Philosophers of Life
The Novelist as Philosopher. Studies in French Fiction, 1935-1960. Edited by John Cruick- shank. (O.U.P., 21s.)
THERE should by now be a formula (which could be kept permanently set up in type) to
describe anthologies of this kind. It would ex- plain that they are always both more and less than their titles suggest; that they will be, in general, too uninformative for those who have not read the books discussed and too unanalyti- cal for those who have; that although by different hands, they will be stylistically inter- changeable; and finally, that all papers will carry reviews of them, but that few reviewers will keep their copies for long. They are, in Aristotelian terms, mechanical rather than or- ganic compounds, heaps rather than wholes: the expense of critical intelligence in a waste of paper and print.
A waste, that is, if one considers them in terms of their professed object (and the dust- jacket's reference to 'variety and liveliness' can- not really deflect objections as easily as that). There is a great deal of good criticism in this book, and its contributors are all unimpeach- ably qualified, erudite and intelligent men. As essays in a magazine, or introductory chapters to new editions of the authors concerned, at least some of their contributions would be useful and enjoyable reading. As a study of a central theme (ill-defined in the first place) they fail.
Not that the cover leads one to expect much else. `Philosophers' who include moralists (Camus and Bernanos), ontologists (Sartre and de Beauvoir), rhetorical fringe-metaphysicians (Mal- raux and Beckett) and men of undeniable but unspecialised intellectual brilliance (Queneau and Robbe-Grillet) are not likely to prove a very tractable intellectual team. `Philosophy' in this sense runs all too easily into `philosophy of life,' a term which any fool can play around with (and most fools have), but which obscures rather than clarifies intellectual discussion.
This reaction betrays a very un-French cast of mind. The closed shop of English linguistic analysis has been criticised precisely on the grounds that its philosophy is not a philosophy of life (or, more subtly, that it is a philosophy of life, and a pretty timid and conservative one, too, but will not admit it). One of the best things in this book, from this insular standpoint, is Maurice Cranston's comparison between Simone de Beauvoir's reaction to the discovery that morality has no absolute, transcendental basis,
and Hume's. This at least gives a starting-point fo readers (and there are a great many of them, and not all of them are philistines, nor people ignorant of philosophy) who would not other- wise take, say, Kicrkegaard's attacks on Hegel as a philosophical watershed one way or the other. '131ancliot, accepting this characterisation of art, will argue that art must, if necessary, work against the grain of history.' Such a sentence takes for granted a whole metaphysical frame- work which would need some justification, at any rate to an audience of English philosophers.
This initial grumble once registered, suitable tribute can be paid to Cecil Jenkins's essay on Malraux, Ernest Beaumont's on Bernanos, Mar- tin Esslin's on Queneau, John Weightman's on Sartre and Robbe-Grillet and Maurice Cran- ston's on Simone de Beauvoir. The first three are particularly welcome. Le Figaro Litteratre complained recently that the English have dis- cussed 'the French novel' for years almost solely in terms of Sartre and of the objectivistes—a tendency which a rather narrow concentration on 'the novel of ideas' has supported. Le Figaro Litteraire is not the critical ally of my hearts
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desire, but the point can still be defended. It s true that one of the strengths of the French novelists is their readiness to embark on general, abstract, universal themes—a characteristic par- ticularly noticeable to English readers, fed for years on the thin gruel of social observation— but that is no excuse for herding them into a few easily recognisable ideological pens, and dis- missing the rest as mere fine writing. The con- tents of this book may interest people in French writers as writers again, which is to be welcomed; its form may confirm the old view that they are a lot of Hegelians, Cartesians and Heideg- gereans run amok, which is a pity.
FRANCIS HOPE
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