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Realist Paradoxes: The Story of the Story of the Stone

Realist Paradoxes: The Story of the Story of the Stone Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE / 118 the novel, which strives for the “beau ideal” (literally, ideal beauty). In terms of this distinction, Stendhal’s novelistic correspondence between a moving representation and a moving reality (what he calls “a mirror carried along the road”) is from Balzac’s perspective too historical and dualistic. No matter how correspondent they are, the division between the mirror and the road persists. Yet Balzac’s conception of the creator’s “pattern for all organized creatures” (9) and his idea of “copying all society” (21) remain a monism having a dualistic basis (copy vs. society). According to Auerbach, it is in Flaubert’s “free indirect style” that Balzac’s monist attempt to overcome duality is achieved. With his “profound faith in the truth of language,” Flaubert treats languages and styles not as means to ends, but as ends in themselves. The author’s voice disappears—“We hear the writer speak; but he expresses no opinion and makes no comment. His role is limited to selecting the events and translating them into language”—though to state matters thus still assumes a division between events and language, and a subject who can pick and choose. With Flaubert, the reader http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Realist Paradoxes: The Story of the Story of the Stone

YAU, KA-FAI
Comparative Literature , Volume 57 (2) – Jan 1, 2005
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2005 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-57-2-117
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Abstract

Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. COMPARATIVE LITERATURE / 118 the novel, which strives for the “beau ideal” (literally, ideal beauty). In terms of this distinction, Stendhal’s novelistic correspondence between a moving representation and a moving reality (what he calls “a mirror carried along the road”) is from Balzac’s perspective too historical and dualistic. No matter how correspondent they are, the division between the mirror and the road persists. Yet Balzac’s conception of the creator’s “pattern for all organized creatures” (9) and his idea of “copying all society” (21) remain a monism having a dualistic basis (copy vs. society). According to Auerbach, it is in Flaubert’s “free indirect style” that Balzac’s monist attempt to overcome duality is achieved. With his “profound faith in the truth of language,” Flaubert treats languages and styles not as means to ends, but as ends in themselves. The author’s voice disappears—“We hear the writer speak; but he expresses no opinion and makes no comment. His role is limited to selecting the events and translating them into language”—though to state matters thus still assumes a division between events and language, and a subject who can pick and choose. With Flaubert, the reader

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Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2005

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