238 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 



lous selection and organisation of detail to the end that everything 

 which happens (and properly considered an incident, an idea or a 

 description are happenings) shall be charged with a significance that 

 points beyond the mere event itself and is contributory to the main 

 intention of the book. 



No theorising on the novel is complete without a statement of 

 Flaubert's position. His ideas and their practical application have 

 been matter for constant discussion in France where the lists are 

 always open for literary disputants, and the English world has heard 

 echoes at least of the eager debate. That we cannot approach the 

 questions at issue with a like degree of warmth is due to the fact that 

 our literary developments are more equable because unconscious, and 

 are not disturbed by violent coterie reactions from classicism to 

 romanticism, from romanticism to realism, from realism to symbolism, 

 and so round the whole face of the clock to the point of departure. 

 Flaubert's sacred fury is to be explained from a real dislocation in his 

 nature, whereby his judgment was in perpetual warfare with his 

 inclinations. Extravagantly romantic by disposition he was born in 

 an age when the hour of romanticism had struck; the literary vices he 

 assailed were rooted in himself; and the blows he dealt were so many 

 self-inflicted wounds. Romanticism had been vehemently partisan, 

 he asserted the need of complete disinterestedness; romanticism had 

 revelled in self-expression, he insisted on the absolute submergence 

 of the author in the theme to be expressed ; romanticism had attached 

 itself to extraordinary characters, Flaubert restrained himself de- 

 signedly within the limits of flat reality, confident in the efficacy of 

 art to lift the subject out of the region of the commonplace. 



With James we can approve of the general doctrine of disinterested- 

 ness enunciated by Flaubert, while recognising with him the almost 

 fanatical exaggeration of the principle that Flaubert's practice reveals. 

 Balzac was disinterested enough, that is to say he does not disturb 

 the logic of events by thrusting his own preferences into the fore- 

 ground. The finished, rounded, self-sustaining work is with him the 

 dominant consideration as it was with Flaubert. But he never like 

 the latter gives us the impression that the whole joy of creation 

 resides in the process of execution. He reserved to himself the priv- 

 ilege also of establishing sympathetic relations with his subject, and 

 his abundant delight in his own characters contrasts very much to 

 Balzac's advantage with the cruelly ironic treatment that Flaubert's 

 excessive detachment entailed. It seems to me that an author ties 

 himself hand and foot whose habitual attitude to his theme prompted 

 the phrase "Ça me pue au nez étrangement." James on the contrary 

 loved his theme no less than he delighted in the art which its execution 



