127 MacNamara, Matthew, 205, 209, 217 Magritte, Rene´: Les mots et les images, 16 Majewski, Henry, 27, 82 Mallarme´, Ste´phane: Un coup de de`s, 27 Manet, Edouard, 180–201, 242; affinity with Zola of, 28, 166, 168, 184, 186, 189; documentary/sociological approach of, 180–81, 184, 190, 192, 197; impressionism of, 168, 187, 189, 191, 202, 208; interest in urban activity of, 180, 184, 186–88, 190, 192–93, 195–97; and irony and ideology of juxtaposed images, 28, 166, 193–98, 200, 240; light and color in, 180–81, 184, 186, 188–89, 191–93, 198, 237; movement in, 16, 180, 181, 184, 186, 189, 190–91; and viewpoint, 180, 184, 190–91, 193, 195, 197, 238. Works: Le ballon, 197; Le coupe´, 189, 190; Fiacre, 180–81; Le fiacre, 180–81, 182; Un fiacre, 181–82, 183, 192; Fiacre et bec de gaz, 184, 185, 192;

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L’homme aux be´quilles, 198; L’homme aux be´quilles, au moment de la feˆte, 193, 194, 195; L’invalide de la rue Mosnier, e´tude pour ‘‘Les Mendiants,’’ 198, 199; Le re´mouleur, 189–90, 193; La rue Mosnier, 184, 186– 87, 187, 190, 192; La rue Mosnier au bec de gaz, 184, 186, 186, 187–88, 190, 192; La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, 192–93, 195, insert; La rue Mosnier aux drapeaux, l’homme aux be´quilles, 193, insert, 195– 98, 200; La rue Mosnier aux paveurs, 190– 93, insert, 196, 238 Marly, 208 Martin, Laurey, 155, 166, 172, 241 Massol-Be´doin, Chantal, 82, 83 Mathey, Jacques, 193 Mathieu, Pierre-Louis, 158, 159 Matisse, Henri, 71 Matthews, J. H., 174 Mauner, George, 197 Maupassant, Guy de: adapted by Jean Renoir, 28, 202, 207, 214, 217–20, 222–23; and antitheses/ideology, 202, 211; associated with impressionism, 202, 205–12, 223–24, 238; auditory mode of, 220–21; and the gaze, 214–17, 218; and mobile viewpoint, 207; painters and models in works of, 16; pessimism of, 224; and Renoir’s painting, 28, 202, 212, 214, 215, 243; spatial and visual style of, 207–12, 220, 222, 242; and the visual as indirect expression, 22, 237. Works: Une partie de campagne, 28, 202, 205–12, 214–17, 220–24, 236, 238, 243; ‘‘La vie d’un paysagiste,’’ 205 Meitinger, Serge, 57, 61 Meltzer, Franc¸oise, 158, 163, 164, 165 Meschonnic, Henri, 111 metaphor, 237; in Balzac, 72, 73, 77, 90; in Chateaubriand, 58, 61, 62; in Corneille, 38, 39, 42; in Hugo, 114–15, 117, 118; in Maupassant, 208, 210; in Moreau, 157; in Sand, 127, 135; in Stendhal, 94, 97, 100; in Zola, 170, 172, 174–75, 177–78 metonymy, 151, 170, 176, 184, 222 Meyers, Jeffrey, 164, 165 Michelangelo, 86, 143 Millet, Jean-Franc¸ois: Le Semeur, 28, 140, 141–44, insert, 190, 236–39, 242 Mitchell, W. J. T., 16, 19, 28, 50, 110

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Mitterand, Henri, 179, 242 Modernism, 16 modernity: ambivalence and resistance to resolution in, 22, 27, 50, 120, 165, 200– 201, 235, 236, 237–40, 243; and Balzac’s Frenhofer, 84, 87, 239; and caricature, 86–87, 90–91, 239, 240; and dialectic, 52, 91, 121, 140, 144, 236–37, 241; and dynamism, mobility, and transitoriness, 236, 238, 239, 241–42; and hybridity, 53, 110; and impressionism, 205; and media exploring each other, 22, 50, 201, 238–43; and positioning of the individual, 17, 22, 200; and reading in the modern mode, 28, 240–43; and urban existence in Manet, 181, 190, 196, 200; in Zola, 172 Moffett, Charles S., 213 Monet, Claude, 16, 84, 169, 205, 212, 224, 237, 243; and antitheses/ideology, 202; at Argenteuil, 202, 203, 208; time and movement in, 15, 16, 203, 204, 238, 242. Works: Effet d’automne a` Argenteuil, 202–4, insert, 211; Impression: Soleil levant, 170, 203, 204; Rue Montorgueil Decked with Flags, 193 Mongan, Elizabeth, 86–87 Montmartre, 212 Moreau, Gustave, 27, 28, 155–60, 237, 238; and architecture, 156, 157, 158; and color, 156–57, 158; as inspiration for Flaubert, 156, 159; represented in Huysmans, 156, 162–65; and sensuality vs. spirituality, 28, 145, 157–58, 165, 236. Works: L’apparition, 28, 155–56, 158–59, 162–65, insert; Salome´, 28, 155– 60, 162–65, insert Moreau-Ne´laton, E´tienne, 193, 198 Mortimer, Mildred, 226, 232 Moscovici, Claudia, 53, 62 Moskos, George, 162 Mossman, Carol, 98 Mouillaud, Genevie`ve, 98 Mulvey, Laura, 220 Muratore, Mary Jo, 34, 42 music: and musicality in Huysmans, 160–61; in Sand, 122, 125, 130–31, 136–40, 239, 243 Napole´on III, 166, 175 naturalism, 166, 172

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nature: vs. artifical luxury of Des Esseintes in Huysmans, 160–62; in Balzac, 73–74, 75; in Flaubert, 153; and impressionism, 202; vs. industry and city in Maupassant, 207, 208, 210–11, 223–24; in Monet, 203, 204, 211, 237; in Sand’s harmony, 122, 125–26, 131, 135–36, 143; vs. civilization and religion in Chateaubriand and related painting, 52–58, 61–64, 66, 68, 69, 211, 236, 237, 239 Ne´agu, Phillipe, 111 Neefs, Jacques, 118–19 neoclassicism. See classicism Newton, Joy, 212 Nochlin, Linda, 141, 190, 192 O’Beirne, Emer, 227, 232, 233 O’Brien, Tom, 84–85 O’Connor, John R., 146 painting: allusions to legends and literature in, 16, 22, 27, 30, 44–50, 69, 155– 60, 237; debate between line and color in, 72–76, 84, 85, 122, 139, 204, 238; expressiveness of human body in, 49; and literature’s abstractions or emotions, 22, 51–52, 74, 82; and metacommentary, 239; narrative subgenre of, 16; novels’ use of theories of, 16, 71–85, 125, 239; and Parisian literary and visual artistic culture, 26–27; as rival ‘‘sister art’’ to literature, 15, 20–21, 23, 25–26, 27, 47, 50, 73–74, 82; seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literariness of, 30; as static, spatial, visual medium, 15–17, 20–24, 45, 49–50; time, movement, and narrativity in, 15–17, 24, 72, 74–75, 77, 180, 181, 184, 186, 189, 190–91, 200, 202, 203, 204, 212, 238, 242; verbal play, titling, and the written word in, 16–17, 22, 108–9, 190, 196, 198, 210, 237; viewpoint and perspective in, 24, 26, 45, 47, 72, 75, 180, 184, 190–91, 193, 195, 197, 203, 212– 13, 238 Pance, Benjamin, 106 Papin, Rene´e, 111 Paris: in Balzac, 77; and the countryside in Maupassant, 207, 211, 223; interaction of literary and visual arts in, 26–27;

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and Manet’s interest in urban setting, 180, 184, 186–88, 190, 192–93, 195–97; reconstruction of, 179, 197; in Zola, 166–74, 177–79, 197. See also industrialization; Salons parody, 90, 239 patriarchy, 45–46, 227 patriotism, 19, 28, 32, 33, 38, 46, 48, 50, 68 Paulson, William, 71, 72, 83, 239 Perez, Gilberto, 207, 217, 220 Pe´ron, Alexandre, 45, 46 personification, 26, 37, 38, 108, 135–36, 221 Peterson, Thomas E., 79, 82 Peylet, Ge´rard, 164 Phillips, James M., 111, 120 photography, 111, 192, 197 Picasso, Pablo, and Balzac, 71; and Delacroix, 226, 229, 234; malleability and lack of resolution in, 233–35, 236, 237, 239, 240, 242; used by Djebar to reflect liberation, 28, 226–35, 237. Works: Femmes d’Alger series, 28, 226–35, insert, 242; Still Life with Chair Caning, 16–17, insert Picon, Gae¨ton, 121 Pierre, Jose´, 158 Pierrot, Jean, 207 Pissarro, Camille, 208, 211 Place, David, 104 Planche, Gustave, 226 Pollard, Patrick, 97, 99, 100 Pool, Phoebe, 191 Porbus, Franc¸ois: as character in Balzac, 70, 71–76, 78, 79, 81–83 Porter, Charles, 56, 62 Porter, Lawrence, 56, 111, 119–20 Porterfield, Todd, 226 portraiture: literary, 16, 22, 28, 52, 77–82; visual, 28. See also caricature Poussin, Nicholas, 50, 146; as character in Balzac, 70, 75, 76, 77, 79–85, 88, 90. Works: The Death of Germanicus, 46; The Rape of the Sabine Women, 46; The Testament of Eudamidas, 46 Powell, David, 131, 136–39 Praz, Mario, 27, 111 Prendergast, Christopher, 104, 174, 178 Proust, Marcel, 16, 27, 80 Provenzano, Victor, 146

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Rabelais, Franc¸ois, 90 Raim, Anne Marmot, 216 Raphael, 74 Raser, Timothy, 110 Rastier, Franc¸ois, 146 Ratcliff, Carter, 49 Raynaud, Jean-Pierre, 120 realism: caricatural, of Balzac and Daumier, 28, 73, 85, 88–89, 237; and Delacroix’s mixing of genres, 109, 237; and Flaubert, 165; intermingling of writers and painters in, 27; and Millet, 142–44, 237; and modernism, 16; rejected by Sand, 125 Reboul, Yves, 218 Reed, Arden, 200, 201, 242–43 Reff, Theodore, 187–88, 192, 195, 198 religion: and ideology generally, 19, 28; in Chateabriand and Girodet, 28, 54–56, 59, 61–69, 237, 239; in Flaubert, 153; in Huysmans, 160–63; in Stendhal, 93– 94, 98–99 Rembrandt, 79, 90 Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 208, 211, 212–14, 224; and antitheses/ideology, 202, 212; used by Maupassant, 28, 212, 214, 243; used by Jean Renoir in adaptation of Maupassant, 28, 202, 214, 217–18, 223. Works: La balanc¸oire, 28, 202, 212–14, insert, 243; Bal au Moulin de la Galette, 212; The Umbrellas, 214 Renoir, Jean: Partie de Campagne, 28, 202, 207, 217–20, 219, 222–23, 243 Reverdy, Pierre, 19 Revolution of 1830, July, 28, 92, 104, 105–7, 114 Revolution of 1848, 92, 141 Revolution of 1871, 92 Rewald, John, 189, 212 Richard, Jean-Pierre, 53, 57, 58, 62, 240 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal, 31, 41 Richepin, Jean: La Chanson des Gueux, 198 Rickels, Lawrence, 17 Ridge, George Ross, 165 Rimbaud, Arthur, 58 Rivette, Jacques: La belle noiseuse, 71; Divertimento, 71 Robertson, Jane, 151 romanticism: and Balzac’s Frenhofer, 84; and Chateaubriand, 28, 51, 52, 56, 57,

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69; and Delacroix, 67, 73; and Flaubert, 148; and Girodet, 65, 69, 237; intermingling of writers and painters in, 27; vs. realism, 88; and Stendhal, 92 Roos, Jane Mayo, 192, 195, 196 Rosenblum, Robert, 46, 143, 144 Rouart, D., 181 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 96, 211; Discours sur l’origine de l’ine´galite´, 52–53; Du contrat social, 21, 25 Rubin, James H., 108 Sabatier, Pierre, 209 Salons, 44, 51, 63, 65, 85, 141, 155–56, 166 Sand, George, 15, 122–40, 236; and the artist as part of human experience, 126, 129–30; idealism and rejection of death and despair of, 122, 123, 125, 129–30, 134–37, 139–41, 143, 144, 237; incorporation of paintings and theory into text by, 16, 27, 122, 125, 127–29, 133– 34, 137, 140, 239, 243; and music, 122, 125, 130–31, 136–40, 239, 243. Work: La Mare au Diable, 28, 122–40, 150, 236–38, 243 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 19, 21, 25 savagery, 52–54, 61, 63 Scarpa, Marie, 174, 175, 177 Scheffer, Ary: The Death of Atala, 63–64, 64 Schehr, Lawrence, 83 Scheider, Mechthild, 86 Schor, Naomi, 56, 66–67, 125, 140 Scott, C., 210, 211 Scott, David, 27 sculpture, 46, 88 Second Empire, 178–80, 197 Selz, Jean, 159 Serres, Michel, 82–83, 84 Se´rullaz, Arlette, 46 Se´rullaz, Maurice, 226 Seurat, Georges-Pierre, 208, 211 Seznec, Jean, 94 Shattuck, Roger, 16, 27 Sicard, Michel, 111, 121 signs, 17, 19, 21, 23, 26, 43, 49, 158, 212 simile, 69, 79, 135, 164, 169, 221 Simons, Madeleine, 94 Sisley, Alfred, 202, 208, 211 Sloane, Joseph, 143–44

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society, 52–54, 162, 178–79, 197, 202, 211, 224, 236 Sonnenfeldt, Albert, 94 Spininger, Dennis J., 57 Spitzer, Alan B, 105 Starobinski, Jean, 43 Steinberg, Leo, 226, 234–35, 236, 237, 242 Steiner, Wendy, 16, 49 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle): as art critic, 27, 94; and freedom and the ideology of Revolution of 1830, 28, 92–97, 100, 102–5, 121, 236; and irony, 94, 96, 102, 104; and light and color symbolism, 28, 92–105; and visual or oblique expression to escape repression, 22, 94, 95, 96, 99, 105, 120, 237. Works: Histoire de la peinture en Italie, 94; Le rouge et le noir, 28, 92–105, 121, 238, 239; Salons, 94 Stone, Harriet, 32, 41 sublime, 20, 62, 121, 237 syllepsis, 119–20, 237 symbolism, 25, 28; in Delacroix, 105; in Flaubert, 150, 151–52, 154–55; in Manet, 197; in Moreau and Huysmans, 157–60, 163, 165, 237; in Sand, 135, 136; in Stendhal, 92–105; in Zola, 175, 179 symbolists, 27 synecdoche, 152, 154, 176, 181, 186, 222 synesthesia, 160, 162, 174 Sypher, Wylie, 27 Tabarant, A., 180, 190, 193, 198 Talbot, Emile, 93, 94 theater: and viewpoint, lighting, costumes, etc., in painting, 45, 46, 48, 158; visual vs. verbal in, 31, 42–44, 158 The´voz, Michel, 46, 48 Thomas, Jean-Jacques, 111 Thompson, C. W., 110 Thore´, The´ophile, 109 time, 15–16, 26, 38, 56, 72, 80, 168, 210, 238 Tintoretto: Golgotha, 21 Titian, 72, 75 Titus Livius: History of Rome, 31, 46 Toczyski, Suzanne C., 42 Todorov, Tzvetan, 24

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Tooke, Adrianne, 145, 155, 156 Toussaint, He´le`ne, 106, 108 tragedy, 31, 32, 41 Tunstall, Kate, 174, 178, 179 Uspensky, Boris, 15 ut pictura poesis, 27 Verhaeren, Emile, 110–11 Vernier, France, 120, 140, 236, 239 Veronese, Paulo, 72 Vierne, Simone, 136–37, 140 Vitet, Louis, 85 Voltaire (Franc¸ois-Marie Arouet), 96 Wakefield, David, 51, 52, 63, 68, 69, 93, 94 Waller, Margaret, 51, 56, 62 Wang, Ban, 53, 54, 57, 58 Wasserman, Renata, 53, 54, 56, 57 Wellbery, David, 26 Went-Daoust, Yvette, 71, 75, 76, 78, 82 Wettlaufer, Alexandra K., 71, 80, 82, 83, 86, 90 Whyte, Peter, 72 Wilde, Oscar: The Picture of Dorian Gray, 25 Wildenstein, D., 181, 203 Wilson, Dora, 140 Wilson, Juliet, 198 Winter, John, 49 Witkin, Sylvie Charron, 134 women. See gender/women Woshinsky, Barbara, 31, 36 Wright, Beth S., 106 Yarrow, P.-J., 37 Zervos, Christian, 226 Zola, Emile, 15, 16, 22, 27, 166–80, 201, 239; affinity with Manet of, 166, 168, 180, 184, 186, 189; antithesis of have vs. have nots and social critique in, 178–80, 197, 198; as art critic, 27; and Ce´zanne, 27; and the creative process, 166, 167, 170–71, 174, 176, 180, 242; and Huysmans, 160; and irony and ideology of juxtaposed images, 28, 166, 170, 176–80; naturalism and experimental method of, 172, 176; painterly descriptions and impressionism of,

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167–70, 173–76, 178, 189, 209, 242; Parisian research and notes of, 166–70, 172, 179, 180, 184; and relation of the individual to the milieu, 79, 171–72,

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176–78; Rougon-Macquart series of, 79, 166. Works: L’Oeuvre, 70; Une page d’amour, 212; Le Ventre de Paris, 28, 166, 171–80, 184, 186, 198, 200, 239, 242

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