Image as Argument: Henry James and the Style of Criticism

Image as Argument: Henry James and the Style of Criticism by William Veeder, The University of Chicago Two tendencies in James scholarship are my starting point. Discussions of the development of James's literary criticism tend to emphasize his ideas and moral concerns rather tiian his style; discussions of his stylistic evolution tend to concentrate upon his fiction, not his criticism.1 I want to bring these two tendencies togedier. Granted tiiat the essays of James's middle period—from "Ivan Turgenieff ' and "The Art of Fiction" in 1884 up to the Prefaces of 1907-09—constitute, like the Prefaces in their own quite different way, one of the major achievements of theoretical and practical criticism in our language: the power of these essays derives, I believe, from an evolution of critical sensibility that is inseparable from James's stylistic development during diese years. James's achievement in the middle period is die fulfillment of critical ideals early formed. It does not result from any personal reorientation or substantial recasting of values. James sought from his first published work, a review of critical essays, to speak out "disinterestedly. ' ' Admirable though much of James's early criticism is, it fails at important moments to sustain disinterestedness precisely because of James's intense interest in certain moral positions. Success in the middle period is not bought at die price of these moral concerns. Roberts is quite wrong when he says that "Zola's coarseness of vision ... is consistently referred [by James] to an esthetic criterion, never for a moment a moral one" (111) in the "Emile Zola" essay of 1903. In fact the word "moral" recurs seven times in this essay and, more important, James's concem with moral issues is evident throughout. What James's middle period demonstrates is not a rejection of early ideals but a maturation both perceptual and stylistic. James comes to perceive experience with a rigorous generosity that recognizes the moral as one component of the human; and he learns to express his perceptions in a style adequate to their intricacy. Since the nature and the sources of James's ideal of disinterestedness are themselves in need of more precise definition than scholars have provided, I will begin there. For Henry James, disinterestedness is die state of being in-between, in at least three senses. The good critic is "a compromise between the philosopher and die historian " (FC 469). This difficult synthesis the elder James found best exemplified in Sainte-Beuve. He is a philosopher in so far as tiiat he deals witii ideas. He counts, weighs, measures, appraises diem. But he is not a philosopher in so far as that he works widi no supreme object. There results from his work no deliberate theory of life, of nature, of die universe. He is not, as die philosopher must ever be more or less, a partizan . . . The philosopher's function is to compare a work widi an abstract principle of trutii; die critic's is to compare a work witii itself, with its own concrete standard of truth. The critic deals, uierefore, widi parts, die philosopher widi wholes. In M. SainteBeuve , however, it is die historian who is most generously represented . As a critic, he bears die same relation to facts ¿at he does to ideas. As die metaphysician handles ideas widi a preconceived theory, so die historian handles facts widi a preconcerted plan. But widi this Üieory or dûs plan, die critic has nothing to do. (FC 469) The alternative to being between philosopher and historian is to be like Taine, "alternately a philosopher and a historian " (FC 469; my italics). The consequence is that "M. Taine is not preeminently a critic [at all]... he is perpetually sacrificing shades to broad lines ... he is too passionate, too partial, too eloquent." Henry James also locates the critic between the scholar and die man of die world. Again the ideal is SainteBeuve . The great critic had as much of what is called human nature as of erudition, and die proof of his genius was die fashion in which he made diem go hand-in-hand. He was a man of books, and yet in perception, in divination...