Notes on novelists, with some other notes, by Henry James.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

67

tion to which I shall immediately come; but I find myself feeling for a moment longer in presence of " L'Iducation " how
much more interesting a writer may be on occasion by the
given failure than by the given success. Successes pure and
simple disconnect and dismiss him; failures-though I admit
they must be a bit qualified-keep him in touch and in relation.
Thus it is that as the work of a " grand ecrivain" " L'lducation," large, laboured, immensely " written," with beautiful
passages and a general emptiness, with a kind of leak in its
stored sadness, moreover, by which its moral dignity escapesthus it is that/Flaubert's ill-starred novel is a curiosity for a
literary museum. Thus it is also that it suggests a hundred
reflections, and suggests perhaps most of them directly to the
intending labourer in the same field. If in short, as I have said,
Flaubert is the novelist's novelist, this performance does more
than any other toward making him so.
I have to add in the same connection that I had not lost
sight of Madame Arnoux, the main ornament of " L'lducation," in pronouncing just above on its deficiency in the sympathetic. Madame Arnoux is exactly the author's one marked
attempt, here or elsewhere, to represent beauty otherwise than
for the senses, beauty of character and life; and what becomes
of the attempt is a matter highly significant. M. Faguet praises
with justice his conception of the figure and of the relation, the
relation that never bears fruit, that keeps Frederic adoring her,
through hindrance and change, from the beginning of life to the
end; that keeps her, by the same constraint, forever immaculately " good," from youth to age, though deeply moved and
cruelly tempted and sorely tried. Her contacts with her adorer
are not even frequent, in proportion to the field of time; her
conditions of fortune, of association and occupation are almost
sordid, and we see them with the march of the drama, such as
it is, become more and more so; besides which-I again remember that M. Faguet excellently notes it-nothing in the
nature of " parts " is attributed to her: not only is she not
presented as clever, she is scarce invested with a character at all.