CRITIQUE OF ABSTRACTION 51 



the characters of Shakespeare beside those of Racine and Corneille: 

 '. . . they are true and Hving; they are complex and real beings, 

 not ideas.' 1"^ He found the same truth in Rembrandt's paintings: 

 'This is poignant, it is life itself, but condensed, assembled. . . . 

 Art is a general idea becoming as particular as possible.^ '^^ Somehow, the 

 well-chosen, significant detail comes alive, sums up a universe, 

 somewhat like a scientific formula, and it is this characteristic, 

 particular detail ('le petit fait') which is lacking in Livy. Taine 

 was not interested in mere abstract types (ideals) but in parti- 

 culars (reals): 'Literature which depicts the particular reality, 

 instead of depicting the ideal and the general, has an unlimited 

 future. Each change in society will renew it. In fifty years, we 

 can have another Beyle and another Balzac' ^^ When Prof. 

 Hatzfeld disagreed with his judgment, Taine restated his position, 

 and fell back on the de gustibus argument: 'Our imaginations are 

 differently constructed; I see red, he sees blue, and with that the 

 discussion is finished.' At this point, since he was defending the 

 moderns, he did not seem to favour a fixed standard of judgment; 

 or perhaps this was simply his way of avoiding continued debate 

 and difference of opinion with the teacher he revered. 



During this period, Taine had made the acquaintance of 

 Stendhal's novels {The Red and the Black, The Charterhouse of 

 Parma) and had been profoundly impressed — reading the former 

 thirty and more times! — particularly because he saw exemplified 

 in them his psychological approach to literature, i^ Against the 

 charge of obscurity, so often levelled at modern art, he claimed, 

 in true Romantic fashion, that the goal of art is not to be clear 

 but to create beauty, i^ Writing to Prevost-Paradol, in the midst 

 of the conflict in the French Academy over the Essay on Livy, 

 he laid down the battle gage: 'Let us strive against the philistines.' 

 Without contradicting this Romantic position, he wrote to 

 William Guizot: 'I am on that point [that the artist should not 

 seek to please the masses, S.J.K.] much more aristocratic than you, 

 in matters of science as in matters of art.' ^i He felt that it was the 

 job of the critics to make the public aware of ^^^ best, both new and 

 old, and he recognized that new beauties, when they first make 

 their appearance, often seem strange and unclear. In brief, 

 Taine managed, then and later, to maintain a remarkably sane 

 balance between awareness of new developments in literature and 

 of the need for standards derived from the old, between the 

 Romantic and the Classic, the particular and the universal. 



