‘I Was the World in Which I Walked’: The Transformation of the British Novel

DANIEL R. SCHWARZ 'I Was the World in Which I Walked': The Transformation of the British Novel I In the Sculpture Garden of the Museum of Modern Art stands Rodin's large 1897 statue'Monument to Balzac.' The imposing figure of Balzacis ten feet tall, and it rests on a five-foot-high slab. At first, the observer may wonder what this seemingly realistic piece is doing in the citadel of modernism. Butgradually he realizes that the workis a crystallizingimage ofmodernism, for it depicts the artist as outcastand hero.Towering above onlookers, Balzac is wearing the expression of scornful magisterial dignity. With back stiffly yet regally arched past a 9o-degree angle, Balzac looks into the distance and the future as if oblivious and indifferent to the opinions of the Lilliputians observing him from below. The large moustache , massive brows, flowing hair, and enormous ears and nose all emphasize the immense physical stature of the figure. As observers we crane our necks to see the features of this commanding figure whose gigantic head is disproportionate to his body. His features are boldly outlined but not precisely modelled. His huge head dominates the massive form; the body enwrapped in a cloak is a taut cylinder; the only visible feature is the feet, which are in motion as ifthey were going to walk off the slab. Indeed, one foot actually overhangs the slab as if it were about to depart. In the geometric shape of an isosceles triangle, the intimidating figure asserts the dependence of content upon form. In a number of ways this sculpture, I think, helps us to understand literary modernism. Rodin has presented the artist as an Ubermensch, as a physical and moral giant who is indifferent to the opinions of his audience. He depicts Balzac the way Rodin would have liked to see himself. 'I think of [Balzac'S] intense labor: he wrote, 'of the difficulty of his life, of his incessant battles and of his great courage. I would express all that." As Albert E. Elsen remarks, 'Rodin has transformed the embattled writer into a godlike visionary who belongs on a pedestal aloof from the crowd." Rodin's presence in the sculpture of Balzac speaks for art as self-expression and thus declares a new aesthetic that questions the impersonalityand objectivity which Balzac sought in his role of moral and social historian ofthe human comedy. Rodin's Balzac is not someone who serves the community but someone who answers to the demands of his imagination and psyche; he does not imitate reality, but transforms what he sees into something original. He is more a visionary than a realist. His UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 51, NUMBER), SPRING 19~32 0042-D247/B2f050C>-0279-D29J$o1.5010 C UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS 280 DANIEL R. SCHWARZ integrity derives from his genius and his independence. The sculpture shows, too, the inseparable relationship between subject and object- the poised tension between content (Balzac) and form (the original stone) that is central to modernism. Finally, Rodin understands that art requires an audience to complete the hermeneutical circle, for he declared that the suggestiveness of his Balzac required the viewer to use 'the imagination to recompose the work when it is seen from close up.') Iwould like to take the Rodin statue as a pointof departure for speaking of the great change in major British fiction from the realistic to the expressionist novel, a change that begins roughly in 1895, the year of Hardy's last novel, Jude the Obscure,' and reaches a climax with Woolf's major novels, Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927).That some or all of the great British modernists - Conrad, Joyce, Lawrence, Forster, and Woolf - withdraw from their work, eliminate the intrusive author, and move to objectivity and impersonality is still one of the shibboleths of literary history. In this essay I shall argue that by making themselves their subject they have, in fact, created a more subjective, self-expressive novel than their predecessors, and that they are present in their works. Influenced by English romanticism, developments in modern art, and a changing intellectual milieu that questioned the possibilities of universal values or objective truth...