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The Map

The Novel Map

Space and Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century French

Patrick M. Bray

northwestern university press evanston, illinois Northwestern University Press www.nupress.northwestern.edu

Copyright © 2013 by Northwestern University Press. Published 2013. All rights reserved.

Printed in the of America

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available from the Library of Congress. Except where otherwise noted, this book is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. In all cases attribution should include the following information: Bray, Patrick M. Map: and Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century French Fiction. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2013. The following material is excluded from the license: Illustrations and the earlier version of chapter 4 as outlined in the Author’s Note

For permissions beyond the scope of this license, visit www.nupress.northwestern.edu

An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high-quality books open access for the public good. More information about the initiative and links to the open-access version can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

Author’s Note xiii

Introduction Here and There: The Subject in Space and Text 3

PART I Stendhal’s Privilege 19

Chapter One The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 23

Chapter Two The Ghost in the Map 41

PART II Nerval Beyond 61

Chapter Three Orientations: Writing the Self in Nerval’s en Orient 65

Chapter Four Unfolding Nerval 85

PART III Sand’s Utopian Subjects 107

Chapter Five Drowning in the Text: Space and 111 Chapter Six Carte Blanche: Charting in Sand’s Nanon 129

PART IV Branching Off: Genealogy and Map in the Rougon-Macquart 147

Chapter Seven and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 151

Chapter Eight Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 169

PART V ’s Double Text 189

Chapter Nine The Law of the Land 193

Chapter Ten Creating a Space for 213

Conclusion Now and Then: Virtual Spaces and Real Subjects in the Twenty-First Century 229

Notes 233

Works Cited 255

Index 263 Illustrations

PART I Figure 1.1 The narrator as Zadig 29 Figure 1.2 Henry in the corner H, the rest of his family in a line at D 31 Figure 1.3 Henry in his bedroom 37 Figure 1.4 Routes taken at various stages of life 53

PART II Figure 2.1 Nerval’s Fantastic Genealogy 87

PART III Figure 3.1 Ahun and Its Moutier 140 Figure 3.2 The Bois de Villemort, Crevant, and the area around Sand’s fi ctional “Île aux fades” 141 Figure 3.3 The blank space corresponding to the “Île aux fades” 142

PART IV Figure 4.1 Zola’s preliminary map of the region surrounding Plassans 160 Figure 4.2 The Aire Saint-Mittre 161 Figure 4.3 1878 genealogical tree revised by Zola 182 Figure 4.4 Defi nitive genealogical tree for the Rougon-Macquart 186

vii

Acknowledgments

This book attests to my enduring fascination with spaces and places. While writing this book over the years, I have had the good fortune of hiking above an ocean of fog in Big Sur, sneaking into the catacombs of Paris at night, walking through an inhabited cemetery in Cairo, and contemplating an unending sea of cornfi elds in Champaign. But a book is made of more than nostalgic atmospheres. Innumerable friends and colleagues have nourished this project with their time and insight. Nearly every sentence bears the trace of a conversation (real or imagined) with a dear friend, to the extent that rereading my text is like traveling across a virtual space of memory. Textual time travel is all the more impor- tant when becomes the only way to communicate with those who have passed away. This book began life as a dissertation at Harvard, the idea for which came from seminars on authorship and taught by Abby Zanger and Naomi Schor. My advisor, Janet Beizer, and my readers, Tom Conley and Christie McDonald, offered not only a wealth of knowledge and insight, but have followed the project through all its stages. I am grateful for their mentoring and remain awed by their scholarship. Nelly Furman has been a friend and mentor from the beginning; her enthusiasm inspired me to become a dix-neuvièmiste. Lawrence Kritzman, through his devotion to the study of and the warmth of his friendship, has taught me the value of an intellectual community. The Bibliothèque municipale de Grenoble graciously allowed me to consult the manuscript of Stendhal’s Vie de Henry Brulard, which proved invaluable to the fi rst two chapters. Stanley Hoffman and Michel Zinc fa- cilitated my entry into the Bibliothèque de l’Institut de France, where I was able to scrutinize fi rsthand Gérard de Nerval’s “Généalogie fantastique.” I owe thanks to the Sablé Center at the University of Toronto for allowing me to consult their materials on Zola’s dossiers for the Rougon-Macquart. I have benefi ted from the fi nancial support of several institutions whose help was crucial to the realization of this project and for which I am duly grateful. I received a dissertation completion fellowship granted by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, a summer faculty fellowship from Indiana University, a Hewlett international research travel grant, and a

ix x Acknowledgments humanities released time grant as well as a publication subvention from the University of Illinois. I would also like to thank Jonathan Strauss, Emily Apter, and Lawrence Kritzman for generously inviting me to speak at their institutions; the Zola chapters of the book have greatly benefi ted from the discussions that ensued. Signifi cant portions of the book were read at different stages by Lia Brozgal, Ross Chambers, Elisabeth Hodges, Natasha Lee, Richard Rego- sin, Philip Usher, Armine Mortimer, and Lawrence Schehr. I thank all of them for their encouragement, their careful reading, and especially for their patience in correcting my myriad typographical whims and rhetori- cal fl ights of fancy. My editor, Henry Carrigan Jr., deserves special thanks for believing in the project from an early stage and shepherding it through the review process. I would like to thank Andrea Goulet and Bell, whose comments enriched the fi nal manuscript. The support, friendship, and dynamic energy from three intellectual communities have sustained me during the project. At both the Nineteenth- Century French Studies and the Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century French and Francophone Studies Colloquia, an incredible group of friends and scholars meets once a year and inspires me throughout the year: Bet- tina Lerner, Ari Blatt, Sara Pappas, Jonathan Strauss, Marina van Zuylen, Deborah Jenson, Maurie Samuels, Dorian Bell, Lauren Fortner, Alison James, Steve Spaulding, Alison Rice, Jeff Fort, Joseph Mai, and countless others. At Indiana University, I particularly appreciated the intellectual camaraderie of Sonya Stephens, Oana Panaïté, Margot Gray, Caroline Strobbe, Gil Chaitin, and Jérôme Brillaud. At the University of Illinois, I would like to express my gratitude to everyone in the French Department for their warm welcome and continued support: Jean-Philippe Mathy, Ar- mine Mortimer, Karen Fresco, Margaret C. Flinn, Alain Fresco, Laurence Mall, Adlai Murdoch, Peter Golato, Zsuzsanna Fagyal, Marcus Keller, Annie Tremblay, and Émile Talbot. Larry Schehr’s critical insight, humor, and friendship cannot be replaced. Students in my graduate seminars on literary and spatial theory engaged in exciting discussions with me and helped to refi ne my arguments. I am particularly indebted to Jenelle Grant, Elizabeth Black, and Audrey Évrard. Other colleagues at Illinois have expanded my intellectual horizons and have created an incredibly rich community of friends and scholars (in no particular order, and with apologies to anyone unintentionally left out): Jim Hansen, Renée Trilling, Justine Murison, Derek Riddle, Rob Rushing, Lilya Kaganovsky, Car- oline Szylowicz, Jane Kuntz, Richard Powers, David O’Brien, Jennifer Greenhill, Irene Small, Masumi Iriye, Lauren Goodlad, Michael Roth- berg, Eleanor Courtemanche, and Ted Underwood. Acknowledgments xi

Jean-Louis Jeannelle, Louis-Georges Tin, Estelle Castro, Julien Artero, Pauline Perrignon, Julien Meyer, and Catherine Meyer have all provided friendship, thrilling conversation, editorial advice, lodging, and numerous lessons on how to be a French intellectual. Maj-Britt Eagle fi rst brought me to literature, philosophy, and critical theory, and inadvertently saved me from medical school. I am deeply grateful to my parents, Pamela Bray and David Rydland, for instilling in me a love of books and an under- standing of the vital importance of beautiful landscapes. I owe an unpay- able debt to my late grandparents, Gordon and Luella Dague, for their countless sacrifi ces and unwavering support. I dedicate this book to my wife Maggie and to my son Sebastian—may we continue to build beautiful things together.

Author’s Note

All translations are mine, unless otherwise cited. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared as an article in French Forum under the title “Lost in the Fold: Space and Subjectivity in Gérard de Nerval’s ‘Généalogie’ and Sylvie,” French Forum 31, no. 2 (Spring 2006): 35–51. I would like to thank the editors of that journal for their kind permission to reprint the article.

xiii

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 The Novel Map 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 INTRODUCTION 3 4 5 6 Here and There: The Subject in Space 7 8 and Text 9 10 11 12 13 Talisman and Map 14 15 Toward the end of October 1830, an unnamed young man, having bet 16 and lost his last coin on cards at the Palais Royal, enters a curiosity shop 17 on the Left Bank to while away the hours until the evening, when he can 18 throw himself in the Seine under cover of darkness. To his mild surprise, 19 the dejected youth fi nds before him four galleries of astonishing antiq- 20 uities encompassing all regions of the world and reaching back to the 21 beginning of time. In a state of confusion between waking and dreaming, 22 he practices a Cartesian philosophical doubt (“le doute philosophique re- 23 commandé par Descartes”) concerning these fantastic visions, reminding 24 himself that magic does not happen in the Paris of the nineteenth century. 25 Suddenly, there appears in the shop an ancient man, the antiquarian pro- 26 prietor, who resembles either Moses or Mephistopheles. Mocking what 27 he supposes to be the trivial torments affl icting the young man, he offers 28 him both a general law of human nature and a Faustian bargain. The 29 antiquarian’s philosophy juxtaposes on the one hand the two words Will 30 (“VOULOIR”) and Power (“POUVOIR”) that sap the force out of life, 31 and on the other Knowledge (“SAVOIR”), which lulls the mind into a 32 perpetual calm. Between the deadening stillness of scholarly detachment 33 and the fatal pursuit of sensual gratifi cation, the old man encourages him 34 to choose knowledge, as it affords the vicarious, “intuitive” pleasure of 35 seeing. If the youth rejects his sage advice, a shagreen (“chagrin”) or talis- 36 man made from a wild ass’s skin will confer on its contractual owner the 37 power to effect anything he wills. The talisman bears an inscription in 38 an Eastern language promising to shrink in size with every wish granted, 39 “even as thine own days” and is roughly the dimension of a “geographi- 40 cal map.” 41

3 4 Introduction

1 So begins Honoré de ’s 1831 novel La P eau de chagrin.1 Of 2 course, the unknown young man (“l’inconnu”) accepts the bargain 3 with the talisman only to die at the end of the novel, and the reader’s 4 knowledge of Parisian society and human nature grows as the magic skin 5 shrinks with every wish fulfi lled. I would like to argue that the talisman 6 functions as both text and map of the unknown subject, the “inconnu” 7 whose story, the reader is often reminded, could belong to anyone. He 8 acquires an identity and a name, the impossibly fanciful Raphaël de Val- 9 entin, but only after he accepts the contract, when he leaves the shop 10 and encounters some friends on their way to a gala. The morning after, 11 the third-person novel becomes a fi ctional autobiography as Raphaël re- 12 counts in fl ashback the woes that led him to contemplate suicide. As if in 13 a lucid dream, exactly like the “Cartesian” one he experienced at the start 14 of the novel, Raphaël can see, not all of human history and geography as 15 he did in the shop, but his entire life spread out before him in the distance: 16 17 Je ne sais en vérité s’il ne faut pas attribuer aux fumées du vin et du punch 18 l’espèce de lucidité qui me permet d’embrasser en un instant toute ma 19 vie comme un même tableau où les fi gures, les couleurs, les ombres, les 20 lumières, les demi-teintes sont fi dèlement rendues. . . . Vue à distance, ma 21 vie est comme rétrécie par un phénomène .2 (120) 22 23 Instead of the wine or a “moral phenomenon,” Raphaël might attribute 24 his heightened awareness, his ability to see his whole life framed in the 25 space of a painting or contracted in the distance, to his new “skin” that 26 is from now on bound to his fate. The talisman, later in the novel explic- 27 itly compared to a map, is a simple atlas that represents time spatially; 28 Raphaël counts with horror the dwindling years, days, and minutes re- 29 maining in his life by carefully tracing the skin on the wall and accurately 30 measuring the gap between the line and the talisman that expands with 31 every desire realized. Just as Raphaël and the magic skin share a mysteri- 32 ous and inextricable bond as geography to map, their contractual union 33 is inscribed as text into fl esh: inspecting the talisman in the shop, Raphaël 34 attempts to cut away a slice of the magic skin to see how the text was en- 35 graved, but the lettering reappears, as if materializing Jean-Jacques Rous- 36 seau’s words in his Confessions, intus et in cute (“inside and under the 37 skin”). 38 Balzac’s La Peau de chagrin allegorizes the transubstantiation by which 39 any subject can be inscribed in the space of a text. Like Descartes, whose 40 anonymous doubter must fi rst doubt his own material existence before 41 proclaiming the metaphysical and universal “cogito,” and like Marcel Here and There 5

Proust’s nameless narrator, who fl oats amid various bedrooms of his past 1 before landing in the bedroom of the present and the beginning of his nar- 2 rative, Balzac’s unknown young man, on the verge of suicide, fi nds himself 3 outside of space and time ready to abandon himself to the unknown of a 4 text. His suicide by drowning exchanged for the certain death of the self 5 in a text, his initial anonymity replaced by the universal “I” of a narrative 6 that refers to anyone, Raphaël de Valentin signs a contract of dubious 7 value. To write oneself as text, to enter into narrative language is to lose 8 the connection with the material world. Fighting for his life, attempting 9 to abolish all desires from his mind, Raphaël imposes an absolute, pre- 10 scribed order on his new mansion, where he no longer has to engage with 11 the world. He reserves his concern only for the magic skin, the map of his 12 life, which shrinks in inverse proportion to the expanding novel record- 13 ing the details of his agony. After the analeptic, autobiographical middle 14 section of the novel, Raphaël’s story returns to the third person; the slow 15 contraction of the skin, the world surrounding him, and his life can only 16 be witnessed from the outside. The allure of the talisman lies here, in the 17 illusion of a text upon which can be engraved an image of one’s entire life 18 from birth to death. 19 20 The question of the subject’s relation to space and text has been at the 21 center of French thought for at least the last several hundred years. From 22 Renaissance cosmography to poststructural critiques of cyberspace, 23 French thinkers conceive of power in spatial terms. The constructions 24 and contradictions of the modern subject were formed before the Enlight- 25 enment and the French Revolution. The founding text of the Cartesian 26 moment and of the modern conception of subjectivity, the Discours de la 27 méthode takes the ambiguous form of a spiritual of a man who 28 discovers a scientifi c method and epistemology but who eventually does 29 away with the spiritual in favor of the rational—the mirror image of the 30 journey taken by Raphaël de Valentin. René Descartes’s project is pur- 31 posefully oxymoronic: an anonymous autobiography that creates a uni- 32 versal model for subjectivity. The narrating je (“I”) is divided into at least 33 two modes; the fi rst je, autobiographical and personal, prepares the way 34 for the second je, which is metaphysical and universal. The care taken in 35 the employment of the two rhetorical voices is designed to guide and con- 36 trol the understanding of the reading public. The autobiographical voice 37 announces itself as if it were writing a fi ctional text: “[Je ne propose] cet 38 écrit que comme une histoire, ou, si vous l’aimez mieux que comme une 39 ” (Discours, 49–50) (“[I only propose] this text as a story, or, if you 40 prefer, as a fable”). This is the “fable” of a man who searches for truth in 41 6 Introduction

1 all of the traditional methods: letters, science, travel, and war. But instead 2 of fi nding a certainty for truth in any of these ways of learning, instead 3 of fi nding his own Being, he fears losing himself in illusion (after one has 4 traveled too long “on devient enfi n étranger en son propre pays”—“one 5 becomes in the end a stranger in one’s own homeland”; Discours, 52). 6 The autobiographical voice prepares the way for the metaphysical voice 7 by demonstrating its own incapacity for fi nding the truth and establishing 8 the negation of knowledge not derived from reason. The autobiographi- 9 cal voice creates an itinerary of salvation, a pilgrim’s progress, where the 10 self can be lost; the metaphysical voice draws a perspectival map for the 11 foundation of subjectivity. 12 Descartes recounts in the fi rst four sections of his Discours the studies 13 of his youth, his travels, his doubts concerning scholasticism, and fi nally 14 the fateful night when he feigns that he has no past, no body, no percep- 15 tions. All that remains is the fact that he doubts and thinks. The moment 16 of doubt, and the creation of a universal subject, is a moment of fi ction 17 that depends upon the feigned negation of time (both past and future) 18 and of body: 19 20 Je pensais qu’il fallait que . . . je rejetasse comme absolument faux tout 21 ce en quoi je pourrais imaginer le moindre doute . . . je voulus supposer 22 qu’il n’y avait aucune chose qui fut telle qu’ils nous la font imaginer . . . 23 je me résolus de feindre que toutes choses qui m’étaient jamais entrées en 24 l’esprit n’étaient non plus vraies que les illusions de mes songes . . . que 25 je n’avais aucun corps et qu’il n’y avait aucun monde ni aucun lieu où je 26 fusse. . . .3 (Discours, 98–101) 27 28 From the moment of doubt, which is a moment of fi ction, he establishes 29 consciousness, then being, and fi nally God in an ontological proof in the 30 tradition of Saint Anselm. He constantly moves between the use of fi c- 31 tion and the counterfactual (indicated by the imperfect subjunc- 32 tive) and a condemnation of imagination and the unconscious. Descartes 33 incessantly worries throughout the text about publication, about losing 34 possession of his theory, of his self. He claims that no one has ever un- 35 derstood or ever will understand his method, but he wants the Discours 36 to provide a model: his discovery is unique and personal, but reveals the 37 centrality of reason and its universal effect. The paradox of an inimitable 38 yet rational model pervades the Discours through the mapping of textual 39 space. In The Self-Made Map, Tom Conley has argued that Descartes’s is 40 a cartographic text. Descartes’s famous affi rmation of planned by 41 rational engineers and architects also applies to the planned writing of the Here and There 7 text and more generally to the planned invention of subjectivity (Conley, 1 289–91). The single, mathematical perspective of the architect confi gures 2 the in the same way that the authority of the author confi gures the 3 text and its future readers: 4 5 The cartographic subtext implies that the space that the author is de- 6 scribing is available to anyone and everyone, like a regional projection, 7 but that a regional projection is also conceived according to the laws 8 of monocular perspective. An all-powerful author needs to be placed at 9 the vanishing point of a city-view redesigned by mechanical or artifi cial 10 means. (Conley, 291–92) 11 12 In the unsigned and anonymous Discours, Descartes inscribes himself at 13 the vanishing point of his cartographic text (Conley, 298). He is a new 14 subject reborn from maps, “René Descartes.” Cartesian metaphysics relies 15 on a suspension between an autobiographical and a fi ctive mode in order 16 to present a theory of a unifi ed, universal subject, which is nonetheless 17 dependent upon the perspective of an author mapped onto the spaces of a 18 text. Descartes’s vision of a universally applicable method and a rational 19 subject relies on the fi ction of a “novel map,” a textual projection fusing 20 the subject with its object of study. 21 As if in response to Descartes’s intuition that his universal experience 22 of the cogito may not be repeatable, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, at the other 23 end of the Enlightenment, developed in his Confessions a theory and 24 praxis of an intensely personal autobiography, of a unique style and char- 25 acter. The originality of Rousseau’s enterprise is that it places at the center 26 of hundreds of pages of text the history of one individual—it makes the 27 self into a subject worthy of investigation. Previous forms of autobiogra- 28 phy, memoirs, journals, and conversion stories sought to elucidate a truth 29 beyond a single person, whereas autobiography since Rousseau shifts 30 the emphasis of discourse to the uniqueness of the individual (Lejeune, 31 L’Autobiographie en France, 15–16). 32 Rousseau can place himself at the center of the Confessions, as the sub- 33 ject of signifi cant attention, because he believes himself to be unique and 34 different from others. He affi rms that he is not better or worse, simply 35 different. He does not even claim that he knows all of the truth about his 36 past. What matters is not the subject’s privileged perspective with regard 37 to an absolute objective truth (as in Descartes), but rather the sincerity 38 of feeling, the affi rmation of individuality, what makes one subject dif- 39 ferent from another. As opposed to Descartes’s universalizing cogito of 40 negation and thought, Rousseau creates a personal cogito of sentiment 41 8 Introduction

1 (“Je sentis avant de penser: c’est le sort commun de l’humanité”—“I felt 2 before thinking: this is the common fate of humanity,” Les Confessions, 3 36). Rousseau’s project exceeds a simple avowal of his own originality, 4 for he offers his autobiography as a tool for others to know themselves. 5 The Confessions will not just create Rousseau as a textual subject open 6 to the scrutiny of readers, but will transform its readers into individ- 7 uals, into subjects of the study of feeling. If Descartes attempted to mold 8 his readers into rational practitioners of the method for which he is 9 the only model, Rousseau proposes to make his autobiography the basis 10 for any subsequent understanding of the self by means of antirational 11 feeling. 12 Rousseau’s argument that his innate difference (his individuality) and 13 original enterprise (his autobiographical text) constitute the basis for any 14 future knowledge of the self relies on the assertion that his autobiography 15 provides the reader with adequate knowledge of Rousseau through an 16 accurate representation of himself. The text that presents such a unique 17 subject must itself be unique. In the Confessions, Rousseau confl ates his 18 book with himself even further, ultimately revealing the autobiographical 19 simulacrum that equates the autobiographical subject with the textual 20 subject: “Si la nature a bien ou mal fait de briser le moule dans lequel elle 21 m’a jeté, c’est ce dont on ne peut juger qu’après m’avoir lu” (Les Con- 22 fessions, 33) (“If nature was right or wrong to break the mold in which 23 she formed me, only after having read me can one judge”). To read the 24 Confessions is to read Rousseau, and yet if nature broke the mold used 25 to cast Jean-Jacques, the text can only be a forged copy of the original. 26 Rousseau’s autobiographical subject simultaneously follows at least two 27 textual models, that of a religious confession in the style of Augustine, 28 and that of Rousseau’s own previous and discours. Jean-Jacques is 29 the man of nature who received the kind of education that he would later 30 promote in Émile and yet who was later corrupted by society. The well- 31 known “conversion” scene in book 8 (structurally similar to Augustine’s 32 conversion scene) reveals the stakes of textuality when Rousseau reads 33 the subject for the Académie de Dijon prize and enters the world of let- 34 ters. His decision to write and enter the public sphere is both a fall from 35 the state of nature and the revelation of the positive and transformative 36 power of writing. Rousseau’s conversion as a born-again man of letters, 37 and by extension his rebirth as text in the Confessions, risks corrupting 38 his nature, erasing his original difference, through the contamination of 39 (inter)texutality. But once the “fall” has happened, the only cure, the only 40 way to correct one’s ways, is to control the power of textuality by using 41 it to serve the individual. Here and There 9

While Descartes and Rousseau provide the models for a theoretical 1 and textual subjectivity, the historically determined discourses of space 2 and time in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries infl uenced the 3 experience of subjectivity and served as catalysts for the transformation 4 of the subject. Rousseau’s focus on the individual subject was adopted by 5 the universalizing and centralizing project of the French Revolution. As 6 Michel Foucault has famously theorized in Surveiller et punir, starting 7 in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the state and other 8 institutions assumed the role of producing and controlling individuals 9 through education, discipline, and surveillance. The promise of freedom 10 gained through self-consciousness dreamt by the Enlightenment was now 11 transformed into a method of normalizing, classifying, and organizing the 12 subjects of the State. The overarching for the new surveillance 13 society, according to Foucault, was Jeremy Bentham’s late eighteenth- 14 century invention, the panopticon: a mechanism that organizes human 15 beings into individuals who interiorize the power of surveillance, each 16 one of whom becomes “le principe de son propre assujettissement” (“the 17 principle or beginning of his own subjection”; Surveiller et punir, 236). 18 The exterior space of surveillance is now converted into the interior space 19 of the subject. 20 At the turn of the last century, Henri Bergson in Matière et mémoire 21 and L’Évolution créatrice criticized the spatialization of thought, of time, 22 which sought to measure time as if it were space. Spatial time, present in 23 the spatial of language and in the idea of homogenous time, 24 prevents us from perceiving time’s true nature as duration, as well as 25 the creative processes of life or “l’élan vital.” But Bergson’s rejection of 26 spatial quantity over temporal quality tended to neglect art forms, such 27 as cinema and even literature, that combine the spatial and the temporal 28 to visualize an image of time emerging from space. Rebelling against the 29 sway held over French thought by Bergson at the beginning of the twenti- 30 eth century, phenomenological thinkers from the middle of the twentieth 31 century such as Gaston Bachelard (La Poétique de l’espace) or Georges 32 Poulet (L’Espace proustien) sought to describe the effects of space on a 33 conscious mind, as revealed most clearly in literary works. Whereas Berg- 34 son insisted on the role of intuition over analysis, Bachelard proposes a 35 “topo-analysis” in which the intrinsic qualities of specifi c types of places 36 (essentially interior spaces such as houses) are analyzed in relation to 37 their power to create poetic images (both representations of the real and 38 unreal inventions). Bachelard’s treatment of the transformation of space 39 as image in a literary text risks simplifying the ever-changing relation 40 between writing subject and textual space to a series of recurring topoi. 41 10 Introduction

1 With structuralism and what became known as poststructuralism in 2 the United States, space became not just the object of thought but its sub- 3 ject; space can be conceived of as what structures thought and subjectiv- 4 ity once philosophy turns its attention away from consciousness. Claude 5 Lévi-Strauss’s rearrangeable “mythèmes,” Pierre Bourdieu’s “habitus,” 6 and Foucault’s “panopticon” describe social phenomena in spatial terms 7 even as their own thought relies on spatial metaphors. What might distin- 8 guish poststructuralists from structuralists is a certain self-awareness of 9 the (spatial) patterns of thought. The philosopher turned writer of texts, 10 in drawing a diagram of power relations at a given time, also invents 11 alternative structures of thought and : as Gilles Deleuze writes, ven- 12 triloquizing Foucault, “écrire, c’est lutter, résister; écrire, c’est devenir; 13 écrire, c’est cartographier, ‘je suis un cartographe . . .’” (Deleuze, Foucault, 14 51) (“to write is to fi ght, to resist; to write is to become; to write is to 15 draw up maps, ‘I am a cartographer . . .’”). 16 While structures express a subjectivity determined by space, the 17 of the structure along with its blind spots and internal breaks cannot 18 be known. The obsession with spatial structures inevitably leads to the 19 search for an image beyond space where new spaces and new subjects can 20 emerge: either the negation of space, (Louis Marin’s Utopiques) 21 and nonspaces (Marc Augé’s Non-lieux), or the invention of other places, 22 Foucault’s “heterotopias” or Michel de Certeau’s subversive (narrative) 23 practice of space. Reality itself becomes a “simulacrum” for Jean Baudril- 24 lard, and for Paul Virilio the increased speed of information and trans- 25 portation shrinks space faster than Raphaël de Valentin’s shagreen, to the 26 point where all movement stops. 27 To paraphrase Jacques Derrida in “Le Signe, la structure, et le jeu dans 28 le discours des sciences humaines,” the subject of space at the center of 29 French thought blocks the it opens up and makes possible (L’Écriture 30 et la différence, 409). Whether the subject is completely determined by 31 spatial structures or it is an ideological burden to be discarded, scien- 32 tifi cally quantifi able or an Enlightenment illusion, theories of subjectivity 33 either dissolve or normalize the relationship between the subject’s constit- 34 uent parts—self and nonself. On either extreme, theoretical formulations 35 of subjectivity tend to obscure possibilities for individual transformation 36 through a restructuring of subjectivity. 37 Just as theories of subjectivity provide an important but limited under- 38 standing of the spatial subject in literature, in a similar way, the empirical 39 discipline of geography, or geographical information science (GIS), can 40 offer tools that illuminate a particular real place at different specifi c mo- 41 ments in history, which may usefully be compared to the places repre- Here and There 11 sented in a text. As Stanley Fish suggests in his New York Times review of 1 the collected volume GeoHumanities (edited by the geographers Michael 2 Dear, Jim Ketchum, and Douglas Richardson and the English professor 3 Sarah Luria), a hybrid, interdisciplinary approach such as “geohuman- 4 ities” represents the breakdown of the distinction between empirical and 5 interpretive discourses. But if Fish can assert that “interpretive methods 6 and perspectives are necessary to the practice of geography” and that 7 the humanities “have been busily moving into, even colonizing” geog- 8 raphy and other disciplines, the converse must be approached with cau- 9 tion, since geography as an empirical, quantitative discipline necessarily 10 reduces time to space. As Edward L. Ayers writes in one of the volume’s 11 central articles, “Mapping Time,” the metaphor of the layering function 12 so crucial to the mapped time of GIS “is a useful fi ction, since it reminds 13 us of the structural depth of time and experience” (Dear, GeoHumanities, 14 223). Mapped time is a fi ction useful for geographers to understand their 15 own interpretive strategies, but the literary scholar, already dealing with 16 fi ctional maps and texts, must not confl ate the metaphors used by em- 17 pirical disciplines with actual quantifi able evidence. Whether the current 18 interest in digital humanities, the sociological approach of Pierre Bour- 19 dieu’s mapping of the Frédéric Moreau in Les Règles de l’art, 20 or Franco Moretti’s call for a textless in Graphs, Maps, 21 Trees, quantifi able approaches supplement and supplant the fictional 22 maps of the text with maps of the critic’s own invention. One empirically 23 based fi ction, that of a contemporary scholar, covers that of another, the 24 literary text. 25 While theoretical concepts provide insights on particular strategies de- 26 ployed to write the self in the space of a text and empirical analysis can 27 offer a glimpse of how space changes across time, literature alone conveys 28 the experience of abandonment to language from the inside, the defi ance 29 of an individual who realigns spatial boundaries to imagine a new world 30 and new subjects. 31 32 33 The Novel Map 34 35 The literary and cultural contexts in nineteenth-century France reconfi g- 36 ured both the ways literature could represent subjects and also the ways 37 subjects related to space. This period saw the emergence of autobiogra- 38 phy in the wake of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions and the rise of 39 the novel as the dominant . First-person works occupying 40 the space between the two genres of autobiography and novel show that 41 12 Introduction

1 the of writing the self unsettles the linguistic and representational 2 stability of the subject while also providing the self with the freedom to 3 redefi ne the subject. 4 At the same time as the literary fi eld was transforming itself, the physi- 5 cal space of nineteenth-century France was radically altered. The Revo- 6 lution of 1789 rationalized the division of national space, drawing up 7 départements around natural landmarks. The Cassini and États-Majors 8 maps from the beginning of the nineteenth century gave the most de- 9 tailed representation of geographical space available in the world. Space 10 itself was both “compressed” by the rapid development of transporta- 11 tion technologies such as the railroad and homogenized and abstracted 12 by the state’s centralization, as David Harvey has argued.4 The “produc- 13 tion of space” by capitalism, according to Henri Lefebvre, disrupts the 14 subject’s relationship to space when space becomes “pulverized” as it is 15 parceled out and sold.5 This pulverized and commodifi ed space destroys 16 the connection not only between places but also between subject and 17 place, connections that can be repaired through the fi ctional maps found 18 in fi rst-person texts. 19 The division and abstraction of space for the production of homog- 20 enous subjects requires the concomitant division and abstraction of time. 21 The nineteenth century was obsessed with theories of history, genealogy, 22 , and progress, all of which are various ways to measure and an- 23 alyze the course of time. Alongside this theoretical abstraction of time, the 24 nineteenth century witnessed the progressive introduction of standard- 25 ized time through rail schedules, optical and electrical telegraphs, and 26 the eventual adoption at the end of the century of Greenwich Mean Time 27 (Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 11–15). Chronological, homog- 28 enous time has the same effect on the subject as pulverized, homogenous 29 space: a shock experience that alienates the subject from the past and 30 prevents the assimilation of time into lived experience.6 Personal time and 31 memories become isolated from the of standard time and history. 32 The romantic notion of being born too late, the decadent belief in the end 33 of civilization and the degeneration of the race, and even Taine’s critical 34 trio of “race, milieu, moment” all attest to the experience of being subject 35 to a time outside of the subject’s control. The dominant literary move- 36 ments of the second half of the nineteenth century (from the decadents to 37 the naturalists) incorporated the shock of time and the acceptance of fa- 38 talism into their aesthetic. The bulk of scientifi c thinking before Einstein 39 accepted the atomistic nature of time (Kern, 20–21). 40 The double context, literary and cultural, in which the novel map 41 emerged necessitates a reading that is attuned both to the specifi c liter- Here and There 13 ariness of the text (the subject as represented by language) and the text’s 1 materiality as a map. By looking at the maps drawn in the manuscripts 2 of Stendhal’s Vie de Henry Brulard (1835), Nerval’s “Généalogie fan- 3 tastique” (1843), Sylvie (1853), and Aurélia (1855), and Zola’s dossiers 4 préparatoires for his Rougon-Macquart series (1871–93), I argue that 5 the maps present in these works serve as emblems that indicate the sub- 6 ject’s unstable position between a visual and concrete representation in a 7 map and a readable and abstract representation in narrative. Similarly, in 8 Sand’s novel Nanon (1871) and in Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu 9 (1913–27), I show how the novel and the narrating self are structured 10 around maps outside of the text: Nanon learns to read and memorize 11 the complex Cassini maps to navigate the routes of France, while Marcel 12 intuits the geographical and social space of Combray and Paris as a func- 13 tion of his family walks on “Swann’s Way” and “the Guermantes Way.” 14 From Stendhal’s illustrations of the events in Grenoble during the 15 French Revolution to Sand’s tale of a young peasant girl whose explo- 16 rations through revolutionary France allow her to cross the social and 17 economic boundaries of her humble origins, from Zola’s detailed account 18 of Haussmann’s transformation of Paris to Proust’s description of the 19 society circles during the Dreyfus Affair, the mapping of space in the nine- 20 teenth-century novel sets the parameters of political action and defi nes 21 the limits of interaction between subjects. 22 23 Far from being a death sentence (magic shagreens notwithstanding, an 24 inevitable fate for us all), Raphaël’s talisman affords new possibilities of 25 conceptualizing the self in time and space—as a subject of space. The 26 talisman is a “novel map,” a term I use in this book to refer to any device 27 in a narrative text that simulates a holistic image of the self occupying 28 multiple times and multiple spaces. The novel map inscribes the writing 29 subject in the spaces of the text, placing the subject simultaneously in the 30 fi ctional world of the narrative, in the material world of the reader as a 31 graphic representation on a page, and in the real-world spaces, such as 32 Paris, referred to in the map-novel. For the geographer and historian of 33 cartography Christian Jacob, all maps present the contradiction of ma- 34 teriality and representation: “[La carte] est un mélange problématique, 35 où la transparence de l’illusion référentielle coexiste avec l’opacité d’un 36 support qui matérialise cette image” (L’Empire des cartes, 41) (“[A map] 37 is a problematic mixture, where the transparency of a referential illu- 38 sion coexists with the opacity of a medium that materializes this image”). 39 The “referential illusion”—the idea that the “here” of a map is identi- 40 cal to a distant “there” of another space—must coexist with the graphic 41 14 Introduction

1 representation of space, a simple X which stands in for a singular place. 2 Like the cartographic simulacrum which maintains the “referential illu- 3 sion,” the autobiographical simulacrum, as defi ned by Louis Marin, simu- 4 lates the (present) presence of the author in a past narrative creating the 5 seamless illusion of an autobiographical subject.7 Yet just as the different 6 types of textual spaces coexist without ever becoming strictly identical, 7 the subject of these spaces is always only represented and never present. 8 The multiplicity of spatial representations of the self, both readable and 9 visible, that attempt to situate the subject in the text only serve to em- 10 phasize its absence. The novel map, a simulacrum representing an imagi- 11 nary totality beyond time and space, can only exist in a work of fi ction; 12 Raphaël’s talisman works by magic. 13 In what follows, I show how the novel map, this fi ctional represen- 14 tation of the self as subject of space, structures fi rst-person 15 in nineteenth-century French fi ction. Taking as exemplary the works of 16 Stendhal, Gérard de Nerval, , Émile Zola, and Marcel 17 Proust, I study how the inscription of a subject into a fi ctional text occurs 18 through a superposition of the visual representations of space found in 19 maps with the linguistic representations of space in written narrative; the 20 resulting textual play intensifi es the experience of space and unsettles the 21 boundaries between subjects and places. 22 I broadly defi ne the subject as a construct that determines the interac- 23 tions between a conscious self and its others (the world, the body, the 24 past, or other subjects). There is, however, an uncertainty principle of 25 subjectivity, since the only way to comprehend or measure the subject 26 (that is, from the perspective of a conscious self or from that of its objec- 27 tive other) modifi es the relationship between the self and its outside, and 28 so any attempt to grasp subjectivity consequently changes its very nature. 29 The narrative subject that emerges from the human subject’s transcrip- 30 tion into text constitutes a new web of connections (between author and 31 text) that both reproduces the original structure of the subject (conscious 32 self and other) and complicates this original structure exponentially. The 33 writing act is inherently transformative, as the writer produces both a 34 refl ection of the self and an object that is other than this self. The text 35 creates simultaneously the author as subject and a textual subject that is 36 different from the author. The authorial subject and the textual or novel 37 subject become superimposed and, at times, indistinguishable from one 38 another. The literary work that results is a hybrid text caught between 39 the contradictory genres of truthful autobiography and fi ctional novel. 40 The play of these contradictions, the textuality of the literary text, allows 41 the subject to alternate between a state of dissolution in the text (where Here and There 15 the novel subject is lost in the plurality of meaning) and one of actual- 1 ization outside the text (where a new, “real” autobiographical subject is 2 constructed). 3 Textuality creates the possibility for the subject’s self-transformation. 4 The novel maps the subject and thereby draws the boundaries between 5 self and nonself. As the lines that delineate the subject shift, they alter 6 the relation the self has with its other. The textual space reconfi gures 7 the subject’s place in society, erasing social barriers and redistributing 8 what Jacques Rancière calls the “partage du sensible”8 (“distribution of 9 the perceptible”). The interior space of disciplinary surveillance is folded 10 outward and projected onto the exterior, mapped space of the text. These 11 mapped spaces of the text contribute to the suspension of form and mat- 12 ter found in all art, since maps represent both the space outside the text 13 and also participate in the text’s system of signs. The novel map ensures 14 that the texts cannot be read defi nitively as either autobiographies or as 15 novels, since either mode of reading would privilege only one aspect of 16 the dual nature of cartography as material object and representational 17 construct. 18 19 20 The Subject of Space 21 22 In the fi rst part of my book, “Stendhal’s Privilege,” I show how Stendhal, 23 in his ambiguous work Vie de Henry Brulard, lays the theoretical founda- 24 tion for the novel map along with an exaggerated anxiety of the loss of 25 the self to the play of the text. The fi rst chapter reads Stendhal’s text as a 26 work that combines novel, autobiography, and cartography. Through a 27 variety of techniques, especially the use of maps, emblems, and drawings, 28 Stendhal’s text plays with the differences between the author (whose real 29 name was Henri Beyle), the narrator, and the character (Henry Brulard). 30 The second chapter returns to the fi rst image of Stendhal’s text, where 31 he introduces another cartographic representation, a bird’s-eye view of 32 , which allows him to see his own past, present, and future in a 33 novel map. Nevertheless, the narrator professes that the act of writing 34 and of drawing erases memory and being, which leads him abruptly to 35 terminate the narrative only eighteen years into the “life” of Brulard. I 36 contend that Beyle/Brulard prematurely closes the narrative in order to 37 maintain the suspension between Beyle and Brulard, authorial and novel 38 subject. 39 In the second part, “Nerval Beyond Narrative,” the work of Gérard 40 de Nerval breaches the border so ardently defended by Stendhal between 41 16 Introduction

1 author and subject, real and textual space, leading inevitably to madness. 2 Nerval’s novel maps provide the cure to his narrative illness. In chap- 3 ter 3, I demonstrate how Gérard de Nerval’s writing of a travel narrative, 4 the Voyage en Orient, creates simultaneously the space of the “Orient” 5 as text and the textual subject that travels through it. Nerval’s desire to 6 restart his literary career, to rewrite himself as sane, leads him to orient 7 himself through his inscription in Oriental space. Nerval’s narrator is able 8 to pass himself off as “oriental” by the appropriation of foreign languages 9 and customs, and by the introduction of three rewritten oriental . 10 Chapter 4 analyzes Nerval’s “Généalogie fantastique,” Sylvie, and Auré- 11 lia to show how the spatial metaphor of the fold, as theorized by Gilles 12 Deleuze in Le Pli, inscribes the subject in the world. In Sylvie space folds 13 in on itself, isolating the narrator in his own illusions; in Aurélia space is 14 opened up and now contains multiple times and perspectives which allow 15 the narrator to embrace others and the fl ux of time. 16 The third part, “Sand’s Utopian Subjects,” examines George Sand’s 17 fi rst signed novel, Indiana (1832), and one of her last novels, Nanon 18 (1871). Sand’s novels, I argue, fi gure the double bind of women’s textual 19 subjectivity, since their fi ctional works were received by critics as inevi- 20 tably autobiographical and their autobiographical works as inherently 21 distorted. The play between truthful fi ction and a fantasized autobiogra- 22 phy along with the inscription of real places into the language of a text 23 did not offer women a liberating escape from the traditional structure of 24 subjectivity, since they did not enjoy the same status of subject as their 25 male counterparts. Instead, Sand places novel maps, utopias of her liter- 26 ary imagination, into her realistic texts, inventing a new world out of the 27 old. In Sand’s fi rst signed novelIndiana (chapter 5), the unstable move- 28 ment of meaning in a text and of places in the city pose a mortal danger 29 to the eponymous character’s sense of self. Only the improbable utopian 30 ending in the Île Bourbon renews identity and language for both Indiana 31 and the male narrator. Nanon (chapter 6), Sand’s last great novel, is a 32 fi rst-person account of the French Revolution by a peasant woman who 33 learns to read the Cassini maps of France as she builds her own agrarian 34 utopia in the center of France. In the blank spaces of history, Sand writes 35 the story of a young woman who builds her own community in the blank 36 spaces of a map. 37 Part IV, “Branching Off: Genealogy and Map in the Rougon-Macquart,” 38 reads the preparatory notes for Émile Zola’s The Rougon-Macquart, a 39 novel series that studies the moral and genetic decadence of Napoleon III’s 40 Second Empire by following the trajectories of two branches of one fam- 41 ily. Zola displaces traditional representation, especially the visual, in the Here and There 17 form of the preparatory notes for his novels. The thousands of pages of 1 Zola’s notes contain countless sketches, diagrams, maps, and lists of ob- 2 servations that attempt to convey a one-to-one correspondence between 3 objects and linguistic representation. Focusing on the hand-drawn map 4 of the “Aire Saint-Mittre” which opens the preparatory notes for the For- 5 tune des Rougon and serves as the site for the origin of the novel series, 6 I show in chapter 7 how in the passage from note to novel, visual repre- 7 sentation and authorial autonomy are sacrifi ced in favor of the freedom 8 of verbal expression. In chapter 8, I analyze the “archive fever” present 9 throughout the novel series as a symptom of anxiety about the origins of 10 the novel in the dossiers manifested in the novels’ narrative. Zola’s novel 11 map, the Rougon-Macquart genealogical tree, hides and supplants the 12 missing origin, serving as both the beginning and the ending of the novel 13 cycle. 14 The fi nal part, “Proust’s Double Text,” argues that Marcel Proust’s 15 monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu at the beginning of the 16 twentieth century incorporates the nineteenth-century novel maps of his 17 predecessors as the very structure of his novel. The novel subject, Proust’s 18 anonymous narrator, exists only at the confl uence of two differing texts, 19 the novel about space written by Proust and the novel of time announced 20 by the narrator. Chapter 9 describes how the division of space in Proust’s 21 novel into two “Ways” imposes a law of place and a law of immutable 22 signs. As the narrator wanders through the places of the text, he slowly 23 learns how to decipher signs and eventually discovers the arbitrary nature 24 of the text’s cartographic system, just as the reader perceives the text’s 25 semiotic system. Chapter 10 reads Proust’s novel as if it were the book 26 about time its narrator claims to write at the end of the text since time, as 27 duration, is represented within the novel about space by means of meta- 28 phor, movement, and the cycle of itself. 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 3 4 5 6 Part I 7 8 Stendhal’s Privilege 9 10 11 Il est, dans l’histoire littéraire, des personnages qui déroutent les 12 procédés ordinaires de la critique et qu’on se sent envie de traiter 13 comme des personnages de roman.* 14 —Léon Blum, Stendhal et le beylisme 15 16 17 18 19 Stendhal, Dominique, Henry Brulard, M.B.A.A. (Monsieur Beyle, Ancien 20 Auditeur), and Mr. Myself are some of the many names and pseudonyms 21 that testify to the multiplicity of the subject Henri Beyle. In his writings, 22 Beyle contradicts the mystifi cation of identity, the will to hide behind an 23 encoded pseudonym, by a nearly constant impulse toward self-exposure 24 in the form of autobiography. Henri Beyle felt the need to write, and in 25 particular, to write about himself, from a relatively early age. What is 26 perhaps more remarkable is that he was able to do so almost continu- 27 ously from the age of eighteen until his death. There exist texts of auto- 28 biographical content that cover nearly every period of his life forming a 29 1 more or less uniform autobiographical project. 30 The Vie de Henry Brulard in its structure, unity, and scope is unlike 31 2 Stendhal’s other autobiographical writings. By way of an analysis of the 32 progression of Stendhal’s autobiographical works, the Vie de Henry Bru- 33 lard can be differentiated from the oeuvre and made autonomous (made 34 to have its own name, the difference between Henri/y Beyle/rulard). The 35 Vie de Henry Brulard transcends the earlier autobiographical writing 36 with the creation of a novel subject, Henry Brulard. 37 38 39 *There are in literary history personages that throw off the ordinary processes of criticism and 40 which one wants to treat like characters in a novel. 41

19 20 Part I

1 The earliest autobiographical writings were a collection of various per- 2 sonal diaries published posthumously as the Journal, and begin with the 3 young Beyle’s arrival in Milan with Napoleon’s army in 1800, tapering 4 off only in 1823. From 1800 to 1814, he regularly made an entry every 5 night, after which time the publication of other works (Histoire de la 6 peinture en Italie, Vies de , de , et de Métastase, and Rome, 7 , et where the pseudonym Stendhal makes its fi rst appear- 8 ance) seems to have satisfi ed some of the writing impulse (Martineau, 9 “Avertissement,” in Stendhal’s Oeuvres intimes, 7). Indeed, the subject 10 matter of the journals is often closer to that of his nonfi ction publications 11 than to a sentimental diary. At various moments, Beyle makes it clear that 12 the journals are intended only for him, or at best for the Henri Beyle of 13 the future. These are private literary journals, where every play seen and 14 book read is carefully recorded, dated, and picked apart. Especially in 15 the early journals (1800–1805), Beyle’s main interest is in his future as a 16 playwright; details concerning his travels, his life as a sous-lieutenant, the 17 women he loves, are secondary and seem to be presented only for their 18 possible connection to future literary endeavors. Gradually, however, the 19 journal itself becomes the site of stylistic experimentation, the entries be- 20 come longer, descriptions are more detailed. 21 The object of study eventually returns to Beyle himself: “Faire incessam- 22 ment (le 13 octobre, jour anniversaire de mon départ de Paris) l’examen 23 de ma conscience” (Oeuvres intimes, 895) (“Incessantly examine (Octo- 24 ber 13th, anniversary of my departure from Paris) my consciousness”). 25 By studying himself, he can arrive at a perfection of his character and 26 profession (as writer). The creation of an aesthetic leads to the creation 27 of an identity. The methods of self-examination vary widely and antici- 28 pate one of Stendhal’s principal literary inventions, what Georges Blin 29 calls the “restrictions de champ,” where the narrative fi eld is restricted to 30 the perceptions of one character (Stendhal et les problèmes du roman). 31 Moreover Beyle rereads the journal from earlier years to discern what his 32 thought process had been; he often describes himself in the third person 33 with the help of an ironic narrator. 34 The end of the Journal coincides with the appearance of short (1–4 35 page) autobiographical essays, “notices autobiographiques,” that Yves 36 Ansel has called “fi ches d’état civil,” or an administrative curriculum vi- 37 tae (Ansel, 2). Often in the third person, they summarize the life and 38 anticipate the death of Henri Beyle, in the form more of a fi ctionalized 39 auto-eulogy than an autobiography. Yet they represent a necessary step 40 toward autobiography (and beyond), by separating it from an “exercice 41 de style,” and preparing the story of his life as a public and no longer private matter. Stendhal’s Privilege 21

In 1832 Beyle began a more ambitious project, the Souvenirs d’égotisme, 1 in which he envisioned recounting the “space of nine years” (1821–30) 2 that he spent in “exile” in Paris, banished by the Austrian government 3 from Milan. For the fi rst time he recounts a part of the past, and not 4 the immediate present. It is a much more personal text than the “auto- 5 eulogies” which precede it. Writing has become a way to know himself, 6 and to be known by others in the future: “J’avoue que le courage d’écrire 7 me manquerait si je n’avais pas l’idée qu’un jour ces feuilles paraîtront 8 imprimées et seront lues par quelque âme que j’aime . . . Quel homme 9 suis-je? Ai-je du bon sens, ai-je du bon sens avec profondeur?” (Oeuvres 10 intimes, 1427) (“I admit that I would lack the courage to write if I didn’t 11 have the idea that one day these pages would be printed and would be 12 read by some soul whom I love . . . What type of man am I? Do I have 13 good sense, good sense with depth?”). He continually expresses reluc- 14 tance to write and doubts as to the possibility of drafting a memoir which 15 is not “boring” or vain; the only remedy to this doubt is absolute sincerity 16 and a minute study of the individual, a quality he terms “l’égotisme”: “[Si 17 ce livre] n’ennuie pas, on verra que l’égotisme, mais sincère, est une façon 18 de peindre ce coeur humain” (Oeuvres intimes, 1482) (“[If this book] 19 doesn’t bore, the reader will see that egotism, the sincere kind, is a way to 20 paint this human heart”). And yet Stendhal’s Souvenirs d’égotisme is left 21 unfi nished, barely twelve days after it was begun; instead of the space of 22 nine and a half years, he only fi nished three. The failure of theSouvenirs 23 d’égotisme lies, perhaps, in its very sincerity. Stendhal only writes what he 24 already knows is true about himself, and therefore is unable to discover 25 the motives for his actions. By recounting the recent past, the author can- 26 not take suffi cient distance from himself or the events in his life. 27 later, in November 1835, he took up the same themes 28 again in the Vie de Henry Brulard, but instead of writing about a rela- 29 tively recent period of his life, he began with the beginning. In the Sou- 30 venirs d’égotisme he states only half in jest that he was (morally and 31 intellectually) twenty years old in 1821 (Oeuvres intimes, 1487), placing 32 his “birth” at the beginning of the Journal, with his arrival in Italy and his 33 fi rst steps to becoming a writer. By placing this new “Life” (the usual page 34 heading he gives to the manuscript) anterior to his “birth” as a writer, by 35 changing the character’s name to Brulard (he had fi rst written Beyle), the 36 text has made a shift from autobiography toward the novel. The frequent 37 protests that he does not wish to “fall into the novel” only help to ac- 38 centuate the precariousness of the text. The desire to fi nd the truth about 39 himself, to be sincere, is even more present in the Vie de Henry Brulard 40 than in the Souvenirs; the concern that “on peut connaître tout, excepté 41 soi-même” (“one can know everything, except one’s self”) which ap- 22 Part I

1 peared in Souvenirs d’égotisme (Oeuvres intimes, 1482), becomes “quel 2 oeil peut se voir soi-même?” (“what I can see itself?”), in the manuscript, 3 “soi=même” (Oeuvres intimes, 41). By looking into the past, by changing 4 the subject into an object of study, Beyle (or perhaps from now on the 5 writer Stendhal) can successfully become other to himself. He can become 6 romanticized.3 It is commonly recognized by Stendhal experts that the 7 Vie de Henry Brulard is an unfi nished work, a draft of something left 8 to be published after his death; Gérard Rannaud, editor of the “Edition 9 diplomatique,” the fi rst to include reproductions of all manuscript pages, 10 claims that there is no “established text,” but rather an unfi nished “edito- 11 rial manuscript” (Stendhal, Vie de Henry Brulard écrite par lui-même, 12 I). I would argue that the Vie de Henry Brulard forms a coherent whole 13 (much more so than his other unfi nished works, such as Lucien Leuwen) 14 that describes the entire childhood of Brulard, from Grenoble to his “es- 15 cape” to Paris and then to Milan. 16 The Vie de Henry Brulard is then a unique text in Stendhal’s oeuvre, 17 suspended between novel and autobiography, deceptive truth and truth- 18 ful lie, past and present. Brulard’s instability, the becoming of the novel 19 subject Brulard, relies on the instability of the text itself. Chapter 1, “The 20 Life and Death of Henry Brulard,” analyzes the construction of an au- 21 tonomous textual subject. The subject of autobiography is converted into 22 narrative and the novel subject is born with the declaration “je vais naître” 23 (“I am going to be born”). This new subject is at once a true representa- 24 tion of Beyle and an abstract, fi ctional invention, Brulard. The text creates 25 and conceals this dual nature through the autobiographical simulacrum 26 which collapses the differences between narrator, author, and character. 27 The tension between word and image introduced by the presence of count- 28 less maps, diagrams, drawings, and engravings in the narrative maintains 29 the distance between autobiographical and novel subject. Maps inscribe 30 another Brulard into textual space that cannot be perfectly assimilated 31 into either the written Brulard of the narrative or the author Beyle. 32 The second chapter of this section, “The Ghost in the Map,” reveals 33 how Brulard questions from the outset the very possibility of autobio- 34 graphical truth and the eventual results of the autobiographical project. 35 The cartographic inscription of the subject occurs through the reduction 36 of the self to language, the transformation of the personal to the univer- 37 sal, the repression of memory through the affi rmation of chronological 38 time. The only recourse is to textuality, the control of meaning through 39 the play of signifi ers. Another model of cartography, what I call the novel 40 map, is proposed which counters chronological time, layers Brulard’s past 41 and present, and embraces the ambiguity of the novel subject. 1 2 CHAPTER ONE 3 4 5 6 The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 7 8 9 10 11 René 12 13 The contradictions of its fi rst two chapters orient theVie de Henry Bru- 14 lard, as a chaotic autobiographical discourse gives way to a linear nar- 15 rative. Various styles and perspectives succeed each other as the narrator 16 struggles to defi ne the project and to summarize the “life” of Brulard. 17 After describing the view of Rome in a style reminiscent of Chateaubri- 18 and, the narrator wonders, “Je vais avoir cinquante ans, il serait bien 19 temps de me connaître. Qu’ai-je été, que suis-je, en vérité je serais bien 20 embarrassé de le dire” (Oeuvres intimes, 38) (“I am going to be fi fty 21 years old, it’s about time I get to know myself. What have I been, what 22 am I, in truth I would have a hard time saying”). In vain he tries to re- 23 spond to these questions by evoking the opinion of others, which leads 24 him to stray off the subject. By the middle of the chapter he has lost a 25 unifi ed notion of the subject (himself) and of his narrative. In the rest of 26 the chapter, he attempts to defi ne himself, his character, “without lying,” 27 by telling his life thematically but not chronologically; this takes him 28 from 1832 to 1802, to 1880 and to 1935 (the dates he hopes his text will 29 be published and understood), to 1809, and back to 1835 (the present 30 of the narrative). 31 By the end of the fi rst chapter, the text is almost impossible to follow. 32 The free association of places and people disturbs the habitual chron- 33 ological progression of autobiography. As the narrator himself admits: 34 “Mais je me laisse emporter, je m’égare, je serai inintelligible si je ne suis 35 pas l’ordre des temps, et d’ailleurs les circonstances ne me reviendront 36 pas si bien” (44); “Mais je m’égare encore . . . Mais je m’égare” (Oeuvres 37 intimes, 45) (“But I let myself get carried away, I’m straying off topic, I 38 will be unintelligible if I do not follow the order of events, and moreover 39 circumstances will not come back to me very well”; “But I stray again . . . 40 But I stray”). The incoherency of the writing is evoked through the use of 41

23 24 Chapter One

1 verbs of movement or space (“carry away,” “stray,” and “come back”), 2 suggesting that the error lies in the spatial component of the analysis. The 3 text calls for a more temporal perspective, one that is less “topical” and 4 more chronological. The narrator is literally “carried away” from one 5 place to another in the text, occupying several different moments at a 6 time. Subjects change over time, in a sense they are because of what they 7 become. A narrative based solely on the association of place would tend 8 to confuse time periods, negating temporal progression. The distinction 9 of subject and object can only occur through the analysis of time; Brulard 10 can only become text through chronological narrative. 11 In chapter 2, Stendhal changes tactics and tries to order his narrative 12 logically and chronologically (similar to the “notices autobiographiques” 13 that he had written earlier). The methodology employed in this chapter is 14 reminiscent of René Descartes’s Discours de la méthode, a text that, like 15 Brulard, confl ates autobiography and fi ction in its search for the founda- 16 tion of subjectivity. The Cartesian method attempts to negotiate the inter- 17 action between subject and object through classifi cation and analysis. A 18 problem, here the subject Brulard, must be divided up into distinct parts, 19 numbered, and catalogued in order to understand how the whole func- 20 tions. For perception and analysis to be clear and free from subjective 21 bias, the basis for subjectivity must be reducible to a universal. Descartes 22 momentarily pretends to be without past and without a body (what Sartre 23 will later call “being-in-itself”), reducing his existence to pure conscious- 24 ness or thought (“being-for-itself”); Cartesian subjectivity is then a time- 25 less (or perhaps instantaneous) hollowing of the self to the point where 26 the only thing left is consciousness. The pseudo-Cartesian method found 27 in Brulard’s second chapter announces a new cogito and the birth of the 28 subject as text. Like Descartes, Brulard/Beyle must momentarily put past 29 and body aside, with the aim of reaching a truthful analysis of the self by 30 rendering it text (other). 31 In the ten pages of the second chapter, the narrator organizes his life, 32 not without more detours, by four major categories according to tempo- 33 ral order, recalling Descartes’s second rule, “diviser chacune des diffi cultés 34 . . . en autant de parcelles qu’il se pourrait” (Discours de la méthode, 49) 35 (“divide each diffi culty . . . into as many sections as possible”). The fi rst 36 category is Stendhal’s military and public career: “né en 1783, dragon 37 en 1800, étudiant de 1803 à 1806 . . . J’ai été homme d’esprit depuis 38 l’hiver de 1826, auparavant je me taisais par paresse” (Oeuvres intimes, 39 46) (“born in 1783, dragoon in 1800, student from 1803 to 1806 . . . I 40 have been a man of wit since the winter of 1826, before I kept quiet out 41 of laziness”). The subject is too vast to be reduced to simple dates, rank, The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 25 and social status, with the result that certain details seem incongruous. 1 Most obviously because his careers overlap: his “military” career was 2 little different from his public one, and his diplomatic career coincided 3 with his literary one. How can one suddenly become “a man of wit”? 4 Such declarations ultimately confl ict with the narrator’s conception of the 5 subject as changing over time. 6 The narrator must look elsewhere for the essence of his life, leading 7 him to resume his affective “career” by ranking the women he loved: 8 “Pour les considérer le plus philosophiquement possible et tâcher ainsi 9 de les dépouiller de l’auréole qui me fait aller les yeux, qui m’éblouit et 10 m’ôte la faculté de voir distinctement, j’ordonnerai ces dames (langage 11 mathématique) selon leurs qualités diverses” (Oeuvres intimes, 50) (“In 12 order to consider them as philosophically as possible and to try thus to 13 remove the halo that gets in my eyes, that dazzles me and impairs my 14 ability to see clearly, I will arrange in order these women (mathematical 15 language) according to their individual qualities”). The Cartesian predi- 16 lection for light as the privileged metaphor for knowledge (especially in 17 the Monde) and the edict that one should accept as true only that which is 18 presented clearly and distinctly to the mind are here inverted. The narra- 19 tor’s cristallisation of these women has produced too much light, blinding 20 the would-be philosopher. As the narrator states later in Brulard: “On ne 21 peut pas apercevoir distinctement la partie du ciel trop voisine du soleil” 22 (Oeuvres intimes, 433) (“One cannot perceive distinctly the part of the 23 sky too close to the sun”). But by mathematically placing the women 24 in chronological and social order and numbering their initials, he can 25 remove the sacred halo. The “vanity” of these women, and obviously of 26 himself as well, leads him to contemplate his fi nances, and then the (dis) 27 loyalty of his friends, the third and fourth categories. Finally, at the end of 28 the chapter, he presents a simple chart which he likens to his friend André 29 de Jussieu’s collection of plants: “Enfance et première éducation, de 1786 30 à 1800. . . . 15 ans, Service militaire de 1800 à 1803. . . . 3 ans, . . . Second 31 service, consul du 15 septembre 1830 au présent quart d’heure. . . . 5 32 ans” (Oeuvres intimes, 54) (“Childhood and fi rst education, from 1786 33 to 1800. . . . 15 years, Military service from 1800 to 1803. . . . 3 years, 34 . . . Civil service, consul from September 15, 1830, to the present quarter 35 of an hour. . . . 5 years”). This schematic is more convincing than those 36 previous, but only because it is much more vague, completely erasing all 37 but the general trajectory of his life. 38 Stendhal candidly and almost joyfully declares his newfound distance 39 from himself. His intellectual solitude in Rome, which will later be related 40 to the state he felt in Grenoble, is aggravated by the classifi cation of his 41 26 Chapter One

1 relations, creating an even greater distance between himself and all cred- 2 ible outside criteria. The narrator must seek inside himself, far from any 3 sentimentality, for his identity. This new approach is almost certainly the 4 exact opposite of the one employed in the fi rst chapter; here we have, as 5 he himself calls it, a “military” or “mathematical” system of classifi cation, 6 whereas in the fi rst chapter (to be studied later) there was an affective 7 palimpsest of memory that led to opaqueness of vision. 8 The discourse of this second chapter, with its manifestly objective and 9 objectifying realism, will take precedence over that of the fi rst chapter 10 with its more subjective, personal . The goal of knowing the truth 11 about himself, of “seeing” himself as other, results in self-abstraction. And 12 yet the piling up of details and charts prevents the entry of the subject 13 into the narrative, that is, a discourse of the event in the past: “Il faut 14 narrer, et j’écris des considérations sur des événements bien petits mais 15 qui précisément à cause de leur taille microscopique ont besoin d’être 16 contés très distinctement. Quelle patience il vous faudra, ô mon lecteur!” 17 (Oeuvres intimes, 52–53) (“I have to narrate, and I am writing refl ections 18 about very small events, but which precisely because of their microscopic 19 size need to be recounted very distinctly. How much patience you have to 20 have, oh my reader!”). These necessary general considerations mark the 21 presence of the narrator, who is thus independent from, or outside of, the 22 narrative that follows, guaranteeing some measure of objectivity. 23 In order for this preliminary discourse to be transformed into narra- 24 tive, there must be a superposition of the present of the narration and 25 the past of the narrative, the “I” of the narrator and the “I” of the nar- 26 rated subject. Louis Marin evokes Émile Benveniste to show how auto- 27 biographical narrative, the combination of discourse and narrative, can 28 only occur through simulacrum (“The Autobiographical Interruption,” 29 600). Narrative, “with its intent on objectivity,” is devoid of discourse’s 30 enunciative marks: the person “I-you” as opposed to the nonperson “he,” 31 the present opposed to the nonpresent of the past (599). A ruse changes 32 the “I” into a “he,” present to past, while maintaining the virtual “pres- 33 ence” of the author/narrator. In fact this simulacrum incites the reader to 34 forget the subject of the narrative: “Memory set up as narrative simulates 35 forgetting” (600). The narrator Brulard/Beyle recounts the memory of the 36 child Brulard, forgetting and erasing the difference between the two. 37 The shift from discourse to narrative takes place at the end of chap- 38 ter 2 and the beginning of chapter 3. After one last attempt at a totalizing 39 summary (his “beginning in the world” in 1794, the date closest to the 40 events of Brulard), the chapter ends with the concise formula, “après tant 41 de considérations générales, je vais naître” (Oeuvres intimes, 55) (“after The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 27 so many general remarks, I am going to be born”). For the narration to 1 begin, everything else must be moved aside, the new “je” must start from 2 nothing, it must be independent of the narrator. 3 The doubts about the narrator’s identity (the “what am I?” of the fi rst 4 chapter) have culminated in a Stendhalian cogito and the birth of a new 5 subject, Brulard. Just as Descartes feigns that he has no body, no past, 6 but exists only in thought, Brulard proclaims that he has renounced the 7 “general remarks” of the past, and exists only in the text. Paradoxically, 8 this move toward universality and logic can only be possible through a 9 mechanism of the imaginary: Descartes “feigns” that he is only thought 10 and Brulard/Beyle must pretend that he can be born again. 11 Autobiography relies on a slippage between pronouns and between 12 verb tenses, and from the beginning it is already slipping into fi ction. 13 The autobiographical subject is at once autonomous from the “authorial 14 subject” (for how else could it be perceived?) and conceived as an ideal 15 (fi ctional) projection of the “authorial” self. This is made possible because 16 language collapses distinctions, now reduced to metaphor, and the sub- 17 sequent forgetting of the nature of language as metaphor. The difference 18 between the two subjects (Beyle and Brulard, author and character) is 19 created and then forgotten by the text. 20 Brulard, “je,” the narrator/main character, is born by and in the text. 21 This birth is the goal of autobiography (the perception of the self as ob- 22 ject), and yet it also constitutes the inscription of the self into a fi ctional 23 narrative.1 Stendhal transforms his “general remarks” into narrative, sac- 24 rifi cing his personal experience in order to become text. The inscription of 25 Brulard into a text, a sort of textual or simulated subject, does not just oc- 26 cur once, but recurs at various moments throughout the narrative. Prod- 27 uct of language (a metaphor that is then forgotten), the textual subject 28 reveals itself and the impossibility of its simulacrum (a subject imagined 29 by an “author” to refl ect the author) through slips in language, through 30 wordplay. Affi rmed and denied in the play of visible/legible markers, 31 thriving in the ambiguity of letters, Brulard masks Beyle. 32 Even before the declaration that he is “going to be born,” the narrator 33 stages a scene of writing and the inscription/encryption of Beyle. Before 34 he classifi es the women of his life, he recalls a recent trip to Lake Albano 35 near Rome, when he traced their names in the dust: 36 37 Je trouvai que ma vie pouvait se résumer par les noms que voici, et dont 38 j’écrivais les initiales sur la poussière, comme Zadig, avec ma canne . . .: 39 Virginie /Kubly/, Angela /Pietragrua/, Adèle /Rebuffel/, Mélanie /Guilbert/, 40 Mina /de Griesheim/, Alexandrine /Petit/, Angeline, que je n’ai jamais 41 28 Chapter One

1 aimée /Bereyter/, Angela /Pietragrua/, Métilde /Dembowski/, Clémentine/, 2 Giulia/. Et enfi n, pendant un mois au plus Mme Azur dont j’ai oublié 3 le nom de baptême, et imprudemment, hier, Amalia /B/. La plupart de 4 ces êtres charmants ne m’ont point honoré de leurs bontés; mais elles 5 ont à la lettre occupé toute ma vie. A elles ont succédé mes ouvrages.”2 6 (47–48) 7 8 He includes a sketch of himself by a tree with a cane, the name “Zadig” 9 next to the fi gure with the cane, and under Zadig, “Astarté” in slightly 10 larger characters and different ink, perhaps as if “drawn” by Zadig. Two 11 pages later the same scene is summarized: “J’écrivais sur la poussière

12 comme Zadig ces initiales: V An1 Ad M2 Mi Al Aine3 Apg2 Mde C4 G5 13 Aur (Mme Azur dont j’ai oublié le nom de baptême). Je rêvais profondé- 14 ment à ces noms, et aux étonnantes bêtises et sottises qu’ils m’ont fait

15 faire” (49) (“I wrote on the dust like Zadig these initials, V An1 Ad M2

16 Mi Al Aine3 Apg2 Mde C4 G5 Aur (Mme Azur whose given name I have 17 forgottn). I dreamed deeply about these names, and about the astonish- 18 ing blunders and foolishness that they made me do”). There is a double 19 substitution that occurs in this inscription of initials: the narrator’s life 20 can be summed up from A (Astarté/Angela) to Z (Zadig/Azur), reduced 21 to the names (which are further reduced to initials) of his lovers, but the 22 narrator also takes the place of Zadig by his citation and imitation. In the 23 conte philosophique by Voltaire, it is Astarté who Zadig’s name; in 24 the written text her name is not mentioned, but it appears in the sketch 25 ambiguously (is it placed under “Zadig” to indicate that Zadig drew the 26 word “Astarté,” or is it a correction of the written text?). Occupying Za- 27 dig’s position, then, it would be the women whom he loved who would 28 trace his name, he would exist through their writing. 29 To appropriate their names, to “be occupied to the letter” of their 30 initials, he writes the nicknames he gave them (Métilde for Mathilda, 31 Azur for Alberthe de Rubempré), places their family or married names in 32 brackets (perhaps creating a rift between their public and private lives, or 33 their social status), and places a number in subscript to indicate the ones 34 “qu[‘il a] eu” (“that [he] had”). In a “Testament” (will) giving the manu- 35 script to a publisher, his only condition is that all the women’s names be 36 changed to prevent scandals (or perhaps to preserve his own appropria- 37 tion of them). Angela is always counted twice, since he met her during his 38 fi rst trip to Milan and had an affair with her during the second, eleven 39 years later. A salient detail in the accompanying drawing is a note declar- 40 ing that this page was written at night, making it illegible. Every sentence 41 of the passage is thus written twice, retraced word for word, as if to The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 29

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Figure 1.1. The narrator as Zadig. Vie de Henry Brulard, R299, vol. 1, no. 113, 17 folio 53v. Courtesy of Bibliothèque municipale de Grenoble. 18 19 20 emphasize the physicality of writing, to take pleasure one more time in 21 the evocation of the names. If one were to murmur the initials quickly, 22 the sound might approach “va maman” (Marin, “Sur un certain regard 23 du sujet”). The unwritable, unspeakable love jumps out of the initials, 24 revealing at once this “initial” love, the one trait that unites the women, 25 and the textual matrix from which Brulard will emerge. 26 Henry’s decision to become a writer and dramaturge, à la Molière, is 27 similarly imbued with shame and secret desire as revealed through the ten- 28 sion of text and image. While his maternal grandfather, Doctor Gagnon, 29 was seeing patients, the young Brulard would sneak into the extensive li- 30 brary to look for the “histoire naturelle de la femme” (184) (“the natural 31 history of woman”). By good fortune, he moves away from Pliny toward 32 a confused stack of libertine novels belonging to his uncle (marked with 33 an L on the accompanying and subsequent maps): “c’était l’essence de la 34 volupté. . . . La possession d’une maîtresse réelle . . . ne m’eût pas plongé 35 dans un tel torrent de volupté. Dès ce moment ma vocation fut décidée: 36 vivre à Paris en faisant des comédies comme Molière” (185) (“this was 37 the essence of pleasure. . . . The possession of a real mistress . . . would not 38 have plunged me into such a torrent of sensual delight. From this moment 39 on my vocation was decided: to live in Paris whole making comedies like 40 Molière”). All his desires culminate in literature, its production and its 41 30 Chapter One

1 consumption, revealing the inextricable link between text and individua- 2 tion through desire (to write). 3 His “tyrannical” Aunt Séraphie is portrayed as the principle obstacle 4 to Henry’s goal as a writer, and so provides the perfect for Hen- 5 ry’s individuation. Her religious devotion and deceptively angelic name 6 (like Henry’s father Chérubin) hide the ultimate hypocrisy: she is Chéru- 7 bin’s mistress (a phantasm Brulard suspects but cannot prove). Later 8 in the novel, when she is sick and dying, she causes Brulard one last 9 embarrassment: 10 11 Une de ses dernières actions avait été, un soir que je lisais sur la commode 12 de ma tante Élisabeth, au point H [of the accompanying sketch], la Hen- 13 riade ou Bélisaire que mon grand-père venait de me prêter, de s’écrier: 14 ‘Comment peut-on donner de tels livres à cet enfant! Qui lui a donné ce 15 livre?’3 (221) 16 17 Like Brulard’s discovery of his vocation as writer, this scene mixes desire 18 to read (he had implored his grandfather to loan the book to him) with 19 the danger of being rebuked. Henry, “au point H,” is drawn as a stick 20 fi gure at one end of the room, whereas “toute la famille était en rang 21 d’oignons devant le feu au point D” (222) (“the entire family was in a 22 row like a bunch of onions in front of the fi re at the spot marked D”) at 23 the other end of the room. Why would his religious aunt be angry that 24 Henry read the edifying, moralistic, and relatively dry Henriade and Bé- 25 lisaire? Critics have overlooked that inscribed in Voltaire’s Henriade 26 and Marmontel’s didactic novel Bélisaire is not Henry Brulard, but Henri 27 (-ade) Beyle (-isaire). The repressed identity of the author Henri Beyle is 28 composed of the letters of the books he read as a child. The “true” author, 29 outside of the text, is reconverted to text by his reading. 30 His aunt serves as a catalyst for the process of individuation by pub- 31 licly shaming him. Séraphie’s rant amounts to an interpellation: Henry/i 32 is separated from the rest of the family and called by his “real” name. 33 This interpellation attempts to fi x the identity of the subject, temporarily 34 unraveling the simulacrum that collapses Beyle and Brulard, narrator and 35 character into one. The textual stability is retrieved when Dr. Gagnon 36 dismisses Séraphie, excusing her for being “malade,” suggesting that she 37 is mentally ill. 38 This ambiguity between personal insight and (inter)-textuality main- 39 tains and exposes the impossible nature of Brulard: a fi ctional autobiog- 40 raphy, Henri Beyle as text. Worrying whether his readers will be able to 41 tolerate four or fi ve volumes “ofI s and mes” the narrator exclaims: The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 31

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Figure 1.2. Henry in the corner H, the rest of his family in a line at D. Vie de Henry 21 Brulard, R299, vol. 2, no. 283, folio 140. Courtesy of Bibliothèque municipale de 22 Grenoble. 23 24 Cependant, ô mon lecteur, tout le mal n’est que dans ces cinq lettres [sic]: 25 B, R, U, L, A, R, D, qui forment mon nom, et qui intéressent mon amour- 26 propre. Supposez que j’eusse écrit Bernard, ce livre ne serait plus comme 27 le Vicaire de Wakefi eld (son émule en innocence), qu’un roman écrit à la 28 première personne.4 (284) 29 30 Editors have negated the ambiguity of the text, the “unconscious” of Bru- 31 lard, by “correcting” the manuscript: the “sept lettres” of B, R, U, L, A, 32 R, D. replace in the standard editions the “cinq lettres” of the unwritten 33 (and yet always present) B, E, Y, L, E. The text seems to have already 34 anticipated Philippe Lejeune’s Le Pacte autobiographique and set out to 35 challenge it. Lejeune defi nes the autobiographical pact as “l’affi rmation 36 dans le texte de cette identité [of the “nom auteur-narrateur-personnage”] 37 renvoyant en dernier ressort au nom de l’auteur sur la couverture” (Le- 38 jeune, Le Pacte autobiographique, 26) (“the affi rmation in the text of this 39 equivalence [of the name author-narrator-character] referring back in the 40 end to the name of the author on the cover”). Any slight deviation from 41 32 Chapter One

1 this “pact” excludes the work from the category of autobiography, since 2 auto biography, for Lejeune, is “all or nothing” (25). 3 Yet, in order for Stendhal’s autobiography to work according to the 4 logic it proposes in the fi rst two chapters, an ambiguity must prevail, and 5 not an affi rmation, regarding the identity of the author/narrator/charac- 6 ter. This margin of doubt concerning the identity of the subject creates 7 the necessary distance for self-refl ection: the textual “birth” of Brulard 8 allows Beyle to see himself. Moreover, if Beyle, Stendhal, the narrator, and 9 Brulard were all identical, they would not be distinguishable. 10 Brulard wants to be between autobiography and fi ction. Beyle is in- 11 scribed in the text, is manifest for the astute reader, a “signature” or guar- 12 antee of autobiography; but autobiography is “all or nothing,” and the 13 character (Brulard) is not expressly equivalent to the author. The narrator 14 admits to playing with the possibility of writing a novel, changing the 15 name, once again, into “Bernard.” Yet he does and does not change the 16 name; it is not Bernard written by Brulard, but Brulard written by Bru- 17 lard (who is not Brulard, but Stendhal, who is Beyle). 18 The various title pages only serve to complicate matters: “Vie de Hy 19 Brul[ard] écrite par lui-même. Life. Nov. 35.”; “Vie de Henry Brulard À 20 M.M. de la Police. Ceci est un roman imité du Vicaire de Wakefi eld. Le 21 héros, Henry Brulard, écrit sa vie, à cinquante-deux ans, après la mort de 22 sa femme, la célèbre Charlotte Corday . . . Moi Henry Brulard j’écrivis 23 ce qui suit à Maro [Roma] de 1832 à 1836” (430–31) (“Life of Henry 24 Brulard. To Messrs. The Police. This is a novel imitated from The Vicar of 25 Wakefi eld. The hero, Henry Brulard, writes his life, at the age of 52, after 26 the death of his wife, the famous Charlotte Corday . . . I, Henry Brulard, 27 wrote what follow in Maro [Roma] from 1832 to 1836”). Any student 28 of Stendhal’s novels would know never to trust a title page or a citation 29 (think of how many of the citations of Le Rouge et le noir are invented),5 30 but Brulard presents some revealing paradoxes. Even if one were to dis- 31 card temporarily the identity real-author/narrator, the assumed author 32 according to the title page would be Henry Brulard, himself; leading the 33 reader to believe that the text claims to be an autobiography. But as Miri- 34 ella Melara has remarked, “the addition of ‘imitated novel’ . . . is both 35 unexpected and disconcerting. An author who has apparently undertaken 36 the task of writing his own life story admits to having imitated a novelis- 37 tic paradigm” (249). As with the Henriade, the Bélisaire, or Zadig, Bru- 38 lard/Beyle is already a repetition, a reinscription of another text. Philippe 39 Lejeune maintains that these titles are not to be taken seriously, in part 40 due to the unpublished nature of the text, since the humorous nature of 41 the titles can only be meant to entertain Stendhal and was not conceived The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 33 for the fi nal edition Le( Pacte autobiographique, 29). Since autobiogra- 1 phy is “all or nothing,” Lejeune must assume that the title pages are not 2 part of the “text itself” but a camoufl age, a ruse to divert unwanted read- 3 ers. The narrator writes of willing the manuscript to an editor after his 4 death, but there are no indications for what will or will not be included 5 in “l’édition,” leading the modern critic to accept all of the manuscript or 6 none of it. Once again, Brulard is able to have it both ways, all and noth- 7 ing, autobiography and fi ction, the identity and nonidentity of Brulard 8 and Beyle. 9 The continual rebirth of Brulard as text could be said to conclude with 10 yet another “birth.” Near the end of the text, the narrator describes work- 11 ing at the Ministry of War in Paris for his powerful relative Pierre Daru 12 (who will later facilitate his fi rst voyage to Italy), when, in the middle 13 of the passage, he writes: “Je vais naître, comme dit Tristram Shandy, et 14 le lecteur va sortir des enfantillages” (381) (“I am going to be born, as 15 Tristram Shandy says, and the reader will leave this childishness”). The 16 repetition of such a key phrase thirty-seven chapters later marks the time, 17 the space of the text, which separates the two occurrences, and delineates 18 the “Life” of Brulard. Soon after, Henry will leave with the army across 19 the Alps to Milan, the city he will consider his true patrie (homeland or 20 “fatherland”), or perhaps matrie, for his mother’s family claims Italian 21 heritage. Indeed, Beyle’s tombstone in Montmartre cemetery is engraved: 22 “Arrigo Beyle, Milanese/ Visse, Scrisse, Amò”—“Henri Beyle from Milan, 23 Lived, Wrote, Loved.” Moreover, the text begins in Italy, and so it also 24 ends there. But this “je vais naître” differs greatly from the fi rst. It is a 25 repetition of an earlier moment in the text, and also a citation of another 26 famous literary égotiste, Sterne’s Tristram Shandy.6 Repetition engen- 27 ders difference since the second cogito modifi es the meaning of the first, 28 confi rming the reader’s suspicion that Brulard is pure text. The second 29 part of the sentence is playfully ambiguous. If Brulard/Shandy is going 30 to be born, wouldn’t the reader enter rather than leave these “enfantil- 31 lages”? Or perhaps, by appropriating the words of (or rather attributed 32 to) Sterne, the narrator trades places, and becomes himself the reader, 33 thus becoming able to leave behind his childhood. Instead of a birth, then, 34 this might be a death or a disappearance: “By means of this interruption 35 and uprise, a triple substitution is simultaneously brought about: ‘I’ and 36 ‘he’; reading and writing; life and death. I disappropriate myself by means 37 of the other, I appropriate the other by means of myself” (Marin, “The 38 Autobiographical Interruption,” 606). The crystallization of narrator, au- 39 thor, and character, which composed Brulard as text, dissolves as Brulard 40 enters a fi ctive intertext and the autobiographical “je” claims to be reborn 41 34 Chapter One

1 outside of the text as a reader. The fi ctive narrator would remain to tell 2 the story of Brulard/Shandy. The author turned reader is cut from the 3 text, allowed to read and be read. The death of Henry Brulard as writ- 4 ten text coincides temporally (1800) with the birth of the writer, Beyle/ 5 Stendhal, of the Journal. 6 7 8 Des/Cartes 9 10 The questioning of genre, the suspension between Beyle and Brulard, the 11 play between the readable and the visible, are guaranteed by the most 12 unique aspect of the Vie de Henry Brulard: the over 170 sketches that are 13 scattered throughout the text.7 Some drawings depict objects (his one 14 and only childhood toy, a spinning top), others are abstract representa- 15 tions of concepts, but the overwhelming majority are maps: street maps 16 of Grenoble, Paris, and Milan, maps of mountains, maps of houses, the 17 spaces of his youth. According to Béatrice Didier, the sketches are an ana- 18 lytic procedure to distance the author from the emotion of past events, 19 to re-create the past objectively in its entirety.8 This cartographic impulse 20 is another manifestation of the Cartesian, the “mathematical” and “mili- 21 tary” analysis of his life. As such the maps would seem to be a way to 22 spare the narrator from tedious description, another sign of the novel (in 23 Souvenirs d’égotisme, Beyle attributes his inability to write novels to the 24 boredom he derives from material descriptions à la Walter Scott [Oeuvres 25 intimes, 1454]). However, the maps are rarely “geographic” but rather 26 “topographic” (Marin, “Sur un certain regard du sujet,” 226–27); they 27 schematize relations between space and the subjects that occupy it, rather 28 than describing a real surface relation that would produce space. 29 Maps would then have a narrative function, linked to the subject’s 30 relation to space through time. They would not add “a reality effect” but 31 would supplement, sometimes replace or call into question, the written, 32 readable, text. Very often they contain their own , with writing 33 over the place represented. These legends do not always correspond to the 34 references in the text or in the map itself. Many of the maps fi ll an entire 35 manuscript page, thereby literally opening a rift in the text. 36 This second, visual narrative would also require the presence of the tex- 37 tual subject. The engraving “San Girolamo nel deserto” by Domenichino, 38 separating the phrase “je vais naître” from chapter 3, reinforces the birth 39 of the subject in the text as character (both as printed character or letter 40 and as character). Carol Mossman has suggested that the engraving of 41 Saint Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin, could be interpreted The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 35 as an (ironic?) evocation of the self-sacrifi ce of the writer for the sanctity 1 of textuality (Mossman, 350). Saint Jerome is, of course, always repre- 2 sented next to a skull, contemplating mortality and his own humility in 3 the face of the greatness of the holy scriptures. 4 The fi rst engraving of the manuscript, fi ttingly enough “La Resurrezi- 5 one di Lazaro,” serves as an introduction, a leading into the presence of 6 the image in the text.9 The actual painting by Garofolo is not present, but 7 only the engraving, that is, an abstraction devoid of color and subtlety. 8 The resurrection of the image occurs through a trace, a poor copy torn 9 out of another book. The image depicts a triumphant Jesus and a weary 10 Lazarus. The resurrection of Lazarus prefi gured that of Jesus, and also of 11 Brulard, who twice declares “je vais naître.” The witnesses to the resur- 12 rection are holding their noses, perhaps referring to the degraded state of 13 Lazarus, or to the degraded state of the painting turned engraving; or per- 14 haps this is an oblique reference to a note on the following page, “Petits 15 faits à placer, 1 mauvaise odeur des gens qui assistaient aux vêpres à la 16 charité” (“Little facts to place, 1 bad odor of those who attend evening 17 mass”). The presence of the engraving of Lazarus opens a space between 18 the readable and the visible which prevents any one interpretation from 19 taking root. 20 As we have seen in the introduction, Christian Jacob has pointed out 21 the inherently problematic nature of maps. Maps seem more real than 22 written text because there is a material support that appears to coincide 23 with the referent, yet the obligations of perspective (reducing three di- 24 mensions to one or two) a referential illusion. However, the pres- 25 ence of a map in a text changes the function of a map or an image; the 26 function is less problematic than it is ambiguous, since the referent is d is- 27 placed. The place or the object represented might very well exist, but the 28 fi ctional narrative adds another possibility of signifi cation. Do the maps 29 in Vie de Henry Brulard refer to the “real” Grenoble or to the Grenoble in 30 the narrative, or even just to itself as map (questions never fully answered 31 by Brulard)? The image stands independent of the text, but participates 32 in the network of meaning. 33 The fi rst sketch by Beyle presents Zadig/Astarté/Brulard tracing ini- 34 tials in the dust, a visual mise en abîme; the narrator draws the narrator 35 drawing the narrator’s newly assumed name. “Astarté” in the drawing 36 provides the key to understanding the misquotation of Voltaire, absent in 37 the written text. Brulard is present and absent in the sketch, just as he is 38 and is not already a citation, is and is not the same as the author. 39 He fi rst appears in a map, on his own, in the chapter following the 40 fi rst “je vais naître,” in the fi rst passage about his mother. The text intro- 41 36 Chapter One

1 duces her, describes her vaguely, and then announces her death and his in- 2 comprehension of the event. The next page in the manuscript portrays an 3 overhead view of the room they shared: “1. Mon matelas. [My mattress]— 4 2. Moi. [a very crude fi gure composed of two circles placed on the bed]— 5 3. Lit d’Henriette.” [“Henriette’s bed,” next to a large X or cross instead of 6 a body] (61). The X takes the place of the lost mother, marks the spot of 7 the object of desire. On the following page the text reveals the signifi cance 8 of the map: “Un soir, comme par quelque hasard on m’avait mis cou- 9 cher dans sa chambre par terre, sur un matelas, cette femme vive et légère 10 comme une biche sauta par-dessus mon matelas pour atteindre plus vite à 11 son lit” (61) (“One night, as by accident I was laid to sleep in her room on 12 the ground, on a mattress, this lively woman, light as a doe, jumped right 13 over my mattress in order to get to her own bed more quickly”). Many 14 commentators have interpreted this leap to be the revelation of sexual 15 difference (notably, Lang, 1083); the text gives away no details, only the 16 possibility of meaning. The very absence of the mother (or the absence 17 of the mother’s phallus), marked by the X, creates a lack that can only 18 be fi lled by the drawings, “a substitute for the missing object of desire” 19 (Mahuzier, 207). Later in the novel he takes drawing lessons, and admits, 20 “ma mère avait eu un rare talent pour le dessin” (“my mother had a rare 21 talent for drawing”); could drawing (and indirectly the presence of maps 22 in the text) be his way of searching for his mother? (Didier, préface to Vie 23 de Henry Brulard, 13).10 The death of the mother gives birth to the nar- 24 rator: “Elle mourut donc dans sa chambre . . . Là j’étais né . . .” (Oeuvres 25 intimes, 63) (“She died in her room . . . There I was born . . .”). The text 26 and the map have condensed time, forcing the death of the mother from 27 complications in childbirth (Henri/y’s younger brother) and the birth of 28 Henry to coincide. 29 Henry, “au point H,” H’, B, or M, is present in almost all of the maps. 30 This presence is at once a doubling of the textual identity (the subject is 31 visible in the map and readable in the text) and its reduction to an em- 32 blem (an initial, a dot, or a stick fi gure). The narrator is able to refer to 33 himself in the text as image, turning himself as subject into an object. This 34 would seem to be a direct response to the question he asks himself near 35 the end of the fi rst chapter: “Quel oeil peut se voir soi-même?” (“What 36 eye can see itself?”) (Oeuvres intimes, 31), as well as to the inscription 37 of the Delphic Temple, “Gnoti Saouton” (“know thyself”) quoted later in 38 the text (218). As Christian Jacob writes in L’Empire des cartes, “l’oeil ne 39 voit pas, il construit, il imagine l’espace. La carte n’est pas un objet, mais 40 une fonction” (29) (“The eye does not see, it constructs, it imagines space. 41 The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 37

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Figure 1.3. Henry in his bedroom. Vie de Henry Brulard, R299, vol. 1, no. 211, 22 folio 102. Courtesy of Bibliothèque Municipale de Grenoble. 23 24 A map is not an object, but a function”). The function of the cartographic 25 eye in this text would be to imagine the relation of objects in space, at 26 a particular time, in order for the narrator to “see” himself. The double 27 perspective of the narrator, who seems to be both subject and object, is a 28 ruse made possible by both the succession of text and image and the re- 29 duction of Henry to a dot and an initial. The space between text and im- 30 age, their different media, create the distance, the cartographic mirror, for 31 the narrator to “perceive” the Henry on the map, that is, to refer to it. At 32 the same time, H (Henry/i), B (Beyle, Brulard), and M (Moi, which could 33 be anyone), by their ambiguity, can signify either the present of the narra- 34 tion or the past, the author, the narrator or the young Henri/y. This ruse 35 is analogous to that of autobiographical narrative: a simulacrum (here, 36 a map) is needed to incite the reader to forget the dual position of the 37 narrator in the past and the present, in the written text and in the image. 38 The maps, as supplements to the text, occasionally both give away and 39 maintain the simulacrum, in the same way that the letters of the text give 40 41 38 Chapter One

1 away the presence of Beyle; they guarantee the authenticity of the auto- 2 biographical representation and simultaneously call the genre of the text 3 itself into question. Twice, more than one moment of time is explicitly 4 represented in an analytical map, disrupting the relation of Henry “au 5 point H” to the rest of the space represented: in chapter 33, there is a 6 map of Grenoble with a bridge built by his friend Crozet in 1827, though 7 the narration in the map and the text indicate 1800 (314); in chapter 13, 8 there is a new road constructed in 1810, “que je n’ai jamais vue” (“which 9 I have never seen”), and posterior to the narration, which takes place in 10 1791 (155). If neither the narrator, nor Henry could have seen the road or 11 the bridge, how can the map function coherently as a system of relations? 12 In one extraordinary series of maps (chapter 33), an element of time 13 and movement creates an alternative narrative to the written text. Henry 14 and his friends plan a “conspiracy” against the “arbre de la Fraternité,” a 15 scrawny tree planted symbolically in the main square of Grenoble across 16 from Henry’s during the Revolution. The tree holds a sign with a 17 crown, a scepter, chains, and some uninspiring verse, which constitute 18 an offense to the young Brulard’s aesthetic sensibility. The written text 19 recounts the incident with the narrator’s usual apology for his lack of 20 memory and the fuzzy details of the representation. The maps, however, 21 are set up like a comic strip, a treatment for a fi lm. The fi rst map is an 22 overhead view, a sort of establishing shot; the indicates details not 23 yet relevant to the written narration, but anticipating it: F. the tree, P. the 24 well, C. the house that the Dlles Codé [sic] rented. The second map is 25 larger, giving more details; there is now a dotted line, from M to M’ for 26 “marche,” that indicates the entry of the conspirators and their eventual 27 fl ight (also not yet mentioned in the text). The third sketch is covered in 28 writing, pointing out all the neighbors that could be watching and who 29 might turn in the youths to the “corps de garde”; the tree itself has disap- 30 peared in order to highlight the sign. Then there is a “cut,” a change in 31 perspective: the profi le of one conspirator is shown firing the pistol (two 32 semicircles indicate the sound or the shot) at the sign on the tree. The last 33 two maps represent the presence of the “corps de garde,” followed by the 34 fl ight of the conspirators (the gun still smoking), now signifi ed by the line 35 FFF (“Fuite”), through the Dlles Codé’s living room. As at other points 36 in the text, “l’auteur ‘se voit’ en H puis en H’ sans avoir aucune idée 37 de ce qui s’est passé dans l’intervalle” (Coulont-Henderson, 146) (“the 38 author ‘sees himself’ at H and then at H’ without having any idea what 39 happened between intervals”). In the interval between maps—between 40 cuts—is where movement occurs. The reader, who imagines the move- 41 ment and fi lls in the interval, necessarily produces the “action” of this The Life and Death of Henry Brulard 39 conspiracy. The narration of the written text is not only superfl uous, but 1 defi cient, unable to provide a credible account of the story. 2 Certain maps produce memory in the written text instead of being 3 produced by it (which seems to be a reversal of the usual procedure). An 4 event, a place, is drawn in a map even though the accompanying text 5 claims amnesia. A few pages later the text, aided by the visual represen- 6 tation, will “remember” the event or place. One could classify the maps, 7 then, into two groups: those that prolong the text and those that short- 8 circuit it by marking an ellipsis in the writing (Coulont-Henderson, 142). 9 At these moments, the repetition of the same image (such as the grand- 10 father’s house which is drawn over a dozen times, from all perspectives) 11 would seem to trigger the writing of the text. 12 But the inversion of text and image upsets the dual position of the 13 narrator/subject in text and image created by the citation of the map 14 in the text. Instead of the text referring to itself as map, instead of the 15 “I” of the narrator/Brulard existing in the past and present, the written 16 text arises from the map: the text produces itself. The written narrative 17 must refer backward in the space of the text and backward in time for 18 the reader. The production of “memory” by certain maps reverses the 19 chronological order of narrative established in chapter 2. The narrator is 20 now a repetition of the narrated, the past has taken over the present of 21 narration. Instead of the surpassing of time itself, this is an invasion of the 22 (imagined) past that problematizes the textual subject. Unlike the “con- 23 spiracy” episode, where the accumulation of individual sketches suggests 24 movement to the reader to the detriment of the written text, these “short- 25 circuiting maps” inspire the text to invent narrative instead of represent- 26 ing the past.11 Despite, or because of, the analytical “Cartesian” maps, the 27 truthful autobiography has fallen into the novel. 28 29 In the Vie de Henry Brulard, Stendhal has devised a unique representa- 30 tion of the self through the convergence of autobiography and novel, 31 text and map. The “truthful” autobiographical text would paradoxically 32 be based upon a moment of deception or imagination, where the au- 33 tobiographical subject gives way to an independent novel subject. The 34 narrator/author imagines or desires the self as other in order to obtain 35 knowledge of the self. The textual ruse would postulate a sort of Holy 36 Trinity, where the author, narrator, and subject are entirely distinct (cre- 37 ating an autobiographical mirror) and yet the same (the reason for the 38 writing of the text). This imagined other, through a new cogito (“after so 39 many general remarks, I am going to be born”), is momentarily stripped 40 of particular details, until it approaches a universal, allowing it to become 41 40 Chapter One

1 text. The new textual subject is then recounted by a narrator, whose dis- 2 course is impossibly the same as the subject’s (a present superimposed 3 onto the past of the subject). The autobiographical simulacrum collapses 4 these distinctions, inciting the reader to overlook the imaginary concep- 5 tion of autobiography. 6 The textual subject, at least as can be deduced from Brulard, exists 7 through a discourse of simulacrum, the ambiguous identities of subject, 8 narrator, and author, and the multiplicity of meaning inherent to textual- 9 ity. The more ambiguous or even incoherent the representation, the more 10 truthful the image of the subject, since, in Stendhal’s logic, a style that is 11 too polished must be lying (which is his principal objection to Rousseau 12 and Chateaubriand). If the (textual) subject is revealed through a pun, 13 then the ultimate text would have to indulge in the free play of language. 14 The abundance of precise “military” and “mathematical” maps draw the 15 limits of the subject, and yet add another level of meaning, often increas- 16 ing the ambiguity of the text. Maps literalize Brulard’s “what eye can see 17 itself” because they encode the self as a sign represented by a letter, a dot, 18 or a stick fi gure, while becoming, themselves, interpretable text. 19 However, as I explore in the following chapter, the textuality of the 20 Vie de Henry Brulard must be controlled so that any one element (the 21 autobiographical or the novel subject) does not upset the suspension 22 between the elements necessary for the transformation of subjectivity. 23 When the maps create an alternative fi ction that oversteps the bounds of 24 the autobiographical simulacrum, an element of censure, in the form of 25 an alternative cartography, emerges that prevents the text from turning 26 defi nitively to fi ction, just as the gaps in the chronological narrative of 27 Beyle/Brulard’s life prevent the dominance of the autobiographical mode. 28 Brulard the novel subject must be reined in by Stendhal the writer in or- 29 der to resemble and yet transcend Beyle the author. 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 2 CHAPTER TWO 3 4 5 6 The Ghost in the Map 7 8 9 10 11 The incomplete fusion of autobiography and fi ction allows the entry of 12 the subject into text, it promises the only possibility of objective self- 13 knowledge and creative self-defi nition. The tension between the identities 14 of Beyle and Brulard can only be preserved if the text remains ambigu- 15 ous: both autobiography and fi ction, and neither one nor the other. The 16 narrator constantly worries about the status of the text, on the one hand 17 about the “truth” of the autobiography and on the other about his lack 18 of memory which might lead him to invent narrative. I analyze in this 19 chapter the various mechanisms employed by the narrator to control the 20 excesses of autobiography and fi ction in order to preserve a tenuous bal- 21 ance that would sustain Henry Brulard’s dual nature as a fi ctive refl ection 22 of a “real” Henri Beyle. 23 Fiction’s threat is that the story of Brulard may no longer refl ect that of 24 Beyle, that the author might lose control of the subject (himself). Novelis- 25 tic paradigms are more or less easily avoidable; the text generally evades 26 , fl owery , and excessive description that might evoke an 27 artifi cial realism. The presence of images and maps continually interrupts 28 the narrative and thus impedes the development of a coherent fi ctional 29 story about Brulard that could compete with Beyle’s own life. 30 But the very conversion of the self into (fi ctive or not) text, its reduction 31 to the universal subject of the cogito, its representation at a single instant 32 in time, inevitably imperils the integrity and of the author’s 33 existence, the uniqueness of personal experience. In order for the reader, 34 for the author himself, to perceive the subject, it has to be inscribed into 35 reductive language and placed into irreversible chronological time. Yet 36 this incessant analysis and universalizing jeopardizes what Beyle treasures 37 most, his own memory. 38 Caught between the illusory self-knowledge of the analytical maps and 39 the text’s invention of memory in ambiguous language, the Vie de Henry 40 Brulard falls back once again on the powers of textuality. The text al- 41

41 42 Chapter Two

1 ternates between analytical, chronological descriptions that reduce the 2 subject to discrete and fragmented moments (represented as ichnographic 3 maps or overhead views) and holistic views that temporalize space and 4 refl ect the subject’s place across time (represented as bird’s-eye views). 5 Brulard’s playful oscillation between partial concealment and total ex- 6 posure denounces the harmful effects of writing (chronological narrative 7 erases memory) and yet uses writing, in the form of a novel map, to imag- 8 ine his entire past and supplement memory. 9 The fi rst section of this chapter, “Monta(i)gnes,” explores a tempo- 10 ral cartography present in the Vie de Henry Brulard, what I liken to a 11 bird’s-eye view. The fi rst chapter of Beyle’s autobiography begins with a 12 view of Rome from on top a mountain, where the narrator/Brulard/Beyle 13 overlooks the Eternal City, his entire life, and time itself. The perception 14 of time and the evocation of memory hallucinate the ghosts of the past, 15 the dismemberment of the self caused by chronological narrative. The 16 bird’s-eye view presents layers of time over space and blurs the distinction 17 between text and self. The second section of this chapter, “The Dazling 18 of Memory,” traces Brulard’s simulated fear of textuality to the fear of 19 the dissolution of the self through language. A mistrust of representation 20 masks, by explaining away, Brulard’s own control of textuality. 21 22 23 Monta(i)gnes 24 25 The majority of maps in the novel could be described as “military” or 26 “mathematical” according to the text’s own precise relations of objects in 27 space at one moment in time. They are almost exclusively ichnographic 28 (overhead or fl oor plan) views with little “unnecessary” detail; the space 29 is fl attened; the only point privileged is an impossible abstract view from 30 above. They seem to correspond to the textual impulse for autobiographi- 31 cal truth and objectivity, while often revealing its limits. Another model of 32 imagining space, however, is present in the Vie de Henry Brulard which 33 functions as a counterpoint to the “Cartesian”1 analytic mapping. At the 34 beginning of the text, the narrator describes a view from a mountain, 35 what could be called a bird’s-eye view. This different type of map includes 36 the perspective of the viewer in the map itself; the relation of the viewer 37 to the objects and the space represented is privileged over the relations of 38 the objects to themselves. As one imagines a city from a bird’s-eye view, 39 certain buildings eclipse others, as contrasted to a street map. Moreover, 40 a duality or plurality of moments in time is implied: the viewer/reader 41 necessarily scans the map in the present; as his or her viewing position (as The Ghost in the Map 43 well as the distance, and therefore the time, between all objects) is already 1 inscribed in the perspective, one could say that a layer of present time 2 covers the image. At the same time, the map, and what it represents, exists 3 prior to the viewing, a past in wait for the present. This perspectival view 4 differs from the “Cartesian” map already described: in the former (bird’s- 5 eye view) there is no simultaneity of subject and object, but rather of past 6 and present; in the latter (“Cartesian”), the “subject” views the “object” 7 from the outside, they can only occupy the same position successively 8 by a deception in the text, a confl ation of the written and the visual. The 9 past does not invade the present in the bird’s-eye view, but coexists with 10 it, which suggests the overcoming of time itself. 11 The rather uncharacteristic fi rst chapter begins with just such a view. 12 It is uncharacteristic since it contains no sketches or maps (only an eighth 13 of the chapters do not), and yet it develops one of the key cartographic 14 moments in the text. The narrator fi nds himself overlooking Rome, high 15 on the Gianicolo Hill (“le mont Janicule”), with a view of the entire city. 16 Marcel Proust, in La Prisonnière, accurately summarizes Stendhal’s con- 17 tribution to literature in one sentence: “vous verriez dans Stendhal un 18 certain sentiment de l’altitude se liant à la vie spirituelle” (Proust, À la 19 recherche du temps perdu III, 879) (“you will see in Stendhal a certain 20 feeling of altitude tied to spiritual life”). Like one of his fi ctional char- 21 acters, Stendhal’s narrator is spiritually moved by this view of Rome; so 22 much so that one could say that the entire work fl ows from the musings 23 inspired by this moment: 24 25 Je me trouvais ce matin, 16 octobre 1832, à San Pietro in Montorio, sur 26 le mont Janicule, à Rome, il fesait [sic] un soleil magnifi que. Un léger vent 27 de sirocco à peine sensible faisait fl otter quelques petits nuages blancs au- 28 dessus du mont Albano, une chaleur délicieuse régnait dans l’air, j’étais 29 heureux de vivre. Je distinguais parfaitement Frascati et Castel Gandolfo 30 qui sont à quatre lieues d’ici, la villa Aldobrandini où est cette sublime 31 fresque de Judith du Dominiquin. Je vois parfaitement le mur blanc qui 32 marque les réparations faites en dernier lieu par le prince F[rançois] Bor- 33 ghèse, celui-là même que je vis à Wagram colonel d’un régiment de cuiras- 34 siers, le jour où M. de Noue, mon ami, eut la jambe emportée. Bien plus 35 loin, j’aperçois la roche de Palestrina et la maison blanche de Castel San 36 Pietro qui fut autrefois sa forteresse. Au-dessous du mur contre lequel je 37 m’appuie sont les grands orangers du verger des capucins, puis le Tibre 38 et le prieuré de Malte, un peu après sur la droite le tombeau de Cecilia 39 Metella, Saint-Paul et la pyramide de Cestius. En face de moi j’aperçois 40 Sainte-Marie-Majeure et les longues lignes du Palais de Monte Cavallo. 41 44 Chapter Two

1 Toute la Rome ancienne et moderne, depuis l’ancienne voie Appienne 2 avec les ruines de ses tombeaux et de ses aqueducs jusqu’au magnifi que 3 jardin de Pincio bâti par les Français, se déploie à la vue.2 (37–38) 4 5 Stendhal’s view of Rome in the Vie de Henry Brulard is much more than 6 a majestic panorama. The panorama of Rome leads to a refl ection on 7 the ancients, on painting, on aging, and fi nally on subjectivity; it is all of 8 Stendhal’s works in miniature. Highly personalized, it contains many au- 9 tobiographical anecdotes and details. Some of the details are relevant to 10 the narrative that will follow (his presence or nonpresence at the battle of 11 Wagram, and the Lake Albano) others are not (most of the Roman build- 12 ings). Many of the best-known sites, though in theory visible from this 13 viewpoint, are not described: the Pantheon, the Santa Trinità del Monte, 14 the Palatine Hill and Forum, the domes of the baroque city center (closer 15 and larger than Santa Maria Maggiore and San Paolo), the Coliseum 16 and the Palazzo Farnese (only mentioned on the following page). The 17 majority of place names correspond to “personal” monuments hardly 18 visible at all. The Vatican is brought up in the text later by reference to 19 the Transfi guration, though the Holy See, and the painting it contained, 20 is not visible from San Pietro in Montorio. The relatively faraway hill 21 of Frascati, Albano, and Palestrina (“quatre lieues” or 17 km away 22 from Rome) mark the outer limit of the view, and so, even on the clearest 23 day, could hardly provide any visual details; the Villa Aldobrandini above 24 Frascati could barely seem more than a speck on the landscape. Indeed, 25 what is privileged is the narrator’s personal relation to place, especially 26 in its capacity to evoke particular events in time. The overall movement 27 of description is fi rst the location of the narrator (San Pietro in Monto- 28 rio), then the limits of his view (Frascati, Albano, Gandolfolo, and Pal- 29 estrina), eventually the places closest to him (the orange grove, the Priory 30 of Malta, the Tiber). It is as if all of Rome, “ancient and modern,” were 31 approaching him. This initiating map inscribes the narrator’s affective 32 perspective on the city, while situating the narrative in the present (1832), 33 as he reminisces about time. “All of Rome, ancient and modern” presents 34 itself to him, as well as, and especially, his own “Life.” 35 This is, of course, Stendhal’s Rome and not yet Brulard’s Grenoble 36 (Brulard does not live past Milan). As this chapter stands as a preamble 37 to the rest of the novel, Promenades dans Rome, written in 1829, is a pre- 38 amble to Brulard. The Promenades is a pseudo-travel journal composed 39 of Stendhal’s memories of Rome (written in Paris) and his unabashed pla- 40 giarism and parody of other popular guides (Crouzet, Promenades, VIII); 41 in short, it is a mixture of genre and citation. It is evident that the later The Ghost in the Map 45

Souvenirs d’égotisme and Vie de Henry Brulard would follow the same 1 path as the Promenades: a fi ctional autobiography that tries to balance 2 objective concerns through the fragmentation of the autobiographical 3 genre. More remarkable is the fact that the beginning of the fi rst chapter 4 of Brulard is almost a direct citation from the Promenades: 5 6 San Pietro in Montorio. J’admire de nouveau la vue; c’est sans comparai- 7 son la plus belle de Rome: on voit tout admirablement bien et l’on voit 8 le mont Albano et Frascati, Cecilia Metella, etc. Il faut un jour de soleil à 9 nuages chassés par le vent; alors tous les dômes de Rome sont tour à tour 10 dans l’ombre et dans le clair.3 (Promenades, notes, 750–51) 11 12 This view is, then, Stendhal’s idealized vision of Rome, about which he 13 fantasized (“ce lieu est unique au monde, me disais-je en rêvant”—“this 14 place is unique in the world, I told myself dreaming”) in Paris while writ- 15 ing the Promenades, and in which he encapsulated, crystallized, the an- 16 cient city. 17 What at fi rst seems to be a view of Rome on a particular day in 1832 18 is actually a palimpsest composed uniquely of memory and citation. This 19 view of Rome in 1832, an ideal moment, a literary moment for Stendhal, 20 is not a factual detailing of a view, but an aesthetic invention, a novel 21 map. By all accounts he was in Abruzzo, not in Rome, from the 7th to 22 the 20th of October in 1832. The manuscript margins state clearly “Book 23 commencé le 23 novembre 1835” (37) (“Book started November 23, 24 1835”); the ink and paper used is the same throughout the fi rst chapter. 25 The “present” of the narrative jumps forward three years to 1835 to co- 26 incide with the actual writing. There is hardly a break in narrative voice 27 (and no graphic break in the manuscript), as Stendhal announces, “Je ne 28 continue que le 23 novembre 1835” (40) (“I can only continue November 29 23, 1835”), as if trying to slip the date past the reader. It is true that ear- 30 lier that year (June 20 to July 4) he worked on the Souvenirs d’égotisme, 31 but Rome is hardly mentioned in that text. 32 By antedating the text, Stendhal stresses the proximity to his fi ftieth 33 birthday (January 23, 1833) and links it to the city of Rome, and in 34 particular to San Pietro in Montorio. The presence, or rather absence, of 35 ’s Transfi guration in this church for 250 years provides the essen- 36 tial digression: the painting would have, at least symbolically, shared this 37 view; fi fty years is the echo of 250 years (Béatrice Didier has emphasized 38 Stendhal’s particular number in relation to death [Stendhal 39 autobiographe, 202]). The painting is now “buried” in the Vatican, resur- 40 rected in the text of Brulard. 41 46 Chapter Two

1 Rome is the city of tombs and death: “Quand on arrive de Naples à 2 Rome, on croit entrer dans un tombeau. Il est peu de contrastes aussi 3 douloureux” (Oeuvres intimes II, journal entry 1832, 157) (“When you 4 arrive from Naples to Rome, you would think you were entering a tomb. 5 There are few contrasts as painful.”) The Castel’ San Angelo (formerly 6 Hadrian’s tomb), the tomb of Cecilia Metella (made famous by the neo- 7 classicists Winkelman and Piranesi), the pyramid of Cestius (an elaborate 8 tomb designed by an ancient Roman banker), and the tombs along the 9 Appian Way are all spectacular ancient monuments to death cited in the 10 view of Rome. In the Promenades, Stendhal recounts the last wish of the 11 poet Tasso, to die on the Gianicolo overlooking Rome: “La vue si étendue 12 et si belle que l’on y a de Rome, cette ville des tombeaux et des souvenirs, 13 doit rendre moins pénible ce dernier pas pour se détacher des choses de 14 , si tant est qu’il soit pénible” (Promenades, 376) (“The expansive 15 and beautiful view one has here of Rome, this city of tombs and memo- 16 ries, must make less painful this last step to detach oneself from the things 17 of this earth, if indeed it is painful”). San Pietro in Montorio is, as Sten- 18 dhal himself writes: “au lieu même où Saint Pierre souffrit le martyre” 19 (Promenades, 397) (“the very place where Saint Peter was martyred”). 20 Six of the twenty engravings included in the manuscript have directly or 21 indirectly as subjects Saint Peter (Mossman, 344), thus all referring back 22 to this fi rst paragraph and continually recalling both the church and Saint 23 Peter’s martyrdom. Tasso (next to his oak tree) and Raphael (through 24 what nineteenth-century art critics considered his most celebrated paint- 25 ing) both achieved glory through their “transfi gurations,” their artistic 26 sublimation, on this same hill: “De plus grands que moi sont bien morts!” 27 (“Much greater men than I have died!”). Stendhal anticipates his own 28 transfi guration into the text as Brulard. This “spiritual” moment (as 29 Proust would have it), inspired by a fi ctional view, allows Stendhal to 30 “play dead,” to see his whole life from beginning to end, allowing for the 31 commencement of a complete, and thus fi ctional, autobiography (but one 32 without an end). 33 The refl ections on mortality are enhanced by the Gianicolo’s position 34 in the Roman landscape; it is at the westernmost limit of the city, with 35 only fi elds behind it. The narrator has his back facing the West (the oc- 36 cident, meaning where the sun dies) and remains until the sun falls be- 37 hind him, hinting at the end of his own life. As the narrator says midway 38 through Brulard, “[il y a] trois ans que m’est venue, sur l’esplanade de 39 San Pietro in Montorio (Janicule), l’idée lumineuse que j’allais avoir cin- 40 quante ans et qu’il était temps de songer au départ et auparavant de se 41 donner le plaisir de regarder en arrière” (115) (“three years ago came to The Ghost in the Map 47 me, on the esplanade of San Pietro in Montorio (Gianicolo), the luminous 1 idea that I was going to be fi fty years old and that it was time to think 2 about the fi nal departure and before then to abandon myself to looking 3 backwards”). The name Gianicolo is derived from Janus (January), the 4 two-faced god of doors and liminal spaces. The narrator can thus occupy 5 the threshold between two moments in time, facing the future (the sunset 6 of his life) while looking back at the past (the view of Rome), just as his 7 text will occupy the threshold between autobiography and fi ction. 8 As the tombs of Rome evoke Brulard/Beyle’s mortality, its ruins and 9 the memories they recall hallucinate the dismemberment of the body in 10 time. The totality (in time and space) of the view of Rome distorts the 11 subject like a baroque anamorphosis, revealing different moments and 12 facets from different angles. Disturbing the idyllic portrait of Rome is the 13 recurrence of traumatic or sublime images that haunt the text. The “sub- 14 lime fresco of Judith” recalls, of course the severed head of Holofernes. 15 The innocuous repairs done on a wall summon up François Borghèse, 16 colonel at Wagram, present when Beyle’s friend M. de Noue lost his leg. 17 The repairs included in the same sentence as well as M. de Noue’s name 18 (de-noue, “dénoue” or “untie”) anticipate the loss of his leg. A series of 19 ancient tombs is listed, starting with that of Cecilia Metella, which had 20 inspired Stendhal’s acquaintance in his Childe Harold and is best 21 known for its bucranium, or ox skull (the medieval name of the tomb 22 was “Capo di bove,” “oxen’s head”). Next in the list is San Paolo, which 23 marks the spot where Saint Paul was decapitated. Cestius’s Pyramid is 24 the tomb of an ancient Roman banker and is adjacent to the Protestant 25 cemetery of Rome, where , Shelley, and others are buried. Finally 26 the Appian Way makes an appearance, with its hundreds of monuments 27 to death. The repetition of death and dismemberment apparent in the 28 bird’s-eye view of Rome suggests that the narrator’s attempt to grasp the 29 totality of the self and its place in the fl ow of time has failed, leading to 30 a feeling that he has lost any unity of the self and hallucinates his own 31 dismemberment. 32 The confl ation of the mind and the city is at least as old as the second 33 book of ’s Republic, but in modern times Rome has become the priv- 34 ileged site of the human psyche. Goethe, in the December 20, 1786, entry 35 of his Italian Journey, attests to the confusion of exterior and interior 36 he felt in Rome: “It is history, above all, that one reads quite differently 37 here from anywhere else in the world. Everywhere else one starts from 38 the outside and works inward; here it seems to be the other way around” 39 (Goethe, 154). The bird’s-eye view also takes as its point of departure the 40 viewer. In Brulard, the entire image of Rome is unfurled, unfolded (“se 41 48 Chapter Two

1 déploie à la vue”) in the text from memory, an interior space becoming 2 exterior again through writing. It is literally imagined, transformed into 3 an image to be seen (“je vois,” “je distingue,” “j’aperçois,” “Quelle vue”). 4 There is a reversal of interiority and exteriority, a Möbius strip of con- 5 sciousness, where Rome refl ects Brulard and Brulard Rome. The history 6 of Rome, “ancient and modern,” cannot be separated from the narra- 7 tor’s sense of time and memory, past and present: “tous les souvenirs de 8 Tite-Live me revenaient en foule” (38) (“all the memories of Titus-Livy 9 come back to me”). His memories of reading Titus-Livy, or literally the 10 memories of Titus-Livy himself, are present as he gazes at the ancient city. 11 The confl ation of text and memory, of the space of Rome and time 12 itself, of city and subject is eloquently elaborated by Montaigne (one of 13 Stendhal’s 3M of French literature, Montaigne, Molière, and Montes- 14 quieu, “les trois M donnent du plaisir en français par du noir sur du 15 blanc” [Oeuvres intimes II, 165–66]) (“the three M give pleasure in 16 French through black on white”) in “De la vanité”: 17 18 J’ay veu ailleurs des maisons ruynées, et des statues, et du ciel, et de la 19 terre: ce sont tousjours des hommes. Tout cela est vray; et si pourtant 20 ne sçauroy revoir si souvent le tombeau de cette ville, si grande et si 21 puissante, que je ne l’admire et revere. Le soing des morts nous est en 22 recommendation. Or j’ay esté nourry dès mon enfance avec ceux icy; j’ay 23 eu connoissance des affaires de Romme, long temps avant que je l’aye 24 eue de ceux de ma maison: je sçavois le Capitole et son plant avant que 25 je ne sçeusse le Louvre, et le Tibre avant la Seine. J’ay eu plus en teste 26 les conditions et fortunes de Lucullus, Metellus et Scipion, que je n’ay 27 d’aucuns hommes des nostres. Ils sont trespassez. Si est bien mon pere, 28 aussi entierement qu’eux, et s’est esloigné de moy et de la vie autant en 29 dixhuict ans que ceux-là ont faict en seize cens.4 (Essais, 209) 30 31 Rome nourishes Montaigne, providing for his psychological and intel- 32 lectual development, in juxtaposition to Paris. Rome’s ruins,“the tomb 33 of this city,” though in theory lost in the past, have more effect on him 34 than any monument in France. Once something becomes part of the past, 35 “trespasses” the threshold between present and past, life and death, it 36 becomes not further away in space or in consciousness, but eternal. The 37 death of Montaigne’s father eighteen years earlier does not seem closer 38 than the death 1,600 years earlier of the literary Romans that nourished 39 his youth. If they survive in the present, it is because of Montaigne, who 40 feels a duty to honor the dead, who cannot help themselves (Essais, 209– 41 10). Brulard also brings back the dead, though his motives seem less pure: The Ghost in the Map 49

“Qui se souvient d’Alexandrine, morte en janvier 1815, il y a vingt ans? 1 Qui se souvient de Métilde, morte en 1825? Ne sont-elles pas à moi, moi 2 qui les aime mieux que tout le reste du monde?” (166) (“Who remem- 3 bers Alexandrine, dead January 1815, twenty years ago? Who remembers 4 Métilde, dead in 1825? Are they not mine, who loved them more than 5 anyone else in the world?”). Montaigne holds “en teste” (“in his head”) 6 the time of the ancients and the present, Rome and Paris, the dead and 7 the living. 8 The two writers collapse the space of two places and times into one 9 textual moment, evoking the phantoms of the past. Montaigne, like Sten- 10 dhal, does not describe Rome from the present, as he did in the Journal 11 de voyage en Italie, but from his memory and from literary citation. Tom 12 Conley, in “A Suckling of Cities: Montaigne in Paris and Rome,” argues 13 that in Montaigne, as well as Freud, the birth of the subject comes about 14 through the city views of Rome.5 Like Paris and Rome’s simultaneity of 15 place in the textual map, Montaigne’s psychological past occupies the 16 same space as his perception of the present. The textual trick of forcing 17 two cities to be collapsed into one is the same as that used in Brulard to 18 collapse the difference between subject and object, past and present. Con- 19 ley extends his argument to Freud’s analogy of Rome and the psyche in 20 Civilization and Its Discontents: the ruins of the ancient city can be seen 21 through an effort of imagination and can thus be contemporaneous with 22 modern time, just as the psyche of the infant lives on in the unconscious 23 of the adult (Conley, 170–71). The psyche destroys memories the same 24 way that time destroys the city’s structures, but the ruins of memories 25 survive in the same way that ruins survive. The metaphor goes too far 26 for Freud because it suggests a collective psychogenesis and therefore the 27 metaphor leads to the paradox of a unique individual who is nevertheless 28 identical to every other individual (Conley, 169). Freud concludes that 29 it is impossible to occupy two different historical states or places in the 30 same space at the same time (Conley, 169). 31 Henri Bergson elaborates this paradox (that one subject can occupy 32 two times and spaces simultaneously) into a theory of consciousness and 33 memory before Freud. The conscious is a mechanism to discard what is 34 not useful to the perception of the immediate present; the unconscious 35 would then be what is “impotent,” what the conscious considers unneces- 36 sary. Just as objects that are not immediately perceived still really exist 37 (the commonsense rebuttal to Berkeley’s immaterialist esse est percipi— 38 to be is to be perceived), “le souvenir-pur” (“pure memory”) and the past 39 coexist with the present. What is more unsettling is that “pure memory” 40 is, according to Bergson, not stored in the brain, but exists independently, 41 50 Chapter Two

1 which suggests (though Bergson seems reluctant to extend his concept) 2 that there may exist a universal memory shared by all. 3 Since space measures the proximity of a potential menace to the body in 4 relation to time, what is essential to perception is a schema of the future; 5 it seems preferable to open the space in front of the body (the future) and 6 to close the time behind. The “real” seems to start with the present, but 7 8 quand un souvenir reparaît à la conscience, il nous fait l’effet d’un reve- 9 nant dont il faudrait expliquer par des causes spéciales l’apparition mys- 10 térieuse. En réalité, l’adhérence de ce souvenir à notre état présent est 11 tout à fait comparable à celle des objets inaperçus aux objets que nous 12 percevons, et l’inconscient joue dans les deux cas un rôle du même genre.6 13 (Bergson, 161) 14 15 Bergson’s version of the uncanny is simply the breakdown of the con- 16 scious’s repression of the past. From here he assumes “notre caractère est 17 bien la synthèse actuelle de tous nos états passés” (162) (“our character 18 is really the present synthesis of all of our past states”). The bird’s-eye 19 view of Rome is a sublime experience that achieves the surpassing of 20 space and time, the synthesis of our past selves. To reverse Bergson’s syl- 21 logism, Stendhal (or Montaigne) must invoke all his past states in order 22 to comprehend fully, or perceive in the present, his “character” (the ex- 23 pressed purpose of Brulard and the Essais). Stendhal’s (or Montaigne’s) 24 conjuring up of his memory of Rome, an object not immediately pres- 25 ent, also conjures up his ghosts, “les revenants” (in French “ghosts,” or 26 “that which comes back”) of his past (hence the choice of Rome, “city 27 of tombs”). This incantation temporarily unlocks the unconscious: “all 28 of Titus-Livy’s memories rushed back to me.” The unconscious (and the 29 memories it perceives) is always present, occupying the same space as the 30 conscious. The contemporaneous presence of the past only resembles a 31 paradox since the mind, in an economy of perception, represses memory 32 as past. The bird’s-eye view of Rome forces the two to coexist, or rather 33 tricks the conscious into projecting the past onto the space in front of 34 the body, what is usually occupied by the future. The return of the sup- 35 pressed is thus superimposed onto the space of the future represented as 36 map (Stendhal has his back to the West, against the usual progression of 37 time). 38 Any attempt to analyze the mass of time revealed by this temporary 39 unleashing of memory, that is, to use the conscious to select memories 40 to bring forward to perception, would break the spell by reinstating the 41 mechanism of repression; the unconscious becomes impotent. Indeed, this The Ghost in the Map 51 ideal moment brought on by the vision of Rome does not even last a few 1 pages, since the narrator has trouble defi ning whom he was or is. The 2 harmony (“j’étais heureux de vivre”—“I was happy to be alive”) has 3 disappeared and been replaced by confusion, as the narrator no longer 4 knows which spatial and temporal reference points to choose, as seen by 5 the narrative’s wandering through space and time (Rome, Wagram, Paris, 6 Ischia, Grenoble, 1793, 1832, 1835, 1880, 1935). Proust’s insomniac suf- 7 fers the same existential wandering upon waking. This “égarement” or 8 “straying” leads, of course, to the Cartesian analysis that dominates the 9 novel, an effort to cut through the different layers of time, the analysis 10 and dismemberment of the subject. 11 There are very few other “panorama perspectives” like the one of 12 Rome in the rest of the work that represent space as a function of time. 13 However, those that exist take on special signifi cance by their rarity and 14 deliberate placement in the text. There are two “fi gures géométriques” or 15 “cartes” (“maps”) as he calls them, which could be described as repre- 16 sentations from a panoramic perspective. Françoise Coulont-Henderson 17 has categorized them as “des croquis à caractère allégoriques, sortes de 18 cartes du Tendre” (149) (“sketches of an allegorical nature, a sort of map 19 of the human heart”). More than just purely visual elements however, 20 they serve to interrupt the text, revealing what the written text cannot. 21 They are equally spaced in the novel: the fi rst 130 pages after the be- 22 ginning (Oeuvres intimes, 159), the second 130 pages after that (290); 23 which is to say almost exactly one-third and two-thirds of the way into 24 the text. Similar to the view of the fi rst chapter (and thus different from 25 the majority of the work), these are affective cartographies or itineraries 26 where time is represented spatially and ideally. Because of their similarity 27 and even spacing in the text, we can link together the fi rst chapter, the 28 last chapter, and these two sketches. These four textual moments serve 29 to question, to undermine the authority of the autobiographical project, 30 the truth in dividing up Henry Brulard’s life into distinct (writeable and 31 drawable) moments, suggesting that the subject cannot be contained by 32 language or chronological narrative. 33 The fi rst sketch schematizes the different “routes” one can take in life, 34 seen from the point of view of the “moment de la naissance” (“moment of 35 birth”). Facing the “moment of birth” (marked suggestively by a triangle 36 and the letter “A”) is an empty half circle. Extending from the half circle 37 are four “routes” that continue open-ended: “Route de la folie” (“Route 38 of madness”), “Route de l’art de se faire lire” (“Route of the art of get- 39 ting oneself read”), “Route de la considération: Fx Faure se fait Paire de 40 France” (“Route of esteem: Fx Faure makes himself a Peer of France”), 41 52 Chapter Two

1 “Route de la fortune par le commerce ou les places” (“Route of fortune 2 through commerce or appointments”). The map is personalized with the 3 name of Stendhal’s least impressive friend, Félix Faure, who, through luck 4 and lack of personal ambition, rose to the elite of Restoration society. 5 The sketch is included in a letter (now lost) to his friend Roland Colomb 6 (cousin of Stendhal who discovered the world of letters late in life and 7 who edited Stendhal’s works after his death). He explains that once a 8 person has chosen his path in life, he cannot suddenly choose another. 9 He does not blame his friend, however, since if the narrator were to die 10 and approach Montesquieu, he would not be surprised if the great writer 11 were to tell him that he had no talent: “l’oeil ne se voit pas lui-même” 12 (159) (“the eye does not see itself”). The modifi cation of the phrase “Quel 13 oeil peut se voir . . . ?” (“What eye can see itself . . . ?”) to the affi rmation 14 “l’oeil ne se voit pas . . .” (“the eye does not see itself . . .”) underscores the 15 impossibility of this cartographic representation: for the map to work, 16 the narrator would have to see himself, presumably by occupying the let- 17 ter A, the moment of birth. This is exactly what Brulard attempts to do, 18 reenter the moment of birth as text in order to see himself objectively. 19 The second sketch (fi gure 1.4) has a similar context to the fi rst: the nar- 20 rator ridicules successful politicians and fi nanciers who decide to add to 21 their megalomania by taking up literature (a vice rampant during the Res- 22 toration and July Monarchy, according to Stendhal). This second sketch 23 is more elaborate than the fi rst, since it now contains six routes instead 24 of four. From left to right, they are “‘F’ la route de la folie” (“‘F’ the 25 route of madness”), “‘L’ l’art de se faire lire: Le Tasse, Jean-Jacques Rous- 26 seau, Mozart” (“‘L’ the art of getting oneself read: Tasso, Jean-Jacques 27 Rousseau, Mozart”), a route with no name, “la route de la considération 28 publique” (“route of public esteem”), “‘P’ Route des bons préfets et con- 29 seillers d’Etat: MM. Daru, Roederer, Français, Beugnot” (“‘P’ Route of 30 good Prefects and Councilors of State: Messrs Daru, Roederer, Français, 31 Beugnot”) and fi nally “‘R’ Route de l’argent: Rothschild” (“‘R’ Route of 32 money: Rothschild”) (290). Five routes have a small letter “B” assigned 33 to them indicating that they are “Routes prises à 7 ans, souvent à notre 34 insu. Il est souverainement absurde de vouloir à 50 ans laisser la route R 35 ou la route P pour la route L. Frédéric II ne s’est guère fait lire et dès 20 36 ans songeait à la route L.” (“Routes taken at seven years of age, often un- 37 consciously. It is supremely absurd at 50 years of age to want to abandon 38 Route R or Route P for Route L. Frederick II could hardly get himself 39 read and already at 20 he thought about Route L.”). It is “sovereignly 40 [i.e., supremely] absurd,” since only a sovereign like Frederick II would 41 attempt it. It should be noted here that, although he expressed interest in The Ghost in the Map 53

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Figure 1.4. Routes taken at various stages of life. Vie de Henry Brulard, R299, vol. 15 2, no. 851, folio 424. Courtesy of Bibliothèque municipale de Grenoble. 16 17 writing plays “à la Molière” as he says early in life, Stendhal/Beyle did not 18 publish until after his public career (“auditeur au Conseil d’Etat”) ended 19 with the fall of Napoleon I. Stendhal is himself the best example for why 20 the proposition that one cannot change directions in life is invalid. The 21 road is taken at the age of seven, “often unconsciously,” the age of reason, 22 and the age when Brulard lost his mother. The destiny of the text is deter- 23 mined by this event, but Beyle/Stendhal’s destiny is that of someone who 24 follows more than one path at the same time. 25 The signifi cance of the letters is left playfully ambiguous, like the road 26 without a name. Just as the analytic maps contain ambivalent letters (H, 27 B, M) which could represent the narrator in the past or present, these let- 28 ters ostensibly signify any individual, but more often refer indirectly to 29 the narrator: is the moment of birth “A” because it is the fi rst letter of the 30 alphabet, and if so, why are fi ve of the six paths labeled “B” (the second 31 stage in development, or the paths attempted by Brulard?); is it “L” for 32 “littérature” or “lire” (Sartre’s distinction between life’s two great divi- 33 sions, writing or reading), “R” for “Rothschild” or for “riche,” “P” for 34 “public” or for “préfet”? As in the view of Rome, the fi rst thing that is 35 mentioned is the location of the subject (San Pietro in Montorio, or here 36 “‘A’ the moment of birth”), then the periphery is described since the labels 37 on the various roads are found at their end. Reading from left to right, 38 the two roads on the left (“Folie” and “Littérature”) move toward the 39 subject at “A”; obviously Beyle/Brulard associated himself with literature, 40 and in this text with madness, even if he states perhaps only rhetorically 41 54 Chapter Two

1 “Rien n’empêche ma folie” (“Nothing prevents my madness”) (428). The 2 route with no name points directly to the word “mois” (“month”) written 3 in the preceding paragraph and perhaps referring to its homonym “moi” 4 (Brulard could be considered to occupy the place between literature and 5 public esteem, or taking a road with no name). The path of “public es- 6 teem” stands directly above “A” moving neither toward nor away, per- 7 haps refl ecting Stendhal’s varying success as public offi cial and diplomat. 8 Finally, the roads of money and power are directed away from point “A,” 9 since Stendhal and his narrator had little of either. 10 These sketches would seem at fi rst to describe a general theory of ca- 11 reer advancement and the choices available to men of Stendhal’s genera- 12 tion in the way that the Rouge et le noir was supposed to be a “chronicle 13 of the nineteenth century.” One could make an analogy to the view of 14 Rome: anyone looking out from San Pietro would see more or less what 15 the narrator describes. And yet, the “geometric fi gure,” as well as the 16 bird’s-eye view, is encoded with very personal signifi cance, containing the 17 names and achievements of friends and acquaintances, letters with ellipti- 18 cal meanings, and especially hints concerning his life’s itinerary. Unlike 19 most of the drawings which represent a particular moment in time, these 20 two outline past and future, transcending the present, but also, perhaps, 21 the autobiographical discourse, since the itinerary they trace reinscribes 22 the personal into the universal. 23 The semicircles found between the “moment of birth” and the vari- 24 ous roads explain best the role of the two distinct cartographic systems 25 in the text. If we consider, as the text itself claims, that Brulard/Beyle’s 26 career began when he went to Milan with Napoleon’s army in 1800, then 27 the empty space not gridded, the void contained in the semicircle, corre- 28 sponds to the time period recounted by the Vie de Henry Brulard between 29 the fi rst “je vais naître” and the second. Similarly, in the fi rst chapter with 30 its view of Rome, there is no mention of his childhood in Grenoble, only 31 the date of birth and the date 1800. This void indicates the difference in 32 the text between what is recounted in Brulard and the life of Stendhal. 33 The name Henri Beyle is inscribed throughout the text as guarantor of 34 autobiography, as a sort of personal graffi ti or a way to appropriate this 35 textual “Life.” The other, affective cartography has the opposite effect: to 36 maintain the distance of the author from the text; to resist the universal- 37 izing tendency of language; in short, to prevent the destruction of the 38 “dazling” [sic] of emotion and affection. The personal is erased from the 39 surface of the text, but visible, as in a palimpsest, underneath the layers 40 of time. 41 The Ghost in the Map 55

The “Dazling” of Memory 1 2 Representation, in all of its forms, is problematized throughout the Vie de 3 Henry Brulard, to a degree which is much more evident than in Stendhal’s 4 “realist” novels.7 Indeed, there prevails a constant fear, or hope, that the 5 text will cross genre lines and “fall” into the novel: “Là, ce me semble, a 6 été mon approche la plus voisine du bonheur parfait. Pour un tel moment 7 il vaut la peine d’avoir vécu . . . Que dire d’un tel moment sans mentir, 8 sans tomber dans le roman?” (407) (“There, it seems to me, was the clos- 9 est I have gotten to perfect . For such a moment it is worth hav- 10 ing lived . . . What can be said of such a moment without lying, without 11 falling into the novel?”). A “true” autobiographical narration that repre- 12 sents objective facts occupies fi guratively a higher position than the novel, 13 a genre that not only does not represent reality, but “lies” about it. For 14 Stendhal’s narrator, any description of facts tainted by subjective emo- 15 tion is incapable of a truthful representation. At best such description is 16 incomprehensible to the reader, since the content is too personal; at worst 17 it creates an alternative narrative that would imitate the “fl at” novels of 18 Sir Walter Scott, a literary supplement to memory’s lack. This hyperbolic 19 distrust of descriptive representation is most acute during the narration 20 of emotionally charged events. The narrator systematically despairs of 21 any faithful rendering: “La sensation présente absorbait tout, absolument 22 comme le souvenir de la première soirée où Giul[ia] m’a traité en amant. 23 Mon souvenir n’est qu’un roman fabriqué à cette occasion” (420) (“The 24 present sensation absorbed everything, absolutely like the memory of the 25 fi rst evening when Giul[ia] treated me like a lover. My memory is only 26 a novel fabricated on this occasion”); “En me réduisant aux formes rai- 27 sonnables je ferais trop d’injustice à ce que je veux raconter” (428) (“By 28 reducing myself to reasonable forms I would commit too much injustice 29 against what I want to say”). As the analyzing maps fail to grasp the 30 totality of the subject and threaten to invent what they cannot represent, 31 the “reasonable forms” of language become an unjust supplement. 32 The intensity of emotion exceeds not only the capacity of linguistic de- 33 scription, but also of memory itself. The narrator can only recall the senti- 34 ments surrounding the event, not the event itself: “Je n’ai aucune mémoire 35 des époques ou des moments où j’ai senti trop vivement” (122) (“I have 36 no memory at all of the periods or moments when I felt too vividly”). 37 When description is not avoided altogether, a variety of rhetorical devices 38 appears in the text that attempt a reconstruction of memory. Abstract and 39 banal adjectives such as “bonheur” (“happiness”), “beau,” and “parfait” 40 41 56 Chapter Two

1 (“perfect”) are used to describe feelings and situations without providing 2 any useful information. Foreign words and phrases express persons and 3 ideas that are too evocative to be said in French: “my poor mother,” “my 4 life,” “campo santo,” “fi asco,” “cette mort . . . me fi t pleasure. Voilà le 5 grand mot écrit” (177–78) (“This death . . . gave me pleasure. There, the 6 great word is written”). Written and yet not written, “les grands mots” 7 bypass the censorship regarding the sublime past; the sublime moment 8 (good or bad) creates a sense of awe that surpasses understanding, ren- 9 dering the event traumatic and thus unspeakable. 10 A recurring metaphor for the struggle with description reveals this 11 mechanism of censorship: 12 13 Je vois des images, je me souviens des effets sur mon coeur, mais pour les 14 causes et la physionomie néant. C’est toujours les fresques du [ ] de Pise 15 où l’on aperçoit fort bien un bras, et le morceau d’à côté qui représentait 16 la tête est tombé. Je vois une suite d’images fort nettes mais sans physiono- 17 mie autre que celle qu’elles eurent à mon égard. Bien plus, je ne vois cette 18 physionomie que par le souvenir de l’effet qu’elle produisit sur moi.8 (191) 19 20 In the manuscript a blank exists, perhaps indicating an intention of re- 21 turning to the text, or at least suggesting a temporary lack of memory. 22 The editor has supplied “Campo Santo” (which appears elsewhere in the 23 text), Pisa’s renowned monumental cemetery, where colorful medieval 24 frescoes of heroic battle scenes are placed uncannily behind ancient Ro- 25 man marble sepulchers. The image produced by the aging (or mutilation) 26 of the frescoes evokes dismemberment and decapitation, thus indirectly 27 referring to what language will not express, the fragmentation of the sub- 28 ject. Similar to the images of dismemberment in the view of Rome, Bru- 29 lard’s personal memory is linked to universal memory (the coexistence 30 of medieval, classical, and modern reminders of death), hallucinating the 31 ghosts of the past and the unweaving of the textual subject. The act of 32 re-membering, of seeing the “physiognomy” of the past is too traumatic 33 (or too revealing) and so can only come about through metaphor and 34 wordplay, by studying the reaction of the subject, “the effect they had on 35 me.” The narrator vows not to describe events, but only the (sentimental 36 and objective) effect the events had on him. The best description would 37 be no description at all. 38 The fi nal chapter ofBrulard could be seen as the culmination of this 39 threat of representation as the narrator, “un amoureux fou,” progres- 40 sively loses his capacity for language. The “life” narrative of Henry Bru- 41 lard abruptly ends when he arrives in Milan, “le plus beau lieu de la terre” The Ghost in the Map 57

(426) (“the most beautiful place on earth”). The fi rst few pages describe 1 in detail his arrival on horseback and his meeting with his relative 2 Daru. The text is accompanied by precise maps of Milan. But when he 3 tries to outline the “bonheur céleste et complet” (“the celestial and com- 4 plete happiness”) of the succeeding days and months, and in particular 5 his love for Angela Pietragrua, the narrator stops completely, apologizing 6 for the excess of his emotions. The diffi culty in representing Angela dates 7 back to the Journal, since there is only one oblique mention of her in 8 1800. He decides three times to summarize, analyze, and catalogue the 9 events and experiences, as he had done at the beginning of the text in the 10 second chapter, without being able to write a single sentence. He then asks 11 the reader to skip fi fty pages to excuse his poor memory, but the novel 12 ends a page later, leaving the reader in a void. The appeals for the patience 13 of the reader, the questions as to how to describe perfect happiness with- 14 out appearing insane, and the anguish at remembering a past too vivid, 15 multiply and become more acute as each sentence becomes shorter. In the 16 manuscript, the handwriting becomes progressively larger, each sentence 17 forms its own paragraph, as if Stendhal were trying hopelessly to fi ll up 18 the page with (empty) description. The work closes abruptly, undoing ev- 19 erything that precedes it with the fi nal sentence: “On gâte des sentiments 20 si tendres à les raconter en détail” (459) (“One spoils such tender feelings 21 by recounting them in detail”). Has he suddenly discovered that all the 22 “sentiments si tendres,” what the narrator had previously claimed were 23 the real object of the text, have been spoiled? That the text has ruined for 24 the author everything that it has described? 25 The idea that narrating feelings in detail can in some way spoil or ruin 26 them is a constant in Stendhal’s autobiographical works. Already in the 27 journal entry of 1805 (thirty years before the writing of Brulard), Sten- 28 dhal writes, “Je n’écris plus les souvenirs charmants, je me suis aperçu 29 que cela les gâtait” (Oeuvres intimes, 715) (“I no longer write charming 30 memories, I have discovered that that spoils them”). One of the main sty- 31 listic traits of Stendhal, an almost stoic absence of detail, is theorized in 32 one of his earliest writings. At least ten different formulations of the same 33 sentence exist in the Journal and the Souvenirs d’égotisme. In the Vie de 34 Henry Brulard this is developed and refi ned. The location of “one 35 spoils . . .” as the last sentence marks its culmination as the last word in 36 Stendhal’s “autobiography,” and the last time he expressed frustration at 37 the harmful effects of writing. 38 The very act of converting an event into language, reducing it to meta- 39 phor, takes it out of the reach of memory. A precise objective rendering 40 of memory necessarily kills the personal, the sentimental; as the Journal 41 58 Chapter Two

1 indicates, “Je trouve froid ce que j’ai écrit dans l’enthousiasme” (Oeuvres 2 intimes, 1300) (“I fi nd cold what I have written with enthusiasm”).Bru- 3 lard’s narrator aims at the destruction of the “dazling” [sic] of an event, 4 since an excess of sentiment distorts vision. The dominant form of cartog- 5 raphy in the text, the “military” or “mathematical” analysis, exaggerates 6 this distance from the event, reducing Brulard to an initial or a dot. By 7 the text’s own admission, the result of this analysis, of this classifi ca- 8 tion, would be the erasure of memory, a substitution of the subjective by 9 the objective. Thus the act of writing the self in text, of engraving one’s 10 memories with mathematical precision and distance not only spoils the 11 “dazling” of events, the tenderness of feelings, but actually erases mem- 12 ory, erases being. As the view of Rome and the “fi gures géométriques” 13 have shown, the narrative of Henry Brulard does not correlate with the 14 schema of Beyle’s life; Brulard is written text but unwritten or scratched- 15 out memory. It is as if childhood memories must be erased, the link with 16 Grenoble cut, in order for the individuation of the adult to take place. 17 Representations (writing, drawing, maps, engravings) enter into the 18 mind and replace memory, threatening the self for the construction of 19 the subject. All signs are conventions, whether linguistic, mathematical, 20 or aesthetic, and therefore signifi ers can never match that to which they 21 refer. And yet the Vie de Henry Brulard is a text that fetishizes the ambi- 22 guity of language, that lives for and by the “danger” of the free play of 23 meaning; any inscription of the subject, as the fi rst chapter has shown, is 24 reliant upon textuality. 25 Brulard as textual subject is both read by future readers and reads, 26 inscribes himself within other texts (Tristram Shandy, Zadig). The reader 27 constructs and deconstructs the text, just as the text frames and destabi- 28 lizes the reading subject. The autobiographical simulacrum allows for a 29 closed cycle of division and individuation of the subject. The “textuality” 30 of the text as a game of multiplicity of meaning is guaranteed by the au- 31 thor’s premature “death” (he can no longer honor the “autobio(thanato) 32 graphical pact”), his ambiguous textual signature (the “fi ve” letters in 33 Brulard, the reader of the Henriade and the Bélisaire, the “point H”), and 34 the fact that it is left “unfi nished,” the reader being encouraged to skip 35 fi fty pages ahead. 36 But the game is fi xed, the cycle of meaning is already inscribed in the 37 text. Beyle’s memories, his personal experiences, that which cannot be 38 confi ded to language, are erased from the text, protected from autobi- 39 ography. Beyle/Brulard/Stendhal is reader and text, the meaning and the 40 arbiter of meaning. Stendhal’s narrator suspends the autobiography, in 41 effect killing “Henry Brulard” to save Henri Beyle. The Ghost in the Map 59

Stendhal’s Privilege 1 2 The Vie de Henry Brulard produces the illusion of an objective distance 3 between the author and the subject of his text (himself) by staging the 4 birth of a new subject, simulating the “Life” of Brulard as text. The auto- 5 biographical is now displaced, its presence ensured by the game of textu- 6 ality but nevertheless always questioned by it. Brulard is simultaneously 7 an inscription of Beyle and also a citation of other ambiguous texts. The 8 distance or perspective gained in this textualization or emblematization 9 of the self is affi rmed as well as destabilized by the eruption of image 10 in the text. “Cartesian,” analytic maps provide for an alternate play of 11 meaning that multiplies the possibility for referentiality the more it tries 12 to defi ne and delimit the subject. The novel maps formed by other key 13 “cartographic” moments in Brulard, however, seek to recuperate the 14 self, the personal, remove it from the dangerous effects of textuality. The 15 view of Rome unfolds the totality of time and space from memory. Beyle/ 16 Stendhal kills Brulard, simultaneously gaining control of the textual game 17 while ensuring that the game will still be played. 18 The last stage of this autobiographical progression would be the “fall” 19 of the text into the novel, the great fear and ultimate desire of Brulard. 20 Chronologically, the entrance of Brulard/Beyle into Milan almost coin- 21 cides with that of the French lieutenant in Stendhal’s novel La Chartreuse 22 de Parme. Almost, but not entirely, since the autobiographical referent is 23 now lost. Similarly, the hero of that novel, Fabrice del Dongo, may be the 24 son of the French lieutenant or even of Beyle, but there is nothing in the 25 text to support the hypothesis except the coincidence of his conception 26 and the lieutenant’s passage. The novel, free of autobiography’s paternal 27 hold on meaning, unleashes the power of textuality almost to excess (the 28 encoded signals exchanged through Fabrice’s prison window are para- 29 graphs long, “expressing” emotions and sighs). Truth, the obsession of 30 Stendhal’s autobiography, is detoured in favor of literary invention, of lies. 31 The impossibility of describing Italy in Brulard has been overcome 32 through the relinquishing of the analysis of the self for the creation of 33 . In 1840, Stendhal wrote a short list of “privileges,” a sort of wish 34 list of imaginary powers (invisibility rings, immunity from impotence, a 35 steady income, etc.) that “God” would bestow on him: 36 37 God me le brevet suivant: . . . Article 7. Quatre fois par an, il 38 pourra se changer en l’homme qu’il voudra. . . . Ainsi, le privilégié pourra, 39 quatre fois par an, et pour un temps illimité chaque fois occuper deux 40 corps à la fois. (Oeuvres intimes, 1560)9 41 60 Chapter Two

1 Stendhal’s seventh privilege grants him the one power he already had in 2 his novel maps, the power to occupy various identities at the same time. 3 The literally countless pseudonyms, the literary characters whose lives cu- 4 riously follow his own (Julien, Fabrice, Lucien), and Brulard, the textual 5 subject between character and pseudonym, allow Beyle a second life in 6 the text. Beyle turned Stendhal will forever be a novel self, immaterial and 7 fl eeting, bound to the destiny of the novel. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 2 3 4 5 6 Part II 7 8 Nerval Beyond Narrative 9 10 11 Comme Henri Beyle, mais sans aucune ironie, Gérard de Nerval 12 semblait prendre plaisir à s’absenter de lui-même, disparaître de 13 son oeuvre, à dérouter le lecteur. Que d’efforts il a faits pour rester 14 inconnu!* 15 — Théophile Gautier, cited in Chotard, Nerval: 16 Mémoire de la critique, 55 17 18 19 20 21 Théophile Gautier was often an astute reader of his childhood friend 22 Gérard Labrunie (known by his most common pseudonym, Gérard de 23 Nerval). Gautier’s of Nerval as a version of Stendhal 24 without the is more apt than Gautier himself could have imagined. 25 Stendhal’s Vie de Henry Brulard was not published in Gautier’s or Ner- 26 val’s lifetimes, and yet the similarities between the two men’s works (at 27 least concerning the stakes of fi rst-person narrative) are remarkable. The 28 fi rst common trait would be what Gautier describes as the pleasure both 29 writers take in sidetracking the reader through the play of the text. Both 30 Stendhal and Nerval were obsessed by pseudonyms and the possibili- 31 ties of inscribing the subject in a literary text while erasing the trace of 32 an author (the subject of my analysis of Voyage en Orient). The second 33 similarity between the two involves their understanding of the role of 34 space in the creation of a textual self. Stendhal’s maps propose two op- 35 posing systems of conceiving the subject in time which are explored in 36 their own way by Nerval (seen in detail in chapter 4). The third parallel 37 38 39 *Like Henri Beyle, but without any irony, Gérard de Nerval seemed to take a pleasure in ab- senting himself, disappearing from his works, throwing the reader off. What effort he made to 40 remain unknown! 41

61 62 Part II

1 between them, what Gautier considers the most salient, are the renewed 2 attempts to “disappear” from their works, to write the self out of the text, 3 and therefore to escape the dangers of textuality. The end of Brulard is 4 strikingly similar to the Voyage en Orient and to Sylvie, where the narra- 5 tive abruptly ends and the narrator replaces himself with another textual 6 character. These literary substitutions allow the narrators to fl ee the death 7 inherent in autobiographical narrative, as it is openly defi ned by both 8 authors. Nerval, however, marks an advance in respect to Stendhal in his 9 last work, Aurélia, where he directly confronts death by analyzing the 10 process by which the narrated and narrating selves are fused. 11 Whereas Stendhal explored the boundaries of autobiography and fi c- 12 tion in one work, Nerval slowly modifi ed the function of first-person nar- 13 rative from the Voyage en Orient up until Aurélia, which was published 14 immediately after his death. To write thematically about Nerval risks con- 15 founding the endless repetition of events, characters, and symbols with 16 a real progression in style and . The following two 17 chapters analyze the structures of four of Nerval’s key works (the Voyage 18 en Orient, the “Généalogie fantastique,” Sylvie, and Aurélia) in order to 19 trace the development from a subjectivity where any one character can be 20 substituted for the narrator in a text (as Stendhal had done with Tristram 21 Shandy and Nerval does with exotic myths) to a subjectivity formed by 22 a fi rst-person subject who is able to incorporate multiple perspectives 23 within a novel map (as Stendhal had done with his view of Rome and 24 Nerval will do in Aurélia). The fi rst chapter, “Orientations,” studies how 25 the Voyage en Orient introduces for the fi rst time in Nerval’s work a 26 semi-autobiographical fi rst-person narrator. The role of the narrator and 27 the voyage is to write the subject in the text and to render the world of the 28 imagination literal text (as the “Orient” is already a construction of the 29 Western unconscious). The narrator becomes entangled in, and insepa- 30 rable from, the references and citations in the text. He avoids the death 31 inherent in narrative by substituting heroes of Arabic myths for himself at 32 the close of the text. The second chapter, “Unfolding Nerval,” follows the 33 subject’s attempts to untangle itself from the labyrinthine spaces of the 34 text. In the “Généalogie fantastique” and in Sylvie, the spaces of memory 35 and the spaces of the text envelop the subject; space isolates the subject 36 from the harmful effects of textuality, time, and difference. In Aurélia, the 37 “novel subject” itself is dissected into its two irreducible parts: the nar- 38 rating (sane) “je” and the narrated (insane) “je.” The two “je” inhabit the 39 same textual space but radically different places and times. Together they 40 invent a novel map, a dual perspective similar to that of Stendhal’s bird’s- 41 eye view. The dual perspective of this novel map, or in Nerval’s words, Nerval Beyond Narrative 63

“double aspect,” allows the subject to view itself as both same and other 1 across time. It both replicates the divide between Nerval’s sane and in- 2 sane selves and produces a palliative image of a unifi ed self in time and in 3 discourse. 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 CHAPTER THREE 3 4 5 6 Orientations: Writing the Self in Nerval’s 7 8 Voyage en Orient 9 10 11 12 13 Heading East 14 15 Gérard de Nerval’s Voyage en Orient would appear to be the long fi rst- 16 person travel narrative of a Parisian erudite, who travels from Paris to 17 Constantinople via Geneva, Constance, Vienna, Cerigo (Cythera), Cairo, 18 and Beirut. Inscribed within the very popular genre of exotic travel litera- 19 ture, the text repeatedly claims to be the truthful account of its narrator’s 20 experience: “Ce que j’ai écrit, je l’ai vu, je l’ai senti. Ai-je eu tort de rap- 21 porter ainsi naïvement mille incidents minutieux, dédaignés d’ordinaire 22 dans les voyages pittoresques ou scientifi ques?” (Oeuvres II, 624) (“What 23 I wrote, I saw, I felt it. Was I wrong to report in a naive way the thousand 24 little incidents, ordinarily ignored in picturesque or scientifi c travel narra- 25 tives?”). More truthful than mere picturesque voyages, such as the ones 26 written by Chateaubriand and Lamartine that use the Orient as an object 27 of style, more real than scientifi c accounts because it incorporates the 28 subjective experiences of its narrator, the Voyage en Orient attempts to 29 portray the perfect balance of ethnographic literature, anticipating Leiris 30 and Lévi-Strauss by almost a century. This apparent balance, however, is 31 only attained through the synthesis of two distinct trips taken by Ner- 32 val, the direct lifting of other travel logs and studies of the Orient, and 33 the assimilation of various Western and Eastern mythologies. Neither en- 34 tirely true, nor entirely fi ctitious, Nerval’s work transcends categories and 35 genres to create a unique work of literature based on paradox and the 36 1 emergence of the subject as text. 37 At the end of October 1839, Nerval traveled through central Europe, 38 passing Lyons, Geneva, Berne, Zurich, Constance, Munich, Salzburg, and 39 fi nally Vienna, where he stayed until March 1840. In a letter to his father, 40 dated December 2, 1839 (Oeuvres I, 836), Nerval expressed the desire to 41

65 66 Chapter Three

1 continue on to Constantinople from Vienna on a mission from the French 2 government, but his request was denied. This fi rst excursion inspired a 3 work published the following year, Les Amours de Vienne, which divides 4 the narrator into two different characters, awkwardly distorting the facts 5 of the journey. Before Nerval could realize his desire to travel to the Ori- 6 ent, he underwent his fi rst documented mental breakdown and intern- 7 ment in an asylum in Paris at the beginning of 1841. In March of that 8 year, Nerval’s friend Jules Janin published a biting “biographie anticipée” 9 (reprinted by Nerval at the beginning of Lorely, in Oeuvres II), the fallout 10 of which threatened to destroy Nerval’s personal reputation and literary 11 career.2 12 It was not until more than a year later, on December 23, 1842, that 13 Gérard de Nerval fi nally set out on a journey to Constantinople. In the 14 numerous letters to his father and to Théophile Gautier, he continually 15 justifi ed his decision to leave, claiming that it would improve his physi- 16 cal and mental health and demonstrate his sanity to the reading public.3 17 Thus before it had even begun, Nerval’s journey had a literary end: to 18 regain the respect of his peers, to re-create himself through the construc- 19 tion of a vastly complicated literary tour de force. Nerval’s goal was to 20 follow his imagination, his dreams, and his illusions of the Orient to their 21 very limit, in order to accomplish his literary work and renew himself in 22 literature. This creates a paradox, according to Ross Chambers, since he 23 cannot travel both to escape his insanity and at the same time to intensify 24 it (Gérard de Nerval et la poétique du voyage, 23). Travel intensifi es per- 25 ceptions, like an attenuated version of madness, promising to reveal other 26 worlds, while remaining fi rmly entrenched in the real. Through travel, as 27 he reiterates in his letters, Nerval will fi nd a way to pursue his visions and 28 collect material for his work by living his future text. 29 Nerval began negotiating the publication of his Voyage in the middle 30 of the voyage itself. The fi rst published account was an open letter to 31 Gautier in the Journal de Constantinople on September 7, 1843 (Oeuvres 32 I, 1436–37). Yet due to the vicissitudes of publishing houses and the Revo- 33 lution of 1848, fragments appeared at uneven intervals; the crucial sections 34 dealing with the initiation myths (“Les Pyramides,” “Histoire du calife 35 Hakem,” and “Histoire de la Reine du matin”) appeared only in 1850 36 (Bowman, La conquête de soi par l’écriture, 146–47). The two-volume 37 Voyage en Orient blends the trip to Vienna and the one to Constantinople 38 into one, often inventing itineraries not followed by Nerval (such as the 39 journey across the Adriatic to Cerigo). It was fi nally published in 1851, 40 some ten years after Nerval fi rst planned his voyage to Constantinople, 41 and only four years before his death. Orientations 67

The Voyage holds a privileged place in Nerval’s corpus: it marks a re- 1 generation of his literary career, it stands as his fi rst major (fi rst-person) 2 narrative, and it introduces themes that will be central to all of his sub- 3 sequent texts. A study of the construction of this text and a close analy- 4 sis of the relation of the narrating subject to space will provide the key 5 to understanding Nerval’s fi nal works (the subject of the next chapter). 6 Tightly structured chapters present episodes and places that correspond, 7 leading the narrator not so much in a circuitous journey as in a spiral, 8 returning to the same place but not on the same plane.4 Similarly, the 9 narrator follows a double trajectory: as his experiences and knowledge 10 of the Orient he perceives widen (destroying the illusions he had formed 11 in Europe), the place reserved in the text for observation narrows until 12 the recounting of myth dominates. The myths themselves repeat each 13 other and increasingly refl ect the experience of the narrator. Subject and 14 subject matter, narrator and text, eventually become indistinguishable 15 from each other, just as the “real” voyage was from the beginning both 16 lived and literary, real and imagined. Nerval’s subject becomes entangled 17 in the fabric of the text; his fi nal works Sylvie and Aurélia will attempt 18 to free him. 19 20 21 Illusions, Lost and Found 22 23 The ninety-page introduction to the Voyage en Orient, entitled “Vers 24 l’Orient,” recounts the narrator’s trip from Paris to the East (of Europe), 25 south to the Greek islands, ending at his arrival in Alexandria. On a 26 smaller scale, it reproduces the spiral structure of the whole, anticipates 27 the themes, places, and myths of the remaining three chapters, renders the 28 familiar neighboring Western countries as foreign as possible, while posit- 29 ing truth, as he imagines it, in the Orient. The continual disappointments 30 faced by the narrator foreshadow his general disillusionment; his experi- 31 ence becomes progressively literary and textual as he approaches Alex- 32 andria. The narrator5 addresses the text to a friend, describing himself as 33 “un touriste parti de Paris en plein novembre” (Oeuvres II, 3) (“a tour- 34 ist who left Paris in the middle of November”), without any particular 35 itinerary or destination, depending on chance (“j’aime dépendre un peu 36 du hasard” 12), and traveling on the tightest of budgets. Gérard’s lack of 37 entourage, absence of fi xed plans, and minimal budget contrast with the 38 extravagance of most European literary travelers (notably Chateaubri- 39 and) in the way they translate the instability of this textual and literary 40 subject. Only when he arrives in Geneva does he “orient” his wander- 41 68 Chapter Three

1 ings, and subtly suggests the purpose for the voyage/text: “Où vais-je? 2 Où peut-on souhaiter aller en hiver? Je vais au-devant du printemps, je 3 vais au-devant du soleil . . . Il fl amboie à mes yeux dans les brumes colo- 4 rées de l’Orient” (12) (“Where am I going? Where can you want to go 5 in winter? I am going ahead of the spring, ahead of the sun . . . It fl ashes 6 before my eyes in the colored fogs of the Orient.”) Finding himself in the 7 Alps in winter, surrounded by snow, Gérard is inspired by the metaphori- 8 cal fl ames of sunset which transform into the colored haze of his imag- 9 ined Orient. Already the perceptions of his sublime surroundings evoke 10 their paradoxical opposites, transcending reality and reaching toward the 11 heights of the imagination. This imaginary trip will render time spatial, 12 as the narrator travels ahead of spring, ahead of the sun, to a country 13 with an eternal summer, an unforgiving sun (his feelings of the Egyptian 14 climate will become decidedly less optimistic: “Je ne veux pas dire, qu’un 15 éternel été fasse une vie toujours joyeuse. Le soleil noir de la mélancolie” 16 (132) (“I do not mean that an eternal sun always makes for a joyous life. 17 The black sun of melancholy”). The narrator’s motivation for traveling to 18 the Orient is from the beginning expressed in terms of a renewed poetic 19 (“Le soleil noir de la mélancolie” will reappear in his much later 20 poem “El Desdichado”), a surpassing of the subject’s place in time. 21 The mechanism of the subject’s inscription into text, the power of met- 22 aphor to bridge the distance between subject and object, along with the 23 dangers involved in this process, are already apparent in the next para- 24 graph: “Ce sont bien les hautes Alpes que l’on découvre de tous côtés à 25 l’horizon. Mais où est le mont Blanc? . . . J’ai fi ni par l’admirer sous la 26 forme d’un immense nuage blanc et rouge, qui réalisait le rêve de mon 27 imagination” (12–13) (“Those are really the high Alps that one can see on 28 all sides of the horizon. But where is Mont Blanc? . . . I ended up admir- 29 ing it in the form of an immense white and red cloud, which fulfi lled the 30 dream of my imagination”). Searching for the ideal mountain, with all its 31 symbolic majesty, in the “dream of his imagination,” Gérard necessarily 32 misses the real mountain. Nineteenth-century graphic representations of 33 Geneva often exaggerated the view of Mont Blanc (the 1984 edition of 34 Nerval’s Oeuvres complètes II, 1406n), thus offering the narrator a mis- 35 leading image. This “Mont Blanc,” “Mount Blank,” or phonetically “My 36 Blank,” is an illusion lacking a base, a blank in which the imagination can 37 inscribe itself. The quest for the imaginary, as apparent here, progresses 38 by a rewriting over the blank of perception. The “real” Mont Blanc can 39 only cause him “little impression,” as the imaginary one has already been 40 imprinted. The real danger involved in this deceptive metaphor is humor- 41 Orientations 69 ously portrayed by the image of Gérard walking into the void to plant a 1 fl ag on top of his cloud/mountain. 2 This scene is paralleled in the chapter “Druses et Maronites,” when 3 Gérard, led by a guide named Moussa (“Moses”) (310), penetrates into 4 the mountains of Lebanon. Just as the colorful sunset of Geneva called up 5 images of the Orient, the whiteness of the Lebanese mountains evokes the 6 Alps (330). He imagines all the possible etymologies of the word Lebanon 7 (“Liban” in French), placing enormous symbolic value on the journey: 8 9 En entendant ce mot leben, je me rappelais qu’il veut dire en allemand la 10 vie. Le Liban tire aussi son nom de ce mot leben, et le doit à la blancheur 11 des neiges qui couvrent ses montagnes, et que les Arabes, au des 12 sables enfl ammés du désert, rêvent de loin comme le lait leben[ in Ara- 13 bic]—comme la vie!6 (318) 14 15 The blankness of the snow, the fantastic plurality of meanings of the 16 word “leben,” delude the Arab travelers as well as Gérard, just as the 17 snows of Mont Blanc (l-[e]-banon) melt into the clouds. Instead of fi nding 18 “life” near the summits, he happens upon the perpetual civil war between 19 two religions, rendering literal the danger of Mont Blanc, the danger of 20 confusing metaphors with objects. 21 Gérard’s impressions of Constance develop even further his desire to 22 transcend opposites, to pursue the illusions of the imagination, and divine 23 the Orient from the Occident (17–18). Constance is a beautiful “name” 24 (evoking permanence and calm), a beautiful “memory,” the seal binding 25 the contradictions of Europe together. It is also geographically and sym- 26 bolically homologous to Constantinople (Constance/tinople), and is used 27 by Nerval to tie together confl icting cultures as well as the chapters of 28 his text. Constance, the “Stamboul d’Occident” (19) (“the Istanbul of the 29 West”), however, does not live up to its imagined reputation: “En appro- 30 chant, on trouvait ensuite la ville elle-même indigne de sa renommée et de 31 sa situation merveilleuse . . . à la place de Constance, imaginons Pontoise, 32 et nous voilà davantage dans le vrai” (19) (“Approaching the city, one 33 then fi nds it unworthy of its reputation and marvelous . . . instead 34 of Constance, imagine [the Parisian suburb of] Pointoise, you would be 35 closer to the truth”). Time after time, Gérard describes the beauty of a 36 city from afar, only to be disappointed at its vulgarity or unimpressive 37 size seen from up close (as he will do most notably for the Pyramids and 38 for Constantinople). The “true” Constance can never be one with itself, 39 since it cannot embody the entirety of associations locked in its name: 40 41 70 Chapter Three

1 either it is the unspectacular Pontoise, or it is the distant and faded re- 2 minder of Constantinople. 3 The narrating subject that passes through these cities must necessar- 4 ily be elsewhere as well, existing in two different places (one imagined 5 and one perceived), and often different times, simultaneously, as a reader 6 engrossed in a novel or a spectator at the theater. The experience for the 7 idealistic traveler is fatiguing, in so far as he becomes disenchanted with 8 the world: 9 10 C’est une impression douloureuse, à mesure qu’on va plus loin, de perdre, 11 ville à ville et pays à pays, tout ce bel univers qu’on s’est créé jeune, par 12 les lectures, par les tableaux et par les rêves. Le monde qui se compose 13 ainsi dans la tête de l’enfant est si riche et si beau, qu’on ne sait s’il est le 14 résultat exagéré d’idées apprises, ou si c’est un ressouvenir d’une existence 15 antérieure et la géographie d’une planète inconnue.7 (19) 16 17 The imaginary universe created by the child dreamer, and destroyed by 18 the adult traveler, seems too beautiful, too full, not to be true. That this 19 universe could be the memory of a past life and of another hardly 20 seems like an extravagant idea to the narrator. Indeed, the text itself un- 21 dertakes the mapping of the geography of the imagination and the ex- 22 ploration of the past, echoed in the three different initiation myths, all of 23 which contain elaborate descriptions of an underground world open only 24 to the privileged few who can unlock the past. 25 Instead of avoiding the possibly corrupting “readings,” “paintings,” 26 and “dreams” that facilitated the creation of the imaginary universe, the 27 text increasingly relies on their active presence to drive forward the voy- 28 age and the narrative. He compares Munich to a star in the fantastic voy- 29 ages of a d’Assoucy or a Cyrano de Bergerac, where the only inhabitants 30 are painters and where their creations have material existences. Every 31 building in Munich seems to be the painted copy of a famous model; its 32 museums overfl ow with precious canvases (24). His observations of Mu- 33 nich’s other artistic treasures are tainted by the comparison, and thus he 34 leaves the city the same day, before his theories can be disproved. 35 In order to describe his “impressions sentimentales” (“sentimental im- 36 pressions”) of Vienna, the “avant goût de l’Orient” (“the foretaste of the 37 East”), Gérard calls upon the help of Sterne, , Captain Cook, 38 Byron, and Molière (31–32). The plethora of citations across geographi- 39 cal and temporal boundaries creates a confusing web of references that 40 threatens to prevent any authentic experience of Vienna for the narrator 41 (and for the reader). Consequently, Gérard’s fi rst real impressions of the Orientations 71 city are not favorable; he wanders the streets confused by the culture, ig- 1 norant of the language. Arriving in Vienna without understanding the lo- 2 cal dialect, he sets out to fi nd “quelque jolie personne de la ville qui veuille 3 bien me mettre au courant du langage usuel” (31) (“some pretty person 4 from the city who would like to catch me up to speed with everyday 5 language”). In a theater he meets his perfect “interpreter”: “Imagine que 6 c’est une beauté de celles que nous avons tant de fois rêvées—la femme 7 idéale des tableaux de l’école italienne, la Vénitienne de Gozzi, bionda e 8 grassota, la voilà trouvée!” (33) (“Imagine that she is a beauty like those 9 we have so often dreamed about—the ideal woman from the paintings of 10 the Italian school, Gozzi’s Venetian, bionda e grassota, has been found!”). 11 His relations with the text’s fi rst love interest belie his obsession, not with 12 romance, but with an artistic and linguistic ideal. The woman as walking 13 canvas becomes an for the city and the language: “J’ai expliqué 14 à cette beauté qu’elle me plaisait, surtout—parce qu’elle était pour ainsi 15 dire Austro-Vénitienne, et qu’elle réalisait en elle seule le Saint-Empire 16 romain, ce qui paraît peu la toucher” (33) (“I explained to this beauty 17 that I liked her especially because she was, so to speak, Austro-Venetian, 18 and that she incarnated by herself the entire Holy Roman Empire, which 19 seemed to touch her little”). She becomes, as Constance was the seal of 20 Europe and Vienna the bridge between East and West, a symbol for the 21 overcoming of opposites and a vehicle for the narrator’s imagination, to 22 her own genuine indifference. Needless to say, they fail to communicate 23 effectively, and Gérard fi nds other loves, only leaving Vienna because of 24 an eventual broken heart. Like Cairo, which it foreshadows, Vienna dif- 25 fers from the other cities in that it fi rst appears vulgar, and only gradually 26 discloses its splendor, like the lifting of a veil. It would seem to be a city 27 that allows the narrator to create the story of his own adventures (56), 28 adventures inspired by actual (sentimental) experience that enable him 29 to let go of his previous images: “A Vienne, cet hiver, j’ai continuelle- 30 ment vécu dans un rêve. Est-ce déjà la douce atmosphère de l’Orient qui 31 agit sur ma tête et sur mon coeur?” (60) (“In Vienna, that winter, I lived 32 continuously in a dream. Was it the gentle atmosphere of the Orient that 33 acted on my head and my heart?”). 34 The Viennese dream ends on the Adriatic, and Gérard attempts in 35 vain to realize an artistic ideal of the classical world on his journey past 36 Greece. His fi rst stop to this mythic land is Cerigo, the island of Cythera, 37 inspiration for Watteau and home of a cult to Venus. The narrator bases 38 his knowledge of the cult on the account by Francesco Colonna, itself 39 related by a , Franciscus Columna, by Charles Nodier. Colonna, 40 a Renaissance monk who wrote a bizarre treatise on erotic mysticism 41 72 Chapter Three

1 (Hypnerotomachia Poliphili), becomes the archetype in the text for the 2 mythic initiation of all artists (Schaeffer, 38–39). Colonna’s description of 3 Cythera is entirely imagined, his knowledge of true love as well. Gérard 4 laments his own need for real experience and empirical evidence: “Et moi 5 qui vais descendre dans cette île sacrée que Francesco a décrite sans l’avoir 6 vue, ne suis-je pas toujours, hélas! le fi ls d’un siècle déshérité d’illusions, 7 qui a besoin de toucher pour croire, et de rêver le passé . . . sur ses débris?” 8 (67) (“And I who am going to stop on this sacred island that Francesco 9 described without having seen it, am I not still, alas! the son of a century 10 disinherited of illusions, which needs to touch in order to believe, and to 11 dream of the past . . . on its ruins?”). Literary invention and imagination 12 would be superior to empirical observation, and Gérard’s need to experi- 13 ence the real, to wander ruins, reveals the inferiority of those who were 14 born after the Revolution. However, Francesco’s literary invention, and 15 the citation of Nodier’s interpretation of it, betrays Nerval’s own literary 16 fabrication. If Gérard is el Desdichado, the disinherited of illusions, Ner- 17 val himself certainly was not; like Colonna, he never traveled to Cerigo, 18 basing his account solely on other texts and his own imagination. 19 The resurrection of imagination through writing is confi rmed upon 20 arrival in Alexandria, the city where Greece meets Egypt and the intro- 21 duction comes to a close. Paradoxically, the narrator begins by writing, 22 “Tu auras compris sans doute la pensée qui m’a fait brusquement quitter 23 Vienne . . . je m’arrache à des souvenirs” (89) (“You will have understood 24 probably the idea which suddenly made me leave Vienna . . . I am tear- 25 ing myself away from memories”). Only after thirty pages of text that 26 describe the ideal Greece of Gérard’s memory and imagination does he 27 “confess” to the reader that he is running away from his memories. More 28 accurately it would seem that his memories are tearing him away from 29 reality, or even away from life. The last paragraphs of the “Introduction: 30 Vers l’Orient” not only elaborate the general aspects of Alexandria and 31 Egypt, but also the psychological state of the narrator: 32 33 L’Égypte est un vaste tombeau; c’est l’impression qu’elle m’a faite en abor- 34 dant sur cette plage d’Alexandrie, qui, avec ses ruines et ses monticules, 35 offre aux yeux des tombeaux épars sur une terre de cendres. Des ombres 36 drapées de linceuls bleuâtres circulent parmi ces débris. . . . J’aurais mieux 37 aimé les souvenirs de l’antiquité grecque; mais tout cela est détruit, rasé, 38 méconnaissable.8 (89) 39 40 Remarkably similar to Stendhal’s Rome, another “city of tombs” that 41 marks the death of the author and the birth of the textual subject, Alex- Orientations 73 andria is only a wasteland of ruins and ashes, the burial ground of the 1 classical world. The ruins of Pompeii’s Column and Cleopatra’s Baths 2 do not inspire Gérard’s weakened imagination. The hills are too small to 3 provoke the sublime emotion of the Alps, the 1,500 years of the “mod- 4 ern” Alexandria pales next to the mere memories of the ancient city. The 5 narrator who attempts to “tear himself away from memories” admits to 6 having “la pudeur de la souffrance, comme l’animal blessé qui se retire 7 dans la solitude pour y souffrir longtemps ou pour y succomber sans 8 plainte” (89) (“modesty with regards to suffering, like a wounded animal 9 which cowers in solitude in order to suffer a long time or to die there 10 without a whimper”). The suffering alluded to after Vienna, the mount- 11 ing deceptions of Greece, and the desolation of Alexandria suggest not 12 that Gérard is fl eeing a romantic fi asco, but rather the lost world of his 13 illusions, the death of himself as author or authority. The narrator’s Eu- 14 ropean imaginary, continually at odds with perceived reality, has been 15 buried at the end of the introduction, allowing for the creation of a new, 16 “Oriental,” imaginary that will be written into the text in harmony with 17 the narrator’s experience and apprenticeship in Arab myth. The narrator 18 will, from now on, be written with and into the text, until he will eventu- 19 ally become indistinguishable from it. 20 21 22 Assimilations and Translations 23 24 The remaining three chapters of Nerval’s Voyage, “Les Femmes du Caire,” 25 “Druses et Maronites,” and “Les Nuits du Ramazan,” fi nd Gérard at- 26 tempting to assimilate Islamic culture and document his experience as a 27 foreign “inside” observer. In contrast to the “Introduction: Vers l’Orient,” 28 where his imagination never coincided with perceived reality, the Orient 29 itself will prove to be a continual mystery to be unraveled through the in- 30 terpretation and rewriting of fragmentary information (personal observa- 31 tion, citation, and imagination). If Edward Said is correct, then the Orient 32 is more a cultural construction of the Occident (which constructs itself in 33 the process) than an actual geographical entity; the system of knowledge 34 concerned with the Orient describes it less as a place “than [as] a topos, a 35 set of references, a congeries of characteristics, that seems to have its ori- 36 gin in a quotation, or a fragment of a text, or a citation from someone’s 37 work on the Orient, or some bit of previous imagining, or an amalgam of 38 all these” (Orientalism, 177).9 39 The Orient would, in short, be a text; one to be read, interpreted, con- 40 densed, or copied. In the distinctly literary pilgrimages undertaken by 41 74 Chapter Three

1 Lamartine, Flaubert, and Nerval to the Orient, despite the sometimes 2 overbearing presence of a “narrative consciousness” (in this case Gérard) 3 that centers the text around the uniqueness of its experiences, there is the 4 eventual realization on the part of this very narrative consciousness “that 5 pilgrimage is after all a form of copying” (Orientalism, 177). Gérard, ever 6 the polytheist, will make many pilgrimages to different temples, copy- 7 ing the various discourses that make up the “Orient” (and the Western 8 subject), and reorienting them, layering them for the creation of a new 9 textual subject. The Voyage en Orient is, then, not only the fi ctionalized 10 work of Nerval’s already literary voyage to Constantinople, but also Gé- 11 rard’s voyage through the text that is the Orient. In assimilating himself 12 to the culture of the Orient, in becoming “Oriental,” he becomes text. 13 Indeed, this assimilation, this becoming text, happens through the learning 14 of Arabic, the deciphering of cultural codes, the apprenticeship of religious 15 and Masonic initiation rites: that is, through translation and writing. 16 The fi rst of the “Oriental” chapters, “Les Femmes du Caire,” relies on 17 an extended allegorization of the city of Cairo as a veiled woman. The veil 18 is a privileged fi gure of the allegorical mode, as it draws attention to the 19 truth that allegory seeks to reveal and to hide (since allegory is to say one 20 thing while meaning another).10 The veil is, obviously, a screen that covers 21 a woman’s face, but it also is a screen onto which the gazing subject can 22 project any image. As Gérard discovers, behind the screen of the veil is a 23 woman gazing back, upsetting the power dynamic of the Western male 24 subject objectifying the Oriental woman. If a veiled woman is an allegory 25 of Cairo, then the narrator’s experience of Cairo exposes his relationship 26 to allegory and to language in general as the locus of repressed desire. 27 The fi rst sentence states clearly, “Le Caire est la ville du Levant où 28 les femmes sont encore le plus hermétiquement voilées” (90) (“Cairo is 29 the city of the Levant where the women are still the most hermetically 30 veiled”). Within this sentence, there is the anticipation that the veil will 31 be lifted, the words “still” and “Levant” (in French “raising” or “lifting”) 32 suggesting that it is only a matter of time before Egyptian women con- 33 form to modernity. According to the narrator, the veils of Egypt discour- 34 age the “frivolous” European traveler, who usually only stays in Cairo a 35 week. He sets himself apart by proclaiming that “la patience était la plus 36 grande vertu des initiés antiques. Pourquoi passer si vite? Arrêtons-nous, 37 et cherchons à soulever un coin du voile austère de la déesse de Saïs” (90) 38 (“Patience was the greatest virtue of ancient initiates. Why pass through 39 so quickly? Let us stop and try to lift up a corner of the austere veil of the 40 goddess of Sais”). Gérard thus places himself in the position of an initiate 41 into the ways of the Orient, though already confl ating the ancient (the Orientations 75 worship of a pharaonic goddess) with the modern (the veil as an element 1 of Islam). His initiation will take place over time and will end with the 2 lifting of the veil and the truth of the city: “La ville elle-même, comme ses 3 habitantes, ne dévoile que peu à peu ses retraites les plus ombragées, ses 4 intérieurs les plus charmants” (92) (“The city herself, like its inhabitants, 5 only unveils little by little its darkest retreats, its most charming interi- 6 ors”). As opposed to the cities of the North that offered all of their mys- 7 teries immediately (Gérard only spends one day in Geneva, Constance, 8 and Munich), the space of Cairo, its mysteries, and the changes in Gé- 9 rard’s own consciousness unfold slowly over many months. 10 The initiation begins when the narrator decides to follow a wedding 11 procession into the “labyrinth” of Cairo’s streets. By following the wed- 12 ding, by witnessing the husband’s “journée de triomphe et d’illusion” 13 (100) (“day of triumph and illusion”) when he is fi nally able to lift his 14 wife’s veil, Gérard will simultaneously have a better understanding of 15 “Les Femmes du Caire” and a map to the city streets. City space and the 16 woman’s veil are repeatedly confused. His dragoman, Abdullah, warns 17 him of the danger of exploring the city at night, and so Gérard disguises 18 himself to blend into the crowd. He witnesses the spectacle of dance and 19 song that accompanies the celebration, comments on the variety and col- 20 ors of the veils, and lists the various Arabic words that describe the event. 21 Fearing that his identity will be revealed, he strives to imitate the gestures 22 of the crowd; but he wishes to continue the procession indoors, as he is 23 aware of the need for spoken language. His dragoman gives the fi rst lan- 24 guage lesson: “Tayeb! c’est une réponse à tout . . . Et d’ailleurs je suis là 25 pour détourner la conversation” (97) (“Tayeb! is a response to everything 26 . . . And anyways I am there to change the conversation”). Abdullah does 27 in fact lead conversations, but not always where the narrator would like. 28 Tayeb is the narrator’s one-word pass into Egypt, a substitute word, like 29 a blank, that allows him to be inserted into the Cairene populace: 30 31 C’est un mot qui, selon l’intonation qu’on y apporte, signifi e toute sorte 32 de choses; on ne peut toutefois le comparer au goddam des Anglais, à 33 moins que ce ne soit pour marquer la différence qu’il y a entre un peuple 34 certainement fort poli et une nation tout au plus policée. Le mot tayeb 35 veut dire tour à tour: Très bien, ou voilà qui est bien, ou cela est parfait, 36 ou à votre service, le ton et surtout le geste y ajoutant des nuances infi - 37 nies.11 (97) 38 39 Unlike Figaro’s “goddam,” which marks the speaker’s relation to the world 40 as one of revolt and negation in the face of a policing society, the nar- 41 76 Chapter Three

1 rator’s tayeb underscores his general philosophy of affi rmation and his 2 willingness to place himself on the same level as his interlocutor. Those 3 who use this word are very “polie” (“polite” or “polished”), permitting a 4 smooth transition across space and language. This verbal passport of af- 5 fi rmation gains him access to any location in the city, and stands in place 6 of any detailed knowledge of the language. 7 Gérard’s observations of marriage rites become more personal when he 8 is told by his neighborhood sheik that in order to rent a house in the non- 9 European area and conform to local custom, he must live with a woman. 10 Ensue long negotiations with the sheik, various consultations with friends 11 and the French Embassy as to his options, and descriptions of the Coptic, 12 European, Islamic, African, and Asian candidates. This gives the narra- 13 tor the opportunity not only to attempt to delineate the class and ra- 14 cial categories of Cairene women (which proves impossible), but also to 15 underscore the tight social fabric of Islamic society. Gérard, the solitary 16 wanderer who travels on hardly any budget, inadvertently fi nds himself 17 at the head of an important household, employing seemingly dozens of 18 people in order to integrate into a society that is not his own. 19 Still obliged to fi nd a woman in order to become a “citizen of Cairo,” 20 but unwilling to marry a woman who is not his ideal, he settles upon the 21 idea of buying a slave who can also cook. His good European conscience 22 promises to set her free at the end of the journey and to treat her with 23 respect. Reversing his European prejudices, the expectations of his slave 24 reveal the complexities of Islamic society, where according to Nerval the 25 women wield more real power than women in Europe and where the 26 masters have more responsibilities than the slaves. Gérard’s greatest dif- 27 fi culties in appropriating his slave are linguistic. She is from the Indian 28 Ocean, perhaps Javanese, and so doubly foreign to the narrator. When he 29 is in negotiations to purchase her, he asks for her name, in order to make 30 the process appear less commercial: 31 32 Je demandai son nom . . . j’achetais le nom aussi, naturellement; –Z’n’b ! 33 dit Abd-el-Kérim. –Z’n’b, répéta Abdallah avec un grand effort de 34 contraction nasale. Je ne pouvais pas comprendre que l’éternuement de 35 trois consonnes représentat un nom. Il me fallut quelque temps pour 36 deviner que cela pouvait se prononcer Zeynab.12 (173) 37 38 Unable even to buy her name, he can never truly possess her, and must 39 make do with approximations and condescension. 40 His second Arabic lesson after tayeb occurs when he tries to commu- 41 nicate with her to discourage her from looking out the window at some Orientations 77 young men (183–84). He remembers the word Lah, the relatively polite 1 way of saying “no,” but is taught by Zeynab a harsher word as she refuses 2 the food he offers. Only later does he discover that the word, Mafi sch, 3 “comprend toutes les négations possibles” (190) (“includes all possible 4 negations”). Tayeb and mafi sch represent the affi rmative and the nega- 5 tive, creation and destruction, inscription and erasure, acceptance and 6 refusal, providing the two poles on the axis of language that allow Gé- 7 rard to navigate the Orient. Armed with his slave and these two words 8 out of which his intelligence will supply the rest of the language (189), 9 Gérard can now dismiss his dragoman, and attempt to live without an 10 interpreter. He no longer requires the mediation of the “Oriental,” since 11 he now imagines that he has immediate access to the Other. 12 Through his relationship with his slave, Gérard begins to understand 13 the allegory of Cairo, to see what is underneath the veil. The veil has been 14 lifted, his ideal glimpsed, but his desire is not fulfi lled. At the end of his 15 stay in Cairo, Gérard, on top of the Great Pyramid, is told by a traveler 16 from Berlin the fi rst of the three myths that structure theVoyage. Accord- 17 ing to various authorities, the ancient Egyptians held initiation rites under 18 the pyramids; the neophyte had to fi nd his way across many obstacles 19 through labyrinths over a period of forty days. He then would witness 20 the veil of the goddess Isis fall, and his ideal woman would appear for 21 a brief instant. His last test would be similar to the story of Adam and 22 Eve: placed in an idyllic garden with the incarnation of this ideal woman, 23 would he take the forbidden fruit? If the neophyte imitates Adam, “sa 24 punition devait être alors d’errer dans le monde, et de répandre chez les 25 nations étrangères les instructions qu’il avait reçues des prêtres” (226) 26 (“his punishment was then to wander the world, spreading to foreign 27 nations the teachings he had received from the priests”). Gérard’s fi rst 28 initiation is similarly unsuccessful. The “secrets” of Cairo prove to be 29 pleasant, but hopelessly domestic and full of responsibility, like the day 30 after a honeymoon. Having lifted the allegorical veil, his desire for the 31 fruit of knowledge is frustrated and he is destined to wander. 32 33 34 A Deadly Dénouement 35 36 The following chapter, “Druses et Maronites,” presents Gérard’s travel in 37 Lebanon through his discovery of two of its religious sects, the Druse and 38 the Maronites. Once again he will proceed literally to initiate himself into 39 the Orient through symbol and marriage, but in an even more explicit 40 way than in Egypt. Though still accompanied by and devoted to Zeynab, 41 78 Chapter Three

1 the narrator decides to marry a young woman from this “sol sacré qui est 2 notre première patrie à tous, que je me retrempe à ces sources vivifi antes 3 de l’humanité” (338) (“sacred soil which is everyone’s fi rst homeland, 4 where I bathe myself again in the invigorating springs of humanity”). 5 Marriage to a woman from Lebanon would be marrying into the sacred 6 culture of humanity that would complete the narrator’s assimilation into 7 the Orient and guarantee a rebirth in the text. 8 The cliché of the Orient as the rejuvenating source of civilization and 9 the renewal of the self through marriage is here taken at face value, de- 10 spite the anticipation of the reader’s mockery (338). The ironic tone of 11 the next passage suggests that there is now a critical distance between the 12 text and the narrator, one that will soon close up as the author/narrator’s 13 “life” becomes a novel: 14 15 J’aime à conduire ma vie comme un roman, et je me place volontiers dans 16 la situation d’un de ces héros actifs et résolus qui veulent à tout prix créer 17 autour d’eux le drame, le noeud, l’intérêt, l’action en un mot. Le hasard, 18 si puissant qu’il soit, n’a jamais réuni les éléments d’un sujet passable, et 19 tout au plus en a-t-il disposé la mise en scène; aussi, laissons-le faire, et 20 tout avorte malgré les plus belles dispositions. Puisqu’il est convenu qu’il 21 n’y a que deux sortes de dénouements, le mariage ou la mort, visons du 22 moins à l’un des deux . . . car jusqu’ici mes aventures se sont presque 23 toujours arrêtées à l’.13 (338–39) 24 25 Here, near the center of the work (page 338 out of 624), the theories of 26 the novel, of the Voyage, and of marriage are fused together in a compli- 27 cated syllogism. The novel, according to the narrator (and the placement 28 of this citation in the text), centers all the apparently divergent discourses 29 of fi ction through drama, the narrative knot, “interest,” and action on the 30 “active and resolute hero,” in this case, the often inactive and irresolute 31 Gérard. Conducting his life like a novel, or more precisely writing himself 32 into a roman-ticized travel narrative, the narrator becomes his own au- 33 thor (and thus does away with the implied author). The master of his own 34 textual destiny, he can write himself into the text of the Orient. 35 “Le hasard,” chance or perhaps simply reality, has never been able to 36 unite the various elements that make up a “passable subject”: both in the 37 sense of the subject of theater (the truth is stranger than fi ction, and so 38 does not make for good drama) and in the sense of the subject as individ- 39 ual who must create an origin and a narrative in order to tie together the 40 random events that make up lived experience. If left to chance, everything 41 fails. The only solution, according to this passage, would be to embrace Orientations 79 the conventions of theater, of literature. By confusing life and text, every- 1 thing is given meaning in the teleological economy of narrative, where 2 there are no remainders and every event leads to the dénouement. Now 3 in the middle of the text, Gérard has already placed himself in a narrative, 4 but must invent an ending that will make sense of his wandering. The 5 conventions of theater only allow two types of dénouement, marriage or 6 death, and Gérard chooses the least grim. Though it may seem comic that 7 both marriage and death have the same effect, the narrator takes this lit- 8 erally. The end of the text would also mean the end of the textual subject, 9 an eventuality to be avoided at all costs. The remainder of the Voyage will 10 see the narrator successively approach and then move away from any sort 11 of dénouement. 12 Gérard’s chosen object of affection is a young blond Arab woman, 13 Zeynab’s friend at the French School in Beirut. What piques his interest 14 is not only the paradoxical fact, for Gérard at least, that she is blond and 15 Arab, thus reuniting supposed opposites, but that her father is the im- 16 prisoned rebel Sheik Eschérazy, member of the mysterious Druse religion. 17 The narrator’s goal is to use his connections and his stature as a European 18 to arrange for the release of the father with the hope of obtaining the 19 hand of the daughter, Salèma. Through multiple ruses, Gérard coaxes the 20 sheik to explain the details of his secret religion, one that blends elements 21 of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and a belief in the transmigration of souls 22 (354). Predictably, this “universal” religion, whose believers worship in- 23 discriminately in mosques or in churches, represents for the narrator (like 24 Salèma’s blond hair) the key to bridging East and West, and by extension 25 text (in the form of the Orient) and subject. 26 The sheik’s story corresponds to the second myth of the text, the forty- 27 page “Histoire du caliphe Hakem.” Nerval’s Hakem (Al-Hakim) is more 28 or less in conformity with the more fantastical versions of history: as 29 the ruler of Egypt around 1000 a.d., he married his sister and set fi re to 30 Cairo in a bout of insane rage reminiscent of Nero. According to Nerval’s 31 account, the caliph had a ferouer, a double, who reigned in his place, 32 while the real Hakem was imprisoned. The story of this divine madman 33 intersects with Nerval’s own preoccupations, hints of his previous men- 34 tal health problems, and foreshadows Aurélia. Within the text itself, the 35 caliph’s projected marriage with his sister, the incarnation of the ideal 36 woman, repeats the theme of the fi rst myth heard on the Great Pyramid, 37 and the narrator’s own obsession with the daughter of the storyteller. 38 This second myth refl ects not only the beliefs of the Druse, but invokes 39 other places and passages within the text (the story is told in Lebanon, 40 but refers back to Cairo), and events in the life of the author, Nerval. The 41 80 Chapter Three

1 distinction between the life of a reincarnated god and the life of the nar- 2 rator and author, the tensions between fi rst-person travel narrative and 3 fi ctional novel, have been so blurred that they coexist on the same level 4 in the text. 5 After listening to the sheik’s story and negotiating his release from 6 prison, Gérard asks for Salèma’s hand in marriage. The sheik refuses since 7 the narrator is not a Druse, and the Druse accept no converts: “la plume 8 est brisée, l’encre est sèche, le livre est fermé” (426) (“the pen is broken, 9 the ink is dried, the book is closed”). No one, it is implied, can enter the 10 Druse communion whose ancestor was not also Druse; the book of mem- 11 bers is shut; it is impossible for Gérard to write himself into the Oriental 12 text, since it has already been written. Desperate, he remembers vague 13 similarities between the beliefs of the Druse and Freemasonry, convincing 14 himself and the sheik that the Knights Templar (spiritual ancestors of the 15 Masons) adopted the ways of the Druse during the Crusades (an affi rma- 16 tion not unique to Nerval’s work). For further proof, Gérard presents his 17 Masonic diplomas, full of cabalistic signs, to the sheik, who fi nally agrees 18 to the union (429). Through a ruse bordering on forgery, the narrator is 19 able to pass himself off as “Oriental,” to insert himself into the closed 20 book of the Druse. 21 However, just as the marriage becomes a possibility, Gérard suddenly 22 comes down with a suspicious fever whose only remedy is to leave the 23 country (432). Gérard claims that “l’homme s’agite et Dieu le mène” (432) 24 (“man moves about and God leads him”), inferring that the “man of ac- 25 tion” who wrote his own destiny is now at the mercy of a higher power. 26 Moreover, the subchapter following the sheik’s tale is entitled “Corre- 27 spondance (Fragments),” the “chain” of time is broken (421), the succes- 28 sion of logical events is fragmented. Renouncing his hopes (or fears) of 29 marriage, he places Zeynab in the care of the sheik and his daughter, and 30 travels on to Constantinople. The narrator continues to fl ee any deadly 31 dénouement, and abandons any agency to God or, perhaps, to the text. 32 The concluding chapter of the Voyage, “Les Nuits du Ramazan” (“Ra- 33 madan Nights”), brings the narrator to Constantinople, and metaphori- 34 cally back to the beginning of the text as this city recalls Constance. As 35 Constance was the “seal” that held Europe together, Constantinople is “le 36 sceau mystérieux et sublime qui unit l’Europe à l’Asie” (622) (“the myste- 37 rious and sublime seal which unites Europe and Asia”). The city serves as 38 a real and metaphorical bridge across the Bosporus, literally translating 39 (“moving across”) the languages and cultures of the East and West. The 40 narrator is constantly surprised, and often bewildered, at how European 41 the city is, culturally, religiously, linguistically, and politically. The vastly Orientations 81 different ethnic and religious groups all cohabit in relative peace, pro- 1 viding a model for Gérard’s ideal society of “universal tolerance” (624). 2 Having traveled from the closed spaces of the mountains of Europe and 3 Lebanon, the islands of Greece, the stifl ing deserts and marshes of Egypt, 4 Gérard has fi nally arrived at the liminal space of the Ottoman capital. 5 The stage is set for other translations and transitions. Constantinople is 6 even personifi ed as a translator of nature, as it transforms the sublime 7 swamps of the Egyptian delta into the harmonious northern landscape 8 (609). 9 This fi nal chapter fi nds Gérard no longer at the center of the action. 10 His interest in marriage has waned, and, perhaps as a result, death poses 11 no immediate threat. While avoiding the two possible dénouements, he 12 has still found a way to narrate his life in literature, though indirectly, 13 through translation. He is now the unassuming observer of his surround- 14 ings, relating to his French readers his insights on this paradoxical soci- 15 ety (while in Constantinople, Nerval had Gautier publish his letters, and 16 Gérard claims to write for journals as well). Whereas his goal in Cairo 17 and Beirut was to become “Oriental” through initiation and marriage, 18 his purpose in Constantinople is simply to give “l’idée d’une promenade 19 à travers ses rues et ses places à l’époque des principales fêtes” (622) 20 (“the idea of a walk through its streets and squares during the principal 21 holidays”). This statement of apparent banality hides a more complex 22 experience that the text elaborates: in order to participate in the religious 23 holidays, in order even to enter Stamboul, the narrator must pass for 24 Muslim. 25 He performs the same role as the city itself, continually moving from 26 the “franc” sector, Pera, to the Islamic sector, Stamboul, and interacting 27 with Armenians, Greeks, and Muslims indiscriminately. In order to pen- 28 etrate the city and stay at an inn during the nights of Ramadan when 29 non-Muslim visitors are prohibited, Gérard dresses like a Persian and 30 must abstain from speaking any European languages (470). During the 31 day when the revelers of Ramadan are sleeping, he travels back to Pera, in 32 order to “reprendre langue avec les Européens” (472) (“take up language 33 again with Europeans”). His relation to the two parts of the city is thus 34 linguistic, spatial, and symbolic: Stamboul is the city of night and Orien- 35 tal mystery, Pera its mirror opposite. Gérard becomes a mediator for the 36 two cultures, successively occupying the position of outsider and insider, 37 Oriental and Occidental. 38 Yet this role of mediator is brought about not through interpretation, 39 which would imply that Gérard was in both places simultaneously and 40 communicated the information orally, but rather through translation, 41 82 Chapter Three

1 that is, through refl ection and the mediation of a text across space. Now 2 that he claims authority as an authentic Oriental, or at least as someone 3 who can pass for one, he is free to provide his own translations, with his 4 own particular distortions. This leads him to inscribe himself to an even 5 greater degree in the text. Though effacing his place in the narrative, since 6 he no longer heads toward any goal, his presence in the translated stories 7 is ubiquitous. No other chapter in the Voyage is as anecdotal: for every 8 observation the narrator offers for a local custom, an elaborate and witty 9 story or theatrical play (opera, vaudeville, or marionette show) provides 10 an illustration and proof. 11 The most revealing of these translated stories is the “Histoire de la 12 Reine du matin et de Soliman prince des génies” (“Story of the Queen 13 of the Morning and Solomon Prince of Genies”), which dominates the 14 chapter, spreading over one hundred pages (it was published twice sepa- 15 rate from the Voyage). Sitting in a café during Ramadan, surrounded by 16 various sorts of artisans (who will be the indirect heroes of the tale), the 17 narrator listens over a period of several days to a professional storyteller. 18 Gérard admits that he only knows the most “indispensable” words of 19 Eastern languages (504), but with the help of his friends and his imagina- 20 tion, he is able to understand the subject. The very complexity of the story 21 betrays his own additions to the translation.14 The role of the storytellers 22 themselves is to come up with a different way of recounting familiar tales 23 (504). Gérard will follow this tradition by composing his own version of 24 the story of Soliman (Solomon) and Saba (Queen of Sheba), borrowing 25 from the Bible, Oriental dictionaries, Masonic legend, and his own imagi- 26 nation (Richer, Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques, chapter 8, “La Reine 27 de Saba”). 28 The “Histoire de la Reine du matin” performs the same function as the 29 other two myths of the Voyage: it heightens the experience of the narra- 30 tor by its correspondences within the text that tie religious myth to the 31 life of Nerval. It is the rewritten tale of King Soliman, his gifted architect 32 Adoniram (Hiram), and the Queen Saba, who has come to Jerusalem to 33 marry Soliman, but then prefers Adoniram. Like the founding myth of 34 the Druse, the two men are described as mirror opposites, struggling for 35 power and for the love of an ideal woman. Soliman, a mediocre poet and 36 planner of Cartesian cities, attempts to trick death and decay through 37 logic and science, conjuring spells to stave off the animals that prey on 38 dead bodies. This vain attempt to “accomplir l’INFINI” (“accomplish 39 the INFINITE”) (605) fails, and he decomposes in his gem-fi lled mines. 40 Adoniram, by contrast, discovers that he belongs to the race of Geniuses 41 and is a descendant of Cain (as the narrator of Aurélia will also claim); Orientations 83 destined to creativity and rebellion, he reveals the power of workers. He 1 secretly weds Saba, but is killed by three fellow artisans under the order 2 of Soliman (one of the Masonic rites is to pursue the murderers). He lives 3 on through Saba’s child and the cries of rebellion against kings (perhaps a 4 reference to the Masonic role in the French Revolution) (602). 5 This “double” dénouement, the marriage and death of Adoniram, cen- 6 ters the narrative on the architect, who fi ttingly deprives Soliman of ei- 7 ther kind of dénouement. In order for the text to follow the narrative 8 laws that Gérard draws up in the middle of the Voyage, a marriage or 9 death must occur. The narrator refuses to perform either of these and 10 so, like Scheherazade, tells more and more tales to postpone his textual 11 execution. He replaces his own death and marriage with those of other 12 characters. This substitution is made possible by Gérard’s disguise as an 13 “Oriental” and his liberal translations that graft elements from the rest 14 of the Voyage to ensure a smooth transition. This last-minute exchange 15 provides for the textual subject’s material safety, as it is only the rewrit- 16 ten incarnation of an older text, destined itself to be rewritten in Nerval’s 17 own future texts. Just as an autobiographical simulacrum made Henri 18 Beyle’s metamorphosis to Henry Brulard and then to Tristram Shandy 19 almost imperceptible, Gérard escapes death through the virtual metem- 20 psychosis of intertextuality. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 CHAPTER FOUR 3 4 5 6 Unfolding Nerval 7 8 9 10 11 The Voyage en Orient reveals that the presence of the subject is con- 12 stantly shifting, avoiding any defi nitive reading, escaping the fatalism of 13 narrative. If the subject can be compared to any character and substituted 14 in any text, if there are no limits either to metaphor or to the metamor- 15 phosis of language, then the subject loses all coherence and becomes a 16 fl oating signifi er. The power of this universal subject is that it is adaptable 17 to any context, and it can write and erase its own context. Gérard liter- 18 ally writes himself as Oriental during the Druse wedding, and just as soon 19 writes himself out of the text, when he exchanges his role with Soliman 20 and Adoniram. The price of universality is the dissolution of the self. The 21 ruse of literature is to combine the powers of the universal with the es- 22 sence of the particular, to become causa sui. Nerval’s mystical and poetic 23 dilemmas converge and, as a result, force the writing both to explore the 24 nature of the subject and to usurp the mystery of the divine. Nerval’s fi nal 25 works offer compelling, if not always complementary, techniques to fi x 26 the subject in space, to draw a map around the textual subject, and at the 27 same time they attempt to alter the boundaries of language and identity. 28 The aim of this chapter is to trace the development of subjectivity 29 through three texts by Nerval (the “Généalogie fantastique,” Sylvie, and 30 Aurélia). Gérard de Nerval attempted to redefi ne the boundaries of his 31 own subjectivity through a remapping and enveloping of both internal 32 and external space. Through a crossed reading of Nerval’s little known 33 “Généalogie” and one of his most illustrious works, Sylvie, the liberat- 34 ing possibilities as well as the eventual dangers (at least to the sanity of 35 the author) of a spatial conceptualization of the subject are revealed. The 36 juxtaposition of the “Généalogie” and Sylvie uncovers the centrality of 37 the fold to Nerval’s spatial and textual imagination. In these two texts, he 38 abandons the logical, modernist Cartesian grid in favor of the ambiguous 39 curved fold, as the distinction between inside and outside disappears in 40 41

85 86 Chapter Four

1 the pleats of his convoluted narrative. Nerval’s folds manipulate space 2 itself to envelop the subject in the world. 3 The fold, according to Gilles Deleuze in Le Pli, is the philosophical 4 and aesthetic fi gure that structures the work of Leibniz and the baroque. 5 Deleuze’s reading of the baroque proposes that “le propre du Baroque est 6 non pas de tomber dans l’illusion ni d’en sortir, c’est de réaliser quelque 7 chose dans l’illusion même, ou de lui communiquer une présence spiri- 8 tuelle qui redonne à ses pièces et morceaux une unité collective” (170) 9 (“what is unique to the Baroque is not falling into the illusion nor leaving 10 it, but rather to achieve something within the illusion itself, or to give to 11 it a spiritual presence which would return a collective unity to its pieces 12 and bits”). 13 In this sense, we could call the folds of Nerval’s texts baroque; the 14 “Généalogie” and Sylvie realize through folds in the text the illusion of 15 the unity of the subject, a unity based on the inextricability of folds in 16 matter to the folds of the perceiving or hallucinating subject. Inside and 17 outside, memory and reality are confused and hallucinated in the fold, 18 which is the site of a perpetually shifting subject. Nerval’s quixotic quest 19 is to unify his visions, create his illusions at will, to make the world con- 20 form to his desire. Space folded in on itself pulls the subject out of time, 21 thereby sparing the subject from change. The folded narrative subject 22 replicates the world in its own image. Aurélia, by contrast to Sylvie, 23 narrates the struggle to overcome the solipsistic structuring of the fold. 24 Space is opened outward, and as a result, the subject embraces time and 25 alterity. 26 27 28 The Fantastic Genealogy 29 30 The document commonly referred to as Nerval’s “Généalogie fantas- 31 tique”1 condenses a wide variety of spatial and thematic concerns onto 32 one manuscript page (fi gure 2.1). Probably composed at the end of March 33 1841 during his fi rst internment in the clinic of Dr. Esprit Blanche (Richer, 34 Nerval: Expérience vécue & Création ésotérique, 47), the “Généalogie” 35 predates the voyage to the Orient and previews the obsessions of Les 36 Filles du feu (1854) and Aurélia (1855). According to Richer, the fi rst ver- 37 sion of Aurélia (also from 1841) presents remarkable similarities to the 38 “Généalogie,” which suggests that 1841 may indeed be the defi ning mo- 39 ment in Nerval’s imagination (Richer, 51). Richer and Richard (Microlec- 40 tures) have done considerable work to situate the “Généalogie” within 41 Nerval’s opus and to interpret the development of the inner logic of the Unfolding Nerval 87

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Figure 2.1. Nerval’s Fantastic Genealogy. Courtesy of Institut de France, in the 40 Collection Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, D 741, folio 78. 41 88 Chapter Four

1 manuscript. However, the form of the “Généalogie,” its quality as image, 2 has literally been overlooked, as the function of the visible is key to the 3 interpretation of this labyrinthine text. 4 The manuscript page is divided into three uneven regions of Nerval’s 5 self: his father’s family (Labrunie), his mother’s family (Laurent), and his 6 literary pseudonym (Nerval). As many critics have remarked, Nerval is 7 the anagram of his mother’s maiden name (LAVREN), a partial anagram 8 of his father’s name (LAbRVNiE), and the name of his uncle’s property, 9 the clos de Nerval. Nerval claims that the property near Senlis was an 10 ancient Roman camp and he traces the name back to the twelfth Roman 11 , Nerva. The literary and textual name Nerval links the two fami- 12 lies and situates them in space and epic time. The “Généalogie” sets out 13 to create the matrix from which Gérard Labrunie de Nerval emerges. The 14 goal of the drawing and the lineage is to make sense (both as meaning and 15 as direction) of the disparate origins of the self. 16 The “Généalogie” is divided exactly in half, as if folded in the center. 17 The top half begins, with Nerval’s characteristically precise and orderly 18 writing, with a description of his paternal origins. The bottom half, de- 19 voted mainly to the maternal side, marks a distinct change, since the writ- 20 ing is the reverse of the top half, the page rotated 180°. Connecting the 21 two halves is a peculiar mass of lines vaguely resembling a tree trunk. 22 The “trunk” of a traditional family tree is here inverted with its roots 23 pointed upward, which suggests that it is not a tree at all. This plant is 24 composed only of roots that branch out from what appears at fi rst to be 25 a center. A closer examination reveals lines in every direction, which stem 26 from multiple centers. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the “rhizome” is 27 a particularly tempting explanation for the “Généalogie fantastique,” as 28 they defi ne a rhizome as an “anti-genealogy” (Mille plateaux, 32). They 29 affi rm the possibilities of “rhizomatic systems” (decentered, without or- 30 igin, spreading out horizontally like grass) over “arborescent systems” 31 (vertical, hierarchical, centered on meaning and truth). Connections are 32 made, in the “Généalogie,” to apparently unrelated names and places that 33 bridge great spatial and temporal distances and create new meaning. The 34 “Généalogie” is not, however, a purely rhizomatic system; the borders 35 of the page mark an outer limit and the main root, or trunk, draws the 36 corners toward the center, the location of Gérard Labrunie. The “Géné- 37 alogie” could be described as a hybrid between the arborescent and the 38 rhizomatic.2 39 These two systems, each with their own functions, fi nd their expres- 40 sion in the “Généalogie,” not only through the ambiguous plant, but also 41 in an inscription and rebus at the center of the text, drawn over the plant: Unfolding Nerval 89

“Tour—et pont [a drawing of a tower and a bridge] toujours 3 enfants” 1 (“Tower—and bridge always 3 ”). The meaning of the inscription 2 is explained in the top (paternal) half, of the text, where Nerval claims 3 that three Labrunie brothers, knights of the emperor Othon, founded 4 three families in Poitou, Périgord, and Quercy. Nerval’s branch would be 5 from Périgord, where there are three “anciennes tours de Labrunie” (“an- 6 cient towers of Labrunie”) (in his poem “El Desdichado,” he is “le Prince 7 d’Acquitaine à la Tour abolie”). He then gives an etymology which links 8 his name to the tower and to the bridge: “(Bruck en gothique-allemand 9 signifi e pont) Brown ou Brunn signifi e tour . . . La Brownie, esprit de la 10 tour et des ponts” (“(Bruck in Gothic German signifi es bridge) Brown or 11 Brunn signifi es tower . . . La Brownie, spirit of the tower and bridges”). 12 The geographical and etymological musings of the name Labrunie unite 13 two very different symbols, the tower and the bridge. Towers connote 14 elevation, hierarchy, surveillance, and stability, having the same symbolic 15 function as trees. Bridges are already double, connecting two or more 16 places; they, by defi nition, imply movement and change (and therefore 17 could be considered “rhizomatic”). In the Voyage en Orient we have seen 18 the fascination with the dangerous heights of Mont Blanc and with the 19 liminal space of the Hellespont, in Constantinople. Michel de Certeau 20 proposes that narrative delimits the borders of places as a practice of 21 space. He conceives of frontiers and bridges as the two contradictory 22 mechanisms of narrative: “Les récits sont animés par une contradiction 23 qu’y fi gure le rapport entre la frontière et le pont, c’est-à-dire entre un 24 espace (légitime) et son extériorité (étrangère)” (L’invention du quotidian 25 1: Arts de faire, 185) (“Narratives are animated by a contradiction which 26 the relationship between border and bridge fi gures, namely between a 27 (legitimate) space and its (foreign) exteriority”). Nerval’s genealogy simi- 28 larly transgresses the frontiers it draws and invokes the other that lies in 29 the self. A reading of the “Généalogie” through the lens of the metaphors 30 of the Tower/tree and Bridge/rhizome will frame the tensions of control 31 and metamorphosis. 32 The most salient aspect of the “rhizomatic” is the etymological frenzy 33 of the text. On the bottom of the maternal half of the manuscript, the 34 word “étymologies” is boxed and set apart, as if an invocation of the 35 transformative powers of language. As any reader of Proust knows, ety- 36 mology and toponymy are very imaginative “sciences,” which seek to fi nd 37 the origins of a lexical unit, and connections are invented when needed. 38 A combination of fanciful etymology and creative genealogy subverts 39 “arborescent” linguistic structures and paternalistic lineages. Instead 40 of fi nding one origin, the text’s etymologies spread out over all human- 41 90 Chapter Four

1 ity, encompassing families from France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Russia, 2 , Hungary, Africa, America, ancient Rome, and elsewhere. Two 3 branches from his father’s side, Labrunie (brown or burnt) and Dublanc 4 can encompass the entire page, uniting the white space of the blank page 5 with the dark blots of ink. The most bewildering etymologies are Nerval’s 6 Greek inventions. Besides transforming Orléans (a virtual homonym with 7 his mother’s Laurent) into the “Greek” `Ορλέανς, he suggests another 8 Greek root for Labrunie: Λαμβ-βρωνος-βρούνος (Lamb-Bronos-Brounos). 9 Richer gives the translation as “qui saisit le tonnerre” (“he who seizes 10 the thunder”), linking Labrunie to the heroic race of Prometheus (Richer, 11 49), and by extension, the heroes of the Oriental myths of the Voyage and 12 Aurélia. 13 Nerval’s etymologies steal the fi re from the “Name of the father,” dis- 14 place origins, and produce subversive connections. In the bottom half, 15 the words “Bourgogne 16e—Origine Dordogne—Joseph B[onaparte]— 16 Joséphine B[onaparte]” form two triangles around the word/name Mon- 17 taigne. The rebus that results is a visible fi gure and a readable allusion to 18 Montaigne. Nerval seems to link himself to Montaigne, the original intro- 19 spective writer of the Renaissance who was also famous for his tower in 20 Aquitaine. If the connection between Mountain/Montaigne/Tower were 21 not obvious enough, Nerval draws a line from the “a” of Montaigne to 22 the edge of the page where he writes “Tou¯rre¯yne, Turenne, Touraine.” 23 Once again, Nerval combines different symbols (here tower and queen) to 24 produce the name of a famous “ancestor” and a place of origin (Richard, 25 16). The metamorphosis of “Tour” undermines the semiotic stability of 26 the mountain. He plays with his (literary and spiritual) fathers’ names, 27 creating chance relationships, substituting an offi cial lineage with a spiri- 28 tual affi liation. Writing and drawing take the place of the father’s name 29 and question the authority of order. On the maternal side of the text, there 30 is less of a need for etymology, as any association will suffi ce to tie a name 31 and person to Nerval. Near the toponym “Senlys” (Senlis), the where 32 his mother was born, Nerval places the word “voisins” (“neighbors”) out 33 from which stem the names of all the lords who owned property in the 34 region. The names and the myths that nourished Nerval’s childhood are 35 just as infl uential in his vision of identity as any genetic link. 36 Folded space provides a surrogate order for the domination of the fa- 37 ther, as it performs the same control over lineage and identity as language. 38 The two folds of the page channel the excess of etymology and link the 39 bridges. The borders of the manuscript page prevent a run-off of the text; 40 an incredible amount of information is condensed, like in a dream, into 41 a small paginal area. Consequently, no space is left blank; everything has Unfolding Nerval 91 its place. Dividing branches of the family into distinct segments are very 1 thick lines, especially on the paternal half, that fi nd their way back to the 2 main “trunk.” 3 The metaphorical “tours” have corresponding visual markers that an- 4 chor the names to places: a Count’s coat of arms, the points of a Lom- 5 bard crown, a map of the Dordogne river valley and its three towers, and 6 numerous crosses indicate geographical locations. Next to the toponym 7 “Terre de Nerval ou Nerva” is the word “granit,” which provides a solid 8 foundation. Under the “Terre de Nerval” is a thick horizontal line out of 9 which grow vertical lines that lead to the city Roma. These lines literalize 10 the etymology of granite (“grain”) and sprout another genealogical plant 11 that links Nerval (or the emperor Nerva) to Rome. 12 The map in the lower right-hand corner offers a totalizing view that 13 grafts genealogy onto geography. The top of the map is labeled “Isle de 14 France” under which is a small circle—Barrys (Paris)—inside a larger 15 circle, Senlys (home of the Valois dynasty and Nerval’s maternal family). 16 The circles render Paris an island, separating Nerval’s native city from the 17 rest of the world. South of Barrys/Paris are `Ορλέανς, Mont d’Or, Bor- 18 deaux, Toulouse, Marseille, Roma, and Corte. The cities are connected 19 by a line to emphasize the absolute relationship between them: Nerval’s 20 ascendance. The correspondence between family, body, and place is re- 21 vealed by a diagram placed next to the map of the “Isle de France”:3 22 oeil 23 Race < main >—pays 24 pied 25 The physical self is caught between the determining factors of race (used 26 by Nerval as synonymous with family or clan) and country, genealogy, 27 and space. The body itself is divided into three symbolic parts and func- 28 tions: the eye, the hand, and the foot. In the “Généalogie” the diagram 29 brackets the subject between two hierarchical concepts (race and coun- 30 try) and, by extension, the city space of Paris (Race–Pays: Parys/Paris). 31 The subject of the “Généalogie” is contained within and disciplined by 32 the lines of space and race that it drew for its own expansion. 33 The necessary focal point of the “Généalogie” reveals and obscures 34 the controlling mechanisms of the text: the fusion of the two halves into 35 Gérard Labrunie de Nerval. On the maternal half of the main trunk stems 36 a branch linked to Étienne Labrunie (Nerval’s father) where, in relatively 37 small letters, is written “fi ls unique Gérard (nom de baptême) Labrunie 38 (nom patronymique) né à Paris en 1808” (“only son Gérard (Christian 39 name) Labrunie (family name) born in Paris 1808”). If one were not 40 aware of the author of the “Généalogie,” the inscription of Gérard’s name 41 92 Chapter Four

1 would not be readily apparent. And yet, it appears at exactly halfway 2 between the two ends of the genealogical plant, providing the keystone 3 that supports the entire structure of the text. The extraordinary wander- 4 ings across time and space are supplanted by the simple facts of place and 5 date of birth. All other events in the genealogy are subsumed under the 6 relatively modest assertion of Nerval’s offi cial identity. However fantastic 7 the rest of the genealogy might be, Gérard’s own place in the text is abso- 8 lutely serious; he avoids his pseudonym and clearly affi rms the fact that 9 he is his father’s son. Underneath Gérard Labrunie’s “birth” is written 10 “Et[ienne] L[abrunie] marié à Marie Victoire Laurence fi lle de Pierre Lau- 11 rent et de M. Vict[oire] Boucher d’Ermenonville” (“Et[ienne] L[abrunie] 12 married to Marie Victoire Laurence daughter of Pierre Laurent and of M. 13 Vict[oire] Boucher of Ermenonville”). Nerval’s mother appears only in 14 this line (the father’s name is written numerous times), but erroneously; 15 her actual name was Marie Antoinette Laurent, and was often called Lau- 16 rence. The text repeats the grandmother’s name twice (Marie Victoire), 17 and feminizes the grandfather’s name, in order to inscribe a sort of matri- 18 archy into the genealogy. Moreover, the mother’s actual name is absent, 19 escaping the direct representation of language (which is reminiscent of 20 Stendhal’s inability to describe his mother). Curiously, this is the only line 21 of the “Généalogie” that Richer does not transcribe, as if he were obeying 22 the text’s own erasure of the mother. 23 Time itself is arrested by the inscription of Gérard Labrunie. His birth 24 date, 1808, is one of only three exact dates (one being the date of the 25 genealogical “research” mentioned in the text’s heading). Throughout 26 the “Généalogie” time is spatialized by placing a very vague chronologi- 27 cal order to the spatial lists of family members; yet everywhere unex- 28 pected juxtapositions of names emerge from vastly different places and 29 epochs. Indeed, the fantastic etymologies work to question the idea of 30 chronological progression, temporal cause and effect. The manuscript’s 31 towers watch over time, seeing into the past and fusing it with the pres- 32 ent. “Tour,” in the masculine, is also “turn” or “return,” as in the expres- 33 sion “tour à tour”; the eternal return of genealogy, etymology, and space 34 guarantee the continuation of the subject. At the bottom of the page, near 35 the word “étymologies” and the diagram linking “race” to “pays,” is the 36 phrase “Il n’y a pas de Nuits des temps” (“There are no mists of time,” 37 the French expression is literally the “nights” of “times”). This ambigu- 38 ous affi rmation may suggest that nothing is lost in time, that through the 39 proper lens (memory, etymology, or geography) the past can be observed 40 and spatialized. The inscription of time onto the page, the end of time’s 41 progression, represents the ultimate control over the subject’s identity. All Unfolding Nerval 93 possible links with the past and future coexist with the subject in the text; 1 the subject is all being and no becoming. 2 The “Généalogie fantastique” is the totalizing representation of Gé- 3 rard de Nerval’s identity. The carnivalesque overturning of the traditional 4 genealogical family tree upsets paternal hierarchy; and yet, other struc- 5 tures of perception and control are left in place to inscribe and delimit 6 the subject. Instead of sketching a purely arborescent structure that con- 7 structs truth based on value and order, Nerval draws a rhizomatic plant 8 that stretches across time and space to subsume everything under the 9 momentous birth of Gérard Labrunie. 10 The space of the manuscript page reinforces both the control of the 11 subject and the control over the subject. The borders of the page limit 12 the expanse of writing, the extent of metaphor. The two folds of the text 13 (the horizontal fold separating the paternal from the maternal, and the 14 vertical fold formed by the genealogical “plant”) divide space and time 15 into quadrants (Nerval’s “quartiers de noblesse”). The page is in effect 16 folded in on itself, pulling the disparate elements together into the loca- 17 tion of Gérard’s birth. The etymological derivations serve as an incanta- 18 tion that invokes all of Nerval’s virtual selves in order to trap them in the 19 folds of the “Généalogie.” The world is re-created in Nerval’s image, the 20 subject is mesmerized by its own refl ection. 21 22 23 The Dénouement Escapes You 24 25 Nerval’s 1853 novella, Sylvie, souvenirs du Valois (later included in the 26 collection Les Filles du feu), expresses and extends the tensions of the 27 “Généalogie fantastique” in narrative form. The textual subject, which 28 in the “Généalogie” was able to anchor all possibility, is no longer able 29 to be its own foundation, nor that of the objective world. A persistent 30 fear of solipsism in Sylvie drives the narrator to search for a foundational 31 referent. The fold, as had been the case for the “Généalogie,” structures 32 the text, channels and focuses all experience on the subject. The subject 33 in Sylvie depends both thematically on the isolation of the Valois region 34 (the subtitle is souvenirs du Valois) and structurally on the mirroring of 35 the chapters. 36 Caught in a hallucinatory world of his own creation, the Nervalian 37 subject struggles to regain control of his illusions. As he becomes progres- 38 sively lost in a (post)modern labyrinth, devoid of inside and outside, he 39 must, as Nerval says in his introduction to Les Filles du feu, “saisi[r] le fi l 40 d’Ariane, et dès lors toutes mes visions sont devenues célestes” (Oeuvres 41 94 Chapter Four

1 I, 158) (“seize Ariadne’s thread, and from then on all my visions will 2 become heavenly”) The seamstress Sylvie plays the role of Ariadne for 3 Nerval’s Theseus; by way of her narrative thread, she leads the narrator 4 out of his psychic labyrinth and exchanges the preeminence of space and 5 simulacrum for that of time and difference. 6 Sylvie is the story of salvation through narrative, yet the exact genre 7 of the text is indeterminable. In a letter to asking him to 8 illustrate the work (November 6, 1853), Nerval describes the text as “un 9 petit roman qui n’est pas tout à fait un conte” (“a little novel which is 10 not quite a ”) in which he tried to set down on paper his memo- 11 ries of the Valois region (Kofman, 11). Sylvie is thus somewhere between 12 a fi rst-person novel, an autobiography, and a fairy tale. The places and 13 events refl ect vaguely the life of the author, but the form and style evoke 14 the mystical setting and timeless nature of a fairy tale. The play of genre 15 will have repercussions on the formation of the subject, as the narrator 16 exploits the tensions between the repetition and illusion of the tale and 17 the progress and realism of linear narrative. 18 In Sylvie the power of the subject to surpass its temporal and spa- 19 tial limitations (offered by intertexuality in the Voyage and by etymology 20 in the “Généalogie”) is everywhere put into question. The confusion of 21 perception and memory, of author and narrator, instead of allowing the 22 textual subject to rewrite the world in its image, undermines the faith 23 in the subject’s ability to organize and control its relationship with the 24 outside. Christopher Prendergast has argued that in Sylvie is in- 25 ternalized, and that each part of the story, linked to other parts of the 26 story, prevents any representation of a world outside the text (The Order 27 of Mimesis). Consequently, there prevails an absence of a stable referent 28 to fi x the subject and object: “The psychological and affective drama of 29 Sylvie is also an epistemological drama; it operates what we might call an 30 ‘epistemological suspension,’ whereby both the knowing subject and the 31 object of knowledge remain irreducibly uncertain entities” (Prendergast, 32 150). The textual subject, which in the “Généalogie” was able to anchor 33 all possibility, is no longer able to be its own foundation, nor that of the 34 objective world. 35 A persistent fear of solipsism in Sylvie drives the narrator to search for 36 a foundational referent. Space, as had been the case for the “Généalogie,” 37 structures the text, mapping and focusing experience on the subject. The 38 ordering of space substitutes for the dissolution of the subject and the un- 39 certainty of perception, simulating unity and stability and abating the 40 changes wrought by time. The subject in Sylvie depends both thematically 41 on the isolation of the Valois region (the subtitle is souvenirs du Valois) and structurally on the mirroring of the chapters. Unfolding Nerval 95

Most critics and readers have taken the novel for a nostalgic and en- 1 chanting tale of the French countryside. This interpretation is encouraged 2 in Nerval’s letter to Maurice Sand: “C’est une sorte d’idylle . . . J’ai voulu 3 illustrer aussi mon Valois” (cited in Kofman, 11) (“It’s a sort of idyll . . . 4 I wanted to illustrate as well my Valois”). The use of the Valois is not, 5 however, as innocent as it appears. The evocative and memorable Valois 6 landscape provides the propulsion that drives the narrative and defi nes 7 the narrator. The fi rst half of the text tells the tale of a cultivated Parisian 8 who begins to fall in love after a long obsession with an actress named 9 Aurélie. While musing about the actress, he reads in a newspaper that he 10 has become rich again in the stock market, perhaps allowing him to ob- 11 tain his love. In his words “je touchais du doigt mon idéal. N’était-ce pas 12 une illusion encore, une faute d’impression railleuse?” (Oeuvres I, 244) 13 (“I had my ideal in my grasp. Was it not still an illusion, a mocking ty- 14 pographical error?”). It soon becomes clear that her material reality does 15 not interest him. In the same newspaper, he notices an announcement for 16 a village fete in the Valois region, which recalls tender childhood memo- 17 ries. Half dreaming, his entire youth unfolds before him. He remembers 18 his love for a mysterious noble girl named Adrienne who became a nun, 19 and the jealousy of his other love, Sylvie. The love for the actress Aurélie 20 is suddenly explained by her uncanny resemblance to the nun Adrienne, 21 but this is deeply troubling for the narrator: “Aimer une religieuse sous 22 la forme d’une actrice! et si c’était la même!—Il y a de quoi devenir fou!” 23 (Oeuvres I, 247) (“To love a nun in the form of an actress! And if it were 24 the same woman!—It’s enough to become crazy!”). He decides to go to 25 the village fete in the hope that Sylvie can save him from the “danger- 26 ous passion” (dangerous, presumably, since it could lead to madness), 27 and in the hope that he can take a foothold in reality (“Reprenons pied 28 sur le réel,” 247). In the carriage ride to the countryside in the middle of 29 the night, he “recomposes the memories” from the time he used to fre- 30 quent the Valois. Other memories ensue, leading the narrator further into 31 a dream-state. 32 The purpose of the voyage is to fi nd the solution to an unsettling 33 enigma: whether Aurélie is the same woman as Adrienne. The answer 34 is to be found within the narrator’s memory, triggered by his presence 35 in the Valois and his discussions with Sylvie. Space does not offer more 36 objective evidence for the identity of the two women, but instead plunges 37 the narrator deeper into his own self-centered memories.4 The exclusively 38 subjective character of the Valois is made possible by its unique geo- 39 graphical location: as Nerval writes in other texts such as Promenades et 40 souvenirs and Les Nuits d’octobre, the Valois is relatively close to Paris, 41 and yet there is no easy transportation to the region (to this day, the mod- 96 Chapter Four

1 ern traveler has to take a bus from Chantilly). Cut off from the modern 2 world, Nerval and his narrator imagine that the Valois is hermeneutically 3 sealed off from time. In Sylvie, the voyage to Senlis at night from Paris al- 4 lows for the narrator to write, “to recompose,” the text through memory, 5 creating a virtual Valois and the illusion of a stable subject. 6 The spatial isolation of the subject is reproduced by the structure of the 7 text. The chapters do not follow a strictly chronological order, but, rather, 8 correspond transversally with each other. The fourteen chapters of Sylvie 9 refl ect upon each other like a mirror, with a complex double symmetry. 10 Chapters from the beginning and the end echo each other in concentric 11 circles and share parallel themes. An episode of representation, reenact- 12 ment, or remembering occurs in each chapter of the fi rst half, which ef- 13 fectively brings to life a memory or an ancient tradition (similar to the 14 revival of the narrator’s desire). The second half of the text marks the 15 narrator’s disillusion as he chases after the ideals sprung from the memo- 16 ries or dreams of the fi rst half, each one proving to be a “chimera.” The 17 narrator will literally try to reinscribe himself into the past in order to re- 18 create and restage the visions of his memory (as evoked in the fi rst half) 19 into text. If he can prove that Aurélie and Adrienne are the same person, 20 and if he can win Sylvie’s love, time will be stopped, the “I” of the past 21 will be identical to the “I” of the present. Léon Cellier has meticulously 22 catalogued the correspondences (episodes, themes, and recurring objects) 23 of the chapters in order to propose a diagram of the overall structure 24 (Cellier, 28): 25 26 i ii iii / iv v vi vii / xii xiii xiv 27 /viii ix x xi / 28 a B a 29 30 According to Cellier, the fi rst three chapters are repeated in the last 31 three, but inversely (“123 . . . 321”), indicating a closed structure, as op- 32 posed to the open structure of Aurélia (35). The central eight chapters 33 also replicate each other, creating a separate confi guration. These eight 34 chapters, in fact, are where the memories of the Valois are most concen- 35 trated. Like the two axes of the “Généalogie fantastique” formed by the 36 horizontal fold in the page and the vertical fold of the genealogical plant, 37 the arrangement of the chapters creates a space in which the enveloped 38 Valois is coextensive with the narrating subject. 39 The pivotal moment of the novella lies in the seventh chapter (the fi nal 40 chapter of the fi rst half), “Châalis,” which reproduces in miniature the 41 mechanisms of the fold found in the rest of the work. Within the nar- Unfolding Nerval 97 rative, it marks the transition between the memories and dreams of the 1 Valois, and the harsh present reality experienced in the second half. At the 2 center of the text, the chapter folds space inward, such that the narrator/ 3 subject is imprisoned within the Valois. The fi rst sentence of the chapter 4 literalizes the enveloping of the narrator as he approaches the region: “Il 5 est quatre heures du matin; la route plonge dans un pli de terrain; elle 6 remonte. . . . Nous nous arrêtions à la maison du garde, à l’ancienne ab- 7 baye de Châalis.—Châalis, encore un souvenir!” (256) (“It is four o’clock 8 in the morning; the road dips in a fold in the terrain; it climbs back up. 9 . . . We stop at the guardhouse, at the former Abbey of Châalis.—Châa- 10 lis, another memory!”). The fold in the terrain announces the complete 11 enfolding of space, in which the Valois and the narrator are enclosed. 12 The transition from the present to memory or dream is revealed in the 13 repetition of the Abbey of Châalis, the fi rst instance being the real, the 14 second the memory/dream. There is a further repetition within the word 15 itself, the very unusual double “a” that smoothes over differences. The 16 fold creases space into two seemingly identical halves. Châalis evokes the 17 English word “chalice” and the French “calice,” simultaneously reinforc- 18 ing the function of containment (the chalice as cup) and the sacred space 19 of the Valois (the “chalice abbey”). 20 The space of Châalis produces the most dense and hallucinatory ex- 21 perience of Sylvie, as the narrator’s desires are confi rmed by his memory 22 or dream. The narrator, along with Sylvie’s brother (another double), ob- 23 serves a private party that happened some point in the past. The uncanny 24 quality of the event is induced by the mix of the abbey’s architectural 25 styles (Byzantine, Gothic, Italian Renaissance) and the sense that the two 26 (modern) observers are intruders (257). An allegorical play is performed 27 by the young girls of the neighboring convent. Adrienne, the narrator’s 28 fi rst love whom he suspects later to be the actress Aurélie, plays the role 29 of a holy spirit who incites angels to admire Christ. The scene, as the 30 narrator remembers it, realizes his desire to fuse the spiritual nun with 31 the heartless actress. The vision is so perfect that the narrator wants to 32 doubt that it ever happened: “En me retraçant ces détails, j’en suis à me 33 demander s’ils sont réels, ou bien si je les ai rêvés” (257) (“Retracing 34 these details, I wonder if they are real or indeed if I have dreamed them”); 35 “Mais l’apparition d’Adrienne est-elle aussi vraie que ces détails et que 36 l’existence incontestable de l’abbaye de Châalis?” (257–58) (“But was 37 Adrienne’s apparition as true as these details and as the incontestable ex- 38 istence of the Abbey of Châalis?”). The realism and vividness of memory’s 39 details correspond to the accuracy of perception, either substantiating the 40 memory/dream or questioning the sanity of the narrator. 41 98 Chapter Four

1 In the last sentence, another fold in the terrain brings him out of his 2 illusions into reality: “Ce souvenir est une obsession peut-être!—Heureu- 3 sement voici la voiture qui s’arrête sur la route du Plessis; j’échappe au 4 monde des rêveries, et je n’ai plus qu’un quart d’heure de marche pour 5 gagner Loisy par des routes bien peu frayées” (258) (“This memory is 6 an obsession perhaps!—Luckily here the carriage came to a stop on the 7 Plessis road; I escaped the world of dreams, and I only have a quarter of 8 an hour to get to Loisy by rather untrodden paths”). Plessis is a common 9 toponym in France that has its origins in the Latin stem plecto (to fold or 10 to plait) and comes from ples, a terrain enclosed with hedges that have 11 branches folded over each other. The fold at the beginning of the chapter 12 is mirrored at the end, setting the chapter apart from the rest of the work 13 (as the text is detached from the outside, and the Valois cut off from mo- 14 dernity). The folds form a spatial envelope outside of time, where every- 15 thing corresponds and repeats and where distinctions are broken down. 16 The hallucination ends when the narrator leaves the fold. Daylight 17 comes to the Valois, and the narrator/Nerval slowly comes to realize that 18 the region no longer refl ects his nocturnal reverie. The second half of the 19 text marks the narrator’s disillusion as he chases after the ideals sprung 20 from the memories or dreams of the fi rst half. The narrator tries to rein- 21 scribe himself into the past in order to restage the visions of his memory 22 (as evoked in the fi rst half) into text. If he can prove that Aurélie and 23 Adrienne are the same person, and if he can win back Sylvie’s love, the 24 “I” of the past (or of his hallucination) will be identical to the “I” of 25 the present. The narrator proceeds by coaxing both Sylvie and Aurélie 26 into revisiting the Châalis Abbey and reenacting the hallucinated scene of 27 chapter 7, with the hope that the young women will confi rm the identity 28 of Adrienne. Sylvie refuses to reveal all that she knows. At the end of the 29 penultimate chapter, Aurélie, however, becomes enraged that the narrator 30 loves her only because of an empty resemblance to another woman, de- 31 claring, “Vous ne m’aimez pas! Vous attendez que je vous dise: ‘La comé- 32 dienne est la même que la religieuse’; vous cherchez un drame, voilà tout, 33 et le dénouement vous échappe” (271) (“You do not love me! You expect 34 me to say to you: ‘The actress is the same as the nun’; you are looking for 35 a play, that’s all, and the dénouement escapes you”). 36 The dénouement does not, in fact, come about through the efforts of 37 the narrator, but rather through a last-minute disclosure from Sylvie. Fol- 38 lowing Aurélie’s rebuttal, the fi nal chapter of the novel jumps forward 39 to the present, a number of years after the main events of the rest of the 40 text (indicated by the use of the instead of the simple past). 41 The overwhelming desire in the fi rst thirteen chapters to repeat the past, Unfolding Nerval 99 to celebrate ancient traditions and songs, to fi nd harmony in nature, and 1 to root identity in space is resolutely denied in this last chapter. Space is 2 no longer the container of memory, of the self; as the narrator declares, 3 “Châalis—que l’on restaure—vous n’avez rien gardé de tout ce passé!” 4 (272) (“Châalis, which is being restored, you have not kept anything of 5 this past!”) He recounts that he often travels to visit Sylvie, who is now 6 married with children. 7 In the fi nal lines of the text, he confesses that he forgot to include an 8 important detail; he had taken Sylvie to see Aurélie’s theater troupe and 9 had asked her if there was any resemblance between the actress and the 10 nun Adrienne. Sylvie laughs at the idea, and then, more seriously, pro- 11 nounces the last words of the text, “elle est morte au couvent de Saint-S 12 . . ., vers 1832” (273) (“she died at the Saint-S convent . . . around 1832”). 13 Sylvie’s revelation turns the repetitive tale into a linear novel. She has 14 fulfi lled her role as the actual narrator of the novel; her profession as 15 lace-maker or seamstress implies that it is she who ties and unties the 16 narrative knot. This dénouement evokes the fi rst date in the text, thus 17 rupturing the timelessness of the tale, and connecting narrative to death. 18 At the same time, however, Adrienne has become a real person through 19 her death; the narrator no longer doubts whether she ever existed (and 20 thus can be sure of his own sanity), because of Sylvie’s confi rmation. A 21 narrative thread offers a way out of solipsism, away from the endlessly 22 obsessive repetition of the past, and toward an acceptance of time and of 23 the difference it engenders. 24 Gérard de Nerval’s experiments with textual space, the “Généalogie” 25 and Sylvie, revolt against the Cartesian mapping of space that produces 26 rational, homogenized subjects. Instead, external and internal, social and 27 psychic space are folded into each other, are literally complicated and 28 multiplied, with the result that the subject occupies the ever-changing 29 line of the fold. As the “Généalogie” so graphically illustrates, enfolded 30 spaces proliferate connections and possibilities, upset borders, and deliver 31 to the subject an almost limitless power to redefi ne itself in time and lan- 32 guage. However liberating this new spatial model may seem, it creates a 33 labyrinthine world in which the subject can no longer distinguish inside 34 from outside, past from present, self from other. The rhizomatic roots of 35 the “Généalogie” structure and control space even more effectively and 36 insidiously than the Cartesian grid, since they pull and manipulate every- 37 thing in space toward the subject. 38 Sylvie exposes the dangers of and offers a tentative solution to Nerval’s 39 textual folds. The narrator of the novel confuses memory and identity 40 with the space of the Valois as he searches for a foundation upon which to 41 100 Chapter Four

1 base his sense of self. The text is structured not according to chronologi- 2 cal narrative, but rather according to spatial contiguity. The narrator only 3 regains his sanity after he abandons control over the outside and accepts 4 the inherent difference of others revealed by time, and not space. Subjects 5 change over time, in a sense they are because of what they become. A text 6 based solely on the association of place would tend to confuse time pe- 7 riods, negating the temporal progression of narrative, and therefore any 8 progression of the self. The distinction of subject and object, inside and 9 outside, self and other can only occur through the introduction of time, 10 not necessarily of chronological time or of a “grand narrative,” but rather 11 through the true time that makes possible becoming and difference. The 12 real narrator of the novel would be Sylvie herself; she is the only charac- 13 ter who changes substantially over the course of the text, from peasant 14 seamstress to a modern industrial worker, from a young innocent girl 15 to a proud mother. It is she who introduces time, through the date of 16 Adrienne’s death, and thereby imposes her difference on the narrator. As 17 long as the dénouement escapes him, as long as he is unable to grasp the 18 narrative thread, the narrator is destined to wander the labyrinth of his 19 own illusion. 20 21 22 Aurélia’s Double 23 24 Nerval’s fi nal work, Aurélia ou le rêve et la vie, breaks from his previous 25 fi rst-person narratives in its dissection of the novel subject. The Voyage 26 en Orient sought to inscribe the subject in the text and spaces of the 27 “Orient” through the ruse of intertextuality, exploiting the ambiguities 28 between a fi ctional and a real Gérard de Nerval.Sylvie rooted the subject 29 within the uncanny spaces of the Valois and depended on an “outside”/ 30 heterodiegetic narratrice to sew together the ends of the text, allowing 31 Gérard to remain within the concentric circles of solipsism. Whereas 32 these texts relentlessly repeat the same of the subject defi ned by 33 space and text, continually fl eeing the menace of alterity and temporal- 34 ity, Aurélia directly counters the textual mechanisms that had anchored 35 the subject and seeks a new defi nition for subjectivity based on time and 36 communication with the other. 37 Instead of assimilating the narrated “je” and the narrating “je,” instead 38 of erasing the difference between the past/written Gérard and the pres- 39 ent/writing Gérard, Aurélia unravels the autobiographical simulacrum 40 (as defi ned in relation to Stendhal). The text explores with astounding 41 clarity the division of the subject by its inscription in text. As the analyses Unfolding Nerval 101 of the previous texts have shown, the narration of the self can only lead 1 to death. Nerval’s fi nal text draws the implications of textual subjectivity 2 to their extreme consequences through an investigation of “death” itself 3 (which Nerval, following an ancient tradition, associates with dream and 4 insanity) and the possibilities of writing about it. 5 Within its fi rst few sentences, Aurélia announces the inscription of the 6 narrating subject and the exploration of life beyond death: 7 8 Le Rêve est une seconde vie. Je n’ai pu percer sans frémir ces portes 9 d’ivoire ou de corne qui nous séparent du monde invisible. Les premiers 10 instants du sommeil sont l’image de la mort; un engourdissement nébu- 11 leux saisit notre pensée, et nous ne pouvons déterminer l’instant précis 12 où le moi, sous une autre forme, continue l’oeuvre de l’existence. C’est 13 un souterrain vague qui s’éclaire peu à peu, et où se dégagent de l’ombre 14 et de la nuit les pâles fi gures gravement immobiles qui habitent le séjour 15 des limbes. Puis le tableau se forme, une clarté nouvelle illumine et fait 16 jouer ces apparitions bizarres;—le monde des Esprits s’ouvre pour nous. 17 Swedenborg appelait ces visions Memorabilia; il les devait à la rêverie 18 plus souvent qu’au sommeil; L’Âne d’or d’Apulée, La Divine Comédie 19 du Dante, sont les modèles poétiques de ces études de l’âme humaine. Je 20 vais essayer, à leur exemple, de transcrire les impressions d’une longue 21 maladie qui s’est passée tout entière dans les mystères de mon esprit; et 22 je ne sais pourquoi je me sers de ce terme de maladie, car jamais, quant 23 à ce qui est de moi-même, je ne me suis senti mieux portant. Parfois, je 24 croyais ma force et mon activité doublées; il me semblait tout savoir, tout 25 comprendre; l’imagination m’apportait des délices infi nies. En recouvrant 26 ce que les hommes appellent la raison, faudra-t-il regretter de les avoir 27 perdues? . . . Cette Vita nuova a eu pour moi deux phases. Voici les notes 28 qui se rapportent à la première.5 (Oeuvres I, 359) 29 30 This extraordinary passage proceeds by a series of complex substitu- 31 tions, metaphors, and citations that propose an understanding of death 32 by means of transcribing experiences in which the mind loses conscious- 33 ness of the body. Dream, as we saw in relation to the Voyage en Orient, 34 is taken by Nerval as a higher plane of existence, a second life. The text 35 valorizes the Dream as a second life, with the ambiguous connotation of 36 a double life or an afterlife. The second sentence evokes the narrator’s 37 emotion or fright while entering “the invisible world” of sleep, referring 38 to ’s Odyssey (book 19): there are two gates of Sleep, one of horn 39 and one of ivory. The horn gate opens onto the real shadows of the un- 40 derworld; the ivory gate, however, reveals only illusory phantoms.6 The 41 102 Chapter Four

1 text elides the difference between the two gates, collapsing dream, illusion 2 (madness), and the underworld into the same “invisible” world of the un- 3 conscious. The fi rst moments of sleep are the “image” of death, disturbing 4 the thought process, and separating the “moi” or ego from the new, oth- 5 erworldly, existence of the self. The new subject has shed the materiality 6 of the “moi” just as the subject of autobiography must be reborn as text; 7 the voyage through dark subterranean landscapes into the clear light of 8 the spiritual world literalizes the rebirth. 9 What the narrator describes here is reminiscent of Stendhal’s rebirth 10 through the textual cogito (“after so many general remarks, I am going 11 to be born”) and Descartes’s cogito, where the anonymous “je” feigns 12 to ignore everything but pure consciousness and the revelation of God 13 through the clarity of thought. Nerval, of course, reverses Descartes’s on- 14 tological proof based on reason to propose another based on Dream (or 15 hallucination). This new proof requires not the single perspective of a 16 universal Cartesian subject (a subject that only realizes the truth through 17 the negation of its own uniqueness), but rather the dual perspective of the 18 dreamer (who is grounded in the place and time of the dreaming body, 19 and yet also present in the Dream, outside of time and space). The pres- 20 ence of a narrating subject (necessarily in the material world) excludes 21 the assimilation of a subject in the “other” world; the narrator of Aurélia 22 claims to separate the two, thus allowing for a dual perspective. Proust 23 will also begin “Combray” with the metaphysically troubling experience 24 of a dreamer who awakens without being able to “reenter” the body. 25 The text then proceeds to inscribe the narrator’s endeavor into the 26 well-worn path of previous writers (Swedenborg, Dante, Apuleius), who 27 by citation guarantee the validity and sanity of the project. Their example 28 justifi es the transcription of the apparently irrational delusions of the nar- 29 rator, who admits to his mental illness, while he simultaneously undercuts 30 the diagnosis of his doctors. The questioning of the “illness” itself rein- 31 forces the foundation of Nerval’s new ontology: disdaining vulgar “rea- 32 son,” the narrator valorizes the knowledge he has gained, the “doubled” 33 strength (of the dual perspective) and activity of his mind. 34 The goal of Aurélia is thus to transcribe the world of dream/death/mad- 35 ness into the language of reason (or more generally the “other” world, or 36 the world of alterity, into the understanding of the self). Shoshana Fel- 37 man, in La Folie et la chose littéraire, has studied the relationship of Au- 38 rélia to the discourse of madness in the wake of Jacques Derrida’s critique 39 of Michel Foucault. As Derrida argues in L’Écriture et la différence, any 40 defense of madness amounts to a “praise of reason,” since there is no 41 “outside” of reason’s discourse; if the insane have been silenced, as Fou- Unfolding Nerval 103 cault claims, for Derrida writing as silent speech would be a mad form 1 of reason. Nerval breaks the silence about his own madness through his 2 writing even as writing itself is “mad.” Felman links the split of the nar- 3 rating subject into (insane) hero and (sane) narrator to the problem of 4 reading and writing signs. Nerval’s illness can only be cured by the pro- 5 cess of becoming a writer: “Si l’hallucination était une lecture de signes, 6 un déchiffrement du réel, l’écriture, en revanche, s’efforcera d’être un 7 déchiffrement du rêve. L’écrivain deviendra, de la sorte, l’interprète, le 8 lecteur de sa propre folie” (77) (“If hallucination were a reading of signs, 9 a deciphering of the real, writing, on the other hand, would try to be a 10 deciphering of the dream. The writer would become, consequently, the 11 interpreter, the reader of his own madness”). 12 Similarly Ross Chambers, in Mélancolie et opposition, argues that Ner- 13 val uses contemporary medical discourse about madness to overturn it 14 from within, creating a textual madness to heal the narrator’s madness: 15 “La guérison narrative ne va donc point sans une certaine forme de ‘folie’ 16 textuelle, et c’est dans cette folie d’un texte radicalement décentré que 17 nous pouvons reconnaître le signe le plus sûr de son modernisme” (127) 18 (“Textual healing does not proceed without a certain form of textual ‘mad- 19 ness,’ and it is in this madness of a radically decentered text that we can 20 recognize the surest sign of its modernism”). Whereas most critics have 21 focused, with good reason, on the discourse of madness within Aurélia as 22 it is related to Nerval’s own mental illness, I base my reading of the text on 23 the constant movement between the metaphors of dream, madness, and 24 death, which are inseparable from their “other,” which is reason. 25 As Théophile Gautier said of his friend: “On dit d’Aurélia que c’était 26 le poème de la Folie se racontant elle-même. Il eût été plus juste encore de 27 l’appeler la Raison écrivant les mémoires de la Folie sous sa dictée” (cited 28 in Chotard, 147) (“Aurélia has been said to be the poem of Madness told 29 to itself. It would have been more apt still to call it Reason writing the 30 memoirs dictated by Madness”). Gautier’s description of Nerval’s writing 31 process as dictation is perhaps more apt than Nerval’s own characteriza- 32 tion of his project as transcription, since dictation implies the simultane- 33 ous physical presence of the other. 34 Aurélia is the story of this dictation and transcription of the two op- 35 posing halves of the self (according to the narrator, each man is double 36 and “Il y a en tout homme un spectateur et un acteur”—“there is in each 37 man a spectator and an actor” (380). The “spectator”/narrator/sleeper 38 listens as the “actor”/dreamer dictates. They necessarily occupy the same 39 space in the text, and yet are in two different places and times. In a rewrit- 40 ing of the fi rst paragraph near the end of the text, the narrator declares: 41 104 Chapter Four

1 Le sommeil occupe le tiers de notre vie. . . . Après un engourdissement de 2 quelques minutes une vie nouvelle commence, affranchie des conditions 3 du temps et de l’espace, et pareille sans doute à celle qui nous attend après 4 la mort. Qui sait s’il n’existe pas un lien entre ces deux existences et s’il 5 n’est pas possible à l’âme de le nouer dès à présent?7 (412) 6 7 Sleep once again describes a separation with the body linked with the 8 experience of death, while also freeing the subject from the conditions of 9 time and space. The goal of the text is to allow consciousness (“the soul” 10 or perhaps the subject) to combine the existence of everyday life (confi ned 11 by a particular time and place) with the perspective of the “other” life 12 that overcomes space and time. This synthesis can only be accomplished 13 by palimpsest, where the experience of the dreamer is written over that 14 of the sleeper. 15 The fi rst psychotic episode of the text (a recounting of Nerval’s own 16 fi rst documented illness shortly before his trip to the Orient) introduces 17 the coexistence of “real” place with oneiric space. The narrator describes 18 being led through the streets of Paris by his friends. Suddenly he sees a 19 giant star in the sky indicating his destiny. Deciding to follow the star, the 20 city streets transform before him: “Je croyais voir le lieu où nous étions 21 s’élever, et perdre de ses formes urbaines; sur une colline, entourée de 22 vastes solitudes, cette scène devenait le combat de deux Esprits et comme 23 une tentation biblique” (363) (“I thought I saw the place where we were 24 rise up, and lose its urban forms; on the hill, surrounded by vast solitudes, 25 this scene became the combat between two Spirits, like some biblical 26 temptation”). The actual place and time of the incident (Paris, 1840) are 27 given by the narrator and can also be inferred from the presence of Gé- 28 rard’s friends who try to convince him to return home. At the same time, 29 the city streets are transformed into a psychic space (a theatrical “scene”) 30 somewhere between dream and text (it is a scene of “biblical tempta- 31 tion,” and Gérard voices his intention to go “Vers l’Orient”—“Towards 32 the Orient,” which refers to the introductory chapter to the Voyage). The 33 reader is aware of the reality and validity of the two very different spaces 34 occupied by the narrator and is not forced to decide which of the two is 35 more “real” than the other. 36 The key to Nerval’s textual vision is revealed in the narrator’s analysis 37 of the scene in the next chapter, where he describes a dual perspective: 38 39 Ici a commencé pour moi ce que j’appellerai l’épanchement du songe 40 dans la vie réelle. A dater de ce moment, tout prenait parfois un aspect 41 Unfolding Nerval 105

double, et cela, sans que le raisonnement manquât jamais de logique, sans 1 que la mémoire perdît les plus légers détails de ce qui m’arrivait.8 (363) 2 3 The overfl owing of dream into real life proceeds with complete lucidity; it 4 follows its own logic (one familiar to any reader of Nerval’s other works) 5 and yet is able to coexist with the observations of the real world, creating 6 a “double aspect.” 7 The logical consequence of this dual perspective would be to allow the 8 narrator to see himself as other. Indeed, the presence of the “double” or 9 Ferouër (which Nerval uses in the Voyage) is fi rst thematized and then 10 eventually literalized in the text as a threat. At the end of chapter 3, the 11 narrator elaborates upon the effects of the dream state and the ensuing 12 double perspective after he is taken in by a group of soldiers: 13 14 Couché sur un lit de camp, j’entendais que les soldats s’entretenaient d’un 15 inconnu arrêté comme moi et dont la voix avait retenti dans la même 16 salle. Par un singulier effet de vibration, il me semblait que cette voix 17 résonnait dans ma poitrine et que mon âme se dédoublait pour ainsi dire, 18 distinctement partagée entre la vision et la réalité. Un instant, j’eus l’idée 19 de me retourner avec effort vers celui dont il était question, puis je frémis 20 en me rappelant une tradition bien connue en Allemagne, qui dit que 21 chaque homme a un double, et que, lorsqu’il le voit, la mort est proche.9 22 (364–65) 23 24 This scene reverses the habitual “dictation” in the text where the rational 25 narrator in the real world observes the dreamer; instead, the dreamer/ 26 madman describes the physical sensation of the separation of “vision and 27 reality.” Here the narrator is able to render the familiar “real world” mad, 28 while at the same time describing the alienation of an out-of-body experi- 29 ence. Though he feels the physical presence of the double in his chest, it 30 becomes other to him, announcing impending death (just as the autobio- 31 graphical form had already done). 32 Nerval’s palimpsest of dreamed experience reproduces the liberation 33 of time and space he associates with death. The writing self thus has the 34 ability to be at once grounded in material reality and to occupy a posi- 35 tion of universality beyond the constraints of time. The “double aspect” 36 of dream’s pouring into real life functions the same way as Stendhal’s 37 bird’s-eye view of Rome, where the narrator, situated at the edge of the 38 city, is able to see all of time projected onto the space in front of him. 39 Stendhal’s spiritual state, provoked by the heights of the Gianicolo Hill, 40 41 106 Chapter Four

1 allows him to tap in to his own memory and to that of the entire city. 2 His state conjures up the ghosts of the past, and an idea of his whole life 3 (death included). Bergson’s metaphor, that seeing the past in present space 4 has the same effect as seeing a ghost (Bergson, 161), seems as appropriate 5 to Nerval as to Stendhal. In the majority of dreams in Nerval’s text, the 6 narrator is visited by the ghosts of his family, or of all humanity, coming 7 to him to tell the story of the human race. 8 9 The observation of the progress of time and metamorphosis, as opposed 10 to the halting of time and the obsession with stability in Sylvie, forces 11 the narrator to take account of his actual place in time. Nowhere is the 12 role of time better expressed than in a dream in the fourth chapter that 13 prefi gures Proust’s famous “bal de têtes” at the end of Le Temps retrouvé: 14 15 J’entrai dans une vaste salle où beaucoup de personnes étaient réunies. 16 Partout je retrouvais des fi gures connues. Les traits des parents morts que 17 j’avais pleurés se trouvaient reproduits dans d’autres qui, vêtus de cos- 18 tumes plus anciens, me faisaient le même accueil paternel. Ils paraissaient 19 s’être assemblés pour un banquet de famille.10 (367) 20 21 Time itself is seen in the changing faces of his relatives, recognizable as 22 the “same” person, and yet the faces occupy different times. The narra- 23 tor’s uncle reveals to him that “notre passé et notre avenir sont solidaires. 24 Nous vivons dans notre race, et notre race vit en nous” (368) (“Our past 25 and our future are in solidarity. We live in our race, and our race lives 26 in us”). Instead of identity being rooted in one place and one instant in 27 time (as the narrator of Sylvie feared), identity is the actualization of an 28 essence that exists across time. 29 The concentric circles and enclosed spaces of Sylvie that sought to 30 freeze time and banish difference have given way to the eccentric spaces 31 of Aurélia. Dreams and visions are fi lled with forms that constantly 32 change nature, growing enormous or shrinking, metamorphosizing into 33 apparently different objects or persons, though recognizable by their es- 34 sence. The folds in the “Généalogie” and in Sylvie that defi ned the subject, 35 locking it in one place and time, are now in Aurélia opened outward, 36 unfolding a world of endless possibilities from the unconscious of a text 37 written from two perspectives. 38 39 40 41 1 2 3 4 5 6 Part III 7 8 Sand’s Utopian Subjects 9 10 11 Homme, mon ami, tu plaisantes volontiers les oeuvres, fatalement 12 autobiographiques, de la femme. Sur qui comptais-tu donc pour te 13 la peindre, te rebattre d’elle les oreilles, la desservir auprès de toi, te 14 lasser d’elle à la fi n? Sur toi-même?* 15 —Colette, La Naissance du jour, 81–82 16 17 18 19 20 Of all the writers I study in this book, George Sand was the most suc- 21 cessful, not only in terms of earning a living from her pen, but espe- 22 cially in her international celebrity during her lifetime. As Naomi Schor 23 in George Sand and Idealism and others have shown, Sand’s innumerable 24 novels and plays awarded her what seemed like an unquestionable place 25 in the French literary canon in the nineteenth century. The most famous 26 woman writer of her time, Sand could not escape a visibility brought on 27 by her exceptionality as artist and woman. This double exceptionality 28 meant that she was already inscribed in a public discourse, caught in the 29 impossible position between authorial subject and the inferior status of 30 feminine subject accorded to her by law and social convention. Unlike 31 Stendhal or Nerval, who wrote unpublished texts meant to explore the 32 limits of their own subjectivities, Sand avoided a candid, personal exami- 33 nation of her own life. Her apparently exhaustive multivolume memoir 34 , for all its inclusion of minute detail, leaves out the 35 most well-known episodes of her infamous love affairs. Sand’s fi ctional 36 texts, instead, propose new models of subjectivity that refuse simple rep- 37 38 39 *Man, my friend, you willingly make fun of women’s inevitably autobiographical works. On whom did you count on then to paint them until you were sick of hearing about it, to turn you 40 against her, to make you tired of her in the end? On yourself? 41

107 108 Part III

1 resentations of gendered subjects and create new spaces where women 2 and men interact with each other and in society. In the next two chapters, 3 I examine Sand’s fi rst signed novel,Indiana, and one of her last novels, 4 Nanon, each of which use textual space to reinvent social ties and to rec- 5 tify historical injustice.1 6 George Sand’s unique place in history might seem to suggest that her 7 works are not representative of a woman’s subject position, that she 8 somehow freed herself from the constraints placed on other women of 9 her time. Many of her male contemporaries, such as Balzac, certainly 10 felt that she was different, masculine, or more like themselves (Naginski, 11 George Sand: Writing for Her Life, 1). Yet her texts work through and re- 12 confi gure women’s subjectivity, independently of her own extraordinary 13 life. Reading Sand’s texts biographically, an approach which often yields 14 insights about the emergence of her ideas, nevertheless obscures the rich- 15 ness of Sand’s thinking about subjectivity. 16 Contemporary feminist scholarship confi rms what Sand’s writing 17 teaches us: the stakes of writing the subject are fundamentally different 18 for women. As Margaret Cohen and others have argued, the choice of 19 literary genre in the fi rst half of the nineteenth century and beyond was 20 largely gender-determined. The hybrid texts of Stendhal, Nerval, Proust, 21 and others combined the genres of realist novel and autobiography. Co- 22 hen claims that the dominant literary genres chosen by women were sen- 23 timental or idealist novels and that realism was later constructed as a 24 genre on the basis of realist texts written by male authors.2 Some scholars 25 claim that men more easily overcame the taboo against the exhibitionism 26 inherent to autobiography since Rousseau.3 27 Women’s writing was therefore caught, until very recently, in a criti- 28 cal double bind, where women’s fi ction was read as autobiographical, 29 and any truth in women’s autobiography was considered compromised 30 because of the gender of the author.4 Women writers were seen as women 31 fi rst and writers second, a critical perspective that casts the inevitable 32 glare of autobiography onto the most fi ctive of their productions. As 33 Domna Stanton remarks, “[autobiography] had been used . . . to affi rm 34 that women could not transcend, but only record, the concerns of the 35 private self; thus it had effectively served to devalue their writing” (4). 36 While the female author’s novel was read as autobiography (and her 37 autobiography read as novel), the discourse of autobiography itself re- 38 produced the notion of a universal, and implicitly male, subject.5 The 39 suspension of the distinction between autobiography and fi ction within a 40 single text, as practiced by Stendhal, Nerval, and others, did not provide 41 Sand’s Utopian Subjects 109 a satisfactory option for women writers since the very denial of their 1 authorial position relied on a supposed blurring of autobiography and 2 fi ction. Instead of unraveling the authorial subject, which constitutes a 3 positive goal for the male writers I study in this book, in women’s writing 4 the affi rmation of separate genres, the inscription of a female subjectivity 5 through an autobiographical signature (an “autogynograph”), and an as- 6 sertion of the right to create truly fi ctive novels proves to be, ultimately, 7 more liberating.6 In my readings of Sand’s works, I make an effort to 8 avoid interpreting her novels as veiled autobiographies, preferring rather 9 to analyze how her texts invent new subjects. 10 Just as the nineteenth-century literary fi eld attempted to marginalize 11 women’s writings, and thereby determined their textual strategies, women 12 did not enjoy the same freedom of movement, the same ability to explore 13 physical space, as their male counterparts. Political oppression goes hand 14 in hand with restrictions on travel. Gérard de Nerval’s wanderings across 15 Europe showed not only his personal confl ation of psychological and 16 physical space, but they also revealed the resistance of the bourgeois or- 17 der to the perceived dangers of vagrancy, all the more exaggerated in the 18 case of women. The sexist ideal of women’s domesticity in the nineteenth 19 century was rendered concrete in their exclusion from the political sphere 20 and objectifi cation by the male gaze in public spaces. Thefl âneur as a dis- 21 passionate, objective observer of city streets served to solidify the neutral, 22 male, subject position, and his very powers of observation rendered it im- 23 possible for the fl âneuse to walk the streets unnoticed. As Catherine Nesci 24 shows in her book Le fl âneur et les fl âneuses, women writers such as 25 George Sand, Delphine de Girardin, and Flora Tristan employed inventive 26 means of taking back the streets, ranging from cross-dressing to assum- 27 ing masculine pseudonyms. Their texts, she argues, deployed “counter- 28 myths” of the modern city, constituting urban utopias where women and 29 men could interact as equals (41–42). 30 Sand’s novels, I argue, fi gure the double bind of women’s textual sub- 31 jectivity—the impossibility of writing either pure fi ction or pure autobi- 32 ography—as a function of textual space. The utopias of Sand’s literary 33 imagination are ideological structures that use space to redefi ne language 34 and society. In Indiana, texts and urban spaces are represented as dangers 35 to the heroine’s body and sanity. The symbolically rich natural utopia of 36 the Île Bourbon (today the French overseas department La Réunion in the 37 Indian Ocean) renews identity and language for both Indiana and Ralph. 38 Nanon, by contrast, portrays a female narrator whose mastery of writing 39 proceeds in tandem with her mastery of maps, and who eventually builds 40 41 110 Part III

1 her own agrarian utopia. These two novels which bookend Sand’s long 2 literary career from the aftermath of July 1830 to the tragedy of 1871 3 suggest that fi ctional women subjects for Sand overcome the limits im- 4 posed on women by their specifi c historical situations and propose tran- 5 scendent forms of subjectivity in imaginary spaces of their own creation. 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 2 CHAPTER FIVE 3 4 5 6 Drowning in the Text: Space and Indiana 7 8 9 10 11 When Indiana was fi rst published under the pseudonym G. Sand in 1832, 12 the fi rst reviewers proclaimed the new male writer a profound analyst of 13 contemporary society, but at the same time one whose novel undoubtedly 14 benefi ted from revisions by a woman’s pen; according to Sand’s Histoire 15 de ma vie: “Les journaux parlèrent tous de M. G. Sand avec éloge, insi- 16 nuant que la main d’une femme avait dû se glissait çà et là pour révéler à 17 l’auteur certaines délicatesses du coeur et de l’esprit, mais déclarant que 18 le style et les appréciations avaient trop de virilité pour n’être pas d’un 19 1 homme” (Histoire de ma vie II, 380). If some readers were led to believe 20 that the author was a man, others more in the know at fi rst thought that 21 Indiana was another collaboration between George Sand and Jules Sand- 22 eau under the name Jules Sand, after their previous novel Rose et Blanche 23 from 1831. The blatant misogyny of the male narrator (who at one point 24 exclaims “la femme est imbécile par nature”—“woman is an imbecile by 25 nature”; Indiana, 251) and the mastery of realist codes clearly indicated 26 to the supposedly savvy reader that this novel could only have been com- 27 posed by a man, albeit a sensitive one capable of understanding the plight 28 of women caught in the chains of marriage. If Sand’s cross-dressing were 29 enough to befuddle men about her gender despite her tiny stature, writing 30 as a man came even easier—all that was necessary was a change in gram- 31 matical gender and a suitably paternalistic tone. 32 Soon enough, however, in the small world of Parisian letters Sand’s 33 authorship was quickly recognized and Indiana suddenly became unmis- 34 takably the work of a woman. As Béatrice Didier writes, once the gender 35 of the author was discovered, any perceived fault in the novel became 36 attributable to Sand the woman and any quality such as the fl aunting 37 of social convention became scandalous (Didier, preface to Sand’s Indi- 38 ana, 11). In his very favorable review in the Journal des Débats of July 39 21, 1832, C (whom Didier identifi es in a note as Victor Charlier,Indi- 40 ana, 375) proclaims astonishment that such a brilliant work of fi ction 41

111 112 Chapter Five

1 has as its creator a young woman: “Après l’avoir lu et relu, on demeure 2 confondu d’étonnement, quand on songe qu’une femme en est l’auteur, 3 qu’une femme délicate et frêle possède cet admirable don d’écrire” (“Af- 4 ter having read and reread it, we remain confused and astonished, when 5 we think that a woman is the author, that a delicate and frail woman 6 possess such an admirable gift for writing”), concluding that the reader 7 is compelled to reread about the awful character of Raymon described in 8 these “pages idéales et vraies, tout à la fois, qu’une femme seule pouvait 9 écrire” (“at once ideal and true pages which only a woman could write.”) 10 The critic, while applauding the novel’s realistic social portraiture and 11 critique, seeks desperately to place Sand’s gendered body back into the 12 text to the point of suggesting that the vivid description of Indiana’s tor- 13 tured and torturing love interest has to be a representation by a woman, 14 presumably drawn from her own personal experience. 15 The weak yet passionate créole Indiana can hardly be mistaken for the 16 cross-dressing, liberated woman George Sand and so what a critic insinu- 17 ates to be inspired by personal experience in a woman’s text, he might call 18 keen observation in a Balzac or a Stendhal. In Histoire de ma vie, Sand 19 attempts to escape the double bind of literature written by women by 20 proclaiming that her personal life is not the subject of her novels: 21 22 On n’a pas manqué de dire qu’Indiana était ma personne et mon histoire. 23 Il n’en est rien. J’ai présenté beaucoup de types de femmes, et je crois que 24 quand on aura lu cet exposé des impressions et des réfl exions de ma vie, 25 on verra bien que je ne me suis jamais mise en scène sous des traits fémi- 26 nins. Je suis trop romanesque pour avoir vu une héroïne de roman dans 27 mon miroir.2 (Histoire de ma vie II, 364–65). 28 29 Her truthful autobiography, she claims, will fi nally prove that her novels 30 are entirely fi ction. Moreover, actual women do not fit fi ctional types, and 31 even less so a woman as extraordinary as Sand. Yet a novel’s shifting con- 32 text determines the various and contradictory ways it can be read, and 33 its author’s gender above all else orients the reader’s expectations. The 34 misogyny of the narrator in Indiana convinces the unsuspecting reader of 35 the masculine gender of the author and predisposes him to the validity 36 of the novel’s argument for greater social freedom. At the same time, this 37 gap between narrator and narrative demonstrates how social prejudice is 38 constructed along gender lines. As Sandy Petrey argues, Indiana is Sand’s 39 only truly realist novel, a pure product of the destabilizing July Revolu- 40 tion of 1830; the duality of Indiana’s misogynistic narrator and feminist 41 narrative convincingly performs a brutal sexism, all the better to expose its workings (In the Court of the Pear King, 92). Drowning in the Text 113

That gender, politics, and history infl uence the “truth” of a text, that a 1 text itself can multiply meanings and disintegrate the unity of the self is 2 the structuring principle of Indiana. The different prefaces and the novel 3 itself warn again and again of the dangers of writing and of interpreta- 4 tion, notably for women. Whether a love letter by a manipulative chau- 5 vinist or a disingenuous review in a literary journal, the written word 6 distorts the truth and misleads a naive reader. Women who themselves 7 try to write in order to convince men inevitably fail in the novel, as their 8 gender already determines how men read their texts. This powerlessness 9 to control meaning manifests itself in the novel through the wandering, 10 hallucinations, madness, and the suicidal impulse of the female charac- 11 ters, Noun and Indiana. Haunted by yet drawn to the dissolution of body 12 and self that accompanies her forays into both textual and physical space, 13 Indiana repeatedly holds herself back, literally and fi guratively, from tak- 14 ing the plunge. 15 16 17 Manipulations 18 19 The two “Préfaces” (an original from 1832 and one from 1842) and 20 one “Notice” (1852) that introduce the novel denounce repeatedly any 21 manipulation of the truth by texts, without apparent irony even as they 22 maintain the fi ction of the masculinity of the author. The role of the novel 23 and of writing in general would not be to interpret facts to fi t an argu- 24 ment but only to refl ect reality; in a decidedly Stendhalian turn of phrase, 25 Sand remarks, “L’écrivain n’est qu’un miroir” (“The writer is only a mir- 26 ror”) (Préface de 1832, Indiana, 37). The writer and his/her novel can- 27 not be held accountable for representing the truth, since only society is 28 to blame for its own corruption. Sand’s novel claims to infl uence public 29 opinion while respecting the sacred institutions it implicitly critiques (39). 30 In her second preface ten years later, Sand admits that an unmediated 31 representation of society in the hopes of persuading the public cannot 32 have an impact without reforming laws and institutions. She writes that 33 it had been her intention not to undermine or even critique society when 34 she wrote Indiana: “Longtemps après avoir écrit la préface d’Indiana sous 35 l’empire d’un reste de respect pour la société constituée, je cherchais en- 36 core à résoudre cet insoluble problème: le moyen de concilier le bonheur 37 et la dignité des individus opprimés par cette même société, sans modifi er 38 la société elle-même” (44).3 Sand, or her masculinized author, seems to an- 39 ticipate Lampedusa’s aristocrat Tancredi in Il gattopardo, who exclaims, 40 “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga com’è bisogna che tutto cambi” (50) (“If 41 we want everything to stay the same, everything must change”); yet in 114 Chapter Five

1 the topsy-turvy world after the July Revolution, everything must stay the 2 same in order for everything to change. Words must keep their meaning, 3 referents must remain stable, if representations of the social order are to 4 be accurate and politically effective. Moreover, as a female author usurp- 5 ing a masculine writing position, it was a clever maneuver to recall how 6 the system is supposed to work in order to accuse the hypocrisy of those 7 who unjustly benefi t from it. 8 Along with this desire for transparent writing and truthful represen- 9 tation, the novel’s prefaces try to guard against and then eventually at- 10 tack readers, journalists, and politicians who put words in the mouth of 11 the author, bending the meaning of a “simple” novel to fi t an ideological 12 agenda. In the original preface, the author warns against all the possible 13 misinterpretations of “his” work, a novel “sans importance” (“without 14 importance”) (37), rehearsing a familiar in nineteenth-century pref- 15 aces which often display a false modesty. Indeed, the author expects his 16 readers not to agree with him: “le narrateur s’attend à des reproches” 17 (“the narrateur expects criticism”) (40); “l’auteur s’abandonne tout en- 18 tier à la critique” (“the author gives himself entirely over to the critics”) 19 (41). Yet here Sand seems to be anticipating more than an average succès 20 de scandale; as we have seen, the fi rst reviews were rather positive and 21 not terribly concerned with any immorality displayed in the novel. 22 The real scandal, the trap set by Sand, is of course the not-so-secret 23 gender of the author. In her preface from 1842, San d reveals how journal- 24 ists overinterpreted her novel, which is to say read it as a woman’s novel 25 with a specifi c agenda: “Certains journalistes qui s’érigent de nos jours en 26 représentants et en gardiens de la morale publique . . . se prononcèrent 27 avec rigueur contre les tendances de mon pauvre conte, et lui donnèrent, 28 en le présentant comme un plaidoyer contre l’ordre social, une impor- 29 tance et une sorte de retentissement auxquels il ne serait point arrivé sans 30 cela” (43).4 Her “Notice” from 1852 is even more blunt when it reiterates 31 that Indiana was Sand’s fi rst novel, that it was written without any theory 32 or ambition, and so those critics who refuse to read “naively” what was 33 written “naively,” who denounce works as immoral, betray their own tal- 34 ent and betray the writing profession (35). It is the critic’s own intelli- 35 gence that does him in: “La critique a beaucoup trop d’esprit, c’est ce qui 36 la fera mourir” (35) (“Critics have too much wit, it will be the death of 37 them”). 38 The novel’s mirrors the textual strategies of its “Prefaces” and 39 “Notice.” The unfl attering portrait of the critic in Sand’s “Notice” cor- 40 responds exactly to that of Indiana’s roguish aristocrat Raymon de Ra- 41 mière, who not coincidentally earns his reputation in society as a brilliant Drowning in the Text 115 essayist. Raymon’s wit, like that of the critic, does ultimately lead to his 1 demise, but a symbolic one in the form of a castration and silencing by his 2 new wife, the former Mlle de Nangy, who is the only woman in the novel 3 not to fall for his eloquent lies (298). As a young, handsome, and well- 4 spoken member of the Restoration’s ruling class, Raymon possesses all 5 the qualities needed to secure a bright future as well as to seduce women. 6 He differs from the stereotype of the suave seducer in one very important 7 respect according to the narrator in another observation reminiscent of 8 Stendhal: “Un homme qui parle d’amour avec esprit est médiocrement 9 amoureux. Raymon était une exception; il exprimait la passion avec art, 10 et il la ressentait avec chaleur. Seulement, ce n’était pas la passion qui le 11 rendait éloquent, c’était l’éloquence qui le rendait passionné” (83).5 In ro- 12 mance and also in politics, Raymon falls in love with his own eloquence. 13 For the sake of a beautiful phrase or a well-wrought argument, he aban- 14 dons the truth and deceives himself. His narcissism is such that when he 15 gazes at a woman he only sees the image projected by his own romantic 16 discourse. As soon as the love affair loses his interest or becomes incon- 17 venient, he writes a new woman into his life. 18 The reader is fi rst introduced to Raymon when M. Delmare, Indiana’s 19 husband, takes him for a burglar and shoots at him on his property (63). 20 The novel’s fi rst of many cases of mistaken identity is resolved when Ray- 21 mon’s elegant hunting outfi t proves his social rank. Unlike the female 22 characters, his gender and class repeatedly protect him from harm. Ray- 23 mon is caught trespassing on Delmare’s estate because of a rendezvous 24 with his fi rst love interest in the novel, Noun—Indiana’s Creole maid and 25 childhood friend. Noun’s natural beauty attracts Raymon, but he can- 26 not or will not overlook the enormous gap in their social positions and 27 so rejects as ludicrous Noun’s desire to be his wife. Once Raymon sees 28 Noun’s mistress Indiana, he falls in love with her more graceful beauty, 29 even though the narrator insists that Noun is the more stunning of the 30 two. Noun, increasingly desperate after she discovers she is pregnant, at- 31 tempts in vain to borrow Indiana’s class markers (she writes on Indi- 32 ana’s stationery, she uses her bedroom, and she wears her clothes), though 33 Raymon only sees the unbridgeable distance between Indiana’s refi ned 34 elegance and Noun’s vulgar beauty. After Noun commits suicide, Raymon 35 pursues Indiana, hoping to have an affair, but counts on Indiana’s sense of 36 decency, as well as her husband’s vigilance, to guarantee that he will not 37 be burdened by a serious, and potentially socially disastrous, relationship. 38 Raymon misguidedly depends upon Indiana to act according to Pa- 39 risian social conventions by staying with her husband and accepting to 40 be Raymon’s mistress; at the same time, he seems to trust Indiana to 41 116 Chapter Five

1 understand that his lover’s discourse is rhetoric for its own sake, meant 2 to incite passion and not inspire everlasting devotion. Noun and Indiana 3 both foolishly take Raymon’s statements and promises at face value, and 4 not as part of an elaborate game of seduction. For them, Raymon should 5 be bound by his words, and the narrator agrees: “L’amour est un contrat 6 aussi bien que le mariage” (76) (“Love is a contract just as much as mar- 7 riage is”). In the end, he woos Indiana back from the far-off Île Bourbon 8 in another deceitfully passionate letter and then promptly forgets about 9 her when he marries Mlle de Nangy. His new wife proves that the mar- 10 riage contract can, when properly exploited, be empowering for women 11 when she uses Indiana’s pathetic return as the pretext to subordinate her 12 husband, delighting in “la position d’infériorité et de dépendance où cet 13 incident venait de placer son mari vis-à-vis d’elle” (298) (“the position 14 of inferiority and dependence which this incident placed her husband 15 toward her”). 16 Raymon’s wife can turn the tables on her husband because his fame 17 as a loyal and vocal supporter of the old regime puts him in danger af- 18 ter Louis-Philippe comes to power. Before 1830, Raymon seduced public 19 opinion in favor of the conservative government with the same skill he 20 used to seduce women: “[Il] est un des hommes qui ont eu sur vos pen- 21 sées le plus d’empire ou d’infl uence, quelle que soit aujourd’hui votre 22 opinion. Vous avez dévoré ses brochures politiques, et souvent vous avez 23 été entraîné, en lisant les journaux du temps, par le charme irrésistible 24 de son style, et les grâces de sa logique courtoise et mondaine” (128).6 25 The narrator introduces a rare second person, “vous,” which equates the 26 (male) reader of the novel and of Raymon’s newspaper articles with the 27 apparently equally gullible women readers of Raymon’s love letters. The 28 language of nineteenth-century political punditry resembles that of ro- 29 mantic lovemaking: “empire,” “entraîné,” “charme irrésistible,” “grâces.” 30 Raymon and his conservative colleagues wrote in defense of the 31 “Charte,” Louis XVIII’s quickly outdated constitution, fooling them- 32 selves into believing they were communicating to the public the letter 33 of the law and not their own self-interested ideological interpretations: 34 “ce [la Charte] n’était plus qu’un texte sur lequel chacun s’exerçait à 35 l’éloquence, sans qu’un discours tirât plus à conséquence qu’un sermon” 36 (128) (“it [la Charte] was nothing but a text on which everyone would 37 practice his eloquence, without reasoning having any more consequence 38 than a sermon”). 39 Just as Raymon falls in love with his own eloquence, he manages to 40 indoctrinate himself through his own political rhetoric. His ability to dis- 41 tort reality is recognized and rewarded by the Restoration government: Drowning in the Text 117

“Cette rare faculté qu’il possédait, de réfuter par le talent la vérité posi- 1 tive, en avait fait un homme précieux au ministère” (130) (“this rare abil- 2 ity that he possessed, of refuting positive truth through talent, made him 3 a precious man for the ministry”). But when the political winds begin 4 to shift in 1829 and the government takes a radical move to the right, 5 Raymon fi nds himself caught between his loyalty to the king and his own 6 better judgment. Worse for a narcissist like Raymon, the new political 7 turn reveals that all of his previous tracts were ridiculous (261). When 8 revolution fi nally happens and the bourgeois king Louis-Philippe takes 9 the throne, Raymon fi nds himself without political allies, and thus with- 10 out a future. His calculated marriage to the wealthy aristocrat Mlle de 11 Nangy guarantees him a comfortable, if forever dull, future. 12 Raymon and the literary critics mocked in the novel’s prefaces share 13 the same talent for molding reality through language in order to fi t their 14 worldview and the same fatal fl aw of believing their own falsifi cations. 15 As long as facts remain hidden, such as the tendency of monarchies to 16 turn absolutist or the inconvenient difference between narrative voice and 17 authorial gender, manipulators of language can take advantage of textual 18 ambiguity to promote their interests. For women, structurally disempow- 19 ered in such a system, the best tactic is to force a confrontation between 20 word and referent, between the letter of the law and social reality. Sand’s 21 “masculine” narrative possesses all the stylistic virtues of a text written 22 by a man, but the gender of the author renders the novel scandalous; if 23 virtue as well as masculinity are performative, then they are societal con- 24 structions and not naturally determined. Similarly, Mlle de Nangy obliges 25 Raymon to confess his marriage to her in front of Indiana; she thus hu- 26 miliates him both by taking command of the situation and by showing 27 Indiana that Raymon’s passionate letters were nothing but an illusion. 28 The lesson for Raymon and for Sand’s literary critics is that writers of 29 shifty texts may eventually be targets themselves. 30 31 32 Lost in Space 33 34 Indiana’s main women characters, Noun and Indiana, do not have Sand’s 35 mastery of writing or Mlle de Nangy’s dispassionate, calculating mind. 36 They take Raymon at his word, and when they do try to infl uence others 37 through writing or in their actions, they tend to mistake signs for real- 38 ity. Trapped in what they imagine to be a transparent world, they lose 39 their bearings whenever their surroundings change. Near the beginning 40 of the novel, the narrator presents the reader with a tableau of domestic 41 118 Chapter Five

1 boredom and stability, a of harmony endangered by the slight- 2 est movement: “On eût dit, à voir l’immobilité des deux personnages en 3 relief devant le foyer, qu’ils craignaient de déranger l’immobilité de la 4 scène; fi xes et pétrifi és comme les héros d’un conte de fées, on eût dit que 5 la moindre parole, le plus léger mouvement allait faire écrouler sur eux 6 les murs d’une cité fantastique” (53).7 For Indiana’s husband, the moral 7 is even clearer, since, as the narrator writes, the only social contract he 8 recognizes is the dictum “Chacun chez soi” with the ambiguous meaning 9 of “to each his own” or “everyone is master in their own home” (132). 10 Bourgeois order depends not only upon the fi ction of stable linguistic 11 meaning, but also upon the immobility of people and things, who must 12 respect each other’s borders. 13 Indiana is a novel about the dangers of and desires for exposing one- 14 self to polyvalent texts and open spaces, especially for women. When 15 Indiana leaves the comfort of her home, her own identity and sense of self 16 is undone in the confusing jumble of images confronting her. Whether the 17 countryside of the Brie, the streets of Paris, or the sublime volcanic land- 18 scape of the Île Bourbon, the novel’s spaces contain a richness of signs and 19 possible meanings that always invite the characters to superimpose the 20 image of their own desires onto what they see: Raymon projects an im- 21 age of Indiana onto the body of Noun; Indiana sees Noun’s form on the 22 quays of the Seine; the narrator imagines all of art history emerging from 23 the rock formations on the island. These rare moments of truth, instead 24 of being seen as epiphanies, are described, in Indiana’s case especially, as 25 hallucinations or madness. Unable to seize a chance at real freedom, Indi- 26 ana repeatedly surrenders control of meaning and of her own narrative. 27 Marked by her presumed race and class as Indiana’s ill-fated mirror 28 image, Noun serves as the novel’s paradigm of a woman’s inability to 29 command her own fate, to write her own text. Noun’s indeterminate iden- 30 tity is refl ected in how literary critics have described her; Pratima Prasad 31 shows how scholars have tended to see only Noun’s class difference with 32 Indiana or, conversely, have classifi ed her as a woman of color (“Espace 33 colonial et vérité historique dans Indiana”). As Adlai Murdoch convinc- 34 ingly argues, the novel itself labels both Noun and Indiana “créoles,” play- 35 ing on the ambiguity of the word meaning person born in the colonies of 36 European stock, person of mixed race, or person of African blood, and 37 so paradoxically, either colonizer or colonized (Murdoch, 3). Neverthe- 38 less Noun’s traits suggest, without ever affi rming, mixed-raced ancestry 39 (black eyes, curly hair, orientalized name) and Indiana’s those of a woman 40 of Spanish descent from the colonies (passionate, noble, pallid) (Mur- 41 doch, 18). Noun’s fl uid identity in the text allows her to attract Raymon Drowning in the Text 119 with her “exotic” beauty and yet still attempt to impersonate Indiana, 1 passing for a different class or a different race. Her eventual suicide serves 2 as a narrative end point toward or away from which Indiana will move 3 throughout the novel. 4 Much critical attention has been focused on one passage in particular, 5 when Noun tries to win back Raymon by dressing as Indiana and inviting 6 him to sleep in her mistress’s bedroom. Noun leads a mystifi ed Raymon 7 into a brightly lit room where she has placed exotic fl owers and which 8 is decorated with furniture from far-off lands as well as engravings of 9 Paul and Virginie and the Île Bourbon. Raymon begins to imagine that 10 the “fantôme d’une femme” (“phantom of a woman”) who led him to 11 Indiana’s room was Indiana herself, but then he unfl atteringly contrasts 12 Noun with Indiana (101). When he temporarily comes to his senses, he 13 is bewildered to be in such an intimate place belonging to the woman 14 he really loves, exclaiming to Noun: “Sortons de cette chambre, nous ne 15 sommes pas à notre place” (102) (“Let us leave this room, we are not in 16 our place”). Ultimately, he succumbs to Noun’s “volupté tout orientale” 17 (“very oriental voluptuousness”) (104), but only to see, entranced, the 18 image of Indiana in the refl ections of Noun between two mirrors: “Les 19 deux panneaux de glace qui se renvoyaient l’un à l’autre l’image de Noun 20 jusqu’à l’infi ni semblaient se peupler de mille fantômes. Il épiait dans la 21 profondeur de cette double réverbération une forme plus déliée, et il lui 22 semblait saisir, dans la dernière ombre vaporeuse et confuse que Noun 23 y refl était, la taille fi ne et souple de madame Delmare” (104).8 Twice in 24 this passage Raymon’s vision of Indiana is that of a phantom, one who 25 presumably haunts the space of the bedroom and takes over Noun’s body. 26 After their night of lust, Raymon wakes up to fi nd Noun once again a 27 maid and Indiana’s room unremarkable, with its air of “decency” (105). 28 But after Noun slowly realizes that Raymon has used her body to make 29 love to another woman, she quietly wanders off and drowns herself in 30 the river, where Indiana eventually faints upon fi nding her. Noun trades 31 places with Indiana, becoming herself a phantom to haunt Indiana and 32 the text. 33 As Béatrice Didier has argued, the novel’s many references to Ophelia 34 (even Indiana’s dog, who also drowns, is named Ophélia), to drowning 35 and the theme of water, underline the repressed desire on the part of the 36 novel’s heroines for absolute passivity (Didier, Sade, 154), a passivity, I 37 would argue, that extends to the vicissitudes of textual meaning. Noun 38 dies less than a third of the way into the novel, but her presence is felt 39 throughout since the characters are drawn back to where she drowned 40 and Indiana and Ralph, her unlikely fi nal love interest, repeatedly con- 41 120 Chapter Five

1 template suicide. By giving herself over to the constant motion of the 2 river, Noun ensures the dissolution of her self (in the text), but also de- 3 cides the fl ow of the narrative—“Noun” becomes a subject. If Indiana is 4 drawn again and again to water, if she sees the ghost of Noun every time 5 she manages to break free from the infl uence of a man, it may, of course, 6 be because she wants to lose herself completely, as she had tried to do in 7 her relations with men. And yet by imagining that she can abandon her 8 identity and her body to chance by wandering through space, as an au- 9 thor does over her writing, Indiana may be trying to envision the dangers 10 and the joys of composing an alternative narrative of her life. 11 The fi rst time Indiana considers suicide, she had just been forced to 12 leave Raymon’s Parisian hôtel by his mother and wanders the foggy 13 streets of the city in a daze. Because she tried to leave her husband for 14 Raymon, Indiana believes herself to be a damned woman, “une femme 15 perdue dans l’opinion publique” (“a fallen woman according to pub- 16 lic opinion”) (218). Picturing her husband’s hand shoving her into the 17 stream of the gutter, she keeps walking, eventually becoming emboldened 18 by the din of the streets. Indiana is unconsciously attracted to the water: 19 20 Elle descendit le quai depuis l’Institut jusqu’au Corps Législatif; mais 21 elle oublia de traverser le pont, et continua à longer la rivière, absorbée 22 dans une rêverie stupide, dans une méditation sans idées, et poursuivant 23 l’action sans but de marcher devant elle. 24 Insensiblement elle se trouva au bord de l’eau, qui charriait des gla- 25 çons à ses pieds et les brisait avec un bruit sec et froid sur les pierres de 26 la rive. Cette eau verdâtre exerçait une force attractive sur les sens d’In- 27 diana. On s’accoutume aux idées terribles; à force de les admettre, on s’y 28 plaît. Il y avait si longtemps que l’exemple du suicide de Noun apaisait les 29 heures de son désespoir, qu’elle s’était fait du suicide une sorte de volupté 30 tentatrice. . . . Quand elle sentit le froid cuisant de l’eau qui baignait 31 déjà sa chaussure, elle s’éveilla comme d’un état de somnambulisme, et, 32 cherchant des yeux où elle était, elle vit Paris derrière elle, et la Seine qui 33 fuyait sous ses pieds, emportant dans sa masse huileuse le refl et blanc 34 des maisons et le bleu grisâtre du ciel. Ce mouvement continu de l’eau et 35 l’immobilité du sol se confondirent dans ses perceptions troublées, et il 36 lui sembla que l’eau dormait et que la terre fuyait. Dans ce moment de 37 vertige, elle s’appuya contre un mur, et se pencha, fascinée, vers ce qu’elle 38 prenait pour une masse solide . . .9 (226–27) 39 40 This passage confounds the reader as much as Indiana; objects trade 41 places with their refl ections, and screens with their projections. Indiana Drowning in the Text 121 herself is portrayed as being void of any ideas or motivation, save for the 1 drive to continue walking straight ahead. Yet she is entirely free for the 2 fi rst time in the novel, having earlier escaped out the window from her 3 husband’s reach and then being left by her lover. Moreover, her dream- 4 like stupor leads to a superimposition of images onto the spaces of Paris 5 and a free association of place and memory quite the contrary of a “medi- 6 tation without ideas.” 7 For the reader, the text indicates Indiana’s trajectory very precisely, 8 from the Institut on the Quai Malaquais heading west toward the Corps 9 Législatif on the Quai d’Orsay by way of the Quai Voltaire; from there 10 she neglects to cross the bridge (the Pont Louis XVI) to return home, 11 instead following the river until she has left the city. The many references 12 to water, to the morning gloom, and of course to Noun’s suicide suggest 13 that in her trance Indiana imagines she is back on her property in the Brie, 14 near the river where Noun drowns. Strangely though, after the passage 15 describes her waking up from the sensation of cold water leaking into her 16 shoe and she leaves behind her “state of somnambulism,” she becomes 17 more, not less, susceptible to hallucination. She seems able to recognize 18 the stone buildings and blue-gray sky of Paris behind her, but only as 19 they are refl ected in the quickly moving fl ow of the Seine. The contrast of 20 the steady river current and the unmoving ground of the quay provoke 21 a sense of vertigo; Indiana mistakes the river for a refl ection of land and 22 leans over to step on it. Earlier, the passage depicted the extreme cold of 23 the river water as hardening into ice, but at the same time Indiana’s shoes 24 are bathed in the water rolling over the riverbank. Water and land have 25 exchanged places, like Elstir’s marine landscapes in Proust’s A l’ombre 26 des jeunes fi lles en fl eurs, confounding Indiana’s already fatigued senses 27 and once again juxtaposing immobility and movement. 28 Indiana’s cousin Sir Ralph, led by her dog Ophélia, prevents her from 29 jumping at the last minute and slowly shakes her out of her reverie. Still 30 out of her mind, she asks him if he met Noun on the “chemin” (“path”), 31 pointing at the river, then asks him to “cherchez mes pieds” (“go fetch 32 my feet”), which she claims to have left on the rocks (228). Later, as she 33 recovers and tries to remember what happened, Ralph insists to her that 34 she tried to commit suicide and makes her promise to him, not that she 35 will never try to kill herself again, but that she will discuss it with him 36 beforehand! At fi rst Indiana denies she ever thought about suicide: “Pour- 37 quoi me parlez-vous de suicide? . . . Je n’ai jamais voulu attenter à ma 38 vie” (229) (“Why do you talk to me about suicide? . . . I never wanted to 39 take my own life”). Eventually she gives in to Ralph’s interpretation and 40 then returns to her husband; but a close reading of the passage shows 41 122 Chapter Five

1 that Indiana, while attracted by the “sensual pleasure” of Noun’s suicide, 2 made an effort to regain what she took for solid ground and so did not 3 consciously try to kill herself. Ralph did in fact rescue her, but in the pro- 4 cess ensured that she was bound to him and to her husband. 5 Indiana experiences a similar vision when she returns to her native Île 6 Bourbon with her husband Delmare and Sir Ralph. Left to herself most 7 of the time, she wanders the mountains outside her home in the evenings, 8 gazing out at the sunset, but averting her eyes from the “magnetic” sight 9 of the ocean in the far distance—presumably the pull of the water is too 10 much for her. Beyond the waves, in the strange cloud forms above the 11 horizon, her mind wanders off to distant lands: 12 13 Quelquefois les nuages de la côte prirent pour elle des formes singulières: 14 tantôt elle vit une lame blanche s’élever sur les fl ots et décrire une ligne 15 gigantesque qu’elle prit pour la façade du Louvre; tantôt ce furent deux 16 voiles carrées qui, sortant tout à coup de la brume, offraient le souvenir 17 des tours Notre-Dame de Paris, quand la Seine exhale un brouillard com- 18 pact qui embrasse leur base et les fait paraître comme suspendues dans 19 le ciel; d’autres fois c’étaient des fl ocons de nuées roses qui, dans leur 20 formes changeantes, présentaient tous les caprices d’architecture d’une 21 ville immense. L’esprit de cette femme s’endormait dans les illusions du 22 passé, et elle se prenait à palpiter de joie à la vue de ce Paris imaginaire 23 dont les réalités avaient signalé le temps le plus malheureux de sa vie. Un 24 étrange vertige s’emparait alors de sa tête. Suspendue à une grande éléva- 25 tion au-dessus du sol de la côte, et voyant fuir sous ses yeux les gorges qui 26 la séparaient de l’Océan, il lui semblait être lancée dans cet espace par un 27 mouvement rapide, et cheminer dans l’air vers la ville prestigieuse de son 28 imagination. Dans ce rêve, elle se cramponnait au rocher qui lui servait 29 d’appui; et pour qui eût observé alors ses yeux avides, son sein haletant 30 d’impatience et l’effrayante expression de joie répandue sur ses traits, elle 31 eût offert tous les symptômes de la folie. C’étaient pourtant là ses heures 32 de plaisir et les seuls moments de bien-être vers lesquels se dirigeaient 33 les espérances de sa journée. Si le caprice de son mari eût supprimé ces 34 promenades solitaires, je ne sais de quelle pensée elle eût vécu; car, chez 35 elle, tout se rapportait à une certaine faculté d’illusions, à une ardente 36 aspiration vers un point qui n’était ni le souvenir, ni l’attente, ni l’espoir, 37 ni le regret, mais le désir dans toute son intensité dévorante.10 (253–54) 38 39 Like Stendhal looking out at Rome from on top of the Janiculum, Indi- 40 ana sees her past projected onto a landscape below. The passage shares 41 many points in common with Indiana’s “suicide” attempt in Paris: at- Drowning in the Text 123 mospheric detail which provokes a dream state; one place melting into 1 the space of another; a “vertigo” caused by the difference between her 2 stable position and a moving one; fi nally, a dissonance between Indiana’s 3 experience and Ralph’s. Whereas the episode in Paris is a singular and 4 unpleasant event in her life, the imperfect tense indicates that Indiana 5 sought out this “vertigo” and “madness” over and over as if compelled 6 to relive the experience, not because it was traumatic but because she 7 fi nds in it an unexplainable joy. For her, “tout se rapportait à une certaine 8 faculté d’illusions” (“everything was related to a certain power of illu- 9 sions”), toward a single intense “desire,” but whereas in Paris that desire 10 revolved around Noun, here she imagines the monuments of Paris, the 11 Louvre and Notre Dame. The narrator supposes that Paris is the site of 12 Indiana’s worst traumas, where Raymon had seduced her and left her. Yet 13 nowhere else does the novel make explicit reference either to the Louvre 14 or to Notre Dame. However, during her delirious walk along the river, 15 these two monuments would have been visible through the fog across 16 the water on the opposite bank and perhaps were refl ected in the current. 17 Moreover, their very monumentality signifi es places of memory, history, 18 and artistic and religious beauty absent elsewhere in Indiana’s life and in 19 the novel. 20 According to the text, her “joy,” her “pleasure,” and her “desire” in 21 these “illusions” comes from the view of her imaginary Paris and also 22 from the sensation of “rapid movement” as she crosses the ocean and 23 moves through the city. As if to highlight her delusional fl ânerie, the al- 24 most sexual pleasure she takes in her virtual walk through Paris, she lives 25 for this “pensée” (“idea”), which would disappear if her husband ever sus- 26 pended her solitary walks. The narrator implicitly suggests that Delmare 27 has every reason to prevent Indiana from wandering when he insists upon 28 her madness and her lack of ideas. But on the following page, Ralph’s 29 hikes through the gorges of the Île Bourbon and subsequent meditations 30 on his past merit respect as the refl ections of a stoic philosopher. Indiana’s 31 daydreams project images of her desire onto changing, mobile, natural 32 forms. Far from just an obsession over Raymon, her evening strolls show 33 that she delights in the creations of her imagination, temporarily freed 34 from her subservience to Delmare, Raymon, and Ralph. 35 The twists and turns of Indiana’s plot in the novel’s fourth part fi nd 36 the heroine lost and wretched twice as she enters urban spaces, exposing 37 the distance between her dreams of mobility and the dangers, especially 38 for a woman, of unaccompanied travel. Indiana makes one fi nal effort 39 at escaping her abusive husband to return to France and Raymon. She 40 bribes a ship’s captain to allow her passage to France (necessary because 41 124 Chapter Five

1 any traveler was required by law to announce his or her departure in the 2 local newspaper), and arrives in Bordeaux during the July Revolution. 3 Disoriented by the strange new political reality, symbolized by the revolu- 4 tion’s tricolor fl ag fl ying on Bordeaux’s city hall, Indiana leaves the ship 5 without her money or her identity papers and is stopped as a suspect by 6 the National Guard. With the news of the monarchy’s demise, she loses 7 consciousness and wakes up days later in a hospital, where she is regis- 8 tered simply as “inconnue” (“unknown”) (293). After two months she is 9 able to leave the hospital, but remains in a feverish daze. She wanders the 10 streets until she ends up once again by the port, eventually sleeping in an 11 abandoned house and begging for food until the ship’s captain recognizes 12 her and sends her to Paris. 13 After her fi nal rejection by Raymon and dismissal by Mlle de Nangy, 14 she is taken in a carriage, again unconscious, and not knowing anyone, 15 dumped in a hotel. The narrator’s description of Indiana’s hotel room 16 corresponds to what Marc Augé calls a “non-lieu,” a transitory place of 17 anonymity that is the polar opposite of places of memory like the Louvre 18 or Notre Dame; according to the novel, “ce local où nul n’a laissé de trace 19 de son passage qu’un nom inconnu, . . . ce cachot de l’esprit et du coeur, 20 voyez Paris, ce beau Paris, que vous aviez rêvé si merveilleux!” (299) 21 (“this place where no one has left a trace of his passing except an un- 22 known name, . . . this dungeon of the mind and of the heart, see Paris, this 23 beautiful Paris, which you have dreamt as being so marvelous!”). This 24 miserable hotel room, where she is even more immobilized than in the 25 Île Bourbon, shatters her dream of the limitless city. Alone, unknown, her 26 imaginary Paris vanished, Indiana wastes away in her room until Ralph 27 once again miraculously arrives to rescue her. 28 Whether in the wilderness of her volcanic island in the Indian Ocean or 29 in the political wilderness of France during the July Revolution, Indiana 30 fi nds herself liberated from her ties to society and from her dependence 31 on men, and eventually from her sense of identity. The spaces she tra- 32 verses present to her a layered landscape where visions of the city com- 33 pete with projections of her own desires. Indiana’s experiences reveal a 34 creative mind that invents metaphors of freedom and movement in order 35 to imagine a world beyond the confi nement of society’s laws—which be- 36 come all the more poignant when she is confronted with the harsh reality 37 of institutional misogyny. Ralph’s constant surveillance of Indiana, Ray- 38 mon’s cynical manipulation of her desires for recognition and adventure, 39 and Delmare’s domineering orders for her subordination all amount to 40 different iterations of the same tactic used by the novel’s sexist narrator: 41 Drowning in the Text 125 to reinscribe Indiana’s search for meaning as a product of madness and to 1 reassert her subservience to men. 2 3 4 The Narrator’s Story 5 6 Indiana’s unexpected dénouement presents more than a few narrative, 7 stylistic, and ideological problems that have puzzled critics. The novel’s 8 fourth part ends with Ralph and Indiana deciding to leap to their deaths 9 into a gorge on the Île Bourbon; in the conclusion, the narrator discovers 10 Indiana and Ralph living happily in the island’s interior apparently cured 11 of their suicidal urges. What is perhaps more disquieting for a novel that 12 portrays the suffering of a woman at the hands of patriarchy, Indiana 13 becomes almost voiceless in the conclusion as the narrator and Ralph en- 14 gage in long emotional conversations and she retires to her quarters. After 15 Indiana’s many unsuccessful struggles to write her own fate, the scene 16 of two men chummily discussing the past seems hardly like a satisfying 17 ending. I would argue, however, that the conclusion marks a fundamental 18 shift in the narrator’s discourse as he embraces the creative possibilities of 19 fantasy and Indiana and Ralph’s dream of building a utopia beyond the 20 tyranny of public opinion. 21 The narrator reveals himself to be a young man traveling to the Île 22 Bourbon for no concrete purpose except to daydream. While exploring 23 the island’s interior and describing its geological peculiarities, he experi- 24 ences an imaginative leap almost identical to Indiana’s vision of Paris in 25 the clouds. Within the confused disorder of volcanic rocks strewn across 26 the “arena” of the volcano’s crater, the narrator imagines he sees increas- 27 ingly complex “architectural” forms; fi rst a wall, then the delicate ara- 28 besque design of a Moorish building, followed by an obelisk, a Gothic 29 fortress, and a pagoda (331). These natural ruins evocative of the his- 30 tory of civilization serve as inspiration and a challenge to the artist: “il 31 semble que les génies de tous les siècles et de toutes les nations soient 32 venus puiser leurs inspirations dans cette grande oeuvre du hasard et de 33 la destruction” (332) (“it seems that geniuses of every century and of 34 every nation have come to draw their inspiration from this great work of 35 chance and destruction”). Volcanic forms, like artistic inspiration, are the 36 work of chance, but also the work of destruction as they make way for 37 new creations. 38 Predisposed to interpretational fl ights of fancy by the playful rock for- 39 mations, the narrator stares at what he takes to be an inscription carved 40 41 126 Chapter Five

1 in a gigantic crystallized monument seemingly written by an ageless hand, 2 but in reality formed by chance in the volcano’s cauldron: 3 4 De ces rencontres fortuites sont résultés des jeux bizarres, des impressions 5 hiéroglyphiques, des caractères mystérieux, qui semblent jetés là comme 6 le seing d’un être surnaturel, écrit en lettres cabalistiques. 7 Je restai longtemps dominé par la puérile prétention de chercher un 8 sens à ces chiffres inconnus. Ces inutiles recherches me fi rent tomber dans 9 une méditation profonde pendant laquelle j’oubliai le temps qui fuyait.11 10 (333) 11 12 The narrator loses himself deciphering a text he knows to be imaginary. 13 Though he qualifi es his activity as childish and perhaps meaningless, he 14 nonetheless connects the interpretation of these natural “signs” to the 15 mystic art of divination, to ancient civilization, to the earlier rock forma- 16 tions which inspired the history of architecture, and so by extension to his 17 own creative textual practice. As Jacques Rancière has shown in works 18 such as La Parole muette or Politique de la littérature, one of the charac- 19 teristics of literature which emerged during what he calls the “aesthetic 20 regime of art” at the beginning of the nineteenth century was a “petrifi ca- 21 tion” of literature, a proliferation of inanimate objects in literary texts 22 which were made to speak: “une parole qui n’est proférée par personne, 23 qui ne répond à aucune volonté de signifi cation mais exprime la vérité 24 des choses à la manière dont les fossiles ou les stries de la pierre portent 25 leur histoire écrite” (Rancière, Politique de la littérature, 23) (“a speech 26 which is proffered by no one, which responds to no particular will for 27 meaning but expresses the truth of things just like fossils or striations in 28 stone are marked by a written history”). By giving the meaning of his text 29 over to the “silent speech” of stones, the narrator both abandons his “will 30 to meaning” and taps into the truth of things rather than the vanities of 31 society.12 32 Just as Indiana’s joyful vision of Paris led to reverie and “madness,” 33 the narrator is caught in a daze. He loses track of time as clouds form, 34 and when a torrential rain begins to fall, he takes refuge in a cave and 35 wanders the island’s interior, lost for two days. The downpour overfl ows 36 the riverbeds, fl ooding the mountainsides and forming one “immense cas- 37 cade” (333). The rest of the conclusion abounds in references to water, 38 from the Bernica Falls into which Indiana and Ralph attempt to jump, to 39 the “furious” cataract and overfl owing lake below the couple’s cabin. In 40 the increasingly unrealistic ending, as the narrator resembles more and 41 more Indiana herself, his strict control over the novel is lost and meaning Drowning in the Text 127 overfl ows its narrative gates. In her Indian Ocean utopia, no longer held 1 back by her fear of society’s laws, Indiana fi nally dove into the water. 2 George Sand’s fi rst novel established her reputation by guarding 3 against the various ways women’s writing was misread. She exposes the 4 bias of masculine narrators and realist tropes by parodying it perfectly 5 and undermining it from within. She realistically portrays, in the charac- 6 ter Indiana, the struggles of women in dangerous texts and hostile spaces. 7 The narrative’s hero, Ralph, vows he will not be the “brute haïssable” 8 (“detestable brute”) (340) he had been. Judging by the vocabulary used in 9 the conclusion, where Indiana is only referred to as either Mme Delmare 10 or as Ralph’s “compagne” (“companion”), the couple have successfully 11 managed to avoid embracing the oppressive institution of marriage on 12 their island paradise. The utopian conclusion to this, Sand’s most realist 13 novel, confi rms that for society to change not only must the causes of in- 14 equality be laid out, but there must also be a leap of imagination toward 15 a better world. 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 CHAPTER SIX 3 4 5 6 Carte Blanche: Charting Utopia 7 8 in Sand’s Nanon 9 10 11 12 13 George Sand’s last major novel, Nanon from 1872, narrates the appropri- 14 ation of a tool of elite power, the Cassini “Carte générale de la France,” by 15 a humble peasant girl, who uses these maps to internalize and negotiate 16 the space of revolutionary France. The novel presents the history of the 17 French Revolution from a displaced perspective: it is told as a memoir by 18 Nanon, an old woman, who remembers her experiences as a young girl 19 in the countryside. Nanon’s story is thus very far from the center of the 20 Revolution in terms of time (the story is told sixty years after the events), 21 space (the novel takes place in an isolated region days from Paris), and 22 gender. Nanon’s new perspective on the French Revolution reiterates re- 23 publican values but also invents new textual spaces for thinking about 24 ideological conundrums—both those posed by the original Revolution of 25 1789 and also by the Paris Commune of 1871. 26 The violence of 1871 required a different novelistic response from that 27 of the hypocrisy of July 1830. As I have argued, Sand’s fi rst novel, Indi- 28 ana, portrayed the political necessity for women in the wake of the Revo- 29 lution of 1830 to expose the widening gap between discourse and deed, 30 between language and its referents. If the realist mode, with its tendency 31 toward ironic distance and objective detail, proved the most effective way 32 to depict society’s cynical opinion of itself, realism in fi ction has diffi culty 33 breaking away from mimetic representation in order to invent new social 34 structures. The unrealistic, utopian ending to Indiana signals the need 35 within the novel to create new, virtual spaces in which women and men 36 can exist equally. As Naomi Schor argues in George Sand and Idealism, 37 “idealism for Sand is fi nally the only alternative representational mode 38 available to those who do not enjoy the privileges of subjecthood in the 39 real” (73). Sand’s position as a woman writer marginalized by the social 40 41

129 130 Chapter Six

1 order led her to see in idealism a mode of writing capable of affi rming 2 equality as a precondition of social harmony. 3 Whereas the utopian spaces imagined by Indiana are islands of ideal- 4 ism within a realist novel, Nanon portrays in realistic detail an alternative 5 experience of the Revolution of 1789 and so affi rms that revolutionary 6 ideals do not have to lead to violence and destruction. At the fragile be- 7 ginnings of the Third Republic, born out of the chaos of Napoleon III’s 8 defeat by the Prussians and immediately challenged by the Paris Com- 9 mune, the of the French Revolution and the viability of republi- 10 canism were very much in question. The head of state of the provisional 11 government, Adolphe Thiers, was the same man who played the decisive 12 role in 1830 by thwarting any attempt at a republic in favor of a new 13 monarchy. Sand, along with many other intellectuals, reluctantly backed 14 Thiers in the hopes of founding a stable republic incrementally, instead of 15 a more radical government, which might easily collapse (as had the First 16 and Second Republics). As she wrote in a letter to Edmond Plauchut on 17 March 27, 1871, “Mr Thiers n’est pas l’idéal, il ne fallait pas lui demander 18 de l’être. Il fallait l’accepter comme un pont jeté entre Paris et la France, 19 entre la République et la réaction, car la France, hors des barrières de 20 Paris, c’est la réaction” (Sand, Correspondance XXII—avril 1870–mars 21 1872, 352–53) (“Mr. Thiers is not the ideal, we shouldn’t ask him to be 22 it. We have to accept him as a bridge between Paris and France, between 23 the Republic and reactionaries, since France, outside of Paris, is the reac- 24 tion”). From her home in Nohant far from Paris, Sand had limited fi rst- 25 hand knowledge of the events unfolding in Paris; the often exaggerated 26 tales of violence on the part of the Communards horrifi ed her, 27 and politically she felt that their actions would undermine the possibility 28 of an eventual republic as Thiers laid siege to the city. For these reasons, 29 the Commune tested Sand’s faith in equality and the wisdom of the com- 30 mon people.1 At the same time, the Commune produced an astonishing 31 number of political innovations in a brief amount of time (73 days): the 32 fi rst government ruled by the working class; the separation of church and 33 state; a push for free, compulsory education; the unprecedented partici- 34 pation of women in government as well as signifi cant advances in gender 35 equality. The Commune, despite Sand’s pragmatic objections, resonated 36 with her sympathy for the people and her ideological agenda. 37 In Nanon, Sand displaces her concerns about violence, women’s rights, 38 and education that come out of the events of the Paris Commune of 1871 39 and works through them by returning to the original French Revolution 40 of 1789. Sand’s novel manages to remain faithful to the actual events of 41 the French Revolution as well as to its spirit, while at the same time it Carte Blanche 131 proposes new ways of thinking about community. Nanon’s many com- 1 munal spaces are at once identifi able on the Cassini map of France and 2 imaginary utopias produced by a fi ctional text. This doubled space, both 3 real and ideal, both historical novel about 1789 and treatise on 1871, 4 allows Sand to replicate the Commune as site of social innovation and 5 to deny the Commune the quality of event or singular intensity, which 6 would spread violent revolution around the world.2 7 As Nicole Mozet argues in her preface to the novel, while the narra- 8 tive taken as a whole may be improbable, even utopian, each element of 9 the story is realistic (Sand, Nanon 7). Nancy E. Rogers has written that 10 though the history of the French Revolution in Sand’s novel is exact, “the 11 disjunction between historical accuracy and the effect of these key events 12 on the of Nanon, who are lost in ignorance and without access 13 to accurate news from the capital, creates a distancing, or an ironic stance, 14 on the part of the reader” (Rogers, “Nanon: Novel of Revolution,” 138). 15 The peasants of the novel’s fi ctional village are alienated from the events 16 in Paris, but I argue that this very distance from the Revolution, and from 17 what the reader knows about it, allows for a rethinking of the essence of 18 revolution and the possibilities for collective action in the future. Conse- 19 quently, interpreting the events in the novel requires particular attention 20 not only to the historical context, but especially to the counterfactual, the 21 break with history opened up by the fi ctional text. 22 23 24 From Shepherdess to Marquise 25 26 Nanon combines the realism of detailed descriptions of everyday peasant 27 life with the idealism of what the French Revolution could have been out- 28 side of Paris, starting with a shift in narrative perspective. According to 29 Janet Beizer in her article “History’s Life Story: Nanon as Histoire de ma 30 vie,” Nanon is one of only a few novels by Sand, out of dozens, to have 31 a fi rst-person woman narrator (4). Sand’s novel about revolution also 32 narrates the revolution that allows a peasant girl to become a historical 33 agent and a writing subject. Nanon recalls her own story beginning at 34 the age of twelve, as an orphan who lives with her uncle and two cousins 35 in extreme poverty. The novel is set in a fi ctional village named Valcreux 36 in the Creuse region near the geographical center of France. Valcreux is 37 dependent on the local monastery, “le moutier,” whose ignorant monks 38 serve as incompetent if relatively harmless landlords. Nanon’s fortunes 39 change when her uncle decides to buy a sheep, Rosette, and give it to 40 her to raise. Having a purpose in life, another being to care for, inspires 41 132 Chapter Six

1 Nanon with a sense of self, hygiene, economy, and eventually public and 2 private space as she follows Rosette around town looking for new pas- 3 tures. Rosette quickly leads her to the green pastures of the moutier’s 4 vast property where Nanon meets a young nobleman, destined to a life 5 of sacrifi ce as a monk by his family’s archaic devotion to primogeniture. 6 The young novice, Émilien de Franqueville, teaches Nanon to read, to use 7 maps, and to challenge received ideas. 8 News of the events of the Revolution of 1789 eventually fi lter down to 9 Valcreux, and the peasants learn with joy and incredulity that they are no 10 longer serfs. What began as an eighteenth-century pastoral novel becomes 11 an adventure story as the Revolution speeds up the of the novel and 12 complicates the lives of the characters. The monastery is sold off by the 13 state to a bourgeois lawyer from Limoges, Costejoux, but entrusted to 14 the last remaining monk, Père Fructueux, and to Nanon and Émilien. A 15 short idyllic interlude ensues before Émilien’s noble ancestry leads to his 16 arrest and condemnation during the Terror. Nanon along with Émilien’s 17 former servant Dumont break Émilien out of prison and fl ee to a remote 18 part of Sand’s cherished , in a mystical place named “l’île aux Fades” 19 (“isle of fairies”) near the town of Crevant. Another brief few months of 20 isolated bliss follow before Émilien goes off to join the Republican Army, 21 and Nanon returns to Valcreux to make enough money to marry Émilien. 22 She believes that only money can compensate for her lowly social status, 23 given his aristocratic birth. Through a little hard work and especially a 24 very large inheritance after the death of Père Fructueux (who thereby lives 25 up to his name), Nanon amasses a fortune and buys the moutier outright 26 from Costejoux. Émilien returns from the war, proud at losing his right 27 forearm and thus merits the right to be a French citizen, Costejoux mar- 28 ries Émilien’s snobbish aristocratic sister Louise, and Émilien and Nanon 29 fi nally marry, have numerous children and live happily ever after as the 30 marquis and marquise de Franqueville. Nanon writes the story in 1850, 31 and an anonymous narrator appends a concluding paragraph to inform 32 the reader that the marquise died in 1864 at the symbolic age of 89, after 33 carrying for the sick. 34 The novel’s narrative arc, as told by Nanon, follows the systematic 35 unraveling of the old order, the ancien régime and its replacement by a 36 community of equals led by Nanon. Starting with the fall of the Bastille, 37 which Nanon believes at fi rst was the name of a person who was put in 38 prison, the peasants are liberated from serfdom. The monks themselves 39 are forced to be independent and eventually disband when the moutier is 40 sold by the state. The aristocracy, in the form of Émilien’s family, discred- 41 its itself by emigrating and then actively works to destroy the republic. Carte Blanche 133

When Nanon’s uncle dies and Émilien’s family fl ees the country, there is 1 no stable family structure to dictate the actions of the two main protago- 2 nists, who, still more or less adolescents, take charge of their community. 3 Nanon, the poorest girl in town, and Émilien, the youngest in the 4 moutier, have no qualifi cations to lead, no experience, and no authorita- 5 tive position from which to speak. But during the days of mass hysteria 6 at the start of the Revolution known as la grande peur, when peasants all 7 over France feared roving bands of armed vagrants (who never appeared), 8 Nanon and Émilien confront the illusion in order to calm the rest of the 9 town, in the absence of leadership from the monks or the town’s mayor. 10 Similar events abound in the novel where Nanon protects the community 11 from an external danger, either real or imagined, because no one else 12 proves able to do so. The spontaneous and courageous Nanon struggling 13 in the face of repeated violence from the outside evokes the image of the 14 popular leaders of the Paris Commune. After Parisian revolts following 15 the capitulation of the provisional government to the Prussian armies, the 16 Commune began unexpectedly on March 18, 1871, when Adolphe Thiers 17 ordered troops to confi scate 400 cannons controlled by the Parisian Na- 18 tional Guard on Montmartre. The troops resisted fi on their fellow 19 citizens (many of those defending the cannons were women), and the 20 two commanding generals were shot.3 Having broken relations with the 21 provisional French government, the Central Committee of the National 22 Guard found itself suddenly the highest authority in Paris. The Central 23 Committee decided to hold elections and, instead of parliamentary rep- 24 resentatives, simple delegates were chosen by arrondissement. These del- 25 egates, mostly workers with no political experience, could be revoked 26 at any time by their constituents. The Commune was therefore run by 27 those considered by the political class to be “incompetent” and without 28 authority.4 29 The novel appropriates some of the structural specifi cities of the Com- 30 mune, such as a greater role for women and rule by the inexperienced, 31 but rejects the singularity of the urban event in favor of a multiplicity 32 of idealized communities situated in no particular place. The greatest 33 danger faced by the Commune was from the “Ruraux” (“Rurals”), the 34 army made up largely of provincials that the provisional government as- 35 sembled in Versailles to attack Paris. Danger in Nanon, however, comes 36 from Paris and from other cities and workers, in the form of ideology.5 37 In her travels Nanon is always sure to avoid larger towns. Her short stay 38 in Limoges is marked by the impression that cities are ugly, dirty, and 39 dangerous. In the novel, there is no solidarity among the poor, since city 40 workers cannot speak in the name of peasants; Nanon chides bourgeois 41 134 Chapter Six

1 revolutionaries like Costejoux who, because they live in the city, only 2 listen to the violent workers: 3 4 Je sais, pour l’avoir entendu assez déplorer chez nous, que c’est le peuple 5 de Paris et des grandes villes qui vous pousse et vous mène, parce que 6 vous demeurez dans les villes, vous autres gens d’esprit et de savoir. Vous 7 croyez connaître le paysan quand vous connaissez l’ouvrier des faubourgs 8 et des banlieues, et, dans le nombre de ces ouvriers moitié paysans, moi- 9 tié artisans, vous ne faites attention qu’à ceux qui crient et remuent.6 10 (231–32) 11 12 Nanon can form her community in Valcreux only because of its distance 13 from Paris and other cities, from the bourgeoisie, and from outside politi- 14 cal infl uence. The initial moment of the Revolution proves to be the most 15 liberating for the peasants, when the chains of the old order are broken. 16 Jacobinism, centralization, and the Terror all become linked in the novel 17 to the unfortunate radicalism associated with cities, which threatens the 18 tranquil revolution of the countryside. 19 The Revolution brings to Valcreux a radical new equality among the 20 peasants, one that is made all the more apparent because the poor village 21 has neither bourgeois nor aristocrats. Its isolation from urban centers, 22 and thus from dangerous political infl uence, forces the peasants to rely 23 on each other; moreover, the sweeping away of the old order can allow 24 for a young woman like Nanon to exercise power for the fi rst time and 25 to organize a new community along rational lines. Nanon’s success is 26 due in large part to her ability to fi nd isolated, abandoned places, the 27 blank spaces on a map, and transform them into viable habitations. The 28 novel’s rejection of cities as well as radical politics suggests that utopias 29 neutralize politics in nondescript places far from the historical events of 30 the capital. The novel’s utopian, neutral or blank, spaces, while the result 31 of Nanon’s tireless efforts, nonetheless refl ect the profound changes in the 32 conception of French space during the Revolution. 33 34 35 Mapping a New France 36 37 French national space went through drastic and unprecedented transfor- 38 mations at the end of the eighteenth century. The Revolution reappor- 39 tioned public space by seizing and then selling church property and émigré 40 estates; as Nanon’s portrayal of the auction of the “moutier” suggests, 41 the bourgeoisie (embodied in the novel by Costejoux) profi ted the most, while for the peasants, the absence of church and aristocratic domination Carte Blanche 135 desacralized space, subjecting it to the apparently more democratic move- 1 ment of capital. 2 Political boundaries, too, were redrawn during the Revolution as large 3 ancient regions were divided into départements along natural, geographic 4 borders. Regionalism, it was hoped, would disappear along with political 5 regions, to be replaced by new ties to an abstract and idealized nation. 6 As Nanon herself says, “j’étais devenue moins paysanne, c’est-à-dire, plus 7 Française” (234) (“I had become less of a peasant, which is to say, more 8 French”). A precise image of the whole of France became possible for the 9 fi rst time as the completion of a decades-old cartographic endeavor, the 10 “Carte de l’Académie” or Carte de Cassini, coincided with the found- 11 ing of the First Republic, thereby greatly facilitating the restructuring of 12 French political space.7 The Carte de Cassini was the fi rst attempt to map 13 an entire country using very accurate geodesic triangulation. Surveys of 14 France were taken from 1756 to 1789, and the 180 individual maps were 15 published by subscription, successively from 1756 to 1815. By the simple 16 fact of its mathematical cartographic method, the Carte de Cassini relied 17 on a survey of the natural, supposedly immobile, landscape and not on 18 the changeable man-made landscapes of political borders and cities and 19 towns. France could be imagined as a country whose unity was not sub- 20 ject to human history because its natural boundaries were self-evident. 21 In his Refl ections on the Revolution in France, Edmund famously 22 argued that human nature is far too complex to be understood by any 23 single rational intellect, and so the French Revolution’s blind destruction 24 of tradition in favor of abstract notions could only lead to disaster: “I 25 cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to that pitch of 26 presumption, to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon 27 which he may scribble whatever he pleases.”8 Taking Burke’s pronounce- 28 ment both literally and fi guratively, the French Revolution’s organization 29 of society and space was at once the unauthorized assumption of divine 30 power by the new government, a new beginning or blank slate that ig- 31 nored history and tradition, but also a blank map upon which anyone 32 could draw up new connections and new boundaries between places and 33 citizens. Opposed to the conservative and skeptical Burke, Sand’s Nanon 34 demonstrates that the new blank map born of the Revolution allowed 35 not just the abstract “scribbles” of Parisian elites, but also and especially 36 the more intuitive rewriting of space by peasants, those who have for 37 centuries worked on the land but who could only take possession of it 38 with the Revolution. 39 Burke’s carte blanche critique suggests, however, that sweeping away 40 religion and history in favor of “nature”—whether in the form of natural 41 borders or natural laws—relies on a more or less hidden Enlightenment 136 Chapter Six

1 ideology even as it seeks to eliminate ideology in the abstract. A new map 2 of France cannot help but reveal the paradigms governing its reconfi gura- 3 tion of space. Similarly, as I have tried to show, Sand’s novelistic cartogra- 4 phy of the French countryside during the Revolution, while plausible, still 5 betrays the ideological signature of its author, who was simultaneously 6 inspired and traumatized by the Paris Commune. Nanon’s innocent story 7 of community building and business success proposes an ideological al- 8 ternative to violent revolution. 9 Louis Marin’s Utopiques: Jeux d’espaces, written in 1973 as a refl ec- 10 tion on the neutral places of the French university after May ’68, offers 11 a conceptual framework for describing utopian texts. Marin asserts that 12 utopia is an ideological critique of ideology, one which consists of the 13 textual creation of a neutral space for the fi ctional resolution or play of 14 contradictions: “L’utopie est une critique de l’idéologie dominante dans 15 la mesure où elle est une reconstruction de la société présente (contempo- 16 raine) par un déplacement et une projection de ses structures dans un dis- 17 cours de fi ction” (249) (“Utopia is a critique of the dominant ideology in 18 so far as it is a reconstruction of present or contemporary society by a dis- 19 placement and projection of its structures in a fi ctional discourse”). Marin 20 connects utopian discourse as it developed from the sixteenth through the 21 eighteenth centuries to the emergence of modernity, and in particular to 22 the foretelling of a capitalist transformation of the world. Utopia is above 23 all a spatial and textual construction, for Marin: “L’utopie est organisa- 24 tion de l’espace comme texte et discours construit comme espace” (25) 25 (“Utopia is the organization of space as text and discourse constructed as 26 space”). Space is organized around opposing concepts and thus is read- 27 able and writable, while the utopian text itself becomes a space that can 28 be navigated. Spatialized, opposing concepts can only coexist side by side; 29 the utopian text produces multiple places (concepts) in a unifi ed project 30 and set in a neutral space of play (10). The nonplace suggested by uto- 31 pia’s etymology is also a neutral or neutralized place, whose referent is a 32 placeholder, real but absent.9 33 Nanon’s utopias, like Burke’s carte blanche and Marin’s utopian neu- 34 ter, construct places according to Sand’s socialist ideology in the blank 35 spaces of the Carte de Cassini. On the textual level, the novel’s fi ctional 36 places can be easily situated on the map, often in places where the map 37 gives no toponym. The novel’s places, just like its retelling of historical 38 events, are at once fi ctional and entirely possible. Within the narrative it- 39 self, Nanon repeatedly insists that the understanding of her environment 40 only occurs in tandem with her slow acquisition of reading and writing, 41 as the places around her become translated into text. After she learns to Carte Blanche 137 read texts and then maps, she understands how to master space, not only 1 in order to navigate safely the routes of France, but also so that she can 2 work the land for profi t. In the mise en abîme of the character and the 3 novel, the writing of Nanon requires imagining what could have occurred 4 in the blank spaces of a map and the blank spaces of history, whereas 5 Nanon’s very survival depends upon fi nding isolated places where she can 6 forge new ways of being. 7 The novel’s utopias have their origin in Nanon’s education and her 8 subsequent exploration of the countryside, which turn space into text (as 9 she learns to describe her world in writing) and text into space (as she 10 memorizes maps in order to walk long distances in unfamiliar territory). 11 On the very fi rst page Nanon humbly observes that she may have dif- 12 fi culty accurately narrating the story of her life and that of her husband 13 because she lacks a formal education: 14 15 Je ne sais pas si je pourrai raconter par écrit, moi qui, à douze ans, ne 16 savais pas encore lire. Je ferai comme je pourrai. Je vais prendre les choses 17 de haut et tâcher de retrouver les premiers souvenirs de mon enfance. 18 Ils sont très confus, comme ceux des enfants dont on ne développe pas 19 l’intelligence par l’éducation.10 (37) 20 21 The paragraph shows more than just modesty regarding Nanon’s poor 22 education or her provincial turns of phrase, since reading and writing 23 profoundly transform the way she thinks and perceives her surroundings 24 and imply that language itself structures memory. At the end of chapter 25 9, Nanon makes a striking announcement about her mastery of language: 26 27 À présent, ceux qui m’auront lue savent que mon éducation est assez faite 28 pour que je m’exprime plus facilement et comprenne mieux les choses qui 29 me frappent. Il m’eût été impossible, durant tout le récit que je viens de 30 faire, de ne pas parler un peu à la manière des paysans; ma pensée n’eût 31 pas trouvé d’autres mots que ceux où elle était alors contenue, et, en me 32 laissant aller à en employer d’autres, je me serais prêté des pensées et des 33 sentiments que je n’avais pas.11 (116–17) 34 35 Nanon’s narrative, although retrospective, must follow exactly the course 36 of her education, since her vocabulary expands with her world. The 37 words themselves contain her thoughts and feelings of the past, thoughts 38 whose very simplicity cannot be translated into a more sophisticated, in 39 her words, “bourgeois,” language. Even though born a peasant and illiter- 40 ate until the age of twelve, Nanon progressively changes into an eloquent 41 138 Chapter Six

1 writer and complex thinker, as she herself remarks and as the increasingly 2 rich vocabulary of her narrative attests. 3 The correlation between reading, space, and perception becomes clearer 4 when Émilien teaches Nanon how to read in chapter 4. Sitting outside on 5 a wide plateau and looking out on the narrow valley of her home town for 6 the very fi rst time, Nanon learns the alphabet from Émilien. Afterward, 7 she begins to notice natural beauty for the fi rst time and, remarkably, to 8 see the world as a function of letters: 9 10 Je connus tout mon alphabet ce jour-là, et j’étais contente, en rentrant, 11 d’entendre chanter les grives et gronder la rivière. . . . Le soleil se couchait 12 sur notre droite, les bois de châtaigniers et de hêtres étaient comme en 13 feu. . . . Ça n’était pas comme ça les autres fois. . . . Mes yeux éblouis 14 voyaient des lettres rouges et bleues dans les rayons du couchant.12 (70) 15 16 The new spatial perspective achieved by walking to the crest of the val- 17 ley combined with what might be described as the afterimage produced 18 from staring intently at the printed letters in Émilien’s book provokes 19 in Nanon a transformative vision, where not only rays of sunlight be- 20 come colored letters, but also where everyday natural objects take on 21 new meaning, as if she had just discovered metaphor (“tout me paraissait 22 drôle”—“everything looked funny to me”). She notices the sounds of 23 birds and moving water, the color of the prairie, and even compares the 24 golden hue of the stream to the moutier’s statue of a virgin. Nanon then 25 looks to the sky for a “sign” that could tell her if she will soon learn to 26 read and is comforted by the sight of one of the thrushes that follows the 27 couple. In a peasant version of Ruskin’s pathetic fallacy, the world turns 28 into a prophetic text to be deciphered. 29 After learning reading, writing, and simple arithmetic, the next subject 30 Nanon asks Émilien to teach her is geography in order to read the maps 31 she glimpsed at the monastery (87). Émilien, as ignorant as she, promises 32 to teach himself geography so he can then teach it to her. Nanon later 33 makes extraordinarily good use of her knowledge of geography and her 34 ability to read maps, not only those of the monastery, but also a copy of 35 the Carte de Cassini in Limoges at Costejoux’s residence (149). Before 36 traveling alone she memorizes her route, engraving, as she says, the image 37 in her mind; she thereby internalizes a textual, cartographic space before 38 writing her own itinerary in the spaces of central France and the space of 39 the novel. 40 Though exact numbers are unavailable, Cassini maps were not best 41 sellers. Each small section was sold separately as it was completed, over Carte Blanche 139 a thirty-year period beginning in 1756. Though it is not impossible for 1 both the intellectually and geographically backward monastery and the 2 more sophisticated bourgeois Costejoux to have owned copies of such 3 detailed maps (and particularly Costejoux’s Cassini maps), it seems rather 4 coincidental. 5 In fact, the reference to these particular maps indicates that they not 6 only serve as a mark of narrative authenticity, since the fi ctional places 7 can be located on the real maps, but that a reading of the maps actually 8 generates the space and the narrative of the novel. George Sand herself 9 owned copies of various Cassini maps. In a letter from 1853 addressed to 10 her son Maurice, she asks for Cassini maps of the Bourbonnais region in 11 order to complete her collection, which she says includes maps of Nohant 12 and part of the Creuse (Sand, Correspondance XI, 603–4). The narrative 13 action in Nanon takes place entirely within the space represented in the 14 maps in Sand’s possession, at least as early as 1853. By paying close at- 15 tention to the geographical descriptions in the novel and comparing them 16 to the Carte de Cassini, Sand’s writing process shows itself to be closely 17 linked to her reading of the empty, uninhabited regions of the maps. 18 The itineraries traced by Sand in the novel coincide exactly with the 19 spatial representation of the Cassini maps, so much so that at least once 20 she relies on what may be a too literal interpretation of the map. On the 21 way to liberate Émilien from prison in Châteauroux, Nanon explains, 22 “En fait de ce que nous appelons route aujourd’hui, il n’y en avait point 23 du tout de la Châtre à Châteauroux. . . . On s’engageait dans une grande 24 lande où les voies se croisaient au hasard; nous faillîmes nous y perdre” 25 (156) (“In point of fact there was nothing of what we would call today a 26 road from la Châtre to Châteauroux. . . . We headed into a large marsh 27 where paths were crossed haphazardly; we almost got lost”).13 According 28 to the geographer Monique Pelletier, one of the major problems with the 29 Cassini maps observed even at the time of their publication was the over- 30 emphasis on major routes to the exclusion of local highways, rendering 31 small towns apparently without any connection: “Les critiques de la par- 32 tie topographique de la carte de Cassini concernent surtout la fi guration 33 des chemins de terre, dont un grand nombre ont étés omis—si bien que 34 de nombreux villages semblent ne pouvoir communiquer, ni entre eux, ni 35 avec une grande route” (Pelletier, 226) (“The criticisms of the topographi- 36 cal portion of the Carte de Cassini are focused especially on the repre- 37 sentation of roadways, a large number of which were left out—so much 38 so that numerous villages seem to have no way of communicating with 39 each other or with a major route”). The cartographic simplifi cation and 40 abstraction of space, here as elsewhere, leads to narrative complication 41 140 Chapter Six

1 as the novel’s must fi nd their own paths through seemingly 2 uncharted territory. 3 The novel’s two principal utopian spaces, Valcreux and the île aux 4 Fades, take on a narrative signifi cance precisely because they exist as 5 cartographic blanks. By their very names, Valcreux being the tautologi- 6 cal “hollow valley” and the île aux Fades “fairy island,” these fi ctional 7 places suggest empty and imaginary space, utopian nonplaces. Nanon 8 situates Valcreux very precisely at various times in the novel: “J’avais vu 9 sur la carte qu’à vol d’oiseau, le moutier était à égale distance de Limoges 10 et d’Argenton” (154) (“I had seen on a map that as the crow fl ies, the 11 moutier was equidistant between Limoges and Argenton”). Early on, one 12 of Nanon’s cousins exclaims that at twelve leagues, Saint-Léonard is far 13 from Valcreux (51). Mozet asserts (Nanon, 28), and a quick look at the 14 Carte de Cassini confi rms, that following the novel’s indications “Val- 15 creux” would correspond to the village of Ahun, next to the Moutier 16 d’Ahun, which counted 1,850 residents in 1793, and is strangely promi- 17 nent on the Carte de Cassini for a town its size (see fi gure 3.1).14 Ahun is 18 near the geographical center of France, relatively far from any city, and 19 utterly unremarkable except for the almost immaterial, or “hollow,” qual- 20 ity of its name, which is composed entirely of vowel and nasal sounds. 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Figure 3.1. Ahun and Its Moutier. Carte générale de la France, dite Carte de 40 Cassini, Detail of no. 12, feuille 56. Courtesy of Library of Congress, Geography 41 and Map Division, G5830 s86 .C3 Vault. Carte Blanche 141

The Cassini maps allow us to locate as well the second utopia of the 1 novel: the île aux Fades, the refuge Nanon, Émilien, and his former ser- 2 vant Dumont fi nd near Crevant in the Berry. Nanon describes the voy- 3 age from Châteauroux to this mysterious wilderness: down the Gourdon 4 stream, through the forest of Villemort, across the Bourdesoule River, 5 past the road leading to Aigurande, and then left into a “pays sauvage” 6 (“wild country”) (176) (fi gure 3.2). The uninhabited space of the map in 7 the area indicated by Nanon’s travels consists of a woods, a valley, and an 8 oddly formed hill in the shape of a peninsula. The topographical contours 9 of the hill (fi gure 3.3) inspire the isolated utopia of the île aux Fades, 10 which Nanon compares to the island of Robinson Crusoe, complete with 11 indigenous “savages.” 12 If, on the level of the novel’s composition, the utopias can be read 13 as closed communities born from the blank spaces of the Cassini map, 14 on the diegetic level the successive places of the novel all share similar 15 narrative fates that taken as a whole suggest a direct engagement with 16 the events of the Commune, all the while reversing its tragic outcome. 17 Whether Nanon’s uncle’s cottage, the “moutier,” Costejoux’s apartment 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Figure 3.2. The Bois de Villemort, Crevant, and the area around Sand’s fi ctional “Île aux fades.” Carte de Cassini, detail no. 11, feuille 83. Courtesy of Library of 40 Congress, Geography and Map Division, G5830 s86 .C3 Vault. 41 142 Chapter Six

1 Figure 3.3. The blank space 2 corresponding to the “Île aux fades.” Carte de Cas- 3 sini, detail of no. 11, feuille 4 83. Courtesy of Library of 5 Congress, Geography and 6 Map Division, G5830 s86 7 .C3 Vault. 8 9 10 11 12 in Limoges, Émilien’s prison in Chateauroux, the hut in the île aux Fades, 13 or Émilien’s ancestral castle, the places begin as enclosed fortresses, pro- 14 tecting their inhabitants, sometimes against their will, from the outside 15 world. The “Grande peur” at the start of the novel forces Nanon and 16 her family to lock themselves up in the cottage; at one point the monks 17 throw Père Fructueux in the dungeon; Costejoux locks up Nanon in his 18 apartment for her own safety; and at the île aux Fades the three refugees 19 avoid all contact with strangers for fear of being discovered. It is as if the 20 characters are continually under siege, but in almost every case the siege 21 is only imaginary. After a few days, the “Grande peur” is shown to be 22 based on a rumor; after the mayor puts some pressure on the monks they 23 not only release Fructueux but make him the prior; the peasants around 24 the île aux Fades show themselves to be just friendly peasants who are 25 superstitious of the Druidic ruins that surround the refugees’ settlement. 26 Once the danger is seen to be illusory, or at least has passed, in every case 27 a healthy work ethic returns and the characters set about cultivating the 28 land for maximum productivity, always under the direction of Nanon. 29 The enclosed spaces thus begin as defensive barriers and end up as ideal, 30 self-contained communities. Nanon emphasizes the point by saying that 31 Valcreux was no longer a “paroisse” (“parish”) but a “commune”—a 32 change in terminology certainly not unique to Valcreux during the Revo- 33 lution, but one that had a strong resonance in 1871, since the rallying 34 point of the Commune was to claim for Paris the same status as “com- 35 mune” that other cities and towns in France enjoyed (76).15 36 The novel’s cartographic intertext, the Carte de Cassini, guarantees an 37 accurate historical and geographic reference point for the narrative’s uto- 38 pian places. But by exploiting the maps’ empty spaces, the neutral areas 39 devoid of place names or, in the case of the île aux Fades, topographical 40 signs, the text superposes onto the historical space of the French Revolu- 41 tion an alternative space that collapses multiple times. While the novel as Carte Blanche 143 a whole constantly evokes the Commune of 1871, Nanon’s retrospective 1 narrative weaves back and forth not only between events in her own 2 life, but also reaches back to the distant past. The moutier at Valcreux 3 resembles a medieval monastery as much as one from the late eighteenth 4 century; even after the Revolution, Nanon transforms the moutier into a 5 communal and agrarian enterprise that combines the original functions of 6 a monastery with nineteenth-century agricultural discourse. Likewise the 7 île aux Fades provides refuge to Nanon, Émilien, and Dumont because 8 the local peasants are afraid of the ancient remains left by the Druids. 9 Nanon converts a dolmen into a shelter and begins to cultivate the sur- 10 rounding land, thereby incorporating traditions of the ancient past and 11 simultaneously disproving local superstitions. She recounts how much 12 the area changes decades after the events she describes, now that the re- 13 gion has been modernized and people circulate freely across the land. 14 Revolution in Nanon comes about by tracing new paths in overlooked 15 areas, by writing in the margins of history. 16 17 18 Nanon, or the Neutral Subject 19 20 Like the novel’s isolated communities, drawn in the interstices of the map 21 of France, Nanon herself exists between categories. She serves as cata- 22 lyst for the events in the novel and as a negotiator between the other, 23 more ideologically rigid characters. The communities formed in the text, 24 from her uncle’s home to the “moutier,” from the île aux Fades to the 25 Franqueville château, hold together disparate, even antagonistic, indi- 26 viduals around a center formed by Nanon’s neutrality. The novel’s more 27 theoretical or political moments all consist of long conversations between 28 the rational and coolheaded Nanon and a more zealous, if often mis- 29 guided, friend: in some of the novel’s most passionate exchanges, Nanon 30 discusses the nature of revolution, violence, and social change with her 31 peasant uncle, Père Fructueux, the bourgeois revolutionary Costejoux, 32 and of course her friend and husband the reformed aristocrat Émilien. 33 Through these conversations, Nanon is able slowly to form, though not 34 impose, a consensus, namely, that the end does not justify the means and 35 that a lasting revolution cannot come from violence. Peasants, servants, 36 bourgeois, monks, and aristocrats all cohabitate, sometimes more and 37 sometimes less peacefully, in Nanon’s utopian community, without losing 38 any of their diversity of opinion or identity. 39 Nanon’s own identity, however, does not fi t easily into nineteenth- 40 century social categories, a fact revealed by George Sand’s hesitation about 41 144 Chapter Six

1 the novel’s title. As Mozet notes, Sand refers in her letters to two different 2 titles, “la paysanne parvenue” (“The Upstart Peasant Woman”) and “la 3 Marquise de Franqueville” (Nanon, 10–11), both of which focus on only 4 one aspect of Nanon’s narrative trajectory. Throughout her story, Nanon 5 insists on her humble origins even though her fi nancial situation and her 6 education have her rise through the social ranks. The last few pages, nar- 7 rated in the third person, confi rm that the marquise still dressed in peas- 8 ant attire despite her bourgeois fortune and noble title (287). Instead of 9 remaining a simple peasant or becoming an aristocrat, she embodies all so- 10 cial classes at the same time as if she were an allegory for France itself. As 11 she says describing her own education, “j’étais devenue moins paysanne, 12 c’est-à-dire, plus Française” (234) (“I had become less of a peasant, which 13 is to say, more French”). One is not born French, apparently, one becomes 14 French, and Nanon’s expanding knowledge of history and geography, 15 along with her role in forming communities, make of her the ideal citizen. 16 While she plans her adventurous rescue of Émilien among other ex- 17 ploits by memorizing the complex Carte de Cassini, Nanon cannot travel 18 freely on the roads of France. As she repeatedly remarks, it was not at 19 all safe for a young girl of seventeen or eighteen to walk for days unac- 20 companied in regions far away from her own. Walking, what for Indiana 21 constituted a mad attempt at escape (and was interpreted by Ralph as 22 suicidal), is for Nanon not only a proof of her commitment to Émilien 23 but also a way for her to gain fi rsthand knowledge of the new nation. 24 Her walks start off relatively limited as she follows her sheep Rosette 25 looking for pasture. Soon Émilien accompanies her and they explore the 26 town and the region as he shares what little he knows about the world. 27 Her fi rst long trip, to Limoges to visit Costejoux, takes her two days on 28 foot, and though she can intuit the way, she decides to look at the map: 29 “J’avais dans la nuit calqué sur une carte tout le pays que j’avais à par- 30 courir” (139) (“During the night I had traced on a map all the area I had 31 to cover”). Already her travels are described in masculine terms, since the 32 fi rst day she says she walked as far as a man would (139). 33 Her next journey, following Émilien’s carriage as he is transferred to 34 another prison, is considerably more dangerous, as the coachmen make 35 remarks about her beauty. Similar to the attention given to Indiana as 36 she traveled by ship to France, Nanon’s gender and her looks attract un- 37 wanted attention once she has left her native region and travels as an 38 unknown young woman: 39 40 Pourtant, j’avais une inquiétude pour la suite de mon voyage. La manière 41 dont on me regardait et me parlait était nouvelle pour moi, et je m’avisais Carte Blanche 145

enfi n de l’inconvénient d’être une jeune fi lle toute seule sur les chemins. 1 À Valcreux, où l’on me savait sage et retenue, personne ne m’avait fait 2 souvenir que je n’étais plus une enfant, et je m’étais trop habituée à ne pas 3 compter mes années. . . . Je voyais enfi n dans mon sexe un obstacle et des 4 périls auxquels je n’avais jamais songé. . . . La beauté attire toujours les 5 regards, et j’aurais voulu me rendre invisible.16 (152) 6 7 A week later, on her next voyage to meet Émilien, she asks his former 8 servant Dumont to accompany her, and she disguises herself as his ado- 9 lescent nephew (156). For the next few chapters she succeeds at making 10 herself almost invisible by cross-dressing as a boy named Lucas (157). 11 Nanon’s masculine attire, reminiscent of course of Sand’s own youth, rep- 12 resents more than a simple disguise as she begins to enjoy a new freedom 13 of movement. Later, after she helps Émilien escape from prison and they 14 hide in the île aux Fades, she notices how self-suffi cient she has become: 15 “J’étais devenue, depuis que j’étais garçon, adroite et forte de mes mains 16 pour les ouvrages de garçon” (179) (“I had become, ever since I started 17 being a boy, skilled with strong hands for boy’s work”). Just as she ef- 18 fortlessly makes the transition from peasant to bourgeoise to marquise, 19 Nanon has no emotional or practical diffi culty dressing and acting like 20 a boy. 21 The paradox of Nanon’s extraordinary neutrality, or even her identity 22 as a neuter beyond gender, while suggested throughout the text, becomes 23 explicit near the end of the novel when Costejoux declares to her: “Vous 24 êtes une exception, vous, une très remarquable exception. Vous n’êtes ni 25 une femme ni un homme, vous êtes l’un et l’autre avec les meilleures quali- 26 tés des deux sexes” (229) (“You are an exception, you, a very remarkable 27 exception. You are neither a woman nor a man, you are both with the 28 best qualities of each gender”). Costejoux’s statement, while obviously 29 problematic from a feminist perspective, makes evident how Nanon as a 30 character exists in a neutral area, since her identity is constructed in the 31 space between categories. For Costejoux, she is “neither” woman “nor” 32 man; the negativity inherent in her name (Nanon) reinforces her quality 33 as neuter (ne-uter, “neither one”). Nanon’s protean subjectivity, in its pos- 34 itive dynamism emerging from negative space, is both perfectly adapted 35 to the changing events of the Revolution and to a text that superimposes 36 political contexts from different time periods onto the same textual space. 37 Nanon personifi es utopia by her neutrality, by her idealistic hope of 38 avoiding violent confl ict, by her devotion to community building, and 39 by the chiasmus of space and discourse generated from her many travels 40 across central France. Yet the end of the novel shares with the end of 41 146 Chapter Six

1 Indiana a troubling silence from the woman . While Indiana’s 2 silence at the end of that novel, as I suggest, might be interpreted as a mir- 3 roring of the hidden omniscient narrator (who in turn begins to resemble 4 Indiana), Nanon’s silence is solely political: 5 6 Ils [Émilien and Costejoux] n’ont pas été dupes de la révolution de Juil- 7 let. Ils n’ont pas été satisfaits de celle de Février. Moi qui, depuis bien 8 longtemps, ne m’occupe plus de politique—je n’en ai pas le temps—je ne 9 les ai jamais contredits, et, si j’eusse été sûre d’avoir raison contre eux, je 10 n’aurais pas eu le courage de le leur dire, tant j’admirais la trempe de ces 11 caractères du passé.17 (286) 12 13 Nanon’s pronouncement carries her neutrality to what seems to be its 14 extreme, abandoning all politics in order to work and in deference to 15 the men in her life. The opposite of the pétroleuses (the stereotypical im- 16 age of the enraged women of the Commune who, according to Versail- 17 lais propaganda, set fi re to the city’s monuments), Nanon refuses to give 18 up her work for the political cause of the day, since “she doesn’t have 19 the time.” As a woman involved both in negotiation between factions 20 and dedicated to her own business ventures (négoce in French, negotium 21 in Latin meaning business, both come from neg-otium, the negation of 22 leisure), she implicitly condemns politics as leisure time. Moreover, the 23 political passion and ideologies of Émilien and Costejoux have solidifi ed 24 into part of their personalities; Nanon seems to mock them gently by her 25 fear of contradicting such caricatural fi gures from the “past.” Politics, as 26 the Communards argued, is not the exclusive realm of the leisure class, 27 but belongs to all those who take part in their community. Nanon’s activi- 28 ties such as farming the land and helping the sick and the poor constitute 29 an extraordinary amount of labor; indeed, she dies of fatigue at the age 30 of eighty-nine while caring for the sick during an epidemic (286). In the 31 wake of the carnage of the Terror of 1793 (and the even greater carnage 32 of May 1871), Nanon’s call for nonviolence beyond ideology and for a 33 return to work may be not only the most politically responsible of acts 34 but the ultimate paradox: a pragmatic utopia. 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 2 3 4 5 6 Part IV 7 8 Branching Off: Genealogy and Map 9 10 in the Rougon-Macquart 11 12 13 C’est un de mes principes qu’il ne faut pas s’écrire. L’artiste doit 14 être dans son oeuvre comme Dieu dans la création, invisible et 15 tout-puissant; qu’on le sente partout, mais qu’on ne le voie pas.* 16 —Gustave Flaubert, letter to Mlle Leroyer de Chantepie 17 18 Moi, je tâche de travailler le plus tranquillement possible, mais je 19 renonce à voir clair dans ce que je fais, car plus je vais et plus je suis 20 convaincu que nos oeuvres en gestation échappent absolument à 21 notre volonté.† 22 —Émile Zola, letter to Huysmans 23 24 25 26 27 In examining Stendhal’s and Nerval’s novel maps, we have seen how in- 28 tensely personal and autobiographical works invent layered spaces and 29 new subjects. Likewise, in Sand’s fi ction, characters imagine idealized, lib- 30 erating spaces for women and men, spaces that could nonetheless exist 31 in the real world. These works exploit a confusion between author and 32 narrator and between real places and fi ctional spaces, simulating a new 33 subject who is both preserved in an archival text and yet susceptible to 34 the play of language. In contrast to these texts centered on individuals 35 36 *It is one of my principles that one should never write oneself. The artist should be in his work 37 like God in creation, invisible and all-powerful; may he be felt everywhere, but seen nowhere. 38 39 †I strive to work the most peacefully possible, but I give up trying to see clearly into what I am doing, for the further I go the more I am convinced that our works in preparation absolutely 40 escape our will. 41

147 148 Part IV

1 who fashion space in their own image, the novels in Émile Zola’s monu- 2 mental series the Rougon-Macquart portray an entire society as it con- 3 sumes itself over the course of the Second Empire. The full title of the 4 twenty-novel series, Les Rougon-Macquart: Histoire naturelle et sociale 5 d’une famille sous le Second Empire (The Rougon-Macquart: The Natu- 6 ral and Social History of a Family Under the Second Empire), underscores 7 that each individual character must represent at the same time the family 8 (of the Rougon or Macquart branch), a component of Second Empire 9 society (“Histoire sociale”), and a universal or natural law (“Histoire 10 naturelle”). Characters take on meaning not as unique individual sub- 11 jects but as examples of larger social, political, economic, or biological 12 phenomena; they are ultimately the objects of Zola’s novel experiment. 13 Characters, the “fonctionnaires” (“functionaries” or “civil servants”) of 14 the naturalist novel, emerge out of their specifi c milieu, they are “territo- 15 rialized” by the textual spaces that produce them.1 16 If the Rougon-Macquart’s characters are in some sense subject to and 17 not architects of the spaces they inhabit, if there is no “novel subject” in 18 the series, then Zola’s naturalist project seems to run counter to the novel 19 maps of his romantic predecessors Stendhal, Nerval, and Sand. In the 20 next two chapters, however, I argue that reading Zola’s extensive notes 21 for the series (referred to as the dossiers préparatoires) alongside the nov- 22 els themselves exposes the artifi cial separation between note and novel, 23 real document and fi ctional construct, author and text. The dossiers re- 24 cord Zola’s creative process, containing the subjective and artistic origin 25 of the “scientifi c” novel project and separating it from the narrative itself. 26 Unlike earlier realists such as Stendhal, Zola did not insert a narrative 27 “je” into his fi ctional texts. On a superfi cial level at least, no authorial 28 presence, or even narrative stand-in, structures the fi ctional narrative, and 29 yet in the dossiers Zola is everywhere present, describing his fi rsthand ex- 30 periences, recording in detail his research, appropriating “his” characters. 31 Just as remarkable as the abundance of “je” and “moi” in the dossiers 32 compared to their absence in the novels, an absolute partition divides the 33 factual origins of the novels meticulously preserved in the dossiers from 34 the fi ctional novels themselves. 35 The author’s scientifi c writing method along with the existence of the 36 visual, factual dossier must be made public (in theoretical publications 37 by Zola himself and by those select friends who saw the dossiers), but 38 the textual, fi ctional novels erase their material origins as if they were 39 spontaneous productions of the Second Empire society they represent. 40 The Rougon-Macquart derives its driving force and its representational 41 authority from the vast archive that makes up the dossiers préparatoires; Branching Off 149 every observation about an aspect of society, every event, every place and 1 character in the novel, it may be inferred, have their origin in a docu- 2 ment somewhere in the unpublished dossiers. Inferred but not known 3 by the reading public, since the dossiers were kept fi rst at Zola’s home, 4 then safely stored and archived at the Bibliothèque nationale de France 5 after his death.2 These notes guaranteed for posterity, and even perhaps 6 for Zola himself, an assurance of the authenticity, the reality behind his 7 fi ctional works. Moreover, the dossiers were kept in excellent condition, 8 whereas the preliminary drafts of his manuscripts were systematically de- 9 stroyed.3 The Rougon-Macquart exhibits, both at the level of and 10 at the level of the novel’s genesis, a severe case of “archive fever”; origins 11 must be conserved as the foundation of authority and hidden from view 12 to guard against the exposure of secrets and to preserve the future from 13 the weight of the past. 14 In the fi rst chapter, “Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel,” 15 I take a close look at Zola’s contradictions as theoretician of , 16 as visual thinker and writer of novels, as scientifi c observer and literary 17 experimenter. Drawing from Jacques Rancière’s notion of the contradic- 18 tions of what he terms the “aesthetic regime,” I argue that the separation 19 of visual representation from the written word reproduces itself at every 20 level, both within the dossiers themselves and between the dossiers and 21 the novels. In the unrepresentable gap between note and novel, and docu- 22 ment and fi ction, authorial control gives way to chance and the unpre- 23 dictability of fi gural language. By inscribing himself so completely in the 24 text of the dossiers, and thus on the side of fact and observation, Zola 25 recuperates his loss of authorial control over the fi ction and asserts, in 26 vain, the novel’s subservience to the dossier. 27 In the second chapter, “Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola,” I trace 28 how the novels reproduce the same dynamic of authority founded on 29 hidden documents as the dossiers, their archival origin/other. Whether 30 the desacralized cemetery of the “Aire Saint-Mittre” in the fi rst novel or 31 the destruction of Pascal’s research on heredity in the last, whether Na- 32 poleon III’s secret plan for transforming Paris in La Curée or his lack of 33 battle plan in La Débâcle, power hinges on the successful manipulation 34 of archives and origins, actual or invented. Like the gap between note and 35 novel, the difference between archival referent and representation leads 36 to speculation, in both senses of conjecture and fi nancial gamble, as the 37 absent documents hold simultaneously the secrets of the past and those of 38 the future; the repressed past preserved in the archive returns in the pres- 39 ent as a destructive force, leaving in its wake new spaces for new subjects. 40 I show how, at the end of the novel series, the blaze that consumes all of 41 150 Part IV

1 Pascal’s genealogical notes on his family (the narrative equivalent of the 2 dossiers préparatoires) spares only the indecipherable Rougon-Macquart 3 family tree, a document that closes the cycle in a teleological confusion, 4 since it represents the starting point for Zola’s project and the end point 5 of Pascal’s hereditary research. The Rougon-Macquart genealogical tree, 6 a fi gure combining textual and visual, factual and fi ctional elements, con- 7 fi rms that meaning in the novel is born from a novel map where the fron- 8 tiers between reality and fi ction are continually shifting. 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 2 CHAPTER SEVEN 3 4 5 6 Zola and the Contradictory Origins 7 8 of the Novel 9 10 11 12 13 Naturalism, as Zola theorized it, merged for the fi rst time in literary his- 14 tory the realist ambition of depicting social interactions with the scientifi c 15 examination of what underlies those interactions. Mimesis surrenders to 16 analysis as the naturalist novelist discovers the true cause of human be- 17 havior hidden under the surface of polite nineteenth-century bourgeois 18 society. No longer Stendhal’s mirror dragged along a muddy road, the 19 novel, in Zola’s telling, would be a precise observational tool, akin to a 20 scientist’s laboratory. The author’s detailed and objective study of a given 21 milieu supported by the laws of heredity and psychology produce a novel 22 that can both represent the logical outcome of any narrative situation 23 and explain its scientifi c necessity. When milieu, as an amalgam of space, 24 class, and historical time (derived in part from Hippolyte Taine’s “race, 25 milieu, moment”), defi nes the very essence of characters, the naturalist 26 author merely juxtaposes one milieu to another and deduces the rational 27 dénouement. The author becomes a scientist who observes phenomena 28 and then experiments in the language of the text. By affi rming the ex- 29 perimental aspect of fi ction writing, Zola shows that naturalism does not 30 blindly copy or assimilate science, but practices it; carefully planned nov- 31 els simulate real-life situations just as laboratory experiments selectively 32 test one hypothesis at a time. The Rougon-Macquart follows the vicis- 33 situdes of one simulated family, but the laws of human behavior may be 34 applicable to Second Empire France and beyond. 35 In his preface to the fi rst novel in the series,, 36 and so to the series as a whole, Zola announces his theory of the novel 37 and the method to his creative process, which will be focused on the 38 analysis of a group of individuals who appear dissimilar but who are 39 “intimately tied together,” since “heredity has its laws, like gravity” (Zola, 40 Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:3). Zola’s novels will try to solve the “double 41

151 152 Chapter Seven

1 question of temperaments and milieus” that determine people’s actions. 2 The novels must be grounded in physiological laws and historical accu- 3 racy to reveal truths both natural and social. The recent disastrous loss 4 of the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the Second Empire months 5 before the novel’s publication offer proof of the validity of Zola’s method 6 and the inevitability of such a historical outcome in a world governed by 7 natural laws (1:4). Zola claims to have collected over the preceding three 8 years all the documents needed for such an extensive study, and thus af- 9 fi rms the existence of a separate archive of documents at the origin of 10 the novels (1:3). In the two short pages of the preface Zola proclaims the 11 theoretical foundation for his novels as a scientifi c and historical project 12 spanning many years and many novels based on reliable documents in the 13 author’s possession. 14 Equally present, however, is the author’s own signature, his owner- 15 ship not just of ideas but of a world he has created. The fi rst word, “Je,” 16 is repeated eleven times and accompanied for good measure by “mon 17 oeuvre” and “ma pensée.” Napoléon III’s fall, while inevitable in Zola’s 18 estimation, was also a dramatic necessity “dont j’avais besoin comme 19 artiste” (“which I needed as an artist”) (1:4). The objects of the novelistic 20 experiment become puppets in the author’s hands: 21 22 Et quand je tiendrai tous les fi ls, quand j’aurai entre les mains tout un 23 groupe social, je ferai voir ce groupe à l’oeuvre, comme acteur d’une 24 époque historique, je le créerai agissant dans la complexité de ses efforts, 25 j’analyserai à la fois la somme de volonté de chacun de ses membres et la 26 poussée générale de l’ensemble.1 (1:3) 27 28 Zola’s preface alternates between a scientifi c vocabulary (analysis, social 29 group, historical period) and an artistic, even theatrical, vocabulary (ac- 30 tor, create, drama, artist) with the effect of subsuming the whole of his 31 work under one artistically new and scientifi cally valid vision. The pref- 32 ace amounts to a pact offered to the reader and signed by the author, who 33 stands by the soundness of his method and implicitly acknowledges that 34 the novel must pass through the fi lter or “screen” of his vision.2 35 Gustave Flaubert, in an otherwise enthusiastic letter to Zola, criticizes 36 his younger colleague’s inclusion of the preface to La Fortune des Rou- 37 gon: “Je n’en blâme que la préface. Selon moi, elle gâte votre oeuvre qui 38 est si impartiale et si haute. Vous y dîtes votre secret, ce qui est trop can- 39 dide, chose que dans ma poétique (à moi) un romancier n’a pas le droit 40 de faire” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:1541) (“I only disapprove of the pref- 41 ace. For me, it spoils your work, which is otherwise so impartial and so Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 153 lofty. You give away your secret, and that is too naive, something which 1 in my (own) poetics a novelist has no right doing”). Flaubert neatly sum- 2 marizes the difference between the two authors. La Fortune des Rougon, 3 like the other novels in the series, erases all signs of authorial presence, 4 suggesting an objectivity and a distance from what is represented. The 5 preface attached to the work, however, reintroduces the fi gure of the au- 6 thor and allows the reader to see the cogs in the textual machine. For 7 Flaubert, a novel’s preparation, its documentation and all the evidence of 8 the author’s research, must remain a trade secret, since presumably the 9 novel must speak for itself. But Zola’s preface does not tell the reader any 10 secrets, it makes known that there is a secret, namely, the novel’s factual 11 basis in science and history recorded in a collection of documents hidden 12 from view. 13 Flaubert’s negative reaction to Zola’s preface and to his theories in 14 general refl ects quite accurately the critical consensus until fairly recently. 15 When not rejecting them outright, critics spared Zola’s novels only by 16 banishing the theory behind them. Even at the time, contemporary writ- 17 ers were suspicious of the scientifi c laws Zola promoted, and they ridi- 18 culed the notion of experimentation in the novel, since the outcome of 19 the experiment was already known by the author (which assumes that 20 authors control the meaning of their texts). Any number of reasons can 21 be put forth to save the novels from the potentially embarrassing (and 22 certainly dated) science found in Zola’s theory: Zola’s writing practice, 23 as shown by genetic critics, does not entirely correspond to his purported 24 method; Zola only represented scientifi c knowledge of the time, however 25 erroneous it appears today; Zola did not actually believe the theories he 26 trumpeted, but used them as part of an ingenious marketing campaign.3 27 All of these assertions are convincing, but rely on a denial of Zola’s theo- 28 retical and literary innovation: a scientifi cally and historically researched 29 novel series with a documentary archive as long as the novels themselves. 30 Zola’s naturalism professed, in word if not always in deed, a narrative de- 31 rived not from literary history and novelistic convention but from natural 32 history and scientifi c practice. 33 The laws of heredity and the observations of social milieu described 34 by Zola, whether true or not (and in his notes Zola hinted at his indiffer- 35 ence to the question), generate new narrative effects, almost mythical in 36 their sweeping vision, that can play out in an infi nite number of combina- 37 tions without repeating.4 When social history and heredity become a new 38 , the novel’s very structure resembles the society it depicts; 39 Napoleon III’s fall is a social, physiological, and narrative inevitability. 40 The textual motor, as Michel Serres described it, fi nds its fuel, its stock, 41 154 Chapter Seven

1 in its own subject matter (and I would add, its reserves in the dossier), 2 consuming itself in an inexorable, entropic blaze.5 Only by juxtaposing 3 Zola’s theoretical impulse to the dossiers préparatoires and to the novels 4 themselves can we understand the complex, even contradictory, relation- 5 ship between the author’s aesthetic, documentary, and scientifi c projects. 6 7 8 Rancière, Zola, and the “Mute” Dossiers 9 10 The philosopher Jacques Rancière provides a useful framework for con- 11 textualizing Zola’s novel project in the literary history of the nineteenth 12 century. Instead of proposing a chronology of successive literary move- 13 ments in opposition to each other that lead inevitably to modernism and 14 postmodernism, Rancière argues that all literature defi nes itself internally 15 as a struggle between the autonomy of the written word, as the indiffer- 16 ence of subject matter to its expression, and a more mystical equivalence 17 of all forms of expression found in material objects. Each “new” literary 18 movement only reshuffl es the terms of the original contradiction. Beyond 19 a conception of naturalism as a stop on the road between romanticism 20 and modernism, Zola’s naturalist theories and novelistic practices refl ect 21 an attempt to harness the latent poetic energy of things in the service of a 22 representation of society. 23 In La Parole muette: Essai sur les contradictions de la littérature (1998) 24 as well as in many other works, Rancière describes the paradigm shift 25 away from a “representational regime of art” toward an “aesthetic or 26 literary regime of art” that occurred around the end of the eighteenth 27 century. This aesthetic revolution introduced the notion of “literature” as 28 an art that abandons the hierarchy of representational genres and defi nes 29 itself exclusively in relation to language and the act of writing. Playfully 30 mocking his and anyone else’s inability to answer Jean-Paul Sartre’s ques- 31 tion “What is literature?” Rancière shows that literature has no object, no 32 “what,” but is rather a “mode historique de visibilité des oeuvres de l’art 33 d’écrire” (13) (“historical mode of visibility of works of the art of writ- 34 ing”). Literature conceptualizes the very possibility of visualizing writ- 35 ing as an art form. It is historical since this mode of seeing did not exist 36 before, roughly speaking, the French Revolution.6 Literature is therefore 37 not some spiritual and transcendental experiment. At the same time, as it 38 has no inherent object, no conventions governing what is appropriate to 39 represent, it cannot be defi ned by any strictly social or directly political 40 context. Refusing the extremes of Sartre’s idea of literature as political 41 engagement and Maurice Blanchot’s idea of literature as the exteriority Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 155 of language (a concept we will return to later in this chapter), Rancière 1 proposes that literature functions precisely because it combines these two 2 contradictory elements inherent to the alienating nature of language and 3 text. 4 Ignoring other ways of dividing and classifying literature by movements 5 or schools such as romanticism, symbolism, or realism, Rancière pro- 6 poses a different division, that of a preliterary regime of representation 7 and the literary or aesthetic regime of art, whose visibility depends upon 8 a seemingly never-ending list of irreconcilable dualities. Literature’s con- 9 tradictions, far from being negative, are described as productive tensions; 10 accepting Rancière’s argument, it becomes apparent that the different 11 movements, schools, and authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centu- 12 ries have in fact produced more and ever-changing contradictions in their 13 impossible search for an organic literature in harmony with society and 14 nature. Literature becomes the art of writing beginning in the nineteenth 15 century by renouncing the primacy of fi ctional representation, which 16 Rancière links to the tradition of belles lettres in the seventeenth and eigh- 17 teenth centuries. In the classical imagination, every genre has its natural 18 subject matter and specifi c generic conventions; fi ctional representation 19 reproduced the hierarchies that structure society. With the advent of the 20 aesthetic regime of art and the abandonment of appropriate subjects of 21 representation, anything can become the subject of literature; now “ev- 22 erything speaks” or has a voice in writing, even inanimate objects. As 23 his primary example, Rancière cites Victor ’s novel Notre-Dame de 24 Paris, where the subject of the fi ction is not an aristocratic or a 25 comic peasant but a stone building. Hugo famously claims that the print- 26 ing press kills or takes the place of architecture (“Ceci tuera cela”). It can 27 only do so because the stone of the cathedral can also signify or “speak,” 28 and thereby become absorbed as the “material” of the novel. 29 While it allows any object to become the speaking subject of a text, this 30 same rejection of generic boundaries promotes the unchecked, democratic 31 circulation of meaning so abhorred by Plato. The ties between language 32 and its referents are loosened by a “parole muette,” the written word de- 33 void of any human voice or any stable meaning. The concept of writing 34 for Rancière becomes doubled, self-contradictory: on the one hand writ- 35 ing is a hieroglyph where an idea is inscribed through form, and on the 36 other hand the word becomes “orphaned” of any body or stable meaning 37 (14). Literature is divided between the language of forms and things and 38 the language of ideas (174); it is both “chatty” and “mute,” both symbolic 39 of what Rancière calls “the poeticity of the world” and “fl oating” without 40 any fi xed meaning (172); it is caught between “the indifference of what 41 156 Chapter Seven

1 is written and the necessity of form” (154). While his text clarifi es how 2 literature is perceived by dismissing the differences and divisions between 3 literature’s various manifestations over the last two hundred years, Ran- 4 cière invents, or demonstrates how texts have invented, countless and 5 shifting new divisions, paradoxes, and partitions, not between different 6 conceptions of literature, but within texts themselves. At each text’s ori- 7 gin lies the failed attempt to bridge a divide, and the failure even to rep- 8 resent this origin as seamless. 9 At the same time as he argues that literature, as framed in the nine- 10 teenth century, is intrinsically contradictory, Rancière makes the surpris- 11 ing claim that naturalism as conceived by Émile Zola offers the novel 12 form a compromise between the representational primacy of fi ction (in 13 the service of a political, republican agenda) and the antirepresentational 14 play of literary expression. Zola’s novels, according to this argument, 15 would not produce contradictions or even seek to resolve them, but rather 16 would work to structure the text so as to hide the confl icting origins of 17 literature. Rancière’s comment on Zola comes in chapter 9 of La Parole 18 muette when he contrasts Stéphane Mallarmé’s negative assessment of 19 Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet to his favorable reception of Zola: 20 21 La description du boudoir de , comme celle des fl eurs du Paradou, 22 des étalages des Halles ou des vitraux du Rêve applique, dans l’‘égalité’ 23 des sujets, l’identité du principe d’expression. Zola, qui ne s’est jamais 24 posé le problème d’une poéticité de la prose, obéit encore au principe de 25 symbolicité qui fonde la poétique romantique, il fait parler les choses à 26 la manière de Notre-Dame de Paris. Et ce principe d’expressivité vient 27 doubler sans problème la narration à l’ancienne, comme la rime de l’idéal 28 en toute réalité. Le naturalisme donne à la forme romanesque le moyen 29 d’être la forme du compromis: compromis entre les principes contradic- 30 toires de la poétique nouvelle, et, par là, compromis entre l’ancienne et la 31 nouvelle poétique, entre le primat représentatif de la fi ction et le principe 32 antireprésentatif d’expression.7 (121–22) 33 34 This rather dense passage is made all the more confusing since it is dif- 35 fi cult to tell at times whether Rancière is expressing his own judgment 36 or is expressing Mallarmé’s, given the free indirect discourse so common 37 in Rancière’s work. If Rancière is speaking for Mallarmé, his interpreta- 38 tion seems skewed. At the end of the passage on Zola’s compromise, a 39 footnote refers the reader to the enthusiastic letter Mallarmé wrote to 40 Zola on March 18, 1876, after reading Zola’s Son Excellence Eugène 41 Rougon, one of the few novels in the series that lacks long lists of “speak- Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 157 ing objects” à la Notre-Dame de Paris. Mallarmé’s letter does not entirely 1 correspond to Rancière’s appraisal. It relates how the poet read the novel 2 twice: the fi rst time all in one sitting, as he says “à l’ancienne,” like a 3 “theatrical play,” and the second time fragment by fragment as a person 4 would who is caught up in the speed of the modern world. The novel, ac- 5 cording to Mallarmé, is adaptable to both styles or rhythms of reading. 6 Instead of a compromise of contradictions, for Mallarmé the forces and 7 drives of Zola’s sweeping narrative create a modulated time, one that al- 8 lows for both textual detail and mythic grandeur. 9 Reading the passage as Rancière’s own critique, Zola’s naturalism 10 would be a double compromise, the fi rst between the contradictions within 11 literature, which is to say between on the one hand a found within 12 banal objects and on the other a mute language of the written word. The 13 second compromise, related to the fi rst, would be between the “old” nar- 14 ration, which I take to be one from the “representative regime of art,” 15 and a newer, literary narration that would be antirepresentational. Zola’s 16 project for the Rougon-Macquart is representational because it seeks to 17 describe how the laws of heredity and milieu determine the trajectory of 18 a family during the Second Empire, while at the same time its “poetic” 19 descriptions of objects and milieus, which belong to the new form of lit- 20 erature, become indistinguishable from the old representational regime. 21 The long lists of everyday objects, technical vocabulary, and colorful eth- 22 nographic detail, which form the evidence of the naturalist’s research, 23 inevitably take on a poetic quality of their own, independent from their 24 representational context. As Rancière shows, Zola’s journalistic preten- 25 sions to the truth take nothing away from the poetic force of his descrip- 26 tions (46). 27 Here as elsewhere, Rancière wants to deny that Zola’s aesthetic or liter- 28 ary compromise allows for an account or understanding of what he calls 29 “political dissensuality,” the essence of politics being the capture of a share 30 of power by a formerly marginalized group not through consensus but 31 through “dissensus.” Political dissensuality in literature has nothing to do 32 with a representation of the politically oppressed, but rather with how a 33 text allows innovative reconceptualizations of what is common to all, in 34 his terms “le partage du sensible” (the partition, division, or sharing of the 35 perceptible). Rancière thus claims that Virginia Woolf’s novels are more 36 effective for thinking politics than what he calls Zola’s “social epics.” 37 But concretely, how does the Rougon-Macquart amount to a compro- 38 mise? I would like to argue against Rancière’s notion of a compromise, 39 with its implication that Zola was simply attenuating the extreme posi- 40 tions of literature’s opposing tendencies, and for Rancière’s concept of lit- 41 158 Chapter Seven

1 erature as contradiction. Zola’s compromise does not involve a resolution 2 of the contradictions of literature, or even a hybrid novel form embracing 3 elements of both belles lettres and literature as defi ned by Rancière, but 4 rather, the displacement of representation in the form of the hidden, or 5 “mute,” dossiers préparatoires for the Rougon-Macquart. It is as if the 6 dossiers must be silenced in order to guard against the inevitability of the 7 mute speech of the novel’s text. The dossiers, which themselves contain 8 representational documents (notes and drawings), can be thought of as 9 the repository for the artifacts of representation; their material, seques- 10 tered and separated from the novels, remains silent, as if Victor Hugo had 11 actually killed the cathedral with his novel. 12 The dossiers form a parallel text, both representational and visual, 13 containing their own aesthetic and their own fi ctions, which the novels do 14 not always incorporate. The passage from note to novel sacrifi ces visual 15 representation and the guarantee of documentary evidence in favor of the 16 freedom of verbal expression within representation. If, as elsewhere in 17 La Parole muette, Rancière is correct in saying that literature “est en son 18 principe la séparation du voir et du dire” (165) (“is in principle/at its ori- 19 gin the separation of the seen and the spoken”), the separation of visual 20 representation in Zola’s notes from the literary text of his novels suggests 21 that Zola’s compromise actually generates the productive contradictions 22 of a literature which cannot be reduced to its competing representational 23 or poetic engagements. 24 25 26 Partitioning the Dossiers 27 28 Unearthing the dossiers préparatoires for the Rougon-Macquart, making 29 the silenced or muted documents speak, exposes the contradictory origins 30 of the novel series as a poetic and scientifi c project. Zola’s notes, like Ran- 31 cière’s argument, progress through a succession of partitions that literally 32 and metaphorically separate the poetic from the representational, and the 33 written from the visual. The simultaneous juxtaposition and separation 34 of contradictions only serves to heighten the contrasting elements of the 35 literary paradox, as we will see by examining the role of the visual in the 36 notes, and in particular the fi rst maps found in the dossiers. 37 The 10,000 or so pages of Zola’s dossiers préparatoires contain count- 38 less sketches, diagrams, maps, and lists of observations that attempt to 39 convey a one-to-one correspondence between objects and linguistic rep- 40 resentation. They correspond perhaps to the “base indestructible” or “des 41 faits vrais” he mentions in his essay Le Roman expérimental.8 Besides Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 159 notes about plot and character development, the dossiers contain about 1 150 hand-drawn sketches and maps by the hand of Zola himself. There 2 are maps of city streets (Une Page d’amour, ), maps of the battle- 3 fi eld at Sedan (La Débâcle), and even maps of the Middle East (L’Argent), 4 along with layouts of dinner tables (Nana), department stores (Au Bon- 5 heur des Dames), and countless other visual documents. These dossiers 6 serve as the factual, observational double to Zola’s novelistic experiment; 7 they are visual, in the manner of Stendhal’s ichnographic maps, compared 8 to the novels, which are inevitably rooted in the play of language. Though 9 Zola claimed in his preface to have amassed all the documentation neces- 10 sary in the three years preceding the publication of the fi rst novel, as the 11 Rougon-Macquart series progressed, the number of notes taken for each 12 novel increased exponentially: for La Fortune des Rougon there are only 13 111 folios, whereas for La Débâcle there are 1,250 (Becker, preface to 14 Zola, La Fabrique des Rougon-Macquart, 1:10). 15 A meticulous organization evolved over the course of the project; each 16 novel would eventually have a dossier containing notes classifi ed into 17 the following sections, “Ébauche” (rough outline), “Personnages” (char- 18 acters), “Plans” (meaning variously outline, project, or map), then the 19 notes documenting Zola’s research. These classifi cations also function as 20 divisions within the dossiers themselves, sorting out the fi ctional from the 21 documentary, even as these boundaries were highly porous. In his thor- 22 ough study of the visual imaginary structuring the dossiers préparatoires, 23 Olivier Lumbroso argues that Zola was a visual thinker who framed real- 24 ity in geometric terms.9 According to Lumbroso, Zola’s creative process 25 habitually began with the invention of a frame (“le cadre”) that not only 26 defi ned the limits of a fi ctional place, but stratifi ed characters, arranged 27 the novels’ chapters, and organized the dossiers themselves; furthermore, 28 the geometric frame not only defi nes the places and the chapters, but 29 extends, to use Rancière’s term, to the novels’ poeticity, since geometric 30 fi gures abound in the novels (Lumbroso, Zola: La plume et le compas, 31 37–38). Likewise, the words on the page or the order of the chapters 32 form visual puns, “calligrammes,” where the repressed visual image re- 33 turns displaced in the text (267–79). Far from imposing two distinct and 34 noncommunicating regions, Zola’s frames set up a hidden network of 35 internal cross-references, where (fi ctional) word and (documented) image 36 continually change places. 37 The fi rst two sketches drawn by Zola himself in thedossiers prépara- 38 toires for La Fortune des Rougon establish the partitions between the 39 visual and the textual and the factual and the fi ctional, as well as between 40 the two branches of the same family, Rougon and Macquart. The sketches 41 160 Chapter Seven

1 inaugurate the section entitled “Plan de la Fortune des Rougon,” in which 2 Zola wrote out a detailed outline of all the chapters of the novel. The fi rst 3 sketch is a map depicting the march of republican insurgents against Na- 4 poleon III’s coup d’état around the fi ctional city of Plassans (fi gure 4.1) 5 (Zola, La Fabrique des Rougon-Macquart, 1:249). Just as Sand’s fi ctional 6 village Valcreux in her novel Nanon was a transparent stand-in for the 7 easily identifi able Ahun, Plassans corresponds to Zola’s childhood home 8 Aix-en-Provence. The geographical situation of the fi ctional towns on the 9 map is rather approximate, since Zola rearranged them along a line and 10 drew a road connecting them that did not yet exist, as if the narrative 11 needed to improve the infrastructure of the region (Lumbroso, 36). Plas- 12 sans, according to Henri Mitterand, shares the same geographical loca- 13 tion as the town of Lorgues, while the layout of its streets and its history 14 are that of Aix (Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:1545). On the map itself, Zola 15 includes in parentheses beside the fi ctional toponyms, the real names of 16 the towns: Sainte-Roure (Aups), Orchères (Salernes), Alboise (Vidauban), 17 and a double referent for Plassans (Lorgues, Aix). The line of the road on 18 the map visually links the circles representing the fi ctional towns, estab- 19 lishing a fi ctional spatial network even as the text of the place names in 20 parentheses refer to a very different and real spatial confi guration. The 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 Figure 4.1. Zola’s preliminary map of the region surrounding Plassans. Mss, NAF 41 10.303 folio 2. Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France. Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 161 map captures the process of metamorphosis as the real Provence dissolves 1 into the Plassans of the Rougon-Macquart. 2 The second sketch found in the dossiers represents a map of the “Aire 3 Saint-Mittre,” an abandoned lot at the edge of the city of Plassans (fi gure 4 4.2) (Zola, La Fabrique des Rougon-Macquart, 1:251). Adjacent to the 5 lot is the property called the Jas-Meiffren where Adélaïde Fouque begat 6 the split or double family, Rougon-Macquart. When the novel begins in 7 1851 right before Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état, the Aire Saint-Mittre is 8 inhabited by gypsies; moreover, by day it is a wood yard where children 9 come to play, and by night a favored rendezvous point for young lovers. 10 The Aire Saint-Mittre and the cul-de-sac of the same name uncannily re- 11 semble the impasse Sylvacanne in Aix-en-Provence where Zola lived with 12 his mother and grandparents between 1843 and 1858, which is to say the 13 time of the novel’s narration (Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:1545). But like 14 the fi rst sketch where the real Provence coincides with its ctionalfi double, 15 the second sketch portrays the transformation between Zola’s childhood 16 Aix and the imaginary Plassans. 17 The sketch makes no reference to characters or events in the novel, 18 but the juxtaposition of places and text on the map suggests a sort of 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Figure 4.2. The Aire Saint-Mittre. Mss, NAF 10.303 folio 3. Courtesy of 40 Bibliothèque nationale de France. 41 162 Chapter Seven

1 prenarrative. Taking a closer look at the drawing, we see that the Aire 2 Saint-Mittre is at the southern edge outside the walls of Plassans, a lim- 3 inal space. Enclosed on three sides, it is surrounded by numerous abstract 4 marks representing trees, walls, houses, and other buildings forming 5 square shapes and boxes within boxes. In the novel, the wall between the 6 Jas-Meiffren and the impasse Saint-Mittre will split Adélaïde Fouque’s 7 legitimate descendants, fathered by the rough peasant Rougon, from her 8 illegitimate descendants, fathered by the drunk Macquart, who lives in a 9 shack on the impasse Saint-Mittre. After Rougon’s death, Adélaïde and 10 her lover Macquart build a door between the two properties, an action 11 which the local gossips fi nd more scandalous than the fact that she had 12 two illegitimate children. On the sketch it is possible to make out in a 13 few places the words “petites portes” or openings that Zola drew and 14 then crossed out, which implies that he fi rst thought of creating a way for 15 the two places to communicate. By suppressing any gap in the walls, the 16 separation between the properties becomes even more absolute and the 17 divide between the lovers more poignant. 18 The other love story in the novel grows out of the same spatial compli- 19 cations. Adélaïde ends up living with her grandson Silvère in Macquart’s 20 hovel on the impasse, and their portion of the Jas-Meiffren is sold to a 21 certain Rébufat. Rébufat’s niece, Miette, falls in love with Silvère, and 22 at the beginning of the novel, she climbs over the wall enclosing the Jas- 23 Meiffren, since there are no “petites portes” in the wall, in order to meet 24 Silvère at night. Three-quarters of the way into the novel Silvère and Mi- 25 ette are separated again by walls as her family tries to prevent her from 26 seeing him. They discover, however, that the two properties share a large 27 well, split by a wall, which the novel refers to as a “puits mitoyen” (an ad- 28 joining or shared well) (Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:179). By looking 29 into the well on each side of the wall, they can see each other’s refl ections 30 and hear each other’s voices. The sketch hesitates between a few differ- 31 ent locations for the well, none of them between the walls, an idea again 32 which postdates the dossiers (Mitterand and Lumbroso, Les Manuscrits 33 et dessins de Zola, 3:324). The sketch puts forth and then rejects several 34 breaches in the partitions around the Aire Saint-Mittre, as if to seal off 35 the “air” from circulating. As the novel describes at the end of the second 36 paragraph: “Ainsi fermée de trois côtés, l’aire est comme une place qui 37 ne conduit nulle part et que les promeneurs seuls traversent” (Zola, Les 38 Rougon-Macquart, 1:11) (“Thus enclosed on three sides, the Aire Saint- 39 Mittre is like a square that leads nowhere and which only strollers tra- 40 verse”). The subsequent narrative in the novel invents new ways for the 41 characters to communicate by exploiting the points of juncture between Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 163 places, which is to say the very structure that divides them; Adélaïde and 1 Macquart build a little door in the wall, and Silvère and Miette take 2 advantage of the privacy afforded by the wall to stare at each other’s 3 refl ections in the well. The novel formulates narrative out of the notes’ 4 frames.10 5 The sketch of the Aire Saint-Mittre gives no indication at all of the 6 novel’s most extraordinary invention: a hundred years before Silvère and 7 Miette meet in the empty lot, it used to be a cemetery, a fact all but forgot- 8 ten by 1851. The opening pages of the novel describe how the cemetery 9 was desacralized and desecrated: tombs were taken down; bones were dug 10 up and carted through the streets to a new area on the other side of the 11 city; the cemetery’s walls were torn down in an unsuccessful effort by city 12 offi cials to sell the land to investors. Inexplicably, fragments of some of the 13 tombs remain, one of which especially troubles Miette with its enigmatic 14 epitaph: “Cy-gist . . . Marie . . . morte . . .” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:11) 15 (“Here lies . . . Marie . . . died . . .”). The tombstone retains the trace of the 16 long-dead woman, but time and the destruction of the cemetery by the 17 city have effaced the text that could have identifi ed her name, her place 18 of birth, and the relevant dates. The grave of one particular woman in the 19 past loses its specifi city, its material reference, and becomes an ill omen 20 for whoever fi nds it in the future; Miette fears she shares the same fate be- 21 cause she shares the same fi rst name (1:208). Naomi Schor argues that the 22 passage from cemetery to “Aire,” and in particular the suspicious death 23 of a young woman (Marie or Miette) and destruction of her tombstone, 24 represent the secret at the origin of the Rougon-Macquart family: “the 25 origins of the Rougon-Macquart are encoded in a half-erased message, 26 at the same time revealed and concealed, thus literally indecipherable” 27 (Schor, Zola’s Crowds, 19). The bloody origins of the family, presumably 28 in the death of a sacrifi cial victim, haunt the family, but the original secret 29 stays unknowable, opening up a “hole” or “discontinuity” in a novel that 30 ends with Docteur Pascal’s attempt to map a “seamless genealogy” (19). 31 As I have argued, Rancière’s many partitions and contradictions in lit- 32 erature reveal that at each text’s origin is the failed attempt to bridge a di- 33 vide or to represent a seamless origin. The sketch of the Aire Saint-Mittre, 34 at what Zola called the “origin” of the Rougon-Macquart, presents a 35 structure of partitions and walls that part space into noncommunicat- 36 ing enclosures, which in turn lead to the division of a family into op- 37 posing branches. The partitions differentiate the family members into 38 classes as they occupy every position of Second Empire society (Hamon, 39 Le Personnel du roman, 209–11). Moreover, as this sketch as well as the 40 narrative of the Fortune des Rougon demonstrate, the porous walls and 41 164 Chapter Seven

1 barriers of the text break down over time to create new divisions and 2 new boundaries. The invention of a razed cemetery, and the idea for the 3 gruesome details of graves being dug up and children playing with skulls, 4 what Rancière might call the “poeticity” of the novel, was invented af- 5 ter the completion of the dossiers and therefore might be considered to 6 fall outside the “representational regime”; the novel’s “poeticity,” then, 7 fabricates a verbal image of its own origins without a factual or a visual 8 equivalent in the dossiers. 9 At the origin of the narrative lies a divide between dossier and novel 10 and at the origin of the family lies a spatial division between the different 11 branches. This original division is passed down as an inheritance from the 12 founder of the family, Adélaïde Fouque, also known as Tante Dide, in the 13 form of the physiological and hereditary “fêlure,” the “crack” or rupture 14 she has in her brain, which manifests itself in various ways for all of her 15 descendants. This “fêlure,” this hole or discontinuity, resurfaces silently 16 in every novel until it erupts, destroying the status quo. As Gilles Deleuze 17 theorized it in relation to Zola’s La Bête humaine in Logique du sens, the 18 “fêlure” in Zola’s works represents inheritance itself, it divides instinct 19 from the object of desire, it is the death drive or even death, and ulti- 20 mately it raises obstacles to thought that make thought possible (Logique 21 du sens). From the empty grave in the Aire Saint-Mittre and the crack 22 in Tante Dide’s head fl ow all of the novels of theRougon-Macquart. If 23 literature emerges from its contradictions, Zola shows us, despite what- 24 ever compromises he might have made, that the art of the novel is always 25 “fêlé.” 26 27 28 Zola’s Fêlure 29 30 The distinction between dossier and novel, the factual and the fi ctional or 31 the visual and the verbal, creates opposing zones that are then partitioned 32 or cordoned off from each other. The novels rely on the factual basis of 33 the dossiers for their fi ctional narratives, while the supposed absence of 34 fi ction in the dossiers reinforces the narrative innovations of the novels. 35 The unchecked circulation of meaning inherent in the written word, its 36 “silent speech,” can be given a stable meaning, a body, in the silent dos- 37 siers; in turn, the archival dossiers liberate the novels from the strictly 38 mimetic representation of the world and allow for fl ights of poetic fancy. 39 The disjuncture, the crack, that rips the two parallel works apart at their 40 origin generates more and more text on both sides of the divide—twenty 41 novels (instead of the original ten) and 10,000 pages of notes (beyond the Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 165 original documents collected over the three years prior to the publication 1 of La Fortune des Rougon). 2 Another rift tears the two bodies of text apart and separates them 3 into a fi rst-person journal of artistic creation and a fi ctional text with an 4 omniscient narrator. In both senses of the word as “crack” and its more 5 colloquial meaning of mental instability, Zola’s “fêlure” protects the in- 6 tegrity of the authorial subject from the instability of the written word by 7 insisting on the author’s appropriation over the factual dossiers and by 8 producing the illusion of a godly remove from the play of language found 9 in the fi ctional novels. Zola’s fear of his own “fêlure” as authorial subject, 10 which is to say the abandonment of the self to the uncertainty of textual 11 meaning, leads to a proliferation of “fêlures” that replicate themselves 12 throughout the two bodies of text. The only way to resist the division of 13 the writing self from the self on the page is to amplify this split, to assert 14 the complete independence of the two. 15 Reminiscent of Stendhal’s Brulard who feared that his autobiography 16 would “fall into the novel,” Zola’s dossiers amount to a fi rst-person ac- 17 count of a novelist afraid of losing control of his fi ctional narrative. The 18 dossiers’ autobiographical aspect exposes the alienating process of com- 19 posing an independent world in a fi ctional text. Colette Becker detects in 20 Zola’s correspondence and in the dossiers an anguish over his inability 21 to master the writing process (Becker, preface to Zola, La Fabrique des 22 Rougon, 1:8). The very fact that the dossiers declare over and over “an 23 affi rmation of the will to power” signals Zola’s profound self-doubts and 24 hesitations (18); the phrases “je veux” (“I want”) and “je voudrais” (“I 25 would like”) are among the most frequently used in the “Ébauches” of 26 the dossiers. Continually doubting his talents as a novelist, Zola worked 27 through his anxieties in the dossiers, using them as an escape valve for 28 psychic pressure and as a generator of text. 29 While many critics have found in the dossiers proof that Zola intended 30 to portray facets of himself in many of the characters in the Rougon- 31 Macquart (most obviously Sandoz in L’Oeuvre and Docteur Pascal in the 32 fi nal novel), Zola’s appropriation of his fi ctional creation goes beyond 33 simple character identifi cation.11 Abstract concepts, such as plot turns 34 and chapter arrangements, as well as characters and places, become pos- 35 sessions marked by the author’s ubiquitous possessive adjectives: “ma sé- 36 rie,” “mon histoire,” “mes personages,” “mes chapitres.” Zola creates his 37 world (“Je crée” appears almost as frequently as “je veux”) as text and 38 story, but then imagines himself within it. In the “Ébauche” for La Con- 39 quête de Plassans Zola writes, “Comme marche générale dans l’oeuvre, 40 il est temps de revenir à Plassans, où, de longtemps ensuite, je ne pourrai 41 166 Chapter Seven

1 remettre les pieds. Vers la fi n seulement” Les( Rougon-Macquart, 1:1648) 2 (“For the unfolding of the work as a whole, it is time to come back to 3 Plassans, where, for a long time afterwards, I will not be able to set foot. 4 Only towards the end”). Likewise, the novel itself, and the events created 5 within it, must be experienced fi rsthand. For his research documented 6 in the dossiers, Zola famously descended into the mines for Germinal, 7 rode with train engineers for La Bête humaine, and traversed the farm- 8 land of the Beauce for La Terre. His notes for La Débâcle, named “Mon 9 voyage à Sedan,” plan to have the soldiers in the narrative follow Zola’s 10 own itinerary, though in the novel itself he makes them follow the same 11 route as an actual army corps during the war (Les Rougon-Macquart, 12 5:1379–81). While fascinating documentation of Zola’s time, these fi rst- 13 person accounts prepare for the transition from note to novel by way of 14 the author’s “screen.” 15 Crucially, the dossiers chronicle Zola’s own transformations as the 16 struggle to defi ne his style, in opposition to other writers and in rela- 17 tion to the representational material he collected, resulted in a heightened 18 awareness of his own thought process and his sense of self. In the frag- 19 ment entitled “Différences entre Balzac et moi” included in the dossiers 20 and written in the early stages of the project’s conception, Zola summa- 21 rizes the differences in style, scope, methodology, and ambitions between 22 Balzac’s Comédie humaine and his own vast project. But the fragment 23 also describes their differences in temperament and their visions of the 24 role of a novelist: “Je ne veux pas comme Balzac avoir une décision sur 25 les affaires des hommes, être politique, philosophe, moraliste. Je me con- 26 tenterai d’être savant, de dire ce qui est en en cherchant les raisons in- 27 times” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1737) (“I do not want, like Balzac, to 28 have a say in men’s affairs, to be a politician, a philosopher, a moralist. I 29 will be happy to be a scientist, to say what is while studying its internal 30 logic”). In another note probably written a little later, Zola ridicules Bal- 31 zac’s philosophical pretensions and conservative moralizing, all the while 32 allowing that moralists and legislators are free to draw their own conclu- 33 sions from the truth of his novel (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1740), and 34 conceding that his novels need some sort of philosophical bent (such as 35 “materialism”) so as to liberate them from tedious metaphysical explana- 36 tions (5:1744). 37 As the novels and the dossiers progressed, Zola’s aggressively com- 38 bative tone gave way to a more refl ective, internal monologue. In the 39 “Ébauche” for L’Oeuvre, he envisions writing a novel about his own cre- 40 ative process, the pains and joys of Zola the writer embodied by Claude 41 the painter: “Avec Claude Lantier, je veux peindre la lutte de l’artiste Zola and the Contradictory Origins of the Novel 167 contre la nature, l’effort de la création dans l’oeuvre d’art. . . . En un mot, 1 j’y raconterai ma vie intime de production, ce perpétuel accouchement 2 douloureux, mais je grandirai le sujet par le drame” (Les Rougon-Mac- 3 quart, 4:1353) (“With Claude Lantier, I want to paint the struggle of the 4 artist against nature, the effort of creation in a work of art. . . . In a word, 5 I will tell in this novel the story of my personal work life, this perpetual, 6 painful childbirth, but I will exaggerate it through tragedy”). The novel 7 about a failed artist refl ects the writing process itself, as if in a dream Zola 8 projects himself in the unfolding of the novel as a whole as well as in each 9 of its characters. 10 In the “Ébauche” for Le Rêve, the sixteenth novel, Zola expresses the 11 desire to prove his artistic versatility, almost as a challenge to himself and 12 his detractors: “Je voudrais faire un livre qu’on n’attende pas de moi. 13 . . . Puisqu’on m’accuse de ne pas faire de psychologie, je voudrais forcer 14 les gens à confesser que je suis un psychologue” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 15 4:1625–26) (“I would like to make a book that no one expects from me. 16 . . . Since I’m accused of not doing psychology, I would like to force people 17 to admit that I am a psychologist”). Here, Zola conveys his temptation 18 to break with the Rougon-Macquart’s stated project by abandoning the 19 laws of heredity for the more intimate, and classical, psychological novel. 20 But this temptation, later in the same “Ébauche,” proves to be rooted in 21 a more personal need to understand his own creative drives: “Moi, le 22 travail, la littérature qui a mangé ma vie, et le bouleversement, la crise, le 23 besoin d’être aimé, tout cela à étudier psychologiquement” (Les Rougon- 24 Macquart, 4:1626–27) (“Me, work, literature which has devoured my 25 life, and upheaval, crisis, the need to be loved, all of this needs to be stud- 26 ied psychologically”). To write a novel, psychological or otherwise, is to 27 confront what lies behind the need to write, the dangerous combination 28 of self-doubt and hubris. In the end, Zola opted for “something much 29 simpler” for Le Rêve, saving the tale of artistic and scientifi c angst for the 30 last novel, (Les Rougon-Macquart, 4:1627). 31 In L’Espace littéraire, Maurice Blanchot describes how the act of writ- 32 ing is a confrontation with death, with the loss of self to a work whose 33 central point is “l’oeuvre comme origine, celui que l’on ne peut atteindre” 34 (“the work as origin, an origin that cannot be attained”) (60). Accord- 35 ing to Blanchot, in the transition from fi rst-person “je” to third-person 36 “il” intrinsic to the fi ctional writing process, a writer will often begin a 37 journal: 38 39 Il est peut-être frappant qu’à partir du moment où l’oeuvre devient re- 40 cherche de l’art, devient littérature, l’écrivain éprouve toujours davantage 41 168 Chapter Seven

1 le besoin de garder un rapport avec soi. C’est qu’il éprouve une extrême 2 répugnance à se dessaisir de lui-même au profi t de cette puissance neutre, 3 sans forme et sans destin, qui est derrière tout ce qui s’écrit, répugnance 4 et appréhension que révèle le souci, propre à tant d’auteurs, de rédiger ce 5 qu’ils appellent leur Journal.12 (24) 6 7 To write fi ction is to search for an unknowable, unattainable origin, the 8 origin of the work in the depths of language. The author grapples with 9 confl icting literary and existential constraints since the act of writing re- 10 quires an extraordinary will to project the self on the page and a cor- 11 responding loss of self to the “solitude” of the text. A journal inscribes 12 the author’s memories in a parallel text, but mimics the very act that 13 threatens the integrity of the self: “Le moyen dont il se sert pour se rap- 14 peler à soi, c’est, fait étrange, l’élément même de l’oubli: écrire” (24) (“the 15 method used to remember oneself, is, strangely, the very element of obli- 16 vion: writing”). 17 Zola shows us in the dossiers that the only cure for the torment of 18 writing, the work which has “devoured” his life, would be further writ- 19 ing, an analysis of the self through text. The dossiers préparatoires may 20 document the novelist’s research, but they are also a journal of the aban- 21 donment of the self to the work. Zola’s partition between the notes and 22 the novel proves to be a futile attempt to protect the self from written lan- 23 guage, all the while generating more and more text. Out of Zola’s “fêlure” 24 grew the expanding notes and increasingly inward-looking monologues 25 in the dossiers that attest to both his terror at the independence of his cre- 26 ation and to the fact that with each novel fi nished, he approached, little 27 by little, the very essence of literature. 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 2 CHAPTER EIGHT 3 4 5 6 Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 7 8 9 10 11 In the novels of the Rougon-Macquart, power resides in the ability to har- 12 ness the destructive force of origins—of memory, of history, of heredity. 13 In the beginning there was only the fateful “fêlure,” the crack that renders 14 impossible a whole, univocal origin. The “fêlure” reproduces only itself 15 as every successive generation invokes the authority of the origin’s secret, 16 but the secret is that there is no one comprehensive or comprehensible 17 origin. As the present moment unfolds in time it splits off from the past, 18 differentiating itself from the origin; the past determines the future, but 19 in unknowable ways. With the past irretrievably lost and the future inde- 20 cipherable, the unattainable desire for the unity of a foundational begin- 21 ning generates in turn a circular movement of thought that fantasizes the 22 existence of an image capable of fusing past and future, of sealing the fi s- 23 sure at the center of the self. Artistic vision, genealogical tree, philosophi- 24 cal musing, scientifi c paradigm, fi nancial swindle, or political ideology, 25 whatever form this image takes it can project an original harmony only 26 by displacing difference, which is to say locating the “fêlure” anywhere 27 else than the origin. 28 The most potent incarnation of this fantasy, an archive functions as the 29 site of an imagined origin, providing the illusion of a material foundation 30 in a localizable space. An archive derives its authority from its capacity 31 to memorialize; therefore it must acknowledge the inevitable deteriora- 32 tion of memory, while maintaining the promise to guard the remains of 33 the past for a time in the distant future when its secrets can be read. 34 Jacques Derrida traces the forgotten origins of the word “archive” as 35 both “commandment” and “beginning,” stemming from “archontes,” the 36 magistrates in whose home (“arkheîon”) offi cial documents were kept 37 (Mal d’archive, 12–13). Documents held in the archive become part of 38 the public record, but kept secret, classifi ed according to a “privilegedto- 39 pology” (13). An archive governs from a site and commands by virtue of 40 41

169 170 Chapter Eight

1 silent or silenced documents, which are preserved so as not to be exposed 2 to the outside and so that the outside is not exposed to them. As we have 3 seen, Zola’s dossiers préparatoires operate as a type of archive for the 4 novels. The dossiers, Zola’s record of his own writing process, safeguard 5 his artistic development as a source of his legitimacy as author and show 6 the fundamental truth that the novel escapes the author’s control. The 7 dossiers document the preparation behind the novels and amount to a 8 treasure of ethnographic research, but also reveal how the novels diverge, 9 sometimes radically, from their documented genesis. 10 The Rougon-Macquart family emerges from near the “Aire Saint- 11 Mittre” as if surfacing from the cemetery to haunt Second Empire France. 12 The founding member of the family, Adélaïde or Tante Dide, expresses 13 the original “fêlure” fi rst in her eccentric choice of husband, the peasant 14 Rougon, and then her lover, Macquart. Her eldest son, Pierre Rougon, 15 realizes early that to claim legitimacy and take hold of the family pos- 16 sessions, he must disinherit his younger half-siblings Antoine and Ursule 17 Macquart. His mother’s embarrassing madness incites Pierre to sequester 18 her with his inconveniently republican nephew Silvère in what used to 19 be Macquart’s hovel. When Pierre gets advanced warning from his son 20 Eugène of Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état, he easily manipulates public 21 opinion and his brother Antoine’s republican opposition, “saving” Plas- 22 sans from disorder. During the uprising, Dide falls into a permanent cata- 23 tonic state after watching her grandson Silvère’s murder at the hands of a 24 gendarme, and is sent by Pierre to spend the rest of her life at the Tulettes 25 asylum. There Dide outlives at least sixteen of her thirty or so descen- 26 dants, living in almost complete silence and dying in the fi nal novel of the 27 series at the age of 105. Witness to the terrible secrets of the family, Dide 28 is carefully watched and locked away at a safe distance from Plassans. 29 At the cracked origin of the family, she embodies the family’s memory 30 even while remaining incapable of speech, incarnating Rancière’s “parole 31 muette”; upon seeing her great-great-grandson Charles bleed to death 32 from hemophilia, the original, awful memory of Silvère’s murder returns 33 and her fi nal words before she herself dies are “Le gendarme!” 34 While the family’s sordid beginnings obviously echo those of the Sec- 35 ond Empire, “archive fever” spreads beyond the political realm to encom- 36 pass every aspect of society. Archives must be visible signifi ers of absent 37 origins, while concealing the textual evidence of this original lack. Secret 38 documents, concealed origins, and empty signifi ers proliferate, granting 39 control to those who claim to be custodians of knowledge, memory, and 40 tradition. Eugène Rougon exemplifi es the power of the new regime, but 41 how he transformed himself from provincial petit bourgeois to imperial Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 171 minister stays shrouded in mystery; tellingly, the end of Son Excellence 1 Eugène Rougon fi nds him named “Ministre sans portefeuille” (“Minister 2 without Portfolio”), as if his power increases when he no longer has a 3 “portfolio” or offi cial document detailing his specifi c responsibilities. A 4 persistent trope in the series is the anonymous letter or blackmail note 5 exposing an inconvenient truth or a threat: Florent’s police dossier full 6 of anonymous letters in , Hélène’s anonymous letter to 7 Henri accusing Juliette in Une Page d’amour, Mme Robert’s anonymous 8 letters to Count Muffat exposing Nana’s numerous affairs, Séverine’s let- 9 ter to Grandmorin in La Bête humaine. When documents or dossiers do 10 become public, they lead to the downfall of their owner: Florent’s notes 11 for a delusional plot to overthrow the government, Lazare’s disastrous or 12 unfi nished projects in , Père Fouan’s “donation entre vifs” 13 (a sort of living will) in La Terre, Docteur Pascal’s research on heredity. 14 Specifi c places in the novels materialize the spatial function of the archive 15 by situating authority and concealing origins: the neutral territory of 16 François Mouret’s property in La Conquête de Plassans, the enchanting 17 garden paradise of the Paradou in La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret, Saccard’s 18 palatial Banque Universelle in L’Argent. The archival source of the novels 19 in the dossiers préparatoires threatens to overtake the narrative by the 20 ubiquity of questionable documents. Instead of confi rming that genetic 21 and class origins circumscribe the fate of each character in a project that 22 is both a “natural” and a “social” history, the novels (and their dossiers) 23 question the very possibility of a knowable or legitimate origin, even as 24 they assert the need for a stable foundation. 25 The omnipresence in the novels of the “cracked” origin and the archives 26 that endeavor to contain it render an exhaustive study of this structuring 27 principle impossible in one book chapter. Instead, in what follows I focus 28 on how textual images, “novel maps,” project a synoptic view of time that 29 attempts to encompass an illusory origin and an inscrutable future. Paris, 30 setting for over half the novels of the Rougon-Macquart, inspires numer- 31 ous attempts at a totalizing panorama, especially in the novel La Curée, 32 for whoever can visualize the development of the city masters it. Yet a 33 complete map of the city, in the novels and in the dossiers, proves elusive. 34 The map or image overlying Paris hides the city’s social, geographical, 35 and temporal fractures, while it gives to its beholder the impression of 36 seeing into the future. Similarly, the genealogical tree drawn up by Pascal 37 at the end of the series undertakes a complete description of the family 38 across four or more generations, tracing the transmission of hereditary 39 traits over time. An elegant fi gure illustrating years of scientifi c research, 40 it becomes indecipherable with the destruction of Pascal’s papers. 41 172 Chapter Eight

1 The Absent Map of Paris 2 3 The second novel in Émile Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart, La Curée, de- 4 scribes the rapidly gained and ephemeral fortune of land speculator Aris- 5 tide Saccard. Saccard owes his fabulous success to an intimate knowledge 6 of Napoleon III’s hand-drawn plan for transforming Paris. In a key scene 7 in the novel, Saccard explains to his fi rst wife, Angèle, Haussmann’s in- 8 credible building project while overlooking Paris from Montmartre. The 9 bird’s-eye view of the city translates the map of Haussmann’s urban plan 10 into language. Saccard’s panoramic vision of Paris takes the static spatial 11 image of a map and puts it into motion, deterritorializing city space, like 12 the fl ow of capital itself which exploits the inherent disjuncture between 13 use-value and exchange-value. In the novel, speculation and creative de- 14 struction go hand in hand. The real estate speculator depends upon the 15 fi ction that he can control space and foresee the future, a control embod- 16 ied in the image of a map. Zola’s novel itself, I argue, attempts to ground 17 the verbal and temporal instability of the literary text’s origin in visual 18 and spatial representations archived in the thousands of pages of his dos- 19 siers préparatoires. That Zola did not in fact include a complete map of 20 Paris in his preparatory notes for the novel and that Haussmann did not 21 in fact receive a map from Napoleon III prove that these maps are screens 22 for the fear of the unchecked circulation of meaning, the “fêlure” at the 23 origin of thought. 24 Zola’s 1871 novel La Curée, contemporaneous with Sand’s Nanon 25 and usually translated in English as “The Kill” or “The Rush for the 26 Spoil,” portrays the parallel narratives of Aristide Saccard’s pursuit of 27 fi nancial gain, or the joy of the kill, alongside the story of the semi-inces- 28 tuous relationship his second wife, Renée, carries on with Saccard’s son 29 Maxime. This juxtaposition of crass materialism with sexual depravity 30 underscores how the Second Empire eroded French society’s moral foun- 31 dation through what Sandy Petrey calls the “capitalization of humanity.”1 32 Money and human fl esh circulate freely in the novel, crossing physical 33 and moral boundaries. Renée is a stepmother who represents the absence 34 of a mother, just as Saccard’s fi nancial transactions have little basis in the 35 real estate he sells. Indeed, Saccard raises the money to realize his fi rst 36 scheme thanks to Renée’s dowry; she is abandoned more or less with his 37 consent to Saccard’s son Maxime. The characters’ loyalty to each other 38 proves to be as changing as the market. In the end Saccard, as well as his 39 son, return in another novel in the series, L’Argent, an even more explicit 40 analysis of the workings of capitalism, while Renée withdraws to her 41 father’s mansion and dies. Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 173

Aristide Rougon begins the novel penniless but ambitious. Arriving in 1 Paris with his wife, Angèle, after Napoleon III’s coup d’état, he hopes to 2 cash in on his brother Eugène Rougon’s rise to political power. Eugène 3 offers him an ostensibly low-level position working for the Hôtel de Ville 4 as an “agent voyer” (a city surveyor), but on condition that his brother 5 change his name. The newly minted “Saccard” (resonating with the sound 6 of sacks of money and also one who sacks) quickly learns the intricacies 7 of land speculation and eventually discovers the plans for the city’s urban 8 renewal projects. He concocts a simple but effective scheme to purchase 9 property marked for demolition, infl ate its value, and sell it for many 10 times its worth: 11 12 Le plan de fortune de l’agent voyer était simple et pratique . . . Il connais- 13 sait son Paris sur le bout du doigt; il savait que la pluie d’or qui en battait 14 les murs tomberait plus dru chaque jour. Les gens habiles n’avaient qu’à 15 ouvrir les poches. Lui s’était mis parmi les habiles, en lisant l’avenir dans 16 les bureaux de l’Hôtel de Ville.2 (Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:387) 17 18 Saccard knows Paris as someone who has studied it as a poor outsider, 19 on foot through every neighborhood. Besides his methodical research of 20 city space, what distinguishes him from his colleagues and superiors is his 21 ability to read the future in the maps and documents scattered through- 22 out the Hôtel de Ville: “Il en devinait plus long que ses chefs eux-mêmes 23 sur l’avenir de moellons et de plâtre qui était réservé à Paris. Il avait tant 24 fureté, réuni tant d’indices, qu’il aurait pu prophétiser le spectacle qu’of- 25 friraient les nouveaux quartiers en 1870” (1:387) (“He saw further than 26 even his superiors into the future of rubble and plaster that lay ahead for 27 Paris. He had rummaged about enough, pieced together enough clues, 28 that he could foresee the spectacle offered by the new neighborhoods in 29 1870”). Saccard composes from seemingly unrelated bits of information 30 a vision, a prophecy, of Paris fi fteen or twenty years into the future. This 31 fantastic vision, Paris as spectacle and object of speculation, has already 32 altered how he looks at the present city, since he knows the fate of so 33 many of its streets and buildings. 34 Saccard projects his imaginary map of Paris onto a view of the real city 35 when he takes his fi rst wife, Angèle, to dinner at a restaurant in Mont- 36 martre. Uncharacteristically romantic and tipsy, Saccard stares lovingly, 37 not at his wife, but at the city, mesmerized by the play of light on the 38 golden mist rising up between the Madeleine and the Tuileries (the im- 39 perial palace), which creates the illusion of gold falling on the rooftops. 40 The giddy couple joke to each other that it is raining coins on the city. 41 174 Chapter Eight

1 This metaphorical vision of money recalls for Saccard his secret plan and 2 inspires him to share it with his wife. The ephemeral, elusive golden mist 3 refl ecting immaterial light on the city rooftops evokes the paradoxical 4 use of gold as immaterial abstraction, money or “universal equivalent,” 5 and its more or less useless material essence as shiny metal.3 Real estate 6 (“biens immobiliers” or “immobile goods”) must too be abstracted from 7 its materiality, put in motion, in order to convert it into money. 8 Just as atmospheric conditions lead to the fantastic vision of golden 9 plunder, Saccard is able to transform a bird’s-eye view of Paris into a 10 dynamic, moving image of the city over time, as buildings make way for 11 roads and money falls into the pockets of speculators. Saccard anticipates 12 the violence that will be done to the city by urban planners as he gestures 13 with his hand: 14 15 Et de sa main étendue, ouverte et tranchante comme un coutelas, il fi t 16 signe de séparer la ville en quatre parts. . . . [then speaking to his wife] 17 “Tiens, suis un peu ma main. Du boulevard du Temple à la barrière du 18 Trône, une entaille; puis, de ce côté, une autre entaille, de la Madeleine à 19 la plaine Monceau; et une troisième entaille dans ce sens, une autre dans 20 celui-ci, une entaille là, une entaille plus loin, des entailles partout. Paris 21 haché à coups de sabre, les veines ouvertes, nourrissant cent mille terras- 22 siers et maçons.”4 (Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:389) 23 24 Like Baudelaire’s book of prose poems, Le Spleen de Paris, which the 25 poet claims can be chopped up into as many pieces as the reader or editor 26 wishes in the image of the modern city, Paris here is mercilessly hacked up 27 in the minds of speculators and the pickaxes of workers. As Saccard looks 28 at the entire city from Montmartre, he destroys whatever organic vision 29 he had of Paris, cutting open its veins to feast on the kill. The violent ap- 30 parition of a Paris gashed, “fêlé” perhaps, by Saccard’s knife or workers’ 31 shovels recalls how the Saint-Mittre cemetery was dug up in the vain 32 hope of selling it to land developers, but also how the subsequent Aire 33 Saint-Mittre concealed the murderous origins of the Rougon-Macquart 34 family. 35 A few pages later, the reader learns why Saccard is so confi dent in his 36 prophecy for the future of Paris and why he can see further than his im- 37 mediate superiors: 38 39 Saccard s’était permis, un jour, de consulter, chez le préfet, ce fameux 40 plan de Paris sur lequel “une main auguste” avait tracé à l’encre rouge 41 les principales voies du deuxième réseau. Ces sanglants traits de plume Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 175

entaillaient Paris plus profondément encore que la main de l’agent voyer.5 1 (Les Rougon-Macquart, 1:391) 2 3 Violating the sanctity of the archive, Saccard entered into Haussmann’s 4 offi ce to sneak a peek at the map of Paris drawn up by the “august” 5 hand of the emperor himself. The existence of this map guarantees that 6 Haussmann’s project is backed by the full might of the empire and that 7 Saccard’s vision of Paris represents the future. Moreover, the destruction 8 of vast sections of the city will adhere to a creative, aesthetic, and ideo- 9 logical, albeit secret, plan. The majestic hand of the emperor guides Sac- 10 card in his quest for fortune—certainly a much more reliable one than the 11 “invisible hand” of the market. 12 Zola relies in this passage on the story, spread perhaps most of all 13 by Haussmann himself, that the emperor had drawn up a detailed plan 14 for Paris’s renewal, a plan that Haussmann only executed. In the second 15 volume of his memoirs, Haussmann describes the moment when Napo- 16 leon III named him the préfet de la Seine and handed him an annotated 17 map of Paris: “L’Empereur était pressé de me montrer une carte de Paris, 18 sur laquelle on voyait tracées par Lui-Même, en bleu, en rouge, en jaune 19 et en vert, suivant leur degré d’urgence, les différentes voies nouvelles 20 6 qu’Il se proposait de faire exécuter.” Though Haussmann’s memoirs were 21 published after Zola’s novel, the image of a map marked up with dif- 22 ferent colors is strikingly similar. While Napoleon III did indeed form a 23 commission to draw up a new plan for Paris based in large part on his 24 uncle Napoleon I’s plans at the beginning of the century, the commission 25 was formed before Haussmann’s appointment and proposed sweeping 26 changes rather different than what Haussmann eventually carried out (or 27 7 claimed that the emperor requested). Historians have convincingly ar- 28 gued that Haussmann invented many details of his meeting with the em- 29 peror and that the map, at least in the form Haussmann describes, never 30 existed; it was nothing but a legend no doubt invented by Haussmann to 31 8 defend himself against his many critics. 32 The invention of this imaginary map was also in keeping with the Sec- 33 ond Empire’s uneasy relationship to politics, secrecy, and capitalism. The 34 empire attempted to control, or at least to project the image of control, 35 over all aspects of society, from the military to the economy. Its inabil- 36 ity to organize the military effectively is brilliantly illustrated by Zola 37 himself with the second-to-last novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, La 38 Débâcle. There, during the Franco-Prussian war, the army’s offi cers are 39 lost within France itself, never having been given maps of their own coun- 40 try but only maps of Germany: “On avait distribué à tous les offi ciers des 41 176 Chapter Eight

1 cartes d’Allemagne, tandis que pas un, certainement, ne possédait une 2 carte de France” (5:472) (“Maps of Germany had been distributed to all 3 the offi cers, while not one, certainly, possessed a map of France”). The 4 empire’s management of the economy was just as haphazard, vacillating 5 between laissez-faire principles and the emperor’s socialist antipauperism 6 campaign. As David Harvey writes, “Economic liberalization . . . gradu- 7 ally undermined imperial power. The Empire was brought down just as 8 much by capital as by republicanism . . . or worker opposition” (Paris, 9 88). For want of a map—of Paris, of France, of the economy—Napoleon 10 III lost his empire. 11 It is possible to see in the legendary map Haussmann invented the 12 desire to create a holistic image of modern Paris, after the destruction he 13 unleashed with all of its competing, chaotic visions, as if knowing that a 14 plan existed can retrospectively organize spatial meaning. Yet the second 15 and third phases, or “réseaux” of Haussmann’s plan relied on speculation 16 from investors. His eventual downfall might be linked to his inability to 17 harness the forces of speculation, to make the destruction adhere to his 18 unifi ed vision. T. J. Clark has argued in The Painting of Modern Life that 19 capitalism works against a stable image of the city: 20 21 Capital did not need to have a representation of itself laid out upon the 22 ground in bricks and mortar, or inscribed as a map in the minds of its 23 city-dwellers. One might even say that capital preferred the city not to be 24 an image—not to have form, not to be accessible to the imagination, to 25 readings and misreadings, to a confl ict of claims on its space—in order 26 that it might mass-produce an image of its own to put in place of those it 27 destroyed. (Clark, The Painting of Modern Life, 36) 28 29 The Paris of modernity, born from urban planning during the First and 30 Second Empires, nevertheless resists any image imposed on it. Instead, 31 the city becomes itself a factory for producing images. I would argue that 32 these images were neither the homogeneous bird’s-eye views of the early 33 part of the century, nor were they always the mass-produced ones Clark 34 mentions, but rather heterogeneous, fragmented images in the works of 35 poets like Baudelaire, painters like the impressionists, and eventually fi lm- 36 makers like Godard.9 While capitalism deterritorialized Parisian space by 37 hacking it up and selling it piecemeal, the pursuit of a unifi ed urban plan 38 or map of the city paradoxically upsets networks of signs, speeding up the 39 circulation of meaning, the proliferation of fragmented images. 40 Émile Zola’s dossiers préparatoires for his novels show that a true pan- 41 orama of Paris, a map of the city, was elusive, but that the city itself Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 177 refl ected the productive tension in his novel between visual representa- 1 tion and textual creation. Given the importance of the dossiers’ role in 2 establishing the factual basis for his novels, one would expect there to 3 be maps of the city of Paris, perhaps an old map from before 1853 or at 4 the least a sketch of Haussmann’s overall project. In the notes for La Cu- 5 rée, however, there is no such thing. Zola took notes about fi nance, land 6 speculation, and Haussmannization in general. Zola even included four 7 detailed drawings of the Hôtel Menier on the Parc Monceau, the model 8 for Saccard’s garish mansion, as well as a drawing of the hothouse, the 9 symbolic center of Renée’s incestuous relationship. But nowhere in the 10 notes does Zola plan the scene when Saccard looks out over the city from 11 Montmartre. The most iconic episode in the novel has no concrete basis 12 in visual observation, outside Zola’s own imagination and his personal 13 experience of the city as if the city’s dynamism can only be conveyed in a 14 poetic image. 15 Paris plays a central role in many of the series’ subsequent novels such 16 as L’Assommoir, L’Oeuvre, and Une Page d’amour, and yet these all lack 17 a panoramic image of the city. There are, of course, hand-drawn maps 18 of the streets around certain neighborhoods, but no view of the city as 19 a whole. In L’Assommoir, after Gervaise and the wedding party visit the 20 Louvre and the Palais-Royal, they decide to climb up the Vendôme col- 21 umn for the magnifi cent view of the city—but the staggering height of 22 the column gives the viewers vertigo (Les Rougon-Macquart, 2:449–59). 23 They look around the city, staring dumbly at the monuments, and then 24 attempt unsuccessfully to see the wine merchant’s where they will be eat- 25 ing later on, on the boulevard de la Chapelle, aptly named the “Moulin 26 d’Argent” (the silver or money mill). The city’s immensity, and the igno- 27 rance of its natives, render it impossible to take it in at a glance in a single 28 image. The narrative describes a beautiful scene of a band of sunlight 29 piercing through a gold-bordered cloud and refl ecting off panes of glass, 30 a sight similar, one imagines, to the one of money raining on the city in La 31 Curée, but L’Assommoir’s wedding party remains indifferent to the spec- 32 tacle, unable to see Saccard’s vision of the future. The top of the Vendôme 33 column, with its statue of Napoleon I, may be at the symbolic center of 34 the empire, but affords no perspective on the city. 35 The dossier for L’Oeuvre, the story of the painter Claude Lantier’s bat- 36 tle to create life in art, as Zola described it, contains very detailed notes 37 taken by Zola describing the view from Montmartre and the surrounding 38 area at sunset in the month of April; according to Mitterand, the au- 39 thor consulted a map of Paris from 1860 (Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart, 40 4:1377). The dossiers for the novel also contain a map drawn by Zola of 41 178 Chapter Eight

1 the Montmartre cemetery and its surrounding streets, as well as a photo- 2 graph entitled “PARIS Panorama de la Cité” taken downstream from the 3 Île de la Cité and showing, not the entire city, but essentially the quays.10 4 It would seem as if Zola had prepared for Lantier to paint a panorama 5 of Paris from Montmartre, an artistic rendering of Saccard’s speculative 6 vision. Yet the novel itself does not contain this passage—instead, Claude 7 obsessively paints the view of Paris from the quays, analyzing the view 8 from below under ever-changing light conditions. Claude fails to capture 9 time in the static images of his paintings, whereas Zola’s narrative, by giv- 10 ing up a stable “factual” representation of Paris, allows the work of time 11 to transform his characters; as Kenneth Cornell writes, his panoramic 12 views of Paris demonstrate “Zola’s talent for producing totality of effect 13 from detailed descriptions” (Cornell, “Zola’s City,” 111). 14 Whereas Paris serves as a backdrop or as an object of speculative desire 15 in La Curée, L’Assommoir, and L’Oeuvre, the city becomes something of 16 a character in its own right in Zola’s novel Une Page d’amour. The novel’s 17 narrative follows a Provençale, Hélène Grandjean, née Mouret, and her 18 daughter Jeanne as they move to the very fashionable neighborhood of 19 Passy, at the time not yet incorporated into the city of Paris. From her 20 window in Passy, Hélène can look out and see all of Paris—each of the 21 novel’s fi ve chapters end with a view of Paris from a different season and 22 time of day in a refl ection of Hélène’s psychological state. Zola included 23 in his notes for Une Page d’amour a photograph of Paris from on top of 24 Saint-Gervais, which is to say from the exact opposite perspective of the 25 city, as well as an engraving of a bird’s-eye view of Paris from a balloon 26 over the Champs-Elysées, to the north of Hélène’s window (Zola, La Fab- 27 rique des Rougon-Macquart, 1:11). According to Zola himself in a later 28 preface to the novel which responded to the many criticisms of the fi ve 29 descriptions of Paris as artifi cial, there is a different origin to the inspira- 30 tion than any visual representation (Les Rougon-Macquart, 2:1607–8). 31 As a young man living in Paris, the view of the city from his window ac- 32 companied him, “immobile et indifférent” in all of his hardships; when 33 he began to write novels he vowed to make Paris itself a character, or 34 rather to have the city serve the role of a Greek chorus. Zola claims that 35 his apparent “furor” of description was none other than a desire to create 36 a symphonic and human story, where the city would refl ect and heighten 37 human emotion. As for his documentation, he took notes from the eleva- 38 tions of Passy but was dissatisfi ed with the view of the northwest of the 39 city, where the new monuments of the Opéra and Saint-Augustin rose up 40 out of a sea of nondescript roofs. Although his novel took place before 41 the completion of the two buildings, he decided to include them in his de- Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 179 scription anyway, “succumbing to the temptation,” as he says, that these 1 monuments could lead to a personifi cation of the city, despite the anach- 2 ronism. This rare concession to the apparent aesthetic unity of Hauss- 3 mann’s Paris, despite Zola’s usual insistence on a strict adherence to facts, 4 allows him to show the ever-changing aspects of the city over time, not 5 as an organic image so much as a dramatic backdrop juxtaposed to his 6 character’s state of mind. 7 Claude Lantier toils away at multiple paintings of the city, lost in the 8 never-ending variations of city time and space. Hélène Grandjean sees 9 the transformations of her own emotional life refl ected and contrasted 10 in images of the city as the seasons pass. Zola the novelist inscribes new 11 monuments onto a vision of the city in his youth, creating an amalgam of 12 times and spaces, and affi rming the aesthetic over the factual. While no 13 single map of Paris exists that can capture the modern city in a holistic vi- 14 sion, the city produces virtual maps of itself, images which correspond to 15 no one moment in time and no actual, concrete view of the city. Saccard 16 sees a vision of the immediate future as he gazes out a restaurant window 17 in Montmartre. And of course Haussmann invents a map from the past 18 that would serve as a foundation for the city of the future. Zola shows us 19 that speculation as well as the creative destruction known as fi ction writ- 20 ing both rely on the ability to see past, present, and future in the spaces 21 of the modern city. 22 23 24 A Figural Genealogy 25 26 There were at least four different stages in the conception of the Rougon- 27 Macquart genealogical “tree” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1777). While in 28 the beginning phases of planning the series in 1869, Zola composed a sim- 29 ple sketch of a family named “Richaud-David,” which became “Rougon- 30 Machard” and eventually “Rougon-Macquart.” The family members of 31 the fi rst and second generations are already established, but the third and 32 fourth generations are not fi lled in until 1870 and 1871. Some characters 33 disappear from the tree never to appear in the novels, such as a “Camoin 34 Mouret.” It remains a work very much in progress, covered in annota- 35 tions and erasures. A second early tree later the same year completed 36 more details related to dates and hereditary traits, but is still uncertain 37 about the names of many characters and includes roughly half of the 38 eventual members of the family (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1778–79). 39 Only with the preparation of the fi rst novel with its elaborate genealogi- 40 cal narrative did the essential details of the family take shape. Far from 41 180 Chapter Eight

1 being a blueprint laying out in advance the foundation and structure of 2 the ten, and then twenty, novels, the genealogical tree provides inspiration 3 and a fairly abstract idea of narrative possibilities, while at the same time 4 adapting to the shifting needs of the project. 5 Included in the eighth book, Une Page d’amour, in 1878, the fi rst pub- 6 lished genealogical tree offered the reading public a succinct outline of 7 the family and therefore of the seven preceding novels. More important, 8 it also provided clues about the twelve novels yet to be published; for 9 instance, Jean Macquart is described as a soldier (though he next appears 10 in the novel about peasants, La Terre). In the note accompanying the tree, 11 Zola justifi es the publication of the document and establishes the pa- 12 rameters for interpreting it (Les Rougon-Macquart, 2:799–800). It acts, 13 fi rst of all, as a guide for the reader, an index to help keep track of the 14 numerous family members. The second reason for publishing it is purely 15 promotional fabrication: “Je regrette de n’avoir pas publié l’arbre dans le 16 premier volume de la série, pour montrer tout de suite l’ensemble de mon 17 plan. Si je tardais encore, on fi nirait par m’accuser de l’avoir fabriqué 18 après coup” (2:799) (“I regret not having published the tree in the fi rst 19 volume of the series, in order to show my whole plan right away. If I were 20 to stall longer, people would accuse me of having fabricated it after the 21 fact”). This third version of the tree was indeed fabricated after the fact, 22 and not in 1868 as he claims, but the fi ction of the dossiers and Zola’s 23 naturalist method require scientifi c preparation before the composition of 24 the novels, not a parallel unfolding. Moreover, by situating the project’s 25 entire conception before the end of the Second Empire, Zola protects 26 himself from the criticism of disguising depictions of current events and 27 scandals under the veil of historical fi ction. 28 The genealogical tree therefore reinforces the claims to scientifi c logic 29 and historical objectivity set forth in the preface to La Fortune des Rou- 30 gon. Because each member of the family inhabits a section of time (a gen- 31 eration), a social stratum, and a genetic variation, the author only has to 32 plug in the coordinates in the resulting grid in order to produce a novel. 33 Fiction becomes an experiment with logical results: 34 35 Depuis 1868, je remplis le cadre que je me suis imposé, l’arbre géné- 36 alogique en marque pour moi les grandes lignes, sans me permettre 37 d’aller ni à droite ni à gauche. Je dois le suivre strictement, il est en même 38 temps ma force et mon régulateur. Les conclusions sont toutes prêtes. 39 Voilà ce que j’ai voulu et voilà ce que j’accomplis.11 (Les Rougon Mac- 40 quart, 2:799) 41 Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 181

Zola articulates the same paradoxical authorial remove and incredible 1 will power in the avowed composition of the novels as he did in the pref- 2 ace and throughout the dossiers. Conveniently, he has constrained himself 3 to doing exactly what he wanted to do all along. The tree is a source of 4 strength and a limiting factor, focusing his attention and channeling his 5 energies. Yet with the publication of the genealogical tree, at least in prin- 6 ciple he adds another constraint, since any reader will be able to see how 7 the future novels branch off from the tree. 8 Finally, Zola announces in his note for Une Page d’amour that he will 9 include the tree one more time at the front of the last novel, Le Docteur 10 Pascal, as well as in the body of the narrative. The tree sums up all of 11 Pascal’s research and the novel cycle as a whole: “Dans ma pensée, il est 12 le résultat des observations de Pascal Rougon, un médecin, membre de la 13 famille, qui conduira le roman fi nal, conclusion scientifi que de tout l’ou- 14 vrage” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 2:799–800) (“In my mind, it is the result 15 of the observations by Pascal Rougon, a medical doctor, member of the 16 family, who will lead the fi nal novel, the scientifi c conclusion of the whole 17 work”). Just as the tree was the (fi ctional) source of the novels in 1868, it 18 will be the scientifi c conclusion, the validation of the original hypothesis. 19 The only rationale for not including all of the details Zola claims to have 20 collected about the family, and that Pascal will expose at length in the 21 fi nal novel, is out of consideration for the reader, whose pleasure at dis- 22 covering the various dénouements of the remaining novels must be kept 23 intact, as he writes, “pour ne pas défl orer les épisodes futurs” (“in order 24 not to defl ower the future episodes”). Zola thus cleverly offers himself an 25 escape route, since he had not yet planned out many of the novels to be 26 written. 27 Various documents in the dossiers préparatoires for Le Docteur Pascal 28 show the development of the tree from 1878 to 1893, when the fi nal vol- 29 ume was published. Besides a copy of the tree drawn by Zola’s wife Alex- 30 andrine, the dossiers contain extensive fi les on nearly all of the individual 31 family members detailing their medical histories and professions, along 32 with a list of the novels with each Rougon-Macquart who appears in 33 them (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1562–64). One document of particular 34 interest is an annotated copy of the 1878 tree, which records the changes 35 to the original plan as the novel cycle closes (fi gure 4.3). As if pruning 36 the tree, Zola marks which members have died (“mort” or “morte”) and 37 which continue to live (“vit”) in 1874, when the last novel ends. Cu- 38 riously, the family member most tied to the empire, Eugène, bears the 39 ambiguous label “à Paris vivant défendant l’empire mort” (“in Paris liv- 40 41 182 Chapter Eight

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Figure 4.3. 1878 genealogical tree revised by Zola. Mss, NAF 10.290 folio 172. 22 Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France. 23 24 25 ing defending the dead empire”). New branches sprout (or perhaps are 26 grafted onto the tree after the fact), such as Jacques Lantier (“mort”), son 27 of Gervaise Macquart, who was invented for La Bête humaine years after 28 Gervaise’s novel L’Assommoir. The most signifi cant aspect in this transi- 29 tional document is that for the fi rst time the tree inscribes the unknown 30 onto the text: Saccard’s illegitimate son, Victor, is labeled “disparu” (he 31 disappears at the end of L’Argent); Clotilde and Pascal’s child, nameless 32 and here sexless, is labeled “? L’enfant inconnu” (“? the unknown child”); 33 below the “trunk” of the tree, buried in the ground under Tante Dide, are 34 the words “l’inconnu derrière elle” (“the unknown behind her”). The des- 35 ecrated cemetery of the Aire Saint-Mittre, with its mysterious past, fi nally 36 appears on the tree, the family’s inscrutable origins extend beyond the 37 madness of Adélaïde. Likewise, the fi fth generation reintroduces uncer- 38 tainty as the tree can no longer provide the key to deciphering the future 39 of the anonymous child. 40 True to the promise he made in 1878, Zola plants the genealogical tree 41 at the center of the narrative of the fi nal novel. Pascal, like Zola, records Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 183 signifi cant events in the tree as he closely follows the lives of his family 1 members; Pascal’s tree has the same graphic form as the one published 2 with the novel: 3 4 C’était une grande feuille de papier jaunie, aux plis coupés par l’usure, 5 sur laquelle s’élevait, dessiné d’un trait fort, un arbre symbolique, dont les 6 branches étalées, subdivisées, alignaient cinq rangées de larges feuilles; et 7 chaque feuille portait un nom, contenait, d’une écriture fi ne, une biogra- 8 phie, un cas héréditaire.12 (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1006) 9 10 For the doctor, and perhaps for the novelist as well, it is the symbol 11 and the summation of the piles of scientifi c dossiers. At the same time, 12 Pascal acknowledges that it is a beautiful fi ction, “où il n’y a pas un 13 trou” (“without one hole”), that only works because it ignores the ge- 14 netic input of the spouses (Mouret, Lantier, Quenu, etc.), the numerous 15 other families who have been grafted onto the tree. It has its basis in 16 reality, even if a selective reality, that confounds a simple mathematical 17 logic, since genetics proves not to be strictly distributional; Charles, in 18 the fi fth generation, closely resembles his great-great grandmother Dide 19 even though, as Pascal observes, he inherits only one twelfth of his genes 20 from her (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1008). Full of scientifi c optimism, 21 Pascal is nonetheless prudently skeptical about his own theories and the 22 fumbling beginnings of the new discipline. Indeed, Pascal confi rms what 23 Zola’s novels themselves demonstrate, that thinking through genetic ori- 24 gins and destinies belongs equally to the poet as well as to the scientist: 25 “Il y a là [dans les sciences commençantes] une marge qui leur appartient 26 [aux poètes], entre la vérité conquise, défi nitive, et l’inconnu, d’où l’on 27 arrachera la vérité de demain” (5:1008) (“There is [in emerging fi elds] 28 a margin which belongs to them [poets], between conquered, defi nitive 29 truth and the unknown, from which will be torn the truth of tomor- 30 row”). This poetic margin, between truth and the unknown, indicates, 31 to those who know how to read it, the place where “solutions” are to be 32 found (5:1008). 33 The tree’s role as poetic text to be interpreted for possible solutions 34 becomes clear later in the novel when Pascal himself scrutinizes it for 35 answers. For over twenty years, the doctor carried on his research at a 36 safe, objective remove from his subject, for he believed he was free of 37 the family affl iction, the “fêlure,” despite rumors that he is a half-crazed 38 genius, “toute cette légende de génie à demi fêlé” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 39 5:1119). The 1878 genealogical tree notes that he is “complètement en 40 dehors de la famille” (“completely outside the family”). His obsession 41 184 Chapter Eight

1 with work, his growing fear that someone will destroy his dossiers, and 2 his budding passion for his niece Clotilde provoke in him a paranoid 3 state, which he fears to be the manifestation of inherited madness. Des- 4 perately, he interrogates the tree: “Il étala l’Arbre sur la table, il continua 5 à le considérer longuement, de son air terrifi é d’interrogation, peu à peu 6 vaincu et suppliant, les joues mouillées de larmes. Pourquoi, mon Dieu! 7 L’Arbre ne voulait-il pas lui répondre?” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1034) 8 (“He spread out the Tree on the table, and continued to stare at it for a 9 long time, with a terrifi ed look of interrogation, little by little defeated 10 and supplicating, his cheeks wet with tears. Why, my God!, wouldn’t the 11 Tree answer him?”). He is only cured of his temporary madness after 12 he is assured that Clotilde will not destroy the dossiers (Les Rougon- 13 Macquart, 5:1043). The incident proves to him that his illness was only 14 an accident (perhaps “archive fever”), and so heredity played no part; the 15 tree could provide no answers but only act as a mirror to his paranoia. 16 After the moving scene of Pascal’s death, when he completes his own 17 leaf and that of his unborn child on the tree, Pascal’s mother, Félicité, 18 and his servant set fi re to all the papers locked in his armoire in order 19 to destroy the archive implicating the family in countless horrors. The 20 only remains are fragments of paper, scraps where not one page is left 21 completely intact. The tree, at Pascal’s bedside, survives despite Félicité’s 22 feverish search for it (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1197), but his years of 23 research, his data and theories, are lost forever. At the end of the novel, 24 Clotilde contemplates the charred remains of the dossiers and unfolds 25 the tree, lost in a daydream. Unable to make out much of anything, 26 the words on the page instead recall memories and emotions. A vision 27 comes to her in the form of a living family tree: “L’Arbre montait, ra- 28 mifi ait ses branches, épanouissait ses feuilles, et elle s’oubliait longue- 29 ment à le contempler, à se dire que toute l’oeuvre du maître était là, toute 30 cette végétation classée et documentée de leur famille. Elle entendait les 31 paroles dont il commentait chaque cas héréditaire, elle se rappelait ses 32 leçons” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1216) (“The Tree rose up, extending 33 its branches, unfolded its leaves, and for a long time she lost herself in 34 contemplation, telling herself that the master’s entire work was there, 35 the whole classifi ed and documented mass of their family. She heard the 36 words with which he explained every hereditary case, she recalled his 37 lessons”). No longer a rigidly scientifi c document, the tree without its 38 accompanying and explanatory dossiers becomes a deeply personal text, 39 bringing back memories of Pascal and his work, though not his complete 40 theories. The tree contains an image of the past, but also turns toward 41 the future, reaching out its branches into the unknown with the young Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 185 children of the next generation, perhaps untouched by the family illness: 1 “Et elle-même retombait à une rêverie, devant l’Arbre prolongeant dans 2 l’avenir ses derniers rameaux. Qui savait d’où naîtrait la branche saine? 3 Peut-être le sage, le puissant attendu germerait-il là” (“And she fell back 4 into a daydream, in front of the Tree, which extended its last branches 5 into the future. Who could say where the healthy branch would be born? 6 Perhaps the long-awaited wise, great man would germinate there?”). The 7 Rougon-Macquart genealogical tree records a long list of atrocities, mad- 8 ness, crime, and imbecility, but it also inscribes on the page the rejuvenat- 9 ing forces of life, the eternal hope for the new. 10 A comparison of the 1878 genealogical tree to Pascal’s defi nitive tree 11 from 1893 (fi gure 4.4) illustrates the change of focus from origins to a 12 concern about the future. The drawing for the 1878 tree very much re- 13 sembles a traditional depiction of a tree: each family member has a label 14 in the form of a leaf, and the earth at the tree’s base is shaded and in relief, 15 extending out into the horizon. The branches are arranged naturally, with 16 the result that some family members appear lower than their parents, as a 17 tree extends its branches outward as well as upward. The legitimate Rou- 18 gon side of the tree appears healthier than the Macquart side, reaching 19 upward toward the top of the page. The 1893 tree, while still retaining 20 “leaves” for each family member, becomes much more abstract. Branches 21 extend far out horizontally and only go up. Each leaf lines up exactly with 22 those from the same generation and is roughly the same size, regardless of 23 the amount of information contained. The ground is much less developed 24 and does not convey the sense of horizon, but blades of grass adorn what 25 was once barren dirt. While still having fewer members than the Rougon 26 side, the Macquart branches are just as healthy. Less “arborescent” and 27 more “rhizomatic,” the Rougon-Macquart genealogy spreads outward in 28 unpredictable ways, like blades of grass. Jean Macquart’s robust peasant 29 children and Pascal and Clotilde’s nameless boy have equal chances for 30 brilliance or decadence. The tree branches out and continually upward, 31 drawing the eye to the top of the page and to the future. 32 The title in both cases is placed in the corner within a form reminiscent 33 of a family crest. As a coat of arms, it bears only the words “Arbre géné- 34 alogique des Rougon-Macquart,” and the name of the family is inscribed 35 on a ribbon that is folded in on itself. If one were to imagine unfolding the 36 paper, the names of each branch of the family would be on opposite ends, 37 just as the two branches are split at their origin and their family members 38 destined to occupy separate economic and social realms. The fold in the 39 ribbon brings the two branches together, juxtaposed to each other on 40 the page, but not repairing the original break, like the tree itself which 41 186 Chapter Eight

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 nitive genealogical tree for the Rougon-Macquart. LLA, NQ-C-034532. Courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France. NQ-C-034532. LLA, nitive genealogical tree for the Rougon-Macquart. 37 38 39 40

41 Figure 4.4. Defi Mapping Creative Destruction in Zola 187 points to a common though unknowable origin. The ribbon itself makes 1 a vaguely circular movement as the Rougon, always on top, turns down 2 to make the fold out of which the Macquart begin to ascend. 3 Even more than Saccard’s mental map of Paris, one image in particular 4 crystallizes the will to locate a simulated origin in the space of a text. The 5 successive genealogical trees drawn up for the Rougon-Macquart fuse the 6 “natural” history of the family to its “social” history in a single iconic 7 representation, since genetic traits are inscribed alongside class markers 8 across all social strata and four or fi ve generations. Expanding as the fam- 9 ily swells along with the number of novels, the genealogical tree, no mat- 10 ter how much it grows and changes, must continue its role as surrogate 11 origin, documenting what little is known of the past while inventing what 12 may exist beyond the immediate present. The explicit point of juncture 13 of the dossiers préparatoires and the fi ctional narrative, the genealogical 14 tree fantasizes an impossible synthesis of origin and termination, birth 15 and death, cause and effect: it transforms a novel series into the Rougon- 16 Macquart cycle. 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 3 4 5 6 Part V 7 8 Proust’s Double Text 9 10 11 L’espace fond comme le sable coule entre les doigts. Le temps 12 l’emporte et ne m’en laisse que des lambeaux informes . . .* 13 —Georges Perec, Espèces d’espaces, 180 14 15 16 17 18 Marcel Proust’s monumental novel À la recherche du temps perdu cap- 19 tures the struggle to write the self in the spaces of the text, fi ctionalizing 20 the process of the formation of textual subjectivity found in Stendhal’s 21 and Nerval’s autobiographical texts, as well as the anguish of Sand’s 22 fi ctional characters and of Zola in his dossiers préparatoires. Stendhal 23 employed the autobiographical form to gain perspective on the self; the 24 subject was enclosed and controlled by a mapped text. The rigid math- 25 ematical and Cartesian mapped self inscribed in the Vie de Henry Brulard 26 proves to be incompatible not only with a self that changes over time, but 27 also with a text that produces a multiplicity of meanings through the very 28 ambiguity of fi ctional autobiographical narrative. Though the problem of 29 time and change is partially resolved by Stendhal through the bird’s-eye- 30 view maps evenly spaced in the text, his objective study of the self fails to 31 satisfy the dual necessity of communicating the particulars of subjectivity 32 while maintaining the integrity of the self. The Vie de Henry Brulard ends 33 abruptly in order to save the self from certain death in and by the text. 34 Instead of mapping subjectivity as Stendhal had done, Nerval’s works 35 seek to envelop the self in the places it inhabits to the extent that the 36 self becomes indistinguishable and inextricable from its environment. 37 The Oriental Gérard, the Gérard of the Valois, or the universal Gérard of 38 39 *Space melts like sand runs through the fi ngers. Time carries it away and only leaves me with 40 shapeless fragments . . . 41

189 190 Part V

1 Aurélia and of the “Généalogie” are situated in extra-temporal places 2 that would seem to protect the self from the adverse effects of change. 3 Nerval does not prematurely end the narrative to ensure the integrity 4 of the self as Stendhal’s text had done, but rather has others die in his 5 place in order to fulfi ll the death inherent in narrative’s dénouement. Only 6 in Aurélia will an equivalent to Stendhal’s bird’s-eye view emerge in the 7 form of the “double aspect.” The simultaneous presence and superposi- 8 tion of a sane or conscious narrator with a dreaming or unconscious nar- 9 ratee reintroduces the element of time, which had been repressed by the 10 Nervalian subject. Time changes the self and transforms it into another, 11 a double. The “double aspect” of Nerval’s narration suggests at the end 12 of Aurélia that the text can, as Stendhal had wished, provide a means to 13 see oneself as other through a textual image, a novel map that collapses 14 spaces and times to reveal the becoming of the self. 15 Sand’s Indiana and Nanon convey the dangers and advantages of tex- 16 tuality for nineteenth-century women, the need to invent new models of 17 subjectivity in the utopian spaces and hypothetical time of the novel. Sim- 18 ilar to Proust’s novel, her works engage with and ultimately transcend the 19 realist tradition. Zola’s division of his text into dossiers and novel, uni- 20 fi ed by the Rougon-Macquart genealogy, becomes an integral structuring 21 principle in Proust’s novel. The Recherche is a double text unifying Zola’s 22 split or parallel texts: at once the journal of one man’s long and painful 23 path to becoming a writer and the novel that man eventually writes. 24 Proust’s novel tells the story of what happens when Stendhal’s auto- 25 biography falls defi nitively into the novel. The autobiographical simula- 26 crum (that the “I” of the present coincides with the “I” of a text) becomes 27 a simulated autobiography where the two components of subjectivity 28 (the self and its relation to the other) are copies without originals, since 29 “Marcel” is not Proust. The other is an exteriorized image of the self, 30 and the self proves to be absent from the text. Just as Zola’s and Nerval’s 31 genealogies marked the impossible coincidence of the self across time and 32 especially of the writer with the written, Proust’s circular novel connects 33 the novel’s conclusion (the narrator decides to write a novel) with its 34 beginning (the narrator is inscribed as text). The death of the writing 35 subject in text, feared by Stendhal, Nerval, and Zola as well as Sand’s 36 fi ctional characters, is in Proust reversed as the only true life is now one 37 lived in literature. But the cost of this textual life amounts to a hollowed 38 self, written in time and not space as a perpetual becoming in text, in 39 language, and actualized by readers who use the novel as an instrument 40 to see themselves. 41 Proust’s Double Text 191

The cyclical structure of the novel calls for a cyclical reading where 1 the key to its interpretation as a novel about time is revealed retrospec- 2 tively. A fi rst reading, chapter 9, considers the text as the story of a failed 3 autobiography where the narrator progressively loses his identity in the 4 spaces of his imagination, until the fi nal revelation that his true vocation 5 is that of a novelist. The second reading, chapter 10, considers the text as 6 the successful novel about time, or the story of the success of literature in 7 forming what Nerval called a “passable subject.” The novel in its entirety 8 forms a novel map: instead of a referential illusion confusing a space 9 outside the text with the space of the text, the (material) novel (in the 10 reader’s hands) about the becoming of a writer coincides at every point 11 with the (hypothetical) novel the writer claims to write in the future (in 12 the reader’s imagination). 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 CHAPTER NINE 3 4 5 6 The Law of the Land 7 8 9 10 11 In Search of Lost Place 12 13 At the familiar beginning of À la recherche du temps perdu one fi nds in 14 contradiction to the novel’s title, not a search for lost time, but the fran- 15 tic search for a lost place. The narrator, writing in the ambiguous tense 16 of habit, the imperfect, relates the trouble he has going to sleep and the 17 even greater trouble he has of fi nding himself again upon waking. The 18 anonymous je, who for a long time put himself to bed early, fl oats in and 19 out of sleep, in and out of consciousness in an unspecifi ed time and place. 20 Improbable identities are assumed and discarded as the reading je turned 21 dreamer becomes whatever subject of the book happened to be on the 22 page when consciousness was lost: “Il me semblait que j’étais moi-même 23 ce dont parlait l’ouvrage: une église, un quatuor, la rivalité de François 24 Ier et de Charles Quint” (CS I, 3) (“It seemed to me that I was indeed 25 what the work was talking about: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between 26 1 François I and Charles V”). The subject of any text can manifest itself as 27 the textual subject: je’s consciousness is invaded by the image of whatever 28 he is reading, be it a person, a church (reminiscent of Rancière’s idea that 29 Victor Hugo was the fi rst to make a building the subject of a novel), or 30 even an abstract concept such as a rivalry. When he fi rst wakes, the images 31 persist in confusing his identity, since the dreamed text has absorbed the 32 narrator’s awareness of himself. Even the pronoun varies from je to il and 33 on, as the narrative moves between the particular anonymous fi rst person 34 to the general third person. Just as Nerval began Aurélia with a dreaming 35 subject, free from the conditions of time and space, who reformulates the 36 Cartesian experience of doubt into the liberating experience of dream, the 37 opening of Proust’s novel explores the liminal space between conscious- 38 ness and unconsciousness, dream and “reality,” perception and illusion. 39 After the initial description of an identity confused by the textual im- 40 ages of the books he reads, the narrating je restates the experience in 41

193 194 Chapter Nine

1 general terms, as a law. The second formulation is an ontological theory 2 that displaces the original cause of confusion—reading—onto what is 3 now described simply as deep sleep: “il suffi sait que, dans mon lit même, 4 mon sommeil fût profond et détendît entièrement mon esprit” (5) (“it suf- 5 fi ced that, in my very bed, my sleep was profound and entirely relaxed 6 my mind”). The shift from the persistence of textual images to deep sleep 7 implies that the experience of the “dormeur éveillé” (“wakened sleeper”) 8 is a universal human condition, and not one restricted to avid readers; as 9 we will see, however, subjectivity in the Recherche is profoundly tied to the 10 reading of literature. On a narrative level, the displacement of reading pre- 11 pares the way for the separation of the narrating je and the narrated, and 12 therefore textual, je, since the text will refl ect the past of the narrating sub- 13 ject instead of the unfolding of a present in the text, as in Stendhal’s self- 14 discovery in Vie de Henry Brulard, or Zola’s in his dossiers préparatoires. 15 The “dormeur éveillé” scene emphasizes the spatial component of iden- 16 tity and memory. The dreamer is able to move freely between different 17 times and different worlds; once he awakens, his power to travel across 18 time and space diminishes and he must remember his location. If the sleep 19 is too deep, the awoken sleeper is faced with the terrifying proposition of 20 not knowing where he is and therefore who he is: 21 22 Un homme qui dort, tient en cercle autour de lui le fi l des heures, l’ordre 23 des années et des mondes. Il les consulte d’instinct en s’éveillant et y lit 24 en une seconde le point de la terre qu’il occupe, le temps qui s’est écoulé 25 jusqu’à son réveil; mais leurs rangs peuvent se mêler, se rompre . . . Mais 26 il suffi sait que, dans mon lit même, mon sommeil fût profond et détendît 27 entièrement mon esprit; alors celui-ci lâchait le plan du lieu où je m’étais 28 endormi, et quand je m’éveillais au milieu de la nuit, comme j’ignorais où 29 je me trouvais, je ne savais même pas au premier instant qui j’étais; j’avais 30 seulement dans sa simplicité première, le sentiment de l’existence comme 31 il peut frémir au fond d’un animal; j’étais plus dénué que l’homme des 32 cavernes; mais alors le souvenir—non encore du lieu où j’étais, mais de 33 quelques-uns de ceux que j’avais habités et où j’aurais pu être—venait à 34 moi comme un secours d’en haut pour me tirer du néant d’où je n’aurais 35 pu sortir tout seul; je passais en une seconde par-dessus des siècles de 36 civilisation, et l’image confusément entrevue de lampes à pétrole, puis de 37 chemises à col rabattu, recomposaient peu à peu les traits originaux de 38 mon moi.2 (5–6) 39 40 Once again, like Balzac’s La Peau de chagrin, Stendhal’s Vie de Henry 41 Bru lard, and Nerval’s Aurélia, Proust’s novel grafts the experience of an The Law of the Land 195 anonymous subject onto the model of Descartes’s cogito. The je fi nds it- 1 self in a dark bedroom, deprived of any sensation except that of existence 2 itself. For Descartes, the knowledge of existence, proven by the simple 3 act of thought, was suffi cient to guarantee being; for Proust’s awakened 4 sleeper, mere existence is not enough; it is his essence, here connected to a 5 place, that must be found. Proust’s anguished narrator, in the pitch-black 6 darkness of his bedroom, does not even have the dim light of Plato’s cave 7 dweller to project an image of his identity onto the wall. 8 Descartes was granted the assurance of the truth of his perception by 9 the miraculous presence of God to his consciousness; no less miraculous 10 for Proust’s je is the “salvation from above” of the memory of the bed- 11 rooms where he has lived. Memory is not a part of the subject and cannot 12 be accessed at will; the narrator’s passing over “centuries of civilization” 13 reinforces the concept of a universal memory of which our personal mem- 14 ory is only a part. The impersonal character of memory suggests that we 15 do not remember ourselves, but only the places where one of our many 16 selves may be found (just as the view of Rome recalled all of Stendhal’s 17 life as well as all of Roman history, and as Nerval attempted to regain his 18 childhood memories by returning to the Valois). 19 The narrator’s consciousness uses memory to link identity to place, 20 with the assumption that the subject is contiguous with an unchanging 21 place in the external world (Bersani, 21). Blocks of space-time, in the 22 form of bedrooms, offer the subject a multiplicity of selves from which to 23 choose. The act of taming a hostile room, described here and later in the 24 fi rst scene of the Grand-Hôtel in Balbec, terrifi es the narrator not because 25 of the newness of the room, but because one self must cede to another. 26 Habit, a form of inattentive memory, is the process that creates a new 27 self in response to an unfamiliar place; habit renders a place inhabitable 28 by projecting a stability onto place and masking its inevitable movement 29 and change in time. Yet habit creates an illusory stability, since places, 30 and therefore identity, are anything but stable: “Peut-être l’immobilité des 31 choses autour de nous leur est-elle imposée par notre certitude que ce sont 32 elles et non pas d’autres, par l’immobilité de notre pensée en face d’elles” 33 (6) (“Perhaps the immobility of things around us is imposed on them by 34 our certitude that it is these same things and not others, by the immobil- 35 ity of our thought confronting them”). As will be argued in chapter 10, 36 movement and mobility are essential to the understanding of time and 37 identity in the Recherche. The miraculous, involuntary memory of the 38 many bedrooms and the attentive memory of intellect required to choose 39 from among them the bedroom of the present counter the immobiliz- 40 ing effect of habit or inattentive memory: “Toujours est-il que, quand je 41 196 Chapter Nine

1 me réveillais ainsi, mon esprit s’agitant pour chercher, sans y réussir, à 2 savoir où j’étais, tout tournait autour de moi dans l’obscurité, les choses, 3 les pays, les années” (6) (“Still is it that, when I would wake up in this 4 way, my mind casting about, without success, trying to know where I 5 was, everything would turn around me in the darkness: things, countries, 6 years”). The active attention of the mind forces places into movement and 7 reveals time’s relation to place and identity.3 8 The shock created by the search for identity in the bedrooms of the 9 past, while short-lived, has lasting effects. The fi rst effect is a temporary 10 solution to the problem of identity: after a few seconds, certitude has 11 settled in, and a bedroom is chosen. The furniture of the bedroom is put 12 “approximately” in its place, and the present identity of the subject is 13 assured. The last sentence of “Combray” questions the very notion that 14 remembered places are stable. The narrator defi nitively awakens only to 15 fi nd that the immobility he imposed upon the bedroom furniture was illu- 16 sory; the light of dawn sets everything in motion as it rectifi es the error of 17 the narrator’s memory: “La demeure que j’avais rebâtie dans les ténèbres 18 était allée rejoindre les demeures entrevues dans le tourbillon du réveil, 19 mise en fuite par ce pâle signe qu’avait tracé au-dessus des rideaux le 20 doigt levé du jour” (184) (“The dwelling I had rebuilt in the shadows was 21 to join up with the dwellings glimpsed in the whirl of waking, made to 22 fl ee by this pale sign which the raised fi nger of daylight had traced above 23 the window curtains”). The end of “Combray” is thus another revelation 24 that places and identity cannot be accurately remembered, but instead 25 must be created. 26 The narrator’s search for place and identity at the beginning of “Com- 27 bray” leads directly to the active remembering of the events recounted in 28 the text, which fl ows from the caused by the disruption of habit. 29 Since the mind of the narrator has already been set in motion, he can no 30 longer fall back to sleep as the memories of past places, selves, and stories 31 unsettle the stability and immobility of the localized self: 32 33 Mais j’avais beau savoir que je n’étais pas dans les demeures dont l’igno- 34 rance du réveil m’avait en un instant sinon présenté l’image distincte, 35 du moins fait croire la présence possible, le branle était donné à ma mé- 36 moire; généralement je ne cherchais pas à me rendormir tout de suite; je 37 passais la plus grande partie de la nuit à me rappeler notre vie d’autre- 38 fois, à Combray chez ma grand’tante, à Balbec, à Paris, à Doncières, à 39 Venise, ailleurs encore, à me rappeler les lieux, les personnes que j’y avais 40 connues, ce que j’avais vu d’elles, ce qu’on m’en avait raconté.4 (8–9) 41 The Law of the Land 197

The nostalgic reminiscence of Combray, Balbec, Paris, Doncières, and 1 Venice introduces the reader to the dominant places of the novel and 2 lays the foundation for the narrator’s identity as it will appear in the text. 3 Like Stendhal’s declaration “After so many general remarks, I am going 4 to be born,” the Proustian narrator’s awakening and reminiscence creates 5 both a je that narrates in the present and a narrated or remembered je of 6 the past anchored in the text in an autobiographical simulacrum occur- 7 ring after the agonizing analysis of the self across many times and many 8 places. The Recherche will tell the story of how the narrated je becomes 9 the narrating je, and the two will reunite at the end of Le Temps retrouvé. 10 The memories that directly follow the sleepless night form the basis 11 of “Combray I,” which is centered around the famous “goodnight kiss” 12 scene. Despite the vivid recollection of the scene, the narrator is incapable 13 of recalling anything but one distinct place and time of day: “comme si 14 Combray n’avait consisté qu’en deux étages reliés par un mince escalier et 15 comme s’il n’y avait jamais été que sept heures du soir” (43) (“as if Com- 16 bray had only consisted of two stories joined by a narrow staircase and 17 as if it was only ever seven o’clock in the evening”). The past contained 18 in Combray cannot be remembered in full and is therefore dead to the 19 narrator, as is, by extension, the narrator’s past self. Just as a miraculous 20 intervention in the form of the memories of past bedrooms saved the 21 awakened dreamer from his identity crisis, the sensation and ensuing in- 22 voluntary memory provoked by the madeleine create the greater world 23 of “Combray II,” and suggest the possibility of existence beyond death. 24 Though the involuntary memory stimulated by the taste of the madeleine 25 also involves the movement of consciousness, it differs from the initial 26 active remembering of bedrooms in that it is an act of creation: 27 28 Je pose la tasse et me tourne vers mon esprit. C’est à lui de trouver la vé- 29 rité. Mais comment? Grave incertitude, toutes les fois que l’esprit se sent 30 dépassé par lui-même; quand lui, le chercheur, est tout ensemble le pays 31 obscur où il doit chercher et où tout son bagage ne lui sera de rien. Cher- 32 cher? pas seulement: créer. Il est en face de quelque chose qui n’est pas 33 encore et que seul il peut réaliser, puis faire entrer dans sa lumière.5 (45) 34 35 Proust’s famously long sentences become suddenly terse as the narrator’s 36 mind or consciousness (l’esprit) grapples with the enigma of the mad- 37 eleine and searches desperately within the interior space of the self (“le 38 pays obscur”) to create a connection between past and present. The pres- 39 ent and the past taste of the cake dipped in tea are both found in the 40 41 198 Chapter Nine

1 narrator’s moi, but it is the task of his mind to invent the link between 2 the two that will bridge the vast distance in time that separates the two 3 sensations. As Gérard Genette has shown in “Métonymie chez Proust,” 4 the madeleine scene begins with a creation that bridges two times through 5 metaphor, and then continues with an opening up of the place of Com- 6 bray through metonymy in order to begin the narrative (Figures III, 63). 7 After the false start of “Combray I” which introduced the difference in 8 narrating and narrated subject, the madeleine episode, through the verti- 9 cal axis of time (metaphor) and the horizontal axis of space (metonymy), 10 creates the places of the text and lays the foundation of identity, which 11 will continue until the fi nal revelations of Le Temps retrouvé. The narra- 12 tive, therefore, relies on places, and by extension space, to create identity. 13 Yet how are the places of the Recherche inscribed in the space of the text? 14 15 16 Place Names and Name-of-the-Father 17 18 Instead of Stendhal’s or Sand’s visual maps, Nerval’s mythical genealogies, 19 or Zola’s geometries, Proust’s novel uses as its structuring principle the 20 places conjured up in the evocation of a proper name—le Nom. The titles 21 of volumes and subsections suffi ciently reveal the role of place and name 22 in organizing the Recherche: “Combray,” “Nom de pays: Le nom,” “Nom 23 de pays: Le pays,” Le Côté de Guermantes, and Sodome et Gomorrhe. 24 For Proust, a name is already an essence distinct from, yet inextricably 25 related to, the object it designates. Names hold within their syllables the 26 secret of places, and by pronouncing a name, by exploring the resonance 27 of its sound, the narrator unfolds place and essences contained in it. The 28 names of persons or families, and especially noble families whose names 29 are “toujours des noms de lieux” (“always names of places”), prove to 30 be just as spatial as the names of places.6 Proper names have the power 31 to capture an essence, and everything contingent with it, because of the 32 illusion that they refer to only one object, as opposed to common words 33 which designate interchangeable objects (Barthes, “Proust et les noms,” 34 124). Places, likewise, are supposed to be unique and not interchange- 35 able;7 yet the very oneness of names and places means that place names 36 are paradoxical. The essence, or place, contained in the name is far greater 37 than that of the “real” place itself, with the result that the two are incom- 38 patible. Names, for Proust, are already places, and two places cannot 39 occupy the same space; names are also signs, and every sign indicates the 40 absence of its object (in the words of Mallarmé in “Crise de vers”: “Je dis: 41 une fl eur! . . . l’absente de tous bouquets”—“I say: a fl ower! . . . the one The Law of the Land 199 absent from all bouquets”). A place name and the place it designates are 1 inextricably but arbitrarily linked; they form two separate regions that 2 cannot overlap. 3 The tension between a proper name and its object fuels the novel’s 4 narrative as the young hero fi rst acquires the imagery of names, then ex- 5 periences the disillusionment of places, and fi nally discovers the redemp- 6 tion of literary creation. For Roland Barthes, in “Proust et les noms,” the 7 “accident” that allows the passage from Proust’s earlier writing attempts 8 to the Recherche, the event that imposes a unifying system to the novel, 9 is the invention of proper names: “L’événement (poétique) qui a ‘lancé’ la 10 Recherche, c’est la découverte des Noms” (124–25) (“The (poetic) event 11 that ‘launched’ the Recherche is the discovery of Names”). Proper names, 12 as Barthes suggests, are “voluminous signs” that call to be interpreted by 13 the narrator, or “apprentice,” as Barthes names him following Deleuze 14 (125). The work of the novelist is to explore the relationship, not between 15 the object and its form or the sign and its referent, but rather between the 16 signifi er and the signifi ed, to explore the depths of signs (133). Barthes 17 is correct in expanding Deleuze’s conception of the Proustian sign to ac- 18 count for the crucial role of proper names, but he fails to account for the 19 spatial dimension of names or their relation to identity as outlined by 20 Proust himself. Toponyms provide the unifying system of the novel by 21 structuring it spatially. 22 “Combray” introduces the narrator, and the reader, to the names of 23 the Recherche, and in “Combray” names are received from the father. Of 24 all the narrator’s family members, it is perhaps the father who appears 25 to play one of the smallest roles in the text;8 after the episodes of “Com- 26 bray” he is hardly mentioned at all, in contrast to the mother and the 27 grandmother who continue to dominate the affective life of the narrator.9 28 The father’s minor part in the narrative reduces him to a caricature. He 29 becomes the fi gure of fatherhood, all the more so because he himself lacks 30 a proper name (conversely, the mother’s lack of a proper name keeps her 31 more intimate, especially since she is often called “Maman,” while the 32 father is only called “Papa” once, presumably after he has died, at the 33 end of Le Temps retrouvé). Combray may be a matriarchy led by Tante 34 Léonie that often reveals the father to be ridiculous or arbitrary in his 35 actions, but it is through this very arbitrary domination that he involun- 36 tarily teaches his son the power of names. 37 As the beginning of Le Côté de Guermantes declares, “Les Noms 38 [nous offrent] l’image de l’inconnaissable que nous avons versé en eux” 39 (CG II, 310) (“Names [present us] the image of the unknowable that 40 we have poured into them”), and in the sketch of the same episode pub- 41 200 Chapter Nine

1 lished in the 1954 version of Contre Sainte-Beuve, a name is “une urne 2 d’inconnaissable” (272) (“an urn of the unknowable”). A name is only 3 magical for the narrator if he can project onto it, or pour into it, the 4 unknowable. The name of someone or something already known is as 5 banal as a common word. The narrator mocks the grandmother when she 6 claims that her friend Mme de Villeparisis is a Guermantes: “Comment 7 aurais-je pu croire à une communauté d’origine entre deux noms qui 8 étaient entrés en moi, l’une par la porte basse et honteuse de l’expérience, 9 l’autre par la porte d’or de l’imagination?” (JF II, 58) (“How could I be- 10 lieve in a communality of origin between two names which had entered 11 my mind, one by the lowly and shameful gate of experience, the other by 12 the golden gate of imagination?”). 13 The father’s refl ex in raising his son is to say “no,” and in so doing, he 14 denies the narrator an immediate experience of the world. Often inca- 15 pable of leaving the house, the narrator projects onto names his desires 16 for knowledge, for travel, and for sex. In “Combray I,” following the sug- 17 gestion of the grandfather, the father sends the narrator to bed without 18 the ritual kiss from the mother (CS I, 30–36); this denial of motherly 19 affection sets in motion a pattern of desire that is repeated continuously 20 until Albertine disparue. The father, against the grandmother’s wishes, 21 forbids the narrator from taking evening walks in the rain, instead asking 22 him to read in his room (CS I, 11). He disapproves of the grandmother’s 23 reading choices for the young child (CS I, 39). He habitually and arbi- 24 trarily breaks the “pacts” that the mother and grandmother make with 25 the narrator, since “il ne se souciait pas des ‘principes’ et qu’il n’y avait 26 pas avec lui de ‘Droit des gens’” (CS I, 35) (“he was not concerned with 27 ‘principles’ and there were no such things for him as ‘Rights of Man’”). 28 The father’s persistence in snubbing Swann and his wife only adds to their 29 prestige in the eyes of the narrator; their greater social distance fi lls the 30 name of Swann with wonder and contributes to the narrator’s budding 31 love for Gilberte (CS I, 98 and 142–43). At the end of Le Côté de chez 32 Swann, in the section titled “Noms de pays: Le nom,” the narrator dreams 33 of traveling to Balbec or to northern Italy and wonders three separate 34 times whether his parents will allow him to go. When his father, checking 35 the barometer and confi rming the weather, fi nally agrees to a voyage to 36 Italy, the son’s excitement is so great that he falls sick; the doctor, another 37 father fi gure, especially if we take into account that Proust’s father was a 38 physician, forbids the narrator both to travel to Venice and to go to the 39 theater to see la Berma (CS I, 382–86). The desire to know Venice, repeat- 40 edly prevented because of Albertine, is not satisfi ed until Albertine dispa- 41 rue. Because of his father, the narrator is unable to experience fi rsthand The Law of the Land 201 the objects he desires; he therefore maintains the distance between name 1 and place or object needed to transform a name into a place of desire. 2 The father’s “negative infl uence” on the narrator succeeds in nourishing 3 his rich imaginary world and in fi lling names with the mystique of the 4 unknowable. 5 The father is instrumental in another key way: he lays out the mental 6 and physical geography for the novel. It is the father who leads the family 7 walks through Combray, and he is a master of the terrain. On moonlit 8 nights, he would lead the family on long walks: “Mon père, par amour 9 de la gloire, nous faisait faire par le calvaire une longue promenade, que 10 le peu d’aptitude de ma mère à s’orienter et à se reconnaître dans son 11 chemin, lui faisait considérer comme la prouesse d’un génie stratégique” 12 (CS I, 113) (“My father, out of love of glory, would take us on the ordeal 13 of a long walk, which my mother’s ineptitude at orienting herself and rec- 14 ognizing what road she was on made her regard as the feat of a strategic 15 genius”). The family would be so disoriented that the father could lead 16 them directly behind their home without the rest of the family recogniz- 17 ing the back door of the house (114). In the eyes of the narrator, the father 18 controls perspective and mysteriously navigates the space of Combray. 19 It is the father who teaches the son, inadvertently, that the two 20 “côtés” (“ways”) are so opposed that one cannot walk both of them on 21 the same day: 22 23 Car il y avait autour de Combray deux “côtés” pour les promenades, et 24 si opposés qu’on ne sortait pas en effet de chez nous par la même porte, 25 quand on voulait aller d’un côté ou de l’autre . . . Comme mon père par- 26 lait toujours du côté de Méséglise comme de la plus belle vue de plaine 27 qu’il connût et du côté de Guermantes comme du type de paysage de 28 rivière, je leur donnais, en les concevant ainsi comme deux entités, cette 29 cohésion, cette unité qui n’appartiennent qu’aux créations de notre esprit 30 . . . Cette habitude que nous avions de n’aller jamais vers les deux côtés 31 un même jour, dans une seule promenade, mais une fois du côté de Mésé- 32 glise, une fois du côté de Guermantes, les enfermait pour ainsi dire loin 33 l’un de l’autre, inconnaissables l’un à l’autre, dans les vases clos et sans 34 communication entre eux, d’après-midi différents.10 (132–33) 35 36 The habitual activity of taking either one “côté” or the other on any given 37 afternoon (an activity presumably dictated by the father) seals each path 38 off from the other defi nitively, which creates in the mind of the narra- 39 tor two “vases clos” (“sealed vessels”) that can never communicate.11 40 Because the father would speak about each “côté” in superlatives and, 41 202 Chapter Nine

1 for the son, in apparently contradictory terms, the narrator conceived of 2 them as absolutes that structured spatial relations and therefore orga- 3 nized mental categories. They are united in the narrator’s mind only be- 4 cause they share the same quality as classifying places. People, as well as 5 other places, are defi ned throughout the rest of the novel in relationship 6 to one or the other “côtés,” as shown by the titles of two volumes, Du 7 côté de chez Swann and Le Côté de Guermantes. The narrative is written 8 as the narrator follows the two divergent paths and explores the world 9 from the two perspectives of Combray. 10 The father literally and fi guratively misleads his son. During the family 11 walks he manipulates space to reveal the view of the home as an unfamil- 12 iar place. As the narrator discovers later, the father arbitrarily separates 13 the two “côtés”; thus the narrator’s future experience (and consequently 14 the structure of the narrative) is mapped in advance according to the fa- 15 ther’s conception of Combray’s places. The mapping of the novel through 16 Combray manifests the more general paternal role: the production of the 17 symbolic. He imposes on his son, albeit without knowing it, a dichot- 18 omy between the symbolic world of names and the world of experience. 19 Jacques Lacan, in “Fonction et champ de la parole et du langage,” has 20 described this process in psychoanalysis as the “Nom-du-père” (“Name- 21 of-the-father”): “C’est dans le nom du père qu’il nous faut reconnaître 22 le support de la fonction symbolique qui, depuis l’ordre des temps his- 23 toriques, identifi e sa personne à la fi gure de la loi”Écrits ( I, 276) (“It 24 is in the Name-of the-father that we must recognize the foundation for 25 the symbolic function which, since the beginning of history, identifi es its 26 person to the fi gure of the law”). Lacan argues that the father, or more 27 accurately the already dead symbolic father, establishes himself as the 28 fi gure of the law through his nom (and its homonym non). The law the 29 Name-of-the-father founds is that of the symbolic order. The Symbolic, 30 for Lacan, constitutes a structure like language, where a symbol or signi- 31 fi er is not fi xed to any one signifi ed (Laplanche and Pontalis,The Lan- 32 guage of Psychoanalysis, 440). 33 In the Recherche, the father inscribes the law of signifi ers, thereby de- 34 fi ning the social interactions of his son. Within the narrative, the narrator 35 is constantly defi ned by the notoriety of his father, and specifi cally by his 36 father’s name. When the narrator fi rst meets Odette, in her incarnation 37 as la dame en rose, she recognizes him as the image of his mother, at 38 which point his uncle Adolphe corrects her: “Il ressemble surtout à son 39 père” (CS I, 76) (“He especially resembles his father”). In À l’ombre des 40 jeunes fi lles en fl eurs Mme de Villeparisis is impressed by his last name 41 (JF II, 59). Suspecting that the father of the narrator is traveling with her longtime companion Norpois, she asks him, “Est-ce que vous êtes le The Law of the Land 203 fi ls du directeur au ministère? . . . Il paraît que votre père est un homme 1 charmant. Il fait un bien beau voyage en ce moment” (61) (“Are you the 2 son of the department head at the ministry? . . . It seems that your father 3 is a charming man. He is having a beautiful trip at the moment”). The 4 other characters in the novel are much more concerned about the father’s 5 status than is the narrator. That the narrator should lack a family name 6 in the text only reinforces the transgression of the written text. The nar- 7 rator, without a proper name and thus without a proper place in the 8 text, wanders the places of the text whose borders were drawn by the 9 Name-of-the-father. 10 The law of the Name-of-the-father reigns over the symbolic order, 11 over the names and therefore the places of the text. The father institutes 12 the uniqueness of names and places, legislating identity as a function of 13 the two “côtés.” There is a law of the land, inscribed by the father, that 14 prevents the narrator from moving from one place to another, from re- 15 defi ning his identity, and from changing or writing his name. Michel de 16 Certeau, in L’invention du quotidien 1. Arts de faire, makes a distinction 17 between space and place that elucidates the relationship between space, 18 place, and identity in the novel: 19 20 Au départ, entre espace et lieu, je pose une distinction qui limitera un 21 champ. Est un lieu l’ordre (quel qu’il soit) selon lequel des éléments sont 22 distribués dans des rapports de coexistence. S’y trouve donc exclue la pos- 23 sibilité, pour deux choses, d’être à la même place. La loi du “propre” y 24 règne: les éléments sont les uns à côtés des autres, chacun situé en un en- 25 droit “propre” et distinct qu’il défi nit. Un lieu est donc une confi guration 26 instantanée de positions. Il implique une indication de stabilité.12 (172–73) 27 28 Place is defi ned as an order of distribution of relationships based on jux- 29 taposing objects without superposing them. The stability of places relies 30 on the “loi du ‘propre,’” its uniqueness, in the same manner as proper 31 names. The law of place, the law of the land, stabilizes identity through 32 an ordered classifi cation of signs. 33 There is thus a fundamental link in the Recherche between the system 34 of signs imposed by the father’s law and the system of places that struc- 35 ture the novel. The narrator’s apprenticeship of signs and the revelation of 36 his vocation as writer is, in essence, an apprenticeship in the transgression 37 of the law of places and in the power of literature to create new signs. 38 For Certeau, space is the necessary counterpart to place: “Il y a espace 39 dès qu’on prend en considération des vecteurs de direction, des quantités 40 de vitesse et la variable de temps. . . . À la différence du lieu, il n’a donc 41 ni l’univocité ni la stabilité d’un ‘propre.’ En somme, l’espace est un lieu 204 Chapter Nine

1 pratiqué” (173)13 (“There is space as soon as directional vectors, quanti- 2 ties of speed, and the variable of time are taken into consideration. . . . 3 Unlike place, it has neither the univocity nor the stability of the ‘proper.’ 4 In short, space is a place put into practice”). Space, in Certeau’s defi ni- 5 tion, is mobile; it accounts for movement and time with the effect that it 6 disrupts the apparent stability and immobility of place (in a similar way 7 to the movement given to the narrator’s consciousness in his search for 8 a stable identity). Through its multiplicity, its disrespectful disruptions, 9 space disobeys the law of place. Space as practice of place is transgression 10 or “délinquance.” All narratives contain a spatial component since they 11 describe an itinerary or a succession of places over time (171); for Cer- 12 teau, then, narrative itself is delinquent: “Si le délinquant n’existe qu’en 13 se déplaçant, s’il a pour spécifi cité de vivre non en marge mais dans les 14 interstices des codes qu’il déjoue et déplace, s’il se caractérise par le pri- 15 vilège du parcours sur l’état, le récit est délinquant” (190) (“If the delin- 16 quent only exists by moving around, if he has as his specifi city living not 17 at the margins but in the interstices of the codes which he foils and shifts, 18 if he characterizes himself by the privilege of the path over the state, nar- 19 rative is delinquent”). The nameless, placeless, narrator, in the interstices 20 of the text, crosses the places of the text and transgresses the law of the 21 land as established by the father. The Recherche itself tells the story of 22 how, through his transgression of paternal law, the narrated je, defi ned 23 by the stability of place, is transformed into the narrating je of transgres- 24 sive space and transformative time. He changes from being subject to the 25 text to being the subject of the text. A new conception of subjectivity will 26 emerge as a function of the narrator’s relation to place through the slow 27 apprenticeship of signs and the fi nal discovery of his vocation. 28 29 30 Places Lost, Time Regained 31 32 A comprehensive study of the narrator’s disillusionment with place is be- 33 yond the scope of this chapter, since the bulk of his apprenticeship of 34 signs, names, and places covers over 2,500 pages, roughly from the end of 35 Du côté de chez Swann to the beginning of Le Temps retrouvé. However, 36 by focusing on a few key passages, the trajectory of the narrator’s path 37 toward the fi nal revelation of his vocation as writer can be traced. “Nom 38 de pays: le nom” (“Place Names: The Name” or “Name of the Country: 39 The Name”), at the end of Swann, expands and theorizes the narrator’s 40 infatuation with the power and place of names; it is there that he devel- 41 ops his love for Gilberte and her name and his obsession with Balbec and The Law of the Land 205

Venice. The logical counterpart to this initiatory section of the Recherche 1 is found in the second half of À l’ombre des jeunes fi lles en fleurs, titled 2 “Nom de pays: le pays” (“Place Names: The Place” or “Name of the 3 Country: The Country”). At Balbec the narrator encounters for the fi rst 4 time the deception of place names and the impossible coexistence of the 5 essence of a name and the experience of place. “Nom de pays: Le pays” 6 sets in motion the forces that unravel the system of names and places that 7 structure the narrator’s world. 8 The Balbec of his dreams, as detailed in “Nom de pays: Le nom,” is 9 a synthesis of various descriptions given to the narrator by Swann and 10 Legrandin: Balbec has a magnifi cent beach and a church that is both Ro- 11 manesque and Norman Gothic, “on dirait de l’art persan” (CS I, 377–78) 12 (“one could say Persian art”). The narrator envisions Gothic architecture 13 mixed with a sea storm (378). Nothing, of course, could be further from 14 the reality he comes across when he arrives there with his grandmother 15 by train. He imagines that certain city names, like Chartres and Bourges, 16 “servent à désigner, par abréviation, leur église principale” (“can desig- 17 nate, as an abbreviation, their principal church”), and therefore that the 18 cities themselves take on in the imagination the same architectural style as 19 the church itself (JF II, 19). The name Balbec, by its synthesis of stormy 20 beach and Persian, Gothic, and Romanesque architecture, should radiate 21 onto everything connected to it the uncanny combination of a Norman 22 seascape with an Oriental fl air. The fi rst deception happens on the train 23 when the unity of the Balbec name is sectioned into different train sta- 24 tions: Balbec-le-Vieux, Balbec-en-Terre, and Balbec-Plage. The locals are 25 confused when the narrator asks to fi nd a slope where he can view only 26 the church and sea at the same time. Not only is it a sunny day with no 27 storm in sight (in fact, his lasting memories of Balbec will be those of 28 sunny afternoons), but Balbec church is very far from the sea. No view 29 can encompass what turn out to be contradictory elements contained in 30 the false unity of the name Balbec. 31 The narrator discovers that his synthesis of church and sea was based 32 on a misreading of guidebooks and an inattention to the conversations 33 he had with Swann, Legrandin, and Norpois. Like Nerval’s Oriental voy- 34 ager, who was misled by an overly enthusiastic reading of guidebooks and 35 ancient texts, the narrator projects meaning onto the letters and syllables 36 of names. He mistook the colorful architectural metaphors of guidebooks 37 for geographical indications: 38 39 C’était bien de falaises battues par les fl ots qu’avait été tirée la pierre de la 40 nef et des tours. Mais cette mer, qu’à cause de cela j’avais imaginée venant 41 206 Chapter Nine

1 mourir au pied du vitrail, était à plus de cinq lieues de distance, à Balbec- 2 Plage, et à côté de sa coupole, ce clocher que, parce que j’avais lu qu’il 3 était lui-même une âpre falaise normande où s’amassaient les grains, où 4 tournoyaient les oiseaux, je m’étais toujours représenté comme recevant à 5 sa base la dernière écume des vagues soulevées, il se dressait sur une place 6 où était l’embranchement de deux lignes de tramways, en face d’un café 7 qui portait, écrit en lettres d’or, le mot “Billard”; il se détachait sur un 8 fond de maisons aux toits desquelles ne se mêlait aucun mât. Et l’église . . . 9 faisait un avec tout le reste, semblait un accident.14 (JF II, 19) 10 11 Materially, Balbec church is built out of the rocks from the sea cliffs. 12 Metaphorically and metonymically, the steeple resembles the cliff out of 13 which it is made. It shares its name with Balbec-Plage, and can therefore 14 assimilate some of the essence of the beach. Around its steeple, seabirds 15 hover. The unity of the church’s stones and structure constitutes a place 16 that evokes the sea, and yet the church itself has been displaced. It has ap- 17 parently been banished to the very landlocked Balbec-en-Terre, where the 18 imaginary church has been “en-terrée” (“buried”). Instead of the steady 19 crash of waves against the rocks, tramways disturb the unity of place 20 by shuttling passengers between places. The gilded letters above the café 21 mock the sanctity of names, as they designate the common game of bil- 22 liards and not what the narrator considers as the holy and unique name 23 of Balbec. The confi guration of the place of Balbec has no meaning as 24 its constituent parts are randomly juxtaposed. Balbec is not the unique 25 manifestation of an essence, but a mere accident. 26 The narrator vainly attempts to revive the dying image of Balbec 27 church by repeating to himself the uniqueness of place: “C’est ici, c’est 28 l’église de Balbec. Cette place qui a l’air de savoir sa gloire, est le seul lieu 29 du monde qui possède l’église de Balbec” (20) (“It is here, this is Balbec 30 church. This place, which seems to know its glory, is the sole place in the 31 world that possesses Balbec church”). He wants to believe that the statues 32 in front of him at Balbec are somehow more, because unique, than the 33 countless photographs and descriptions that had fi lled his imagination 34 before his voyage. Instead of being more than the sum of the images it has 35 inspired, the church is much less. The narrator comes to this realization 36 when he grasps that he occupies the same space as the church, that he 37 can measure its statues. He could permanently alter the physical appear- 38 ance of the site by simply writing his signature over the soot crusted on 39 the stone, disfi guring the unique, and only, statue of the Virgin of Balbec. 40 The essence of eternal beauty incarnated in the statue changes into “une 41 petite vieille de pierre” (21) (“a little old lady made out of stone”). Graf- The Law of the Land 207 fi ti operates by crude appropriation through the superimposition of the 1 narrator’s name over the statue: the now materialized art object loses 2 its own name, which is replaced by that of the narrator. He leaves the 3 church in dismay, but for the moment at least, blames himself and bad 4 circumstances for his inability to see in the church what he imagines is 5 expressed in its name (21). 6 While the metaphors found in guidebooks can lead astray the traveler 7 who knows of places only through their names, the narrator learns later 8 during his stay at Balbec that metaphors created by a work of art can 9 free objects of their names and alter our everyday perceptions of them. 10 The work of the painter Elstir, one of a series of artists in the Recherche, 11 imposes on the narrator the need to manipulate the perspective of place 12 through metaphor in order to counter the debilitating effects of habit. 13 When the narrator fi rst enters Elstir’s studio in Balbec, he is disappointed 14 that the majority of paintings there are only “marines” (“seascapes”) in- 15 spired by local views. Yet what at fi rst appear to be clichéd paintings of 16 the sea turn out to be unexpected transformations that represent true 17 impressions instead of the constructions of intelligence: 18 19 J’y pouvais discerner que le charme de chacune [des marines] consistait 20 en une sorte de métamorphose des choses représentées, analogue à celle 21 qu’en poésie on nomme métaphore et que si Dieu le Père avait créé les 22 choses en les nommant, c’est en leur ôtant leur nom, ou en leur don- 23 nant un autre qu’Elstir les recréait. Les noms qui désignent les choses 24 répondent toujours à une notion de l’intelligence, étrangère à nos impres- 25 sions véritables et qui nous force à éliminer d’elles tout ce qui ne se rap- 26 porte pas à cette notion.15 (JF II, 191) 27 28 The metaphors expressed by Elstir’s paintings are epitomized by his view 29 of the port of Carquethuit where the artist reverses the viewer’s intellec- 30 tual expectations by only using for the town “des termes marins” (“sea 31 terms”) and for the sea “des termes urbains” (“urban terms”). Elstir’s 32 metaphors teach the narrator that names signify only a concept dictated 33 by intelligence and that truth lies in our impressions. Elstir practices a 34 blasphemous re-creation of the world by removing or changing the names 35 that God the father created. Elstir reveals not only that the father’s sym- 36 bolic order is an illusion, he also teaches how to perceive the truth beyond 37 the illusion of space: “Mais les rares moments où l’on voit la nature telle 38 qu’elle est, poétiquement, c’était de ceux-là qu’était faite l’oeuvre d’Elstir” 39 (JF II, 192) (“But the rare moments when we see nature as it really is, 40 poetically, Elstir’s work was made of those”). The narrator is only able 41 208 Chapter Nine

1 to put theory into practice after the revelation of his literary vocation. 2 When Julia Kristeva, in Le Temps sensible, asserts that “Proust ne cesse 3 de ‘déchiffrer,’ mais son monde n’est pas fait de ‘signes.’ En tout cas, ce ne 4 sont pas des signes-mots ni des signes d’idées, encore moins des signifi ants 5 ou des signifi és” (307) (“Proust never stops ‘deciphering,’ but his world 6 is not made of ‘signs.’ In any case, not word-signs or signs of ideas, even 7 less signifi ers and signifi eds”), she works backward from the novel’s con- 8 clusion without taking into account how the narrator arrives there. If the 9 world of the narrator (Proust’s world is presumably our world, whereas 10 the world of the narrator is the text) is made up of impressions, as the 11 passage quoted above suggests and as Kristeva argues (252), impressions 12 themselves can only be revealed and communicated by the displacement 13 of signs, by the process of renaming proper to metaphor. Proust’s text 14 never argues that signs do not exist, but rather argues for their continual 15 reformulation through art. 16 The collapse of the system of places and of names that started with 17 “Nom de pays: Le pays” continues as the narrator discovers the vacuity 18 of aristocratic society, the deterritorialized cities of the plain (since homo- 19 sexuality is ubiquitous), and the impossibility of sequestering a loved one 20 (in his words “un être de fuite” or “a being of fl ight”). This slow destruc- 21 tion of places of the novel, and thus of the identity of the narrator, speeds 22 up exponentially at the end of the cyclical novel, in Albertine disparue 23 and Le Temps retrouvé. The two “côtés” change forever as they too are 24 destroyed and delocalized, not by God the father, but by World War I and 25 the experience of the narrator. After his return from Venice, he learns that 26 Gilberte Swann and Robert de Saint-Loup-en-Bray are engaged. Their 27 marriage indicates a possible link between the two “côtés,” since each 28 represents for the narrator one of the two paths. A few pages from the 29 end of Albertine disparue Gilberte, now married, invites the narrator to 30 her home, Tansonville, near Combray, where he has been absent since 31 childhood. The return to Combray leads to a succession of discoveries 32 for the narrator. He and Gilberte take long moonlit walks, not unlike 33 the ones that the narrator’s family would take in his youth, but now the 34 countryside has no effect on him. The actual geographical places no lon- 35 ger have anything in common with his memories of them. Gilberte tells 36 him that they could walk to Guermantes in less than fi fteen minutes AD( 37 IV, 268). There is thus an end to the Guermantes Way, but it retains the 38 mystery of its name: 39 40 C’est comme si elle m’avait dit: “Tournez à gauche, prenez ensuite à votre 41 main droite, et vous toucherez l’intangible, vous atteindrez les inattingibles The Law of the Land 209

[sic] lointains dont on ne connaît jamais sur terre que la direction, que—ce 1 que j’avais cru jadis que je pourrais connaître seulement de Guermantes, 2 et peut-être, en un sens, je ne me trompais pas—le ‘côté.’”16 (AD IV, 268) 3 4 The “côté de Guermantes” as well as the name Guermantes fi rst acquired 5 their mystique because the destination of Guermantes was unreachable, 6 the contents of the place, unknowable. The only tangible, attainable as- 7 pect of Guermantes was the name and the path, or the “side,” that led to 8 the mysterious place. The narrator maintains that, in a sense, he was cor- 9 rect in believing that he could never reach Guermantes, the place, because 10 it only exists in his imagination as a name, a path, and a family. A reversal 11 has happened, where the importance now lies in experience, in the tan- 12 gible as opposed to the imaginary. The syntax of the sentence reinforces 13 the narrator’s discovery, since the word “côté” has been removed to the 14 end of the sentence, which indicates that the path is an end in itself. 15 Gilberte’s next stunning geographical revelation, already prepared by 16 the narrator’s apathy to the places of his childhood, is the fact that the 17 most agreeable way to walk to Guermantes is to take the Méséglise path 18 (“Swann’s way”). The two “côtés” connect in space, as they have already 19 done socially through the marriage of Gilberte (Swann) and Robert (a 20 Guermantes). The discovery of the paths’ unity “boulever[sait] toutes 21 les idées de mon enfance” (AD IV, 268) (“shattered all the ideas from 22 my childhood”), as it unravels all the mental geography of Combray in- 23 scribed by the father, the mental geography upon which is based the en- 24 tire novel. Yet Combray and his memories of it are already dead to the 25 narrator, who no longer shows any interest in his past or even life itself. 26 The destruction of the places that structured his world encourages him 27 further in his self-imposed isolation (he will spend most of the war in a 28 “maison de santé”). Gilberte makes one fi nal disclosure that ends both 29 Albertine disparue and, in a sense, the errors and wanderings of the nar- 30 rator: the secret desires that he held for Gilberte at their fi rst meeting 31 were shared, if not surpassed, by Gilberte herself, as she had tried to show 32 him with an indecent gesture (271–72). What he desired so much during 33 his walks in Combray, what he felt to be attainable only in his imagina- 34 tion, had always been possible, indeed would have been realized had it 35 not been for his investment in the imaginary. He had desired only what 36 he thought he could not have (Gilberte, Guermantes, and the power of 37 names detached from places); yet it was the obstacle of the imaginary that 38 obscured the possibility of experience. The structure of places, founded 39 upon the desire for an essence contained in a name, completely collapses 40 through Gilberte’s revelations. 41 210 Chapter Nine

1 The passages devoted to the First World War in Le Temps retrouvé 2 complete the destruction of the system of place set up in “Combray.” His- 3 tory erupts to sweep away the illusion of the permanence of place. Like 4 the “blank” Proust praises in Flaubert’s L’Éducation sentimentale which 5 separates Frédéric’s horror at the murder of Dussardier from his return to 6 Paris years later, the narrator abandons society for health reasons for an 7 untold number of years, the minute details of his observations suddenly 8 disappear, his quest to be a writer abandoned. The narrator fi nds himself 9 in a “maison de santé” (ambiguously “nursing home” or “mental home”) 10 far from the social and political upheavals in Paris brought on by the 11 war. The asylum functions as an absence of place and desire; nowhere 12 does the narrator indicate why he is there, where it is located, or what it 13 looks like. On a strictly narrative level, his stay at the asylum provides a 14 distance, both in time (over many years) and space, from both the social 15 world of Paris and the places of Combray; this distance allows the narra- 16 tor suffi cient perspective to understand the momentous changes in society 17 after the war (Shattuck, 61–64). By severing the link with the past, the 18 war disrupts the effects of habitual memory and permanently transforms 19 the geographical and mental places of the text. Yet the “maison de santé” 20 also marks the complete failure of the narrator to make the names which 21 fi ll his imagination coincide with the places he occupies. Recovering from 22 what may be , he exists nowhere, he writes nothing. 23 Only the lack of medical personnel during the war forces the narrator 24 to leave the asylum briefl y to travel to Paris. He describes a transformed 25 city where the skies above are fi lled with warplanes and underground in 26 the metro social classes are mixed while seeking shelter. The social hierar- 27 chy is shifted by the war, as it had been earlier by the Dreyfus Affair. Mme 28 Verdurin ascends to the top of the social ladder, and Charlus, because of 29 his Germanophilia, loses his prominence. 30 The war transfi gures Combray even more than Paris. In a letter to the 31 narrator, Gilberte describes her experiences at Tansonville in the middle 32 of the fi ghting: “Vous n’avez pas idée de ce que c’est que cette guerre mon 33 cher ami, et de l’importance qu’y prend une route, un pont, une hauteur” 34 (TR IV, 335) (“You have no idea what this war is my dear friend, and 35 the importance that a road, a bridge, an elevated site can take”). The 36 Germans destroyed Méséglise, blew up the bridge over the Vivonne, and 37 fought all along the “côté de Méséglise,” where over 600,000 men died 38 (335). Names are created to refl ect military realities: the end of the Mé- 39 séglise Way becomes infamous as the “côte 307” (“hill 307”). The war 40 performs the same metaphorical transformations as Elstir’s paintings, 41 temporarily imposing a military perspective on the countryside. The Vi- The Law of the Land 211 vonne stream, the place of the narrator’s childhood fascination, becomes 1 a strategic battleground that divides Combray into French and German 2 territories. The nostalgic lieu de mémoire of childhood is now a national 3 lieu de mémoire. Gilberte is correct in emphasizing the new importance 4 of Combray’s places, but the war has changed their role. Instead of con- 5 stituting identity through stability, places during the war become a func- 6 tion of strategy and instability; war transgresses the places of Combray 7 and creates indeterminate identities that change rapidly depending on the 8 location of enemy territory. 9 Charlus, in a conversation with the narrator, provides another blow 10 to the system of places set up in “Combray”: Combray’s church, serving 11 as a German observatory, was destroyed by the French and the English 12 troops (TR IV, 374). The Combray church, when it fi rst appears inDu 13 côté de chez Swann, is described in human terms: it is a “simple citoyenne 14 de Combray” (CS I, 62); the steeple looks over the whole town, giving 15 meaning to the affairs of Combray’s inhabitants (64). The church is not 16 simply a symbol for the town, but its organizing principle (just as the 17 two “côtés” organize the narrator’s world). The Combray church used to 18 stand for the very presence of time incorporated in place: 19 20 Un édifi ce occupant, si l’on peut dire, un espace à quatre dimensions—la 21 quatrième étant celle du Temps—déployant à travers les siècles son vais- 22 seau qui, de travée en travée, de chapelle en chapelle, semblait vaincre et 23 franchir non pas seulement quelques mètres, mais des époques succes- 24 sives d’où il sortait victorieux.17 (CS I, 60) 25 26 The church, however, does not survive the modern epoch victorious; its 27 destruction during the war indicates the inability of places or persons to 28 resist the work of time. The church is built in the space of a few meters 29 and is built in time across the centuries, but it is never outside of time nor 30 immune to time’s effects. The fi nal sentences of the novel will return to the 31 idea that being is subject to time more than it is to space. However, instead 32 of the “four-dimensional” church which symbolized the people of Com- 33 bray in a few meters and over many centuries, it is people themselves who 34 occupy a disproportionately greater place in time than they do in space. 35 After the war is over, after the places and symbols of the narrator’s 36 youth have been destroyed, the narrator despairs of ever being capable 37 of writing a novel or even of acting in a meaningful way. The places that 38 formed the basis of his identity have vanished; he no longer believes in 39 the father’s symbols that had mapped out his world. Without a preexist- 40 ing discourse, even an oppositional one, no place exists for the narrator 41 212 Chapter Nine

1 to inscribe himself in space. He can no longer decide between the magic 2 of names and the disappointing experience of places. The complete rejec- 3 tion of external space, the hollowing out of the narrator himself, coupled 4 with the fi ve successive incidents of involuntary memory before the “bal 5 de têtes” at the Princesse de Guermantes’s lead to the revelation that the 6 narrator’s vocation is to write a novel about time. Instead of the narra- 7 tor’s inevitably fl awed perception of places conforming to the imaginary 8 world formed by evocative place names, instead of looking for truth in 9 deceptively legible external signs, the narrator must look inward toward 10 the space of the unconscious. 11 For Proust’s narrator, the unconscious is a text composed of signs en- 12 graved by the impressions of reality: “Ce livre, le plus pénible de tous à 13 déchiffrer, est aussi le seul que nous ait dicté la réalité, le seul dont l’‘im- 14 pression’ ait été faite en nous par la réalité même” (TR IV, 458) (“This 15 book, the most painstaking of all to decipher, is also the only one that 16 reality has dictated to us, the only one whose ‘impression’ was made in us 17 by reality itself”). The unconscious text is to be deciphered with diffi culty 18 by the artist, who must search within the self for the truth of external 19 reality.18 The reading of this text can only be accomplished through an 20 act of creation, through the writing of another text, which would be the 21 translation of the “livre intérieur de signes inconnus” (TR IV, 458) (“the 22 interior book of unknown signs”). The composition of a book about time 23 that would translate the “unknown signs” of subjective interiority nec- 24 essarily reconfi gures the paternal signs that founded the law of places. 25 This new book would set the “paternal” places in motion through narra- 26 tive and would thus create unexpected connections between places and 27 between signs. Instead of the hierarchical law of the land imposed by 28 the narrator’s father, the narrator’s book about time would represent the 29 transformation of signs over time and according to the interpretation of 30 each new reader. 31 An understanding of the self through a reading of the “inner text” al- 32 lows the narrator to perceive himself and others as they really are. Art 33 and literature in particular are the only means of making us “sortir de 34 nous” (“leave ourselves”), by transporting us to different places, re-cre- 35 ating the temporal experience of involuntary memory and communicat- 36 ing it to others (474). Only through literature can we perceive our own 37 essence in its relation to time. In this way, real life is, paradoxically, a life 38 of literature: “La vraie vie, la vie enfi n découverte et éclaircie, la seule vie 39 par conséquent pleinement vécue, c’est la littérature” (474) (“True life, 40 life fi nally discovered and understood, the only life consequently fully 41 lived, is literature”). 1 2 CHAPTER TEN 3 4 5 6 Creating a Space for Time 7 8 9 10 11 Proust Paradox 12 13 The end of the Recherche leaves the reader with an unanswerable ques- 14 tion. Is the novel the narrator is about to write the novel the reader is 15 about to fi nish, or is it a virtual novel, existing somewhere beyond the 16 reader’s imagination and the theoretical projections of the aging narra- 17 tor? Many indications within the text itself favor one or the other inter- 18 pretation: Proust’s text most often calls itself a story or “récit,” which 19 distinguishes it from the “ouvrage” (“work”) that the narrator will write 20 (Landy, 127); on the other hand, the Recherche is so unquestionably a 21 masterpiece that it would be diffi cult to label it a simple mémoire, and 22 perhaps even more diffi cult for the reader who has fi nished many thou- 23 sands of pages to accept that the narrator does not succeed in his voca- 24 tion. Critics have tended to make a clear choice for one or the other 25 1 possibility. 26 As I noted in chapter 9, the experience of confusion upon waking (and 27 later of involuntary memory) suspends the narrator’s consciousness be- 28 tween different times, places, and identities. Perhaps the reader of the 29 Recherche can and should fi nd the same joy in indecision and suspend 30 decision not only about her or his own identity upon reading (as the text 31 seems to solicit), but also about the identity of the very text that is read. 32 At any one moment the reader could interpret the narrative je as either 33 the narrator of a story about a writer (who may or may not ever fi nish a 34 novel) or as a meta-narrator, one who narrates the story of his own com- 35 ing into narration. Paul Ricoeur, in Temps et récit II, argues that through- 36 out the Recherche, until the very last moments of revelation at the “bal 37 de têtes,” the voice of the narrator is practically indiscernible from that 38 of the hero, or narrated je; at the end of the novel, the two voices become 39 one (or rather the narrator drowns out the hero), as they were the same 40 presumably in the fi rst few pages when the narrator fl oats between time, 41

213 214 Chapter Ten

1 space, and multiple identities (Ricoeur, 252–53). The functions of the two 2 narrative voices are distinct, but it is diffi cult at any one instant to declare 3 which voice speaks through the je. 4 Gérard Genette in “Proust Palimpseste” (Figures I) argues that since 5 the Recherche is a double text, the reader feels an imperative to reread: 6 7 En effet chaque moment de l’oeuvre est en quelque sorte donné deux 8 fois: une première fois dans la Recherche comme naissance d’une voca- 9 tion, une deuxième fois dans la Recherche comme exercice de cette voca- 10 tion; mais ces “deux fois” nous sont données ensemble, et c’est au lecteur, 11 informé in extremis que le livre qu’il vient de lire reste à écrire . . . qu’il 12 échoit de remonter jusqu’à ces pages lointaines . . . et qu’il doit mainte- 13 nant relire.2 (62–63) 14 15 But if the Recherche is a “practice of this vocation” the careful reader 16 will be capable of reading the text for the elements of its style that re- 17 fl ect or anticipate the fi nal revelation about time, even if the reader is 18 not informed in extremis of the dénouement. Paul Ricoeur argues that 19 there are signs in the text that hint to the fi nal revelation. He compares 20 the Recherche to an ellipsis with “deux foyers” (“two foci”): one the 21 apprenticeship of signs, as described by Deleuze, and the other the fi nal 22 revelation of the narrator’s vocation. The Recherche tells a “fable about 23 time” because it relates these two incompatible “foci.” Ricoeur’s focus on 24 the structural level of the novel leads him to emphasize only the aspects 25 of time that reveal the extra-temporal and the past. As will be seen later 26 in this chapter through a close reading of the image of time itself, time in 27 the Recherche is not only what reveals the past, but what allows us to see 28 the work of time through text. 29 The Recherche is a work that projects backward from the fi nal revela- 30 tion to the beginning of the novel, a sort of “futur dans le passé” (Ricoeur, 31 257). The conditional mode is nothing other than a verbal form of the 32 future in the past; the novel itself can be taken as a conditional text. If the 33 reader chooses to read for the plot that leads toward the fi nal revelation 34 of the narrator’s vocation, then, as in chapter 9, the novel ends as a failed 35 autobiography that looks toward the future and the creation of a literary 36 work not yet written. However, if the reader chooses to read (presumably 37 in a second reading of the Recherche) as if the work itself were the novel 38 written by the narrator, then, as in chapter 10, the text appears to be the 39 writing of its own past, its own becoming. In this second conditional 40 statement, the literary theories of the eventual narrator or the diegetic 41 author of the novel would be apparent, not in what the narrated je says Creating a Space for Time 215

(since he is not yet the writer of the novel), but rather in the form and 1 style of the writing itself. 2 À la recherche du temps perdu is both a work about the role of place, 3 where time is kept at bay, and a novel about the role of time against the 4 stability of places. It is both a work obsessed by places where time ap- 5 pears, literally, as an afterthought only in the last two hundred pages, 6 and a novel where the image of time is infused in every single sentence. 7 The Recherche, because of the very impossibility of deciding one absolute 8 condition for its reading, becomes a virtual text, actualized differently 9 with every successive reading. 10 11 12 Spatial Time: Movement and Metaphor 13 14 If the Recherche may be read (also) as a novel about time, then it can only 15 be so despite its own plot. As chapter 9 demonstrated, the novel portrays 16 the narrator as a character obsessed with the connection of places, names, 17 and identity, to the exclusion of time. The novel form, while possessing 18 an element of time (one reads over time), is structured by the places of 19 proper names and the spaces of the written page.3 The narrator, in his 20 literary apprenticeship, spends the greater part of the novel (all but the 21 last few hundred pages) deceived by these spatial elements of his textual 22 world. In the same way as he becomes aware, retrospectively, of the role 23 time has played in his life, the enlightened reader of the Recherche, who 24 presumably reads the novel for a second time, perceives time everywhere 25 in the text. Time must be in some relation to place and to space, and yet 26 also must remain hidden to the narrator until the end of the novel. The 27 act of reading the Recherche (as the novel about time) becomes a search 28 for the time lost in the text. Such a reading requires a willful inattention 29 to the troubles of the narrator and the plot, and necessitates an active 30 focus on the language of the text and in particular metaphors as mani- 31 festations of the creative force of time revealed by involuntary memory. 32 Time, on the level of each sentence, in the Recherche is expressed 33 through a relation to or a practice of place. As I argued in chapter 9, the 34 law of place relies on the stability of ordered relations represented in one 35 moment of time. A unifi ed system of places, such as that imposed by the 36 father’s law, would negate time and becoming because it would prevent 37 movement across places and across the instants of time. The negotiation 38 of place, the practice of place (by a walker, by narrative, or by transgres- 39 sion) constitutes space, “space is a place put into practice” (Certeau, 173). 40 Space is at the crossroads of mobile place (“l’espace est un croisement 41 216 Chapter Ten

1 de mobiles”—“space is a crossing of moving objects/motives,” 173), and 2 forms destabilized, and therefore temporalized, place. Time manifests 3 itself in space as movement since it is the motion of places that make 4 up space. Once places are set in motion, the ordered, fragmented, and 5 chronological time expressed in the law of place yields to the fl ux of true 6 time experienced as duration. The Recherche is a novel about time and 7 duration because it is a novel about movement. 8 The text creates movement through narrative, through metaphor, 9 through involuntary memory, and through literal representations of mo- 10 tion (such as the description of automobiles). Narrative inscribes move- 11 ment in the text because it describes the changing relationships of places 12 to each other and to the characters. The narrator as character distin- 13 guishes himself from the narrator as writer of the novel because he is 14 subject to the law of places while the writing narrator continually upsets 15 the law of places. The narration of the novel is a transgression of the (fa- 16 ther’s) law of places, a creation of space, and a revelation of time through 17 motion. However, a reading that strictly analyzed the plot would follow 18 the fi rst-person character’s attempts to fi x identity in place and would 19 consequently miss the more fundamental revelation of time through the 20 movement of metaphors, which threaten his sense of immobile places. 21 Metaphors bridge the distance between places; they translate impressions 22 and shuttle meaning. 23 Movement in the form of metaphor exists at every level of the text, 24 from individual words, to sentences, and to entire episodes. The monu- 25 mental scale of Proustian sentences multiplies the possible implications 26 of a metaphor, sometimes over many pages. The narrator’s world be- 27 comes increasingly complex and marked by speed as technological ad- 28 vances (the telegram, the telephone, the train, the automobile, and the 29 airplane) allow movement and communication to cross previously im- 30 possibly distant places in ever shorter time increments; in a literal way 31 movement is a sign of the times, an indication of a changing society.4 The 32 technological analogy of harnessing movement would be the ordered 33 regulation of train schedules that attempts to neutralize any unexpected 34 event; both Swann and Marcel in their jealousy use train schedules to 35 trace the fl ight of their elusive beloveds (Carter, 26). Though metaphor 36 takes two different objects and “les enferm[e] dans les anneaux néces- 37 saires d’un beau style” (TR IV, 468) (“encloses them in the necessary 38 links of a fi ne style”), the movement of metaphor, as a function of time, 39 invariably creates something new and unexpected. An accelerated cycle 40 of movement occurs where a dangerous movement necessitates the con- 41 trol of metaphors, which in turn create a new movement requiring even Creating a Space for Time 217 more metaphors. The play of meaning in a text cannot be stopped by the 1 writing of more text. 2 The “moments bienheureux” (“happy or felicitous moments”) caused 3 by involuntary memory, the most famous of which is of course the mad- 4 eleine scene in “Combray,” provide the inspiration for literary creation at 5 the end of the novel by revealing the role of metaphor, and so any analysis 6 of movement in the text must account for movement in the various “mo- 7 ments bienheureux” scattered throughout the novel. Roger Shattuck’s 8 classifi cation of these episodes in Proust’s Binoculars remains the most 9 complete analysis. He counts eleven “moments bienheureux,” but notes 10 that Samuel names them “fétiches” and includes a few other, in- 11 complete, episodes; Shattuck also writes that Howard Moss names them 12 “mnemonic resurrections” and counts eighteen of them (Proust’s Bin- 13 oculars, 149–50). Shattuck recognizes six stages in a basic but variable 14 pattern: (1) a preexisting state of mind (usually depression), (2) an intense 15 sensation (like the taste of the madeleine), (3) an inner feeling (pleasure, 16 exaltation, or sadness), (4) recognition of a past sensation, (5) presenti- 17 ment of the future, and (6) some result (like the revelation of Marcel’s lit- 18 erary vocation) (Proust’s Binoculars, 70). Shattuck’s most original insight 19 is the role of the fi fth stage, that of presentiment. Involuntary memory not 20 only recalls a past sensation, but very often announces the future, or at 21 least the future of the text: the madeleine scene announces the composi- 22 tion of the episode of Combray; the steeples of Martinville announce “la 23 réalité pressentie” (“a premonition of reality”) (Proust’s Binoculars, 75) 24 and also another “moment bienheureux,” the three trees in Hudimesnil; 25 Vinteuil’s septet announces the possibility of joy in the afterlife; and the 26 sequence of fi ve episodes inLe Temps retrouvé announces Marcel’s voca- 27 tion and the future composition of his book (70–75). The involuntary 28 memory of a past sensation calls forth images of the future and therefore 29 creates a movement between the individual instants of the past and the 30 text as a whole. Involuntary memory does not arrest time, but sets in 31 motion images that manifest time. The images describe the past of a sen- 32 sation, the present, and a future in a block of time where creation (the 33 literary text) can emerge. 34 Movement also exists in the emergence of the sensation of involuntary 35 memory. In the madeleine episode, the narrator, after tasting the mad- 36 eleine soaked in tea and undergoing an intense sensation, attempts to 37 repeat the sensation by drinking more tea, to no effect. He understands 38 fi nally that the sensation is not in the object, but within himself. He must 39 force his mind to travel deep into his memory in order to fi nd the original 40 sensation. Finally, after emptying his consciousness and tasting the mad- 41 218 Chapter Ten

1 eleine again, the past sensation is unleashed and moves to the surface of 2 the present: 3 4 Je sens tressaillir en moi quelque chose qui se déplace, voudrait s’éle- 5 ver, quelque chose qu’on aurait désancré, à une grande profondeur; je 6 ne sais ce que c’est, mais cela monte lentement; j’éprouve la résistance et 7 j’entends la rumeur des distances traversées. Certes, ce qui palpite ainsi au 8 fond de moi, ce doit être l’image, le souvenir visuel, qui lié à cette saveur, 9 tente de la suivre jusqu’à moi.5 (CS I, 45) 10 11 The narrator attempts a few more times to re-create the sensation and 12 search his memory, always using a vocabulary of movement: “arrivera- 13 t-il jusqu’à la surface?” (“will it arrive all the way to the surface?”), 14 “l’attraction d’un instant identique” (“the attraction of an identical in- 15 stant”), “soulever tout au fond de moi” (“to lift up everything from deep 16 within me”), “il est arrêté, redescendu peut-être; qui sait s’il remontera 17 jamais de sa nuit?” (“it stopped, went down again perhaps; who knows 18 if it will ever ascend again out from its darkness?”) (46). The image or 19 visual memory attached to the taste of the tea-soaked madeleine moves 20 upward from the depths of his memory and causes another sensation of 21 shivering, different from that of taste. He is unable at fi rst to make out 22 the image since it becomes confused in the “insaisissable tourbillon des 23 couleurs remuées” (46) (“the elusive whirlwind of shifting colors”). The 24 image of memory is in movement as it translates the time of the original 25 sensation to the present. 26 The episodes of involuntary memory, while describing motion, often 27 portray the narrator himself in motion, a “movement of movements” as 28 Bergson would say (Deleuze, Cinéma 1, 37). Shattuck counts fi ve of the 29 eleven episodes where the narrator moves while experiencing a “moment 30 bienheureux”: at Martinville and at Hudimesnil he is in a carriage; in 31 Paris with Saint-Loup he descends a staircase; after a dinner at the Duc 32 de Guermantes’s he again travels in a carriage and “[il s’agitait] dans la 33 voiture, comme une pythonisse” (CG II, 840) (“[he wiggled about] in the 34 car, like a prophetess”); he is on a train going to Paris in an episode at 35 the beginning of Le Temps retrouvé. The narrator’s movement multiplies 36 perspective and destabilizes place. His privileged perspective becomes 37 a-centered, which seems to disrupt his habitual repression of the past and 38 obsession with immobile places. 39 The fi rst and quintessential episode of a “mobile” “moment bienheu- 40 reux” is that of the “steeples of Martinville” near the end of “Combray.” 41 During a family walk on a late afternoon, he despairs, already as an ado- Creating a Space for Time 219 lescent, that he has no talent for letters. As it is getting late, his family 1 accepts a ride home in a neighbor’s carriage; the narrator takes the seat 2 next to the coachman. The unusual speed of the coach, the winding turns 3 in the road, and the changing light of sunset provoke in him “ce plaisir 4 spécial qui ne ressemblait à aucun autre” (“this special pleasure that re- 5 sembled no other”): the two Martinville steeples appear to change places 6 and then seem to be right next to the Vieuxvicq steeple, which is sepa- 7 rated from them by a hill and a valley (CS I, 177–78). The experience so 8 preoccupies the narrator that he borrows pencil and paper, and, without 9 sensing the analogous relation between the pleasure of this new percep- 10 tion and “une jolie phrase” (179) which he will understand much later, he 11 decides to compose a short prose description right in the carriage, despite 12 the rattling motion. The young narrator’s passage is cited directly in the 13 text, but the details are more vivid and the metaphors more startling than 14 in the fi rst description. The steeples are now anthropomorphized, and 15 their apparent motion is given intentionality. At one point they remind 16 him of three legendary young girls. He is very attentive to the passing of 17 time, as if the scene were a race between the steeples and the coach: “Les 18 minutes passaient, nous allions vite et pourtant les trois clochers étaient 19 toujours au loin devant nous . . . Puis le clocher de Vieuxvicq s’écarta, 20 prit ses distances . . . je pensais au temps qu’il faudrait encore pour les 21 atteindre” (179) (“The minutes passed, we traveled quickly and yet the 22 three steeples were always far ahead of us . . . Then the Vieuxvicq steeple 23 moved away, took its distance . . . I thought about the time still needed to 24 catch up with them”). The movement in this “mobile shot” changes the 25 relationships the steeples have between each other and with the observer: 26 fi rst there are two steeples, then a third; for a while they are immobile, 27 then one moves away; they wave a sign of good-bye, and return again 28 only to be transformed into three painted fl owers and then three girls; 29 fi nally, after the sun sets, they close in on one another to compose one 30 black form that disappears into the night (179–80). The movement of the 31 carriage ride changes the spatial relationships of the steeples and thereby 32 creates changing perspectives and changing images. In these images each 33 steeple expresses duration and transformation in a unique manner, just as 34 time, in the form of old age, expresses itself differently in the faces of the 35 “bal de têtes.” Though the narrator is unaware of it when he composes 36 his sketch, the joy he feels upon observing the movement of the steeples is 37 related to an experience of true time expressed through the succession of 38 transformed steeples. He is so relieved to have rid himself of the intense 39 moment through writing, that after singing like a chicken who has just 40 laid an egg (180), he promptly forgets about the whole episode. 41 220 Chapter Ten

1 This early writing experiment contains all the elements of involuntary 2 memory and metaphor that will appear a few thousand pages later in Le 3 Temps retrouvé. The episode at Martinville illustrated early that move- 4 ment proliferates perspectives and images of change. While the young 5 narrator’s writing of the episode converted his experience into metaphor, 6 and thus textual movement, it also immobilized the experience through 7 this very writing. He quickly forgets about the episode and the passage 8 because the act of writing temporarily captured or immobilized the mo- 9 ment. Because the narrator forgets the “steeples of Martinville” episode, 10 the signifi cance of the role of time and writing remains hidden to him 11 throughout his long apprenticeship. He continues to wander the progres- 12 sively more mobile places of the novel but cannot navigate his increas- 13 ingly changing social world. After the places of Combray and the social 14 relations of Paris are both transformed by the war, he again falls into a 15 state of despair about his literary career much greater than he had felt at 16 Martinville. 17 The fi ve fi nal episodes of involuntary memory, which occur before the 18 narrator enters the Princesse de Guermantes’s “matinée,” serve a crucial 19 role in that they teach Marcel how to convey his experience through art. 20 Only metaphor can bridge the distance between two distant images in 21 the way that involuntary memory bridges two distant times. Metaphor is 22 spatial and temporal since it sets places in motion and therefore changes 23 their relation to each other. Metaphors are the textual replacement of in- 24 voluntary memory, since they fi ll the void between intermittent “moments 25 bienheureux” and ensure that perceptions remain unstable. 26 Yet the narrator expresses hints of doubt about the supplemental na- 27 ture of metaphor in the novel. He observes that in the work of art which 28 he is ready to create there are nevertheless “great diffi culties,” since it 29 would have to consist of “une matière en quelque sorte différente” (“a 30 material in some sort different”) from that of memory (TR IV, 449). Lit- 31 erary metaphors as the “spiritual equivalent” (458) of involuntary mem- 32 ory can only work by the transference of the quality of one object into 33 another; however, the presence of metaphors does not guarantee anything 34 about the work itself: “le rapport peut être peu intéressant, les objets 35 médiocres, le style mauvais, mais tant qu’il n’y a pas eu cela, il n’y a rien” 36 (468) (“the relationship may be of little interest, the objects mediocre, 37 the style bad, but without it [metaphor], there is nothing”). Metaphor, 38 and by extension movement, have limits that involuntary memory does 39 not have: an uninteresting comparison, mediocre objects (could there be 40 anything more mediocre than a madeleine?), and bad style. Movement, as 41 an expression of time and not time itself, can express duration in varying Creating a Space for Time 221 degrees. The degrees vary so much that the narrator himself is incapable 1 of perceiving the true nature of time in movement until the very end. The 2 length of the Recherche extends metaphors to their limit and reveals that, 3 while metaphor and movement consistently express time, they also can 4 lead dangerously astray as the narrator tries to rein in their excess. 5 Movement presents an indirect representation of time mediated by 6 space. Marcel’s book of places represents time through movement in 7 space. Yet time is indivisible, as Bergson proposes, whereas space can 8 always be measured and divided into separate places. If the text narrates, 9 or sets in motion, stable and isolated places, does it not also reproduce the 10 spatialization of time (time as measured and divisible) present in Stend- 11 hal’s ichnographic maps, Nerval’s portrayal of the Valois, and the system 12 of signs laid down by Marcel’s father? According to Georges Poulet’s 13 L’espace proustien, the various, divisible episodes of the text would thus 14 not depict a continual movement, but rather juxtaposed moments with- 15 out any connection (135). For Poulet, since the Recherche describes a 16 fragmented space, it cannot accurately be considered a book about time.6 17 18 19 The Image of Time 20 21 Movement and metaphor consistently present an indirect image of time 22 as duration throughout the Recherche. Through metaphor and move- 23 ment, the novel can claim to be the book about time and of time that the 24 narrator decides to write at the end of his literary apprenticeship. The 25 momentum of movement and metaphor accelerates after the death of Al- 26 bertine with an increase in the appearance of telephones, telegrams, auto- 27 mobiles, and airplanes. The First World War invades Paris with warplanes 28 and total mobilization, in the literal and metaphorical sense. Though he 29 has intellectualized the relation between time and psychology after the 30 death of Albertine, the narrator continues to fear the effects of time and 31 tries to insulate himself from it at the “maison de santé.” His complete 32 desperation forces him to abandon his isolation, to return to Paris, and 33 to accept the princesse de Guermantes’s invitation at a “matinée.” As we 34 have already seen, the fi ve miraculous “moments bienheureux” allow the 35 narrator to regain his faith in his literary career and to learn the valuable 36 lesson that metaphor translates time through a textual movement. 37 But the series of fi ve involuntary memories, in notable contrast to the 38 madeleine scene, prevents the metonymic refl ection of place that persisted 39 in many of the other episodes and forces the narrator to focus on the 40 temporal aspect of the experience. As with the earlier “moments bien- 41 222 Chapter Ten

1 heureux,” movement displaces memories that then rise to the surface of 2 consciousness: in the fi rst moment he trips over stones in a courtyard, 3 literally jogging his memory; in the second moment a servant strikes a 4 spoon against a plate; in the third he wipes a starched napkin over his 5 mouth; in the fourth water moves in a pipe; and in the fi fth the opening of 6 George Sand’s François le Champi creates a chain of countless memories 7 that “sautaient légèrement d’eux-mêmes” (TR IV, 463) (“jumped lightly 8 from one to the other”). The succession, or as Poulet would say the jux- 9 taposition, of these moving images brought on by involuntary memory 10 fi nally compel the narrator to investigate within himself not just the par- 11 ticular moment of the past linked to a particular sensation, but the more 12 pressing issue of why this experience should cause him so much joy. 13 The narrator concludes that the “moments bienheureux,” because they 14 force a past moment to coexist for an instant with a present one, offer the 15 experience of being extra-temporal or outside of time (450). However, the 16 meaning of “extra-temporal” is qualifi ed a page later when he elaborates 17 on his thesis of memory; an involuntary memory satisfi es the imagination 18 because it is a past and absent sensation, and satisfi es the imagination 19 further because it is also a present sensation which provides “un peu de 20 temps à l’état pur” (451) (“a little bit of time in a pure state”). The images 21 set in motion by involuntary memory allow Marcel to isolate a fragment 22 of pure time, duration itself. The new self glimpsed for “la durée d’un 23 éclair” (451) (“the duration of a lightning fl ash”) is extra-temporal be- 24 cause it is outside of habitual or chronological time, although very much 25 in the true or pure time of duration. As Maurice Blanchot writes: “Proust 26 . . . a pressenti que ces instants où, pour lui, brille l’intemporel, expri- 27 maient cependant, par l’affi rmation d’un retour, les mouvements les plus 28 intimes de la métamorphose du temps, étaient le ‘temps pur’” (Le livre à 29 venir, 33) (“Proust . . . had a premonition that these instants, when, for 30 him, the extra-temporal [or “intemporal”] shines, expressed however, by 31 the affi rmation of a return, the innermost movements of the metamorpho- 32 sis of time, they were ‘pure time’”). The isolated moments of involuntary 33 memory manifest two different aspects of time, since the extra-temporal 34 is both outside of (the chronological fl ow of) time and the heightened 35 image of time itself (“extra” temporal), where the work of time as meta- 36 morphosis can fi nally be glimpsed in an instant. 37 Instead of the “impure” time of metaphor and juxtaposition where 38 the effects of time are seen indirectly through spatial confi gurations, this 39 image of “pure” time appears directly as a return of a past coinciding 40 exactly with the present, the enfolding of the total subject across time, 41 and therefore the superposition of two incompossible states of the same Creating a Space for Time 223 subject (because occurring in two different moments in time) reveals in 1 an instant the work of time that produces difference and change. This 2 image of time, which occurs in involuntary memory, functions like 3 Nerval’s double perspective: the imagination grasps the past, and thus 4 absent sensation, while the senses can add to the imagination “l’idée 5 d’existence” (TR IV, 451) (“the idea of existence”). The “trompe-l’oeil” 6 effect of the dual perspective only lasts a moment and leads the narrator 7 to doubt his very existence, though without the anguish of the opening 8 pages of the novel in the bedroom scene (452). The involuntary memory 9 does not bring back an echo or a memory of the past sensation, but the 10 very sensation itself, and the sensation, in turn, causes one place to erupt 11 into another: 12 13 La sensation commune avait cherché à recréer autour d’elle le lieu ancien, 14 cependant que le lieu actuel qui en tenait la place s’opposait de toute la 15 résistance de sa masse à cette immigration dans un hôtel de Paris d’une 16 plage normande ou d’un talus d’une voie de chemin de fer . . . Toujours, 17 dans ces résurrections-là, le lieu lointain engendré autour de la sensation 18 commune s’était accouplé un instant, comme un lutteur, au lieu actuel. 19 Toujours le lieu actuel avait été vainqueur; toujours c’était le vaincu qui 20 m’avait paru le plus beau . . . Et si le lieu actuel n’avait pas été aussitôt 21 vainqueur, je crois que j’aurais perdu connaissance; car ces résurrections 22 du passé, dans la seconde qu’elles durent, sont si totales qu’elles n’obligent 23 pas seulement nos yeux à cesser de voir la chambre qui est près d’eux 24 pour regarder la voie bordée d’arbres ou la marée montante. Elles forcent 25 nos narines à respirer l’air de lieux pourtant lointains, notre volonté à 26 choisir entre les divers projets qu’ils nous proposent, notre personne tout 27 entière à se croire entourée par eux, ou du moins à trébucher entre eux 28 et les lieux présents, dans l’étourdissement d’une incertitude pareille à 29 celle qu’on éprouve parfois devant une vision ineffable, au moment de 30 s’endormir.7 (453–54) 31 32 The law of places, what Certeau called “la loi du ‘propre’” (173), the law 33 instilled by the father in “Combray,” unravels through the force of a past 34 sensation breaking through the present. The consciousness occupies two 35 places simultaneously, outside of chronological time and fi xed identity; 36 places are not put into “practice” to form a space, as with metaphor, but 37 occupy the same position in the consciousness as if coupled, not just play- 38 ing with but obliterating the specifi city inherent to the law of places and 39 also of identity. For a brief moment, the past place resurrects the past (and 40 thus dead) self, inhabiting the present self not only with the sensations of 41 224 Chapter Ten

1 the past (the smell of the air, the visual aspect of the surroundings) but 2 with an entire state of mind (the “projects” or plans one had in the past). 3 The “I” of the present and the “I” of the past grapple with each other, 4 never quite fusing, but occupying the same position. That the narrator 5 seems to substitute places for the self throughout the passage (it is af- 6 ter all the places that grapple with each other) seems to emphasize the 7 inability of consciousness to comprehend the work of time. The effect 8 of a prolonged “moment bienheureux” would make someone “lose con- 9 sciousness,” as the barrage of contradictory choices of moments in time 10 and of identities surpasses the ability of the conscious mind to process 11 the information.8 Similarly, the text itself forces the narrator as writer of 12 the novel and the narrator as fi rst-person character to occupy the same 13 subject position, the paradoxical je whose indeterminacy allows the work 14 to be read as either (simulated) autobiography or novel. Thus the passage 15 theorizes or renders visible (“theory” originally meaning a mental view- 16 ing) the image of time, which functions in a text as an impossible coinci- 17 dence of origin and fi nal result, in the same way that Zola’s genealogy of 18 the Rougon-Macquart family was the supplemental image of the novel’s 19 absent origin in the dossiers. 20 Just as the past returns to haunt the present and the consciousness, 21 when experiencing an involuntary memory, turns within itself, the pas- 22 sage near the end of the novel marks a return to the beginning and the 23 inscription of the novel self within the bedrooms of the past. By connect- 24 ing the multiple experiences of “moments bienheureux” to the moment 25 of falling asleep, Proust’s narrator brings the reader back to the fi rst page 26 of the Recherche, where it seems to him “que j’étais moi-même ce dont 27 parlait l’ouvrage” (“that I was myself what the work was talking about”). 28 At the beginning of the text, the cause of the waking sleeper’s confusion is 29 replaced by a “deep sleep”; the impact of literature on the self is repressed 30 until it resurfaces here near the very end of the text. The narrator, now 31 outside of space and time, inhabits literature as a writer and as a tex- 32 tual subject. As Nerval’s double perspective bridged the distance between 33 the conscious and the unconscious self, the Proustian narrator decides to 34 write a book that would prolong his experience about time and offer the 35 possibility of sharing it with others through art.9 36 The theoretical moment of insight becomes exteriorized, rendered into 37 narrative, and confi rmed by the “bal de têtes” scene. After his vefi “mo- 38 ments bienheureux,” Marcel is led into the Guermantes salon, what he 39 calls the “bal de têtes,” where his newfound perspective on time is chal- 40 lenged. There, through a series of recognitions and discoveries, he is able 41 to see the image of time itself, unmediated by movement, not just within Creating a Space for Time 225 himself during an involuntary memory but in the faces of long-forgotten 1 acquaintances. He struggles to recognize many faces because time has 2 transformed their features. Even names are unable to aid him because 3 they no longer refer to the same people: names and titles are passed down 4 across generations, while social hierarchies are in constant upheaval. The 5 “loi du ‘propre’” of names, as with places, has no jurisdiction over him: 6 “les noms avaient perdu pour moi de leur individualité” (TR IV, 510) 7 (“names lost for me their individuality”). Eventually the recognition of 8 old acquaintances forces Marcel to change his perspective on himself; for 9 the fi rst time he understands that he is no longer a young man. Blinded by 10 habit, he had not been able to notice the passing of time within himself: 11 12 Et maintenant je comprenais ce c’était que la vieillesse—la vieillesse qui 13 de toutes les réalités est peut-être celle dont nous gardons le plus long- 14 temps dans la vie une notion purement abstraite, regardant les calen- 15 driers, datant nos lettres, voyant se marier nos amis, les enfants de nos 16 amis, sans comprendre, soit par peur, soit par paresse, ce que cela signifi e 17 . . . Je comprenais ce que signifi aient la mort, l’amour, les joies de l’esprit, 18 l’utilité de la douleur, la vocation, etc. . . . Sans doute la cruelle découverte 19 que je venais de faire, ne pourrait que me servir en ce qui concernait la 20 matière même de mon livre. Puisque j’avais décidé qu’elle ne pouvait être 21 uniquement constituée par les impressions véritablement pleines, celles 22 qui sont en dehors du temps, parmi les vérités avec lesquelles je comptais 23 les sertir, celles qui se rapportent au temps, au temps dans lequel baignent 24 et changent les hommes, les sociétés, les nations, tiendraient une place 25 importante.10 (TR IV, 510) 26 27 The discovery of the meaning of old age, or the visible effects of time on 28 the body, has fi nally allowed Marcel to grasp the role of the work of time 29 as change in death, love, and life. This “cruel discovery” tempers the joy 30 of his recent extra-temporal experience, but is infi nitely more valuable. 31 His book project is modifi ed to incorporate this new understanding of 32 time as it is really lived. Instead of a work based solely on the rare mo- 33 ments of involuntary memory, his novel will also comprise the time in 34 which men, societies, and nations are immersed.11 35 The culmination of the novel, the fi nal image of time that leads the nar- 36 rator fi nally to begin his novel, occurs at the end of the “bal” when the 37 narrator meets Gilberte and Robert’s daughter, Mlle de Saint-Loup-en- 38 Bray. Because she comes both from the “côté de Méséglise” and from the 39 “côté de Guermantes,” she synthesizes all the other characters and events 40 in the novel. With a remarkable thoroughness, the narrator links her to 41 226 Chapter Ten

1 every place, every major person, and every event in his life. He reasons 2 that the effect of any one acquaintance has repercussions on every other 3 aspect of our lives: “Quels êtres avons-nous connus qui, pour raconter 4 notre amitié avec eux, ne nous obligent à les placer successivement dans 5 tous les sites les plus différents de notre vie?” (TR IV, 607) (“What be- 6 ings have we known who, in order to tell the story of our friendship with 7 them, oblige us to place them successively in all the most different sites 8 of our lives?”). Mlle de Saint-Loup holds a special place in the narrative, 9 as she unites the two “côtés” and therefore recalls, in a youthful form, 10 all of the now-destroyed Combray. Instead of being a unique individual, 11 with a unique name and from a unique place, she has both her father’s 12 and mother’s features. She is not fi xed in any one place, but is rather a 13 crossroads of places: 14 15 Comme la plupart des êtres, d’ailleurs, n’était-elle pas comme sont dans 16 les forêts les “étoiles” des carrefours où viennent converger des routes 17 venues, pour notre vie aussi, des pointes les plus différents? Elles étaient 18 nombreuses pour moi, celles qui aboutissaient à Mlle de Saint-Loup et 19 qui rayonnaient autour d’elle. Et avant tout venaient aboutir à elle les 20 deux grands “côtés” où j’avais fait tant de promenades et de rêves.12 (606) 21 22 She offers an allegory of identity across places, based on intersections and 23 not barriers. The stable places that structured the novel have given way 24 to a practice of place, an identity of movement like in the metaphorical 25 movement of a changing identity and the literal movement across space. 26 Not only is Mlle de Saint-Loup the model for a new conception of place 27 and identity, she also presents a youthful counterpoint to the aging faces 28 at the “bal.” The narrator’s past is reincarnated in the sixteen-year-old girl, 29 as she is the very image of himself in time: “pleine encore d’espérances, ri- 30 ante, formée des années mêmes que j’avais perdues, elle ressemblait à ma 31 jeunesse” (609) (“still full of hope, cheerful, formed from the very years I 32 had lost, she resembled my youth”). Quite literally she embodies both the 33 lost time the narrator has been looking for and the very material of his 34 future novel, since “tous ces matériaux de l’oeuvre littéraire, c’était ma vie 35 passée” (478) (“all the material of my literary work was in my past life”). 36 The novel he plans to write at the end of the text and which the reader 37 is about to fi nish incorporates the vision of time and identity offered by 38 Mlle de Saint-Loup. 39 With Mlle de Saint-Loup’s appearance, the narrator vanishes from the 40 “matinée.” He offers no account of leaving the Hôtel de Guermantes; he 41 simply disappears. His lack of place realizes his new vision that identity is Creating a Space for Time 227 in time. The remaining fi fteen or sixteen pages are devoted to the compo- 1 sition of his future novel and to the fear that imminent death will prevent 2 him from its completion. The novel to be written in the future or that has 3 just come to a close, as the translation of the narrator’s “inner book,” 4 disseminates the metaphors created from the “moments bienheureux” 5 and therefore allows others, as readers, to experience life in two places, 6 intermittently outside of chronological time. The apparent danger of the 7 excess of metaphors, embodied by Albertine’s incessant movement, has 8 now been harnessed into a cyclical text, which sets the narrator himself 9 in motion. 10 At the end of the novel, the narrator returns to the state in which he 11 found himself at the beginning of the text, where he fl oats in an indeter- 12 minate place and where he is free to move across time and space. The 13 passage from the end of the text to its beginning shuttles the reader to 14 alternative interpretations of the text. The narrator of the end of the novel 15 becomes the writer of the book at the start of a second reading, just as the 16 novel obsessed with space becomes the book about time. The two “oppos- 17 ing” sides of a hypothesis or a paradox (the book about time/place, the 18 narrated/narrating je) occupy the same space, the text of the Recherche, 19 but take place in two different times of reading. Proust’s novel is a book 20 about time because it forces the reader to experience time through the 21 cycles and apparent paradoxes of the text. The metaphors and the circu- 22 lar structure ensure perpetual movement and continual change as time 23 manifests itself in the novel with each new reading. The Recherche trans- 24 forms both its author and its readers by revealing that we are because we 25 are in time. 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 CONCLUSION 3 4 5 6 Now and Then: Virtual Spaces and 7 8 Real Subjects in the Twenty-First Century 9 10 11 12 13 In nineteenth-century French literature, the self was written in text as a 14 subject of space in works that upset the traditional generic boundaries of 15 novel and autobiography. This subject of space emerging from the play of 16 language in text projected an origin outside the text, in an autobiographi- 17 cal self inhabiting real-world places. Maps in the novel (Stendhal’s ich- 18 nographic projections, Nerval’s genealogy, Sand’s reference to the Cassini 19 maps, Zola’s maps of Plassans, Proust’s opposing “ways”) delimit textual 20 space and the textual subject and provide a material foundation for the 21 self as text. But the spatialization of self in text inevitably fragments it, 22 partitions it within discrete moments of time, at once isolating it, in vain, 23 from the instability of language and obscuring the change and difference 24 wrought by the work of time. In order to maintain the illusion of self in 25 text, in order to simulate the becoming across time of a changing self 26 within and outside of the text, an image synthesizing different places in 27 space and specifi c moments in time conceals the missing unity of an “I” 28 divided between the “here” of the page and an imaginary “there.” This 29 image, the novel map, both new and fi ctional, supplements and surpasses 30 the maps in the novel, creating a synoptic and textual image of the self 31 beyond the page and the present of writing. 32 In this book I have argued that what I term the novel map, such as 33 Stendhal’s bird’s-eye view of Rome, Nerval’s double perspective of him- 34 self as other, Sand’s character Indiana’s confusion of Paris and the Île 35 Bourbon, Zola’s genealogy of the Rougon-Macquart, and Proust’s entire 36 work as a double text, attempts to imagine a new, textual subjectivity, one 37 that could renegotiate the relationship between the self and the oppres- 38 sive spaces of a modern society. 39 In our own iteration of modernity or postmodernity at the beginning 40 of the twenty-fi rst century, the ever-accelerating speed of communication 41

229 230 Conclusion

1 and transportation technologies coupled with the omnipresence of new 2 forms of surveillance have shrunken space and arrested time. As Paul 3 Virilio has argued in L’Inertie polaire (1990) and elsewhere, real space 4 has ceded to real time through the acceleration of technology, leading 5 Virilio to the paradoxical conclusion that the state of modernity is not 6 a greater freedom of movement in space, but rather a state of inertia. 7 When it becomes possible to communicate instantaneously with someone 8 anywhere on the planet, when inconceivably large amounts of data exist 9 in an unlocalizable network, when international news is projected live 10 twenty-four hours a day, the specifi cities of regions and the importance of 11 place seem almost meaningless. And yet satellite technology, global posi- 12 tioning systems (GPS), and mobile telephones have combined to make the 13 slightest movements of anyone instantly knowable and traceable, leading 14 to the bundling of spatial information sold for marketing purposes, but 15 eventually, one supposes, available for the formulation of political and 16 military strategies. While the spatial imagination has contracted and the 17 acceleration of movement and information has slowed the fl ow of time, 18 our connection to real places and to materiality has been severed. Cinema 19 is in the process of abandoning celluloid fi lm for digital, screens are re- 20 placing paper, online social networks stand in for public meeting places. 21 The rapid pace of change renders any cultural response necessarily 22 delayed and displaced. Whether an Amélie Poulain nostalgia for an era 23 when contact with others was authentic and meaningful or a morbid fas- 24 cination with the unpredictability of the everyday manifested in “reality” 25 television, unprogrammed chance encounters in real-world spaces now 26 seem to belong to the realm of fi ction. Proust’s “livre intérieur” (“inner 27 book”) that inscribed the real within us may have been replaced by the 28 “inner book” of our genome, whose code is readable by all and which in 29 the popular imagination formed by vapid journalistic exposés would seem 30 to predetermine our actions and our fate. Proust may have anticipated 31 discoveries in neuroscience, but literature’s specifi city lies in its ability to 32 heighten intuition, to create new sensations and form new perceptions. 33 While the writing of a novel map created the fi ction of a self both situ- 34 ated in the space of a text and ubiquitous, both material and extra-tem- 35 poral, the ultimate goal of virtual reality is to lose all consciousness of the 36 physical world and the present moment. Conversely, the ideal vacation 37 for many today is to travel someplace outside the range of cell phone tow- 38 ers, to “go off the grid” only to fi nd oneself cut off from one’s own iden- 39 tity as a subject of technology. A more interesting tactic involves using 40 Internet communication or GPS playfully to transform lived space; from 41 the fi rst fl ash mobs to the current Foursquare, satellite surveillance can Now and Then 231 be subverted to assert the potential of the masses to converge or at least 1 to reinvest in the importance of place. And yet there remains something 2 undeniably predictable, mechanical, in these ephemeral games that denies 3 a sense of the becoming of an individual across time and across space. 4 The barrage of the factual launched by our information society, where 5 everything is already recorded and quantifi ed, needs to be answered by 6 the counterfactual of literature. The obsession with the instantaneous and 7 with the contraction of the global into the “glocal” must be opposed by 8 the unique perspective of the novel map, where the past, present, and fu- 9 ture coexist and where space is opened up to the infi nite. Writing the self 10 would then operate a movement across identities that would transcend 11 the limits imposed by historical conditions toward the material actualiza- 12 tion of the imaginary as text. 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

1 2 Notes 3 4 5 6 7 Introduction 8 1. Honoré de Balzac, La Comédie humaine, vol. 10 (Paris: Gallimard, 1979). 9 2. “I do not know, in truth, whether to attribute to the wine and the punch 10 this kind of lucidity that allows me to survey instantaneously my whole life 11 like a single painting where the fi gures, the colors, the shadows, the light, the 12 halftones, are all faithfully rendered. . . . Seen from a distance, appears contracted by a moral phenomenon.” 13 3. “I thought that it was necessary that . . . I reject as absolutely false every- 14 thing in which I could imagine the least doubt . . . I wanted to suppose that 15 there was nothing that was as we have imagined it . . . I resolved to feign that 16 everything that had ever entered my mind was no more true than the illusions 17 of my dreams . . . that I had no body and that there was no world or no place 18 where I existed.” 19 4. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Ori- gins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1990), 250–54. 20 5. Henri Lefebvre, La Production de l’espace, 4th ed. (Paris: Anthropos, 21 2000), 386. 22 6. The scholarship that has developed to explain the temporal shock of mo- 23 dernity, especially in relation to Baudelaire, is too vast to elaborate here. Some 24 of the best works are Ross Chambers’s The Writing of Melancholy, Fredric 25 Jameson’s The Seeds of Time, David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity, 26 and Elissa Marder’s Dead Time: Temporal Disorders in the Wake of Modernity. 27 Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th Century shows how the new technology of speed not 28 only warped conventional views of time and space, but also forced into the 29 public consciousness an acceptance of personal danger and mass disaster for 30 the sake of progress. 31 7. Louis Marin, “The Autobiographical Interruption: About Stendhal’s Life 32 of Henry Brulard,” Modern Language Notes 93, no. 4 (1978): 597–617. 33 8. Jacques Rancière, Le Partage du sensible (Paris: La Fabrique, 2000), 12. 34 35 Part I 1. “Le fi l du récit n’étant pas rompu, ces ouvrages [ Journal, Souvenirs d’égo- 36 tisme, Vie de Henry Brulard] en dépit de leur ton et de leur variété présentent 37 alors une sorte de biographie continue de Stendhal” (Henri Martineau, “Aver- 38 tissement,” in Stendhal’s Oeuvres intimes, 8) (“The narrative thread unbroken, 39 these works [ Journal, Souvenirs d’égotisme, Vie de Henry Brulard] despite their 40 styles and their variety represent a sort of continuous biography of Stendhal”). 41

233 234 Notes to Pages 19–33

1 2. The citations from the Vie de Henry Brulard, the Journal, and the Souve- 2 nirs d’égotisme are taken from the Pléiade edition of Oeuvres intimes, edited by 3 Martineau in 1955. The more recent, two-volume edition edited by V. Del Litto in 1981 integrates Stendhal’s marginalia after 1821 to form a virtual Journal. 4 Citations from this edition will be referenced as Oeuvres intimes I or II. 5 3. Michel Crouzet considers Brulard to be the portrait of Stendhal as a novel 6 hero (“La Vie de Henry Brulard : La moins ‘puante’ des autobiographies? III,” 7 Stendhal Club, 135: 249). 8 9 Chapter 1 10 1. “After the discourse of generalities, ‘I’ will then write the narrative of sin- 11 gularities [604] . . . The writing of the narrative-text would be a sort of onto- logical argument: I cause myself to exist as text. Consequently, I do not yet 12 exist, but I am going to be born as text. But don’t I already exist as text because 13 I have already written some general considerations? No, in fact, because gen- 14 eral considerations are discourse whereas narrative—and only narrative—can 15 make me come about [ad-venir], (de-)negatively, as an autonomous textual 16 identity” (Marin, “The Autobiographical Interruption,” 605). 17 2. “I found that my life could be summed up by these names, the initials 18 of which I wrote in the dust, like Zadig, with my cane . . . : Virginie /Kubly/, Angela /Pietragrua/, Adèle /Rebuffel/, Mélanie /Guilbert/, Mina /de Griesheim/, 19 Alexandrine /Petit/, Angeline, whom I never loved /Bereyter/, Angela /Pietra- 20 grua/, Métilde /Dembrowski/, Clémentine/, Giulia/. And fi nally, for a month 21 at the most Mme Azur whose given name I have forgotten, and imprudently, 22 yesterday, Amalia /B/. The majority of these charming beings have not honored 23 me with their favor; but they have occupied my entire life to the letter. My 24 works have followed them.” 25 3. “One of her last actions was, one night when I was reading on my aunt Elis- 26 abeth’s commode, at the spot marked H [on the accompanying sketch], the Hen- riade or the Bélisaire that my grandfather had just lent me, Séraphie cried out: 27 ‘How could someone give such books to this child! Who gave him this book?’” 28 4. “However, oh my reader, the whole problem lies in these fi ve [sic] letters: 29 B, R, U, L, A, R, D that form my name and concern my self-esteem. Let’s suppose 30 I were to write Bernard, this book would no longer be like The Vicar of Wake- 31 fi eld (its emulator in all innocence), only a novel written in the fi rst person.” 32 5. “Of the seventy-three epigraphs in the novel [Le Rouge et le noir], only 33 fi fteen are correctly attributed. Moreover, of these fi fteen, two are inaccurately 34 reproduced” (Jefferson, 109). 6. Stendhal may be referring to this passage of Sterne: “I declare I have been 35 at it these six weeks, making all the speed I possibly could—and am not yet 36 born” (Sterne, 37). Tristram Shandy is a fi rst-person novel that privileges above 37 all else the detours of narrative and lived time opposed to chronological time. 38 Its manifold fragments prevent any possibility for closure (Christie McDonald, 39 “Fractured Readers,” 844). Shandy as narrator is present in language and text 40 even before he is born, and thus is a subject only insofar as he is subject to lan- 41 guage and text. The reference to Shandy renders closure impossible for Brulard, Notes to Pages 34–44 235 as he is now an imitation of another text, itself the quintessential intertextual 1 novel. As Nerval, in his narrator’s own self-refl exive moment inAngélique, 2 writes: “—Vous avez imité Diderot lui-même./—Qui avait imité Sterne . . ./” 3 (Nerval, Oeuvres I, 239) (“—You have imitated Diderot himself./—Who imi- 4 tated Sterne . . ./”). And of course the epigraph to Balzac’s La Peau de chagrin is a visual citation of Captain Trim’s drawing in the sand from Tristram Shandy. 5 7. Michael Sheringham, in his chapter on Stendhal in French Autobiography: 6 Devices and Desires, groups the 170 sketches under the name “diagram” as a 7 graphic and verbal representation (71). According to John Bender and Michael 8 Marrinan in The Culture of Diagram, “a diagram is a proliferation of mani- 9 festly selective packets of dissimilar data correlated in an explicitly process- 10 oriented array that has some of the attributes of a representation but is situated 11 in the world like an object” (7). The term “diagram” is certainly appropriate, 12 conveying the tension between the “dissimilar data” of the visual and the ver- bal, but it fails to recognize the spatial component of a map (which also exists 13 in the world as an object). Beyle’s drawings overwhelmingly depict spatial rela- 14 tions between himself and others in the past. 15 8. Béatrice Didier, preface to Vie de Henry Brulard, 14. 16 9. Twenty engravings of mostly Italian paintings are scattered throughout the 17 manuscript, and are taken from the same collection as those found in the Lucien 18 Leuwen manuscript. They are not included in most of the standard editions. 19 There has been much debate as to whether the engravings placed apparently haphazardly throughout the manuscript were “intended” for publication, with 20 most experts affi rming that they are only simple partitions between chapters 21 (Sheila M. Bell, “Stendhal’s Vie de Henry Brulard: The Engravings—A Public 22 or Private Matter?” Modern Language Review 93 [1998]: 356–69). Since the 23 text clearly anticipates a posthumous publication, it is impossible to distinguish 24 the “public” from the “private,” authorial intention from textual signifi cance. 25 10. In his essay “Ce que disent les enfants” (Critique et Clinique), Gilles De- 26 leuze explores the relationship between a child’s relationship to space and to 27 parents: “Or les parents aussi sont eux-mêmes un milieu que l’enfant parcourt, dont il parcourt les qualités et les puissances et dont il dresse la carte” (82) 28 (“Parents are also themselves a place that the child explores, the qualities and 29 powers of which he explores and for which he draws up a map”). 30 11. Deleuze, in Foucault, proposes that in all knowledge there exists a power 31 play between visual representation and expressed language, best captured by 32 the fi gure of a diagram (46–47). The tensions created by the “short-circuiting 33 maps” expose the more general tensions between the “mathematical” represen- 34 tation of Brulard and Brulard’s subjective self-knowledge. 35 Chapter 2 36 1. This is not meant to imply that there is an actual connection between this 37 type of map and the works of Descartes himself, but rather a link between the 38 function of these maps and Cartesian logic in Brulard. 39 2. “I found myself this morning, October 16, 1832, near San Pietro in Mon- 40 torio, on the Gianicolo Hill, in Rome, there was a magnifi cent sun. A light 41 236 Notes to Pages 45–55

1 sirocco breeze, which was hardly perceptible, made a few small white clouds 2 fl oat above Mount Albano, a delightful heat dominated the air, I was happy to 3 be alive. I made out perfectly Frascati and the Castel Gandolfo, which are four leagues from here, the Villa Aldobrandini where there is the sublime fresco of 4 Judith by Domenichino. I see perfectly the white wall that marks the repairs 5 made lately by Prince F. Borghese, the same one I saw at Wagram, colonel of a 6 regiment of armored cavalry, the day when Mr. de Noue, my friend, had his leg 7 carried off. Much further in the distance, I see the rock of Palestrina and the 8 white house of Castel San Pietro, which used to be its fortress. Below the wall 9 against which I lean are the large orange trees of the capuchin orchard, then the 10 Tiber and the Priory of Malta, a little further on the right the tomb of Cecilia 11 Metella, Saint-Paul, and the Cestius Pyramid. In front of me I see Santa-Maria- Maggiore and the long lines of Monte Cavallo Palace. All of ancient and mod- 12 ern Rome, from the Appian Way with the ruins of its tombs and its aqueducts 13 to the magnifi cent Pincio gardens built by the French, is laid out to view.” 14 3. “San Pietro in Montorio. I admire yet again the view; it is without com- 15 parison the most beautiful in Rome: one sees everything admirably well and 16 one sees Mont Albano and Frascati, Cecilia Metella, etc. There has to be a day 17 with sun and clouds chased by the wind; then all the domes of Rome are one 18 by one in the shadows and in the light.” 4. “I have seen houses in ruins elsewhere, as well as statues of gods and men: 19 these are still men. All this is true: and yet, despite it all, I cannot often enough 20 see the tomb of this great and powerful city without admiring and revering it. 21 Caring for the dead is recommended to us; now, I have been nourished since 22 my childhood with these here; I knew the affairs of Rome long before those of 23 my own house. I knew the Capitol and its plan before I knew the Louvre, and 24 the Tiber before I knew the Seine. The conditions and fortunes of Lucullus, Me- 25 tellus, and Scipio fi ll my head more than those of anyone of my own country. 26 They are all dead. So is my father, as entirely dead as they, and has become as distant from me and my life in eighteen years as they are in sixteen hundred.” 27 5. “Both [Montaigne and Freud] appeal to cartography to bring forward 28 some pervasive and unsettling effects of psychogenesis. The birth of the subject, 29 what is tantamount to a universal experience of life, is situated in a specifi c to- 30 pography. The birth of the subject is always likened to an overlay of city-views 31 of Rome” (Tom Conley, “A Suckling of Cities: Montaigne in Paris and Rome,” 32 168). 33 6. “When a memory reappears to the consciousness, it has the effect for us of 34 a ghost whose mysterious apparition requires explanation by special causes. In reality, the adherence of this memory to our present state is entirely comparable 35 to that of unperceived objects to objects that we perceive, and the unconscious 36 plays in both cases the same type of role.” 37 7. Representation is, of course, problematic in Stendhal’s realist novels. Com- 38 menting on Stendhal’s famous formulation of the novel as a mirror led through 39 a muddy road, Lawrence Schehr remarks that “the mirror is the locus of the 40 imaginary . . . before the mirror refl ects the same, and before it creates the 41 simulacrum in which writing repeats the world, the mirror marks the unrep- Notes to Pages 56–70 237 resentable” (Schehr, 46). In Stendhal’s autobiography, however, the author can 1 no longer hide behind the textual mirror as he did in the novel since the text is 2 supposed to refl ect the author himself. 3 8. “I see images, I remember the effects on my heart, but as for the causes 4 and the physiognomy [defi ning characteristics], nothing. It is always like the frescoes of the [ ] in Pisa, where one can see quite well an arm and the portion 5 next to it representing a head has fallen. I see very clearly a series of images, but 6 without physiognomy except for whatever one they had related to me. What is 7 more, I only see this physiognomy by the effect it had on me.” 8 9. “God [in English] grants me the following: . . . Article 7. Four times a year, 9 he can change himself into whichever man he wants. . . . Thus, the privileged 10 man will be able to, four times a year, and for an unlimited period each time, 11 occupy two bodies at once.” 12 Part II 13 Chapter 3 14 1. In Orientalism, Edward Said sets Nerval apart from his contemporaries: 15 “his Orient untied itself from anything resembling an Orientalist conception of 16 the Orient, even though his work depends on Orientalism to a certain extent” 17 (183). But even this dependence on the “Orientalist canon” is subverted: “His 18 Voyage incorporates numerous pages copied out of Lane’s Modern Egyptians, 19 but even their lucid confi dence seems to dissolve in the endlessly decomposing, 20 cavernous element which is Nerval’s Orient” (183). 2. Richard Holmes sees the mental breakdown of 1841 as the year Nerval’s 21 personality split into a public, literary persona (Nerval) and a private, familial 22 one (Labrunie) with the systematic use of his pseudonym Nerval (242). 23 3. To his father, from Constantinople, August 19, 1843: “Ce voyage me ser- 24 vira toujours à démontrer aux gens que je n’ai été victime, il y a deux ans, que 25 d’un accident bien isolé” (Oeuvres I, 935) (“This trip will serve forever to dem- 26 onstrate to people that I was only the victim, two years ago, of a very isolated 27 accident”). 4. Gerald Schaeffer’s Le Voyage en Orient de Nerval, étude des structures 28 provides an exhaustive study of this spiral structure. For an account of circu- 29 itous and spiral journeys during the Romantic era, see M. H. Abrams’s Natural 30 Supernaturalism. 31 5. The words “narrator” and “Gérard” will be used to denominate the fi rst- 32 person pronoun of the text, distinct from yet undeniably related to the author 33 Labrunie/Nerval. 34 6. “Hearing this word leben, I remembered that in German it means life. 35 Lebanon also traces its name to this word leben, and owes it to the whiteness of the snow which covers the mountains, and which the Arabs, crossing the 36 enfl amed sands of the desert, dreamed of from afar as milk, as life!” 37 7. “It is a painful impression, as we travel further along, to lose city by city 38 and country by country, this whole beautiful universe we have created for our- 39 selves in our youth, through readings, paintings, and dreams. The world thus 40 formed in the mind of the child is so rich and so beautiful, that it is hard to say 41 238 Notes to Pages 72–86

1 if it is the exaggerated result of learned ideas, or if it is the return of a memory 2 of a prior existence and the geography of an unknown planet.” 3 8. “Egypt is a vast tomb, that is the impression it had on me upon reaching the beach at Alexandria, which, with its ruins and little hills, presents to the 4 eyes tombs scattered on a cindered earth. Shadows draped with bluish shrouds 5 circulate amid the ruins. . . . I would have preferred the memories of ancient 6 Greece, but all of that is destroyed, razed, unrecognizable.” 7 9. One of the principal objections to Said’s argument is that it does not allow 8 the possibility for dialogue between the (Western) subject and the (Oriental) 9 object (Michael Richardson, “Enough Said,” 16). If Orientalists have created 10 their own language for describing the Orient, then the “Oriental” subject is lost 11 in the aporia between his or her own experience and the language of the Orien- talist expert. As we will see, Nerval progressively loses any ties with Orientalist 12 discourse as he “goes native” and slowly learns the language of experience, 13 especially from his female slave Zeynab. 14 10. For an exhaustive analysis of allegory, see Angus Fletcher, Allegory, The 15 Theory of a Symbolic Mode (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1964). 16 11. “It is a word that, depending on the intonation given to it, means all sorts 17 of things; yet it cannot be compared to the English goddam, except to mark the 18 difference between a people who are very polite and a nation who are at best very policed. The word tayeb means variously: very well, or that’s fi ne, that’s 19 perfect, or at your service, the tone and especially body language add infi nite 20 nuances.” 21 12. “I asked her name . . . I was buying her name as well, naturally. ‘Z’n’b!,’ 22 said Abd-el-Kerim. ‘Z’n’b’ repeated Abdullah with a big effort at a nasal con- 23 traction. I was unable to understand that the sneeze of three consonants could 24 represent a name. It took me some time to guess that it could be pronounced 25 Zeynab.” 26 13. “I like to lead my life like a novel, and I will voluntarily put myself in the position of one of those active and resolute heroes who at all costs want 27 to create around themselves drama, the narrative knot, interest, action in a 28 word. Chance, as powerful as it is, has never brought together the elements 29 of a passable subject, and at most has it laid out the setting; thus, if we leave 30 it to chance, everything fails despite the most perfect arrangements. Since it is 31 conventionally understood that there are only two sorts of dénouements, mar- 32 riage or death, lets us aim at least at one of the two . . . given that until now my 33 adventures have almost always ended at the expository scene.” 34 14. Scott Carpenter, in Acts of Fiction, places translation at the center of Nerval’s preoccupation with otherness (111). He notes, in particular, that Gé- 35 rard fi res his dragoman in Cairo for manipulating his translations, yet affi rms 36 the same conduct for himself when he performs the role of dragoman for the 37 reader, translating the “Histoire de la Reine du matin” (112). 38 39 Chapter 4 40 1. The heading Nerval himself gave was “Généalogie d’après des renseigne- 41 ments pris à Francfort, le plus récemment vers 1822” (“Genealogy based on Notes to Pages 88–104 239 research conducted in Frankfort, most recently around 1822”). The manuscript 1 is found at the Institut de France, in the Collection Spoelberch de Lovenjoul, 2 D 741, folio 78. It measures approximately 12 cm by 21 cm. The other half of 3 the manuscript page lists numerological facts about Napoleon’s life. The “Gé- 4 néalogie” (without the accompanying life of Napoleon) was fi rst reproduced in Aristide Marie’s Gérard de Nerval; Le poète—l’homme in 1914, and then 5 transcribed by Jean Richer in Nerval: Expérience vécue & Création ésotérique 6 in 1987. 7 2. Deleuze and Guattari insist that the arborescent and the rhizomatic are 8 not polar opposites that would divide up the world into good and bad, or 9 in Nerval’s case sane and insane: “Il y a des noeuds d’arborescence dans les 10 rhizomes, des poussées rhizomatiques dans les racines” (“There are knots of 11 arborescence in rhizomes, rhizomatic shoots in roots”) (Deleuze and Guattari, 12 30–31). 3. “Race (or family) < eye hand foot > country.” 13 4. As Marcel Proust writes about Sylvie in Contre Sainte-Beuve: “Ce retour 14 dans un pays qui est plutôt pour lui un passé qui existe au moins autant dans 15 son coeur que sur la carte” (158) (“This return to a countryside which is a past 16 existing as much in his heart as on a map”). 17 5. “The Dream is a second life. Never have I been able to penetrate without 18 shuddering the doors of ivory or of horn that separate us from the invisible 19 world. The fi rst instants of sleep are the image of death: nebulous numbness seizes our thought, and we cannot determine the precise instant when the ego, 20 under another form, continues the work of existence. It is a vague underground 21 that is lit little by little, and where out of the shadows and the darkness emerge 22 pale faces, solemnly immobile, which inhabit the abode of limbo. Then the 23 scene comes together, a new brightness illuminates these bizarre apparitions 24 and makes them play; the world of Spirits opens itself to us. Swedenborg called 25 these visions Memorabilia, he owed them to daydreaming more than to sleep; 26 the Golden Ass by Apuleius, Dante’s Divine Comedy, are the poetic models of 27 these studies of the human soul. I am going to attempt, by their example, to transcribe the impressions of a long illness which occurred entirely within the 28 mysteries of my mind; and I do not know why I use the term illness, for never, 29 concerning my own self, have I felt in better health. Sometimes, I would feel 30 my strength and my activity to be doubled; it seemed I knew everything, under- 31 stood everything, my imagination brought infi nite delights. When I recovered 32 what men call reason, do I have to regret having lost them? . . . This Vita Nuova 33 had two phases for me. Here are the notes related to the fi rst.” 34 6. “Two gates for ghostly dreams there are: one gateway/ of honest horn, and 35 one of ivory,/ Issuing by the ivory gate are dreams/ of glimmering illusion, fan- tasies,/ but those that come through the solid polished horn/ may be borne out, 36 if mortals only know them” (Homer, The Odyssey 19, cited in Harry Levin’s 37 The Gates of Horn). 38 7. “Sleep takes up a third of our lives. . . . After a few minutes of numbness 39 a new world begins, freed from the conditions of time and space, and perhaps 40 similar to the one that awaits us after death. Who knows if a link does not ex- 41 240 Notes to Pages 105–108

1 ist between these two existences and if it is possible for the soul to tie it right 2 away?” 3 8. “Here began for me what I will call the effusion of dream into real life. From this moment on, everything took at times a double aspect, and that, 4 without my reasoning ever lacking logic, without my memories ever losing the 5 slightest detail of what was happening to me.” 6 9. “Lying down on a cot, I heard the soldiers talking about an unknown pris- 7 oner like me and whose voice had rung out in the same room. By a singular ef- 8 fect of vibration, it seemed to me that this voice resonated in my chest and that 9 my soul doubled itself so to speak, distinctly split between vision and reality. 10 One instant, I had the idea of turning myself with diffi culty toward the man in 11 question, then I shuddered in remembering a tradition well known in Germany, that says each man has a double and that, when he sees him, death is near.” 12 10. “I entered into a vast room, where many people were gathered. Every- 13 where I found again recognizable faces. The features of deceased relatives I 14 had mourned were found reproduced in others, who, dressed in costumes from 15 older time periods, gave me the same familial welcome. They seemed to be as- 16 sembled for a family banquet.” 17 18 Part III 1. George Sand, Indiana, ed. Béatrice Didier (Paris: Gallimard, 1984); George 19 Sand, Nanon, ed. Nicole Mozet (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire: Christian Pirot, 2005). 20 2. Cohen argues that “realist codes did not appeal to women writers . . . 21 because of the complex interaction between the construction of gender in spe- 22 cifi cally literary and more broadly social contexts” (The Sentimental Education 23 of the Novel, 14). She enumerates three aspects of the construction of gender 24 and genre: Balzac and Stendhal’s “campaigns to masculinize the novel in real- 25 ist poetics as well as polemic,” “the pervasive gendering of sentimentality as 26 feminine,” and, more generally, women’s status within literary institutions (14). 3. Janet Hiddleston, in George Sand and Autobiography, argues that in the 27 nineteenth century, “writing one’s own life-story rather than that of a fi ctional 28 character was perhaps more diffi cult for women . . . since such a project implied 29 a self-confi dence and even a presumption which could be thought unfeminine, 30 as well as a certain celebrity and experience of public life” (5). Nancy Miller, 31 in Subject to Change: Reading Feminist Writing, proposes that women’s auto- 32 biography in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has to be read in the 33 context of Rousseau’s shadow, and that “the decision to go public is particu- 34 larly charged for the woman writer” (50). 4. Philippe Lejeune cites Georges Picon’s declaration that George Sand’s His- 35 toire de ma vie is “le plus romanesque de ses romans” (“the most novel-like of 36 her novels”) (L’autobiographie en France, 28). 37 5. As Nancy Miller argues, “the fact of [a male writer’s] gender is given and 38 received literarily as a mere donnée of personhood, . . . the canon of the auto- 39 biographical text, like the literary canon, self-defi ned as it is by the notion of a 40 human universal, in general fails to interrogate gender as a meaningful category 41 of reference or of interpretation” (57). Notes to Pages 109–118 241

6. Germaine Brée (in “Autogynography”) and Domna Stanton (in The Fe- 1 male Autograph) propose the term “autogynograph” to assert the difference of 2 female autobiography, to make the female “I” visible: “Creating the subject, an 3 autograph gave the female ‘I’ substance through the inscription of an interior 4 and an anterior” (Stanton, 14); “at this symbolic moment the female signature, unlike the generic fi xation, had liberating rather than constraining effects” (16). 5 Similarly, Shari Benstock and Sidonie Smith claim that a female “I” destabilizes 6 autobiographical discourse: “the self that would reside at the textual center 7 is decentered—often absent altogether—in women’s autobiographical texts” 8 (Benstock, 9); “as ‘inappropriate’ subjects, women . . . become agents for au- 9 tobiographical change in a double sense. They change their own lives and they 10 change the discursive regime of autobiographical ‘truth’ itself” (Smith, 46). 11 12 Chapter 5 1. George Sand, Histoire de ma vie II, ed. Damien Zanone (Paris: GF Flam- 13 marion, 2001). “The newspapers all spoke of Mr. G. Sand with praise, insinuat- 14 ing that a woman’s hand must have slipped in here and there to reveal to the 15 author a certain sensitivity to the heart and mind, but declaring that the style 16 and opinions were too masculine not to be a man’s.” 17 2. “People did not neglect to say that Indiana was me and my story. That’s not 18 it at all. I presented two types of women, and I think that when one has fi nished 19 reading this portrayal of the impressions and refl ections on my life [Histoire de 20 ma vie], it will be clear that I have never depicted myself in feminine guise. I am too romantic/novelistic to have seen the heroine of a novel in my mirror.” 21 3. “A long time after having written the preface to Indiana under the infl u- 22 ence of what remaining respect I had for social norms, I was still trying to 23 resolve this unsolvable problem: how to reconcile the happiness and dignity 24 of individuals oppressed by this same society, without changing society itself.” 25 4. “Certain journalists, who have established themselves as representatives 26 and guardians of public . . . declared sternly their opposition to the ten- 27 dencies of my poor tale, and gave it, by presenting it as a tract against the social order, an importance and a sort of renown it would otherwise not have had.” 28 5. “A man who speaks of love with wit is not particularly in love. Raymon 29 was an exception; he expressed passion with art, and he felt it with fervor. 30 Only, it wasn’t passion that made him eloquent, it was eloquence that made 31 him passionate.” 32 6. “[He] is one of the men who has had the most authority and infl uence on 33 your thoughts, whatever may be today your political views. You have devoured 34 his political booklets, and often you have been led astray, while reading news- 35 papers of the time, by the irresistible charm of his style and the gracefulness of his courtly and urbane logic.” 36 7. “One would have said, upon seeing the immobility of the two characters 37 in front of the hearth, that they were afraid of upsetting the immobility of the 38 scene; fi xed and petrifi ed like two heroes from a fairy tale, the slightest word, 39 the smallest movement would make the walls of a fantastic city crumble on top 40 of them.” 41 242 Notes to Pages 119–122

1 8. “The two panes of glass which refl ected Noun’s image to infi nity seemed 2 to be peopled with a thousand phantoms. He [Raymon] saw in the depths of 3 this double reverberation a fi ner form, and he seemed to hold onto, in the last vaporous and confused shadow that Noun refl ected, the slender and supple 4 waist of Mme Delmare [Indiana].” 5 9. “She walked down the quay from the Institut de France all the way to 6 the Corps Législatif; but she forgot to cross the bridge, and continued along 7 the river, absorbed in a stupid reverie, in a meditation without ideas, pursu- 8 ing the pointless act of walking straight ahead. Imperceptibly she found herself 9 on the water’s edge, which swept ice cubes across her feet and crushed them on 10 the rocks of the riverbank with a dry, cold crack. This greenish water held an 11 attractive force over Indiana’s senses. One can get accustomed to terrible ideas; just by letting them cross the mind, one ends up taking pleasure in them. For a 12 long time the example of Noun’s suicide had appeased the hours of her despair 13 that she had considered suicide as a sort of tempting sensual delight. . . . When 14 she felt the biting cold water which was already bathing her shoe, she woke 15 up as if in a state of sleepwalking, and, looking around at where she was, she 16 saw Paris behind her, and the Seine, which was fl eeing under her feet, carried 17 away in its oily mass the white refl ection of houses and the grayish blue of the 18 sky. The continuous movement of the water and the immobility of the ground became mixed up in her clouded perception, and it seemed to her that the water 19 was sleeping and that the earth was receding. In this moment of vertigo, she 20 supported herself against a wall, and leaned over, fascinated, towards what she 21 took for a solid mass.” 22 10. “Occasionally, she would take the clouds from the coast for strange 23 forms: sometimes she saw a white blade rise up over the fl ows and describe 24 a gigantic line which she took for the façade of the Louvre; sometimes it was 25 two square sails that, emerging abruptly from the mist, suggested the memory 26 of Notre Dame’s towers, when the Seine exhales a compact fog that hugs their base and makes them seem suspended in the sky; at other times it was pink 27 wisps of cloud that, in their changing forms, displayed all the architectural 28 whims of an immense city. This woman’s mind fell asleep in the illusions of the 29 past, and she would tremble with joy at the sight of this imaginary Paris whose 30 realities had indicated the most unfortunate time of her life. A strange vertigo 31 then took over her head. Suspended high above the coast, and seeing recede 32 under her very eyes the gorges which separated her from the ocean, it seemed 33 to her that she was thrown into this space by a rapid movement, and that she 34 walked on air toward the prestigious city of her imagination. In this dream, she held onto the rock which supported her; and for whoever might have observed 35 her avid eyes, her breast heaving in impatience and the frightening expression 36 of joy spread on her face, she seemed to present all the symptoms of madness. 37 And yet those were her hours of pleasure and the only moments of well-being 38 she looked forward to all day. If her husband’s whims had suppressed these 39 solitary walks, I don’t know what thoughts she would have lived on; because, 40 for her, everything was related to a certain power of illusions, to an ardent as- 41 Notes to Pages 126–133 243 piration towards a point which was neither memory nor expectation, neither 1 hope nor regret, but desire in all its devouring intensity.” 2 11. “Out of these fortuitous encounters [of fi re and rock] result bizarre 3 games, hieroglyphic impressions, mysterious characters, which seem thrown 4 there like a signature from a supernatural being, written in cabalistic letters. I stayed a long while under the childish pretension of looking for a meaning in 5 these unknown fi gures. This useless investigation made me fall into a profound 6 meditation during which I forgot the time which fl ew by.” 7 12. We will further explore Rancière’s defi nition of literature as “silent speech” 8 in chapter 7. 9 10 Chapter 6 11 1. In her letters from 1871, Sand expresses a range of opinions and emotions 12 about the meaning of equality after the Commune. Writing to Charles Poncy on May 25, 1871, she declares, “La voilà vaincue, cette chimérique insurrec- 13 tion. . . . C’est un malheur pour ceux qui aiment l’égalité et qui ont cru aux 14 nobles instincts des masses, et j’étais de ceux-là!” (Correspondence XXII, 390) 15 (“That chimerical insurrection has fi nally been defeated. . . . It is 16 for those who love equality and who believed in the noble instincts of the 17 masses, and I used to be one of them!”). But to Gustave Flaubert, she wrote 18 just a few weeks earlier: “Pour moi l’ignoble expérience que Paris essaye ou 19 subit ne prouve rien contre les lois de l’éternelle progression des hommes et des choses, et si j’ai quelques principes acquis dans l’esprit, bons ou mauvais, ils 20 n’en sont ni ébranlés, ni modifi és” (370) (“For me the ignoble experiment Paris 21 attempted or suffered proves nothing against the laws of the eternal progress of 22 men and things, and if I had some defi nite principles in my mind, good or bad, 23 they have been neither shaken nor changed”). 24 2. Alain Badiou uses the Paris Commune to think through the questions of 25 singularity, site, and event: Alain Badiou, “Logic of the Site,” Diacritics 33, nos. 26 3–4 (Fall-Winter 2003): 141–50. 27 3. Henri Lefebvre offers an hour-by-hour account of the events of March 18, 1871, in La Proclamation de la Commune (Paris: Gallimard, 1965). 28 4. Kristin Ross describes the Commune as “antihierarchical” and “horizon- 29 tal”; through an analysis of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, she argues that 30 “political emancipation means emancipation from politics as a specialized 31 activity. . . . The means through which the Commune was possible was simply 32 its sustained attack on the divisions of labor that render administrations and 33 government ‘mysteries, functions only to be trusted to the hands 34 of a trained caste.’” Kristin Ross, The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and 35 the Paris Commune (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 24–25. 5. Sand’s letters during the Commune repeatedly remind her Parisian friends 36 that the conservative provinces distrust Paris. Moreover, Parisian radicalism 37 only serves to alienate the provinces from the republic: “Paris fait les répub- 38 liques, nous le savons, mais c’est lui aussi qui les perd et les tue” (353) (“Paris 39 makes republics, we know that, but it’s also Paris that loses and kills them”). 40 41 244 Notes to Pages 134–139

1 6. “I know, from having heard people around here deplore them, that it’s the 2 common people of Paris and of the big cities who push and lead you, because 3 intellectual people like you stay in the cities. You think you understand peas- ants when you know workers from the suburbs or city neighborhoods, and 4 among the workers who are half peasant and half artisan, you only pay atten- 5 tion to those who yell and agitate.” 6 7. The creation of the départements can be directly linked to the Carte de 7 Cassini: “The inspiration [for the division of national space into départements] 8 was cartographic. The prime mover on the constitutional committee, Abbé Sie- 9 yès . . . explained that he would begin ‘by obtaining the great triangulated map 10 of Cassini, which has without dispute the most exact positions; I would divide 11 it fi rst of all geometrically’” (Michael Biggs. “Putting the State on the Map: Cartography, Territory, and European State Formation,” Comparative Studies 12 in Society and History 44, no. 2 [April 1999]: 389.) 13 8. Edmund Burke, Refl ections on the Revolution in France (London: Apollo, 14 1814), 158–59. Quoted in Biggs, 390. 15 9. “La fi gure utopique est donc un objet de discours, non pas sans référent, 16 mais à référent absent, comme son nom le signale: elle n’est pas le sans-lieu, 17 voire le lieu imaginaire, irréel, mais le non-lieu, le lieu sans détermination, la 18 fi gure du neutre” (Marin, Utopiques, 251) (“The utopian fi gure is thus an ob- ject of discourse, not without a referent, but with an absent referent, as its name 19 indicates: it is not the without-place, or even the imaginary, unreal place, but 20 the nonplace, the place without determination, the fi gure of the neuter”). 21 10. “I do not know if I will be able to tell the story in writing, me who, at 22 the age of twelve, still did not know how to read. I will do as I can. I am going 23 to start things from the top and try to fi nd the fi rst memories of my childhood. 24 These memories are very confused, as are those of children whose intelligence 25 has not been developed through education.” 26 11. “Now, those who will have read me know that my education is complete enough so that I may express myself more easily and understand better the 27 things that happen to me. It would have been impossible, over the course of the 28 narrative so far, not to have spoken a little like a peasant; my thinking would 29 not have found other words than those in which it was then contained, and, by 30 letting myself use other words, I would have given myself thoughts and feelings 31 that I did not have.” 32 12. “I learned my whole alphabet that day, and I was happy, coming home, 33 to hear the thrushes singing and the stream rumbling. . . . The sun was setting 34 on our right, the chestnuts and beach trees were as red as fi re. . . . It had never been like that before. . . . My dazzled eyes saw red and blue letters in the rays 35 of the setting sun.” 36 13. In an endnote in her 2005 edition of Nanon, Nicole Mozet points out 37 that Nohant is on the road between La Châtre and Châteauroux and that 38 in Histoire de ma vie Sand writes of getting lost as a child on the way from 39 Châteauroux to Nohant (291n). Sand’s childhood memory of losing her way 40 reinforces the impression that there were no clear paths from the two towns. 41 Notes to Pages 140–149 245

14. The École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) maintains a 1 website dedicated to the Carte de Cassini that also lists demographic informa- 2 tion from the eighteenth century: http://cassini.ehess.fr. 3 15. “Paris n’aspire qu’à se renfermer dans son autonomie, plein de respect 4 pour les droits égaux des autres communes de France” (“Paris only aspires to withdraw into itself autonomously, being respectful of the equal rights of the 5 other communes of France”). From a manifesto written by the Commune’s 6 Commission Exécutive on April 6, 1871, quoted in Lefebvre’s La Proclamation 7 de la Commune, 136. 8 16. “However, I was worried about the rest of my journey. The way in which 9 everyone looked at me and spoke to me was new for me, and I fi nally became 10 aware of the inconvenience of being a young woman all alone on the open 11 road. In Valcreux, where I was known to be well-behaved and reserved, no one 12 would have reminded me that I was no longer a child, and I was all too accus- tomed to forgetting my age. . . . I saw in my gender an obstacle and dangers of 13 which I had never dreamed. . . . Beauty always attracts looks and I would have 14 liked to make myself invisible.” 15 17. “They [Émilien and Costejoux] weren’t duped by the July Revolution 16 [of 1830]. They weren’t satisfi ed by the February [1848] one either. As for me, 17 not having anything to do with politics for a long time now—I don’t have the 18 time—I have never contradicted them, and, even if I could be sure of being 19 right, I wouldn’t have the courage to tell them, so much I admired the caliber of these characters from the past.” 20 21 Part IV 22 1. “Le personnage, ici, est ‘fonction,’ voire ‘fonctionnaire,’ plutôt que fi ction, 23 est personnel plutôt que personne” (25) (“The character, here, is a ‘function,’ 24 or a ‘functionary,’ more than fi ctional, personnel more than person”). “Mais ce 25 sont surtout des localisations dans des espaces ‘réalistes’ soigneusement nom- 26 més, balisés et circonstanciés qui défi nissent le personnage. Le personnage, chez 27 Zola, est d’abord et avant tout un habitant, un ‘assigné à résidence’” (208) (“But it is especially localizations in ‘realist spaces,’ which are carefully named, 28 charted, and detailed, that defi ne the character. The character in Zola’s work 29 is fi rst and foremost an inhabitant, someone who is ‘under house arrest’”). 30 Philippe Hamon, Le Personnel du roman: Le système des personnages dans les 31 “Rougon-Macquart” d’Emile Zola (Geneva: Droz, 1983). 32 2. Portions of the dossiers have been published as scholarly apparatus, nota- 33 bly in Henri Mitterand’s Pléiade edition of the Rougon-Macquart. Mitterand 34 and Olivier Lumbroso have published selections of the dossiers along with 35 Zola’s drawings from the dossiers in a three-volume work, Les Manuscrits et dessins de Zola; Notes préparatoires et dessins des “Rougon-Macquart” (Paris: 36 Éditions Textuel, 2002). Colette Becker has undertaken the herculean task of 37 publishing a diplomatic edition of the entire dossier and has completed four 38 volumes, or roughly half of the total: Émile Zola, La Fabrique des Rougon- 39 Macquart: Éditions des dossiers préparatoires, ed. Colette Becker and Véro- 40 41 246 Notes to Pages 149–153

1 nique Lavielle, 4 vols. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003). For the novels them- 2 selves and textual content in the dossiers, I will refer to the Pléiade edition 3 (Émile Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart, ed. Henri Mitterand, 5 vols. [Paris: Gal- limard, 1960–67]) with a volume number and page number, and for visual 4 documents contained in the dossiers, I will refer either to the Mitterand and 5 Lumbroso or to the Becker. 6 3. “Nous ne possédons, en effet, que quelques pages de brouillons . . . Or 7 il est sûr que les manuscrits donnés à l’imprimeur sont le résultat de versions 8 antérieures. . . . Zola a détruit cette étape du corps à corps avec l’écriture pour 9 ne laisser que le travail de construction, témoignage de sa ‘méthode’” (Becker, 10 preface to Zola, La Fabrique des Rougon-Macquart 1:17) (“We only have, in 11 fact, a few pages of the drafts [. . .] It is certain that the manuscripts given to the printer are the result of previous versions. [. . .] Zola destroyed this stage 12 of the confrontation with writing, only leaving the work of construction [the 13 dossiers] as testimony to his ‘method’”). 14 15 Chapter 7 16 1. “And when I hold all the strings, when I have in my hands a whole social 17 group, I will show this group at work, as actor of a historical period, I will cre- 18 ate it acting in all the complexity of its efforts, I will analyze at the same time the willpower of each of its members and the general movement of the whole 19 group.” 20 2. Well before the Rougon-Macquart Zola proposed his theory of “écrans” 21 (fi lters or screens) in a letter to Antony Valabrègue in 1864: “Toute oeuvre d’art 22 est comme une fenêtre ouverte sur la création; il y a, enchâssé dans l’embrasure 23 de la fenêtre, une sorte d’Écran transparent, à travers lequel on aperçoit les 24 objets plus ou moins déformés, souffrant des changements plus ou moins sen- 25 sibles dans leurs lignes et dans leur couleur. . . . Nous voyons la création dans 26 une oeuvre, à travers un homme, à travers un tempérament, une personnalité” (“Every work of art is like a window open onto creation; there is, set in the 27 window frame, a sort of transparent Screen, through which objects appear more 28 or less deformed, as they undergo more or less perceptible changes in their lines 29 or their color. . . . We see creation in a work, through a man, through a tempera- 30 ment, a personality”). Cited in Colette Becker, Zola: Le saut dans les étoiles 31 (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2002), 233–34. See Naomi Schor, “Zola: 32 From Window to Window,” Yale French Studies 42 (1969): 38–51. 33 3. David Baguley’s introduction to his Critical Essays on Émile Zola (Boston: 34 G. K. Hall, 1986) gives a succinct overview of the history of Zola criticism. In another study of the naturalist movement, Baguley shows how Zola (and 35 naturalism in general) was motivated as much by strategic positioning within 36 the literary and economic fi elds as by purely aesthetic concerns: “We see once 37 more that strategy, opportunism, réclame, mystifi cation are primary motive 38 forces behind the movement. A shared sense of purpose and common aesthetic 39 principles are obviously of secondary importance.” David Baguley, Naturalist 40 Fiction: The Entropic Vision (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 41 1990), 19. Notes to Pages 153–168 247

4. In a document included in the preliminary notes of the dossiers, “Notes 1 générales sur la nature de l’oeuvre,” Zola writes: “Avoir surtout la logique de la 2 déduction. Il est indifférent que le fait générateur soit reconnu comme absolu- 3 ment vrai; ce fait sera surtout une hypothèse scientifi que, emprunté aux traités 4 médicaux” (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1742) (“Have above all else the logic of deduction. It does not matter that the generating fact be recognized as ab- 5 solutely true; this fact will be a scientifi c hypothesis, borrowed from medical 6 treatises”). 7 5. Michel Serres, Feux et signaux de brume: Zola (Paris: Grasset, 1975). 8 6. As Zola remarks in his “Notes générales sur la marche de l’oeuvre,” “Mon 9 roman eût été impossible avant 89” (“My novel would have been impossible 10 before ’89”) (Les Rougon-Macquart, 5:1738). 11 7. “The description of Nana’s boudoir, like that of the fl owers of the Para- 12 dou, of the displays of les Halles or the stained-glass windows of Le Rêve, ap- ply, in the ‘equality’ of their subjects, the principle of equivalence of expression. 13 Zola, who never confronted himself with the problem of a prose poeticity, still 14 obeys the principle of symbolicity at the heart of romanticist poetics; he makes 15 objects speak in the same way as Notre-Dame de Paris. And this principle of 16 expressivity fi ts seamlessly with the old style of narration, like the rhyme of 17 the ideal in reality itself. Naturalism gives to the novel form a way of being a 18 form of compromise: a compromise between the contradictory principles of the 19 new poetics, and, thus, compromise between the old and new poetics, between the representative primacy of fi ction and the antirepresentative principle of 20 expression.” 21 8. Émile Zola, Le Roman experimental, 4th ed. (Paris: G. Charpentier, 22 1880), 10. 23 9. Olivier Lumbroso, Zola: La plume et le compas: Construction de l’espace 24 dans Les Rougon-Macquart d’Émile Zola (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2004). 25 Likewise, for Philippe Bonnefi s, “la description zolienne est cette nostalgie d’un 26 paradis perdu des géomètres” (“description in Zola’s works is this nostalgia 27 for the lost paradise of surveyors”). Philippe Bonnefi s, L’Innomable: Essai sur l’oeuvre d’É. Zola (Paris: SEDES, 1984), 64. 28 10. “Comme si le texte ne vivait que de la répétition de son geste de clôture” 29 (“As if the text only lived by the repetition of its gesture of closure”) (Bonne- 30 fi s, 25). 31 11. Robert Lethbridge gives an excellent account of the autobiographical 32 readings that have plagued the criticism of L’Oeuvre, arguing that any autobio- 33 graphical value resides in the “production” or process of creation of the novel 34 as a whole rather than in anything the fi nal novel can reveal to the reader. Rob- 35 ert Lethbridge, “L’Homme et L’Oeuvre: Zola et la déformation romanesque,” in Lire/Dé-lire Zola, ed. Jean-Pierre Leduc-Adine and Henri Mitterand (Paris: 36 Nouveau Monde, 2004), 135–52. 37 12. “It is perhaps striking that at the moment when writing becomes an ar- 38 tistic search, becomes literature, the writer feels an ever greater need to keep a 39 connection with himself. He feels disgust at giving himself over to this neutral 40 force, formless and futureless, behind everything that is written, disgust and 41 248 Notes to Pages 172–175

1 apprehension revealed by the care taken by so many authors to compose what 2 they call their Journal.” 3 Chapter 8 4 1. Sandy Petrey, “Stylistics and Society in La Curée,” MLN: Modern Lan- 5 guage Notes 89, no. 4, French issue (May 1974): 630. 6 2. “The employee’s plan for making a killing was simple and practical. . . . 7 He knew his Paris like the back of his hand; he knew that the money shower 8 that beat against the walls would fall harder each day. Clever people only had 9 to open up their pockets. He put himself on the side of the clever, reading the 10 future in the offi ces of the Hôtel de Ville.” 11 3. David Bell analyzes the connection between the “universal equivalent” and political power in the Rougon-Macquart, arguing that the hidden origins 12 of the gold standard function in precisely the same way as the foundation of 13 the Second Empire: paraphrasing Marx, “gold as money can occupy a position 14 of transcendence only if the genesis of the monetary form through four distinct 15 phases is obscured or forgotten. Gold itself was originally a mere commodity, 16 and only if this fact is neglected can its position of prestige and uniqueness be 17 maintained.” David Bell, Models of Power: Politics and Economics in Zola’s 18 “Rougon-Macquart” (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988), 17. 4. “And with his hand spread out, open and slicing like a large knife, he 19 made a gesture to separate the city into four parts. . . . [Speaking to his wife] 20 ‘Here, follow my hand a little. From the boulevard du Temple to the barrière 21 du Trône, one gash; another gash from the Madeleine to Monceau; and a third 22 gash in this direction here, another gash in that direction, a gash over here, a 23 gash further out, gashes everywhere, Paris hacked by saber blows, its veins 24 open, feeding a hundred thousand road workers and masons.” 25 5. “One day, Saccard dared take the liberty of consulting, in the prefect’s of- 26 fi ce, the famous map of [or plan for] Paris upon which ‘an august hand’ had traced in red ink the principal routes of the second network. Those bloody pen 27 strokes cut through Paris even deeper than had the surveyor’s hand.” 28 6. “The Emperor was in a hurry to show me a map of Paris upon which He 29 Himself had traced in blue, in red, in yellow and in green, according to the 30 degrees of urgency, the different new roads which He proposed having con- 31 structed.” Baron Haussmann, Mémoires du Baron Haussmann: Vol. II: Préfec- 32 ture de la Seine (Paris: Victor-Havard, 1890), 53. 33 7. See Commission des embellissements de Paris, Commission des embellisse- 34 ments de Paris: Rapport à l’empereur Napoléon III, ed. Pierre Casselle, Cahiers de la Rotonde, 2001, no. 23. 35 8. “On the day that Haussmann took his oath of offi ce, the Emperor handed 36 him a map, so the legend spun by Haussmann in his Mémoires has it. . . . This 37 was, according to Haussmann, the plan that he faithfully carried out (with a 38 few extensions) over the next two decades. We now know this to be a myth.” 39 David Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003), 8. 40 David P. Jordan, in a mostly favorable study of Haussmann’s achievements, 41 wants to take the baron at his word concerning the existence of the Emperor’s Notes to Pages 176–196 249 map, but concedes that “mystery” surrounds it, that its “very existence” raises 1 questions, since it would have been destroyed along with all the other archives 2 in the Hôtel de Ville during the bloody days of the Commune. David P. Jordan, 3 Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann (New York: 4 Free Press, 1995), 170. 9. For a thorough study of bird’s-eye views of Paris and the city in general in 5 the fi rst half of the nineteenth century, see Seth Graebner. “The Bird’s-Eye View: 6 Looking at the City in Paris and Algiers,” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 7 36, nos. 3–4 (2008): 221–39. 8 10. The image can be seen at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, in the 9 Nouvelles Acquisitions françaises, no. 10.316, folio 416. 10 11. “Since 1868, I stay in the grid that I have imposed for myself, the genea- 11 logical tree indicates for me the major lines, without letting me deviate right 12 or left. I have to follow it strictly; it is at once my force and my regulator. The conclusions are ready-made. Here is what I have wanted and here is what I 13 accomplished.” 14 12. “It was a large sheet of yellowed paper, worn at its fold, from which rose 15 up, drawn in bold strokes, a symbolic tree, whose outstretched, subdivided 16 branches lined up fi ve rows of wide leaves; and each leaf bore a name, and 17 contained, in small handwriting, a biography, a hereditary case.” 18 19 Part V Chapter 9 20 1. Quotations of the Recherche are taken from the Pléiade editions of 1987– 21 89. I will use the following abbreviations for convenience: CS—Le Côté de chez 22 Swann, JF—À l’ombre des jeunes fi lles en eurs,fl CG—Le Côté de Guerman- 23 tes, SG—Sodome et Gomorrhe, P—La Prisonnière, AD—Albertine disparue, 24 TR—Le Temps retrouvé. Roman numerals correspond to the Pléiade volume. 25 2. “A man who sleeps holds in a circle around him the thread of hours, the 26 order of years and of worlds. He consults them instinctively upon waking and 27 reads in a second the place on earth that he occupies, the time that has elapsed until his waking; but this order can be confused, and break . . . But it suffi ced 28 that, in my very bed, my sleep was deep and entirely relaxed my mind; then, it 29 let go the map of the place where I had fallen asleep, and when I would wake 30 up in the middle of the night, as I did not know where I was, I did not even 31 know at fi rst who I was; I only had the rudimentary sense of existence as it can 32 quiver for an animal; I was more deprived of perception than the cave dweller; 33 but then the memory—not yet of the place where I was, but of some of those I 34 had inhabited and where I might have been—came to me like a salvation from 35 above to pull me out of the nothingness which I could not escape alone; I trav- eled over one second over centuries of civilization and the confused images of 36 oil-lamps, of shirts with folded-down collars, recomposed the original features 37 of my ego.” 38 3. Much of Proustian criticism has denied any relationship between Bergson’s 39 metaphysics and Proust’s novel on the basis that they have different concep- 40 tions of duration (see Georges Poulet’s L’Espace proustien and Julia Kristeva’s 41 250 Notes to Pages 196–199

1 Le Temps sensible, 240 and 377). The description here of active memory, and 2 especially later of involuntary memory in the madeleine episode, as the sensa- 3 tion of an “image” or “souvenir visuel” that is unanchored, rises up to the sur- face of consciousness, which itself is displaced and orients itself to receive the 4 memory, is remarkably similar to Henri Bergson’s concept of consciousness and 5 pure memory, as represented in the fi gure of the cone (see Bergson,Matière et 6 mémoire, 181; Deleuze, Proust et les signes, 73; and Dumoncel, 52–53). 7 4. “But it was no use knowing that I was not in the houses which in my 8 unaware state of waking had for an instant if not given me a distinct image, at 9 least made me believe the possible presence, my memory had been set in mo- 10 tion; generally I did not try to go back to sleep right away; I spent a good part 11 of the night recalling our life in the old days, in Combray at my great aunt’s house, in Balbec, in Paris, in Doncières, in Venice, other places still, recalling 12 the places, the people whom I used to know, what I saw of them, what people 13 told me about them.” 14 5. “I put my tea cup down and I turned toward my mind. It is up to it to 15 discover the truth. But how? Serious uncertainty, whenever the mind feels over- 16 taken by itself; when it, the seeker, is at once the obscure country where it must 17 search and where its baggage will be useless. To seek? More than that: to cre- 18 ate. It is confronted with something that does not yet exist and that only it can bring about, then bring to the light.” 19 6. In an alternative version to the beginning of Le Côté de Guermantes, 20 Proust envisioned a long analysis of the “Noms de personnes” (perhaps a pun, 21 “names of persons” or “nobody’s name,” since for Proust names never coin- 22 cide with the people they designate). One of the versions of the “Noms de 23 personnes,” found in the “Esquisse VIII” of the second tome of the Pléiade edi- 24 tion, elaborates the evocative power of Names and their spatial quality (CG II, 25 1051–52). In yet another version, published in the 1954 Contre Sainte-Beuve 26 (but absent from the second Pléiade), Proust is more explicit: “C’est encore aujourd’hui un des grands charmes des familles nobles qu’elles semblent situées 27 dans un coin de terre particulier, que leur nom qui est toujours un nom de lieu 28 . . .” (268) (“It is still one of the great charms of noble families that they seem 29 situated in a particular corner of the land, that their name, which is always a 30 place name . . .”). 31 7. “La singularité supposée du nom propre répond à la singularité mythique 32 du lieu, et la renforce” (Gérard Genette “Proust et le langage indirect” Fig- 33 ures II, 234) (“The supposed singularity of a proper name corresponds to the 34 mythical singularity of the place, and reinforces it”). “Le charme d’un lieu tient donc, en dernière analyse, au fait qu’il est lui-même et non pas un autre, qu’il 35 possède, à l’égal des êtres humains, cette caractéristique essentielle qui s’appelle 36 l’unicité” (Georges Poulet, L’espace Proustien, 49) (“A place’s charm comes 37 from the fact that it is itself and not another, that it possesses, just like human 38 beings, this essential characteristic called unicity”). 39 8. Jeffrey Mehlman’s reading of “Combray” in A Structural Study of Au- 40 tobiography: Proust, Leiris, Sartre, Lévi-Strauss focuses its argument on the 41 “failure of the paternal principle” (24). Notes to Pages 199–207 251

9. Uncovering the chiasmus of critic and novelistic creation, Lawrence 1 Kritzman argues that Barthes’s work on Proust serves as an “intertext” to work 2 through Barthes’s own mourning for the death of his mother: “Ironically unlike 3 Freud who had, seventy-fi ve years earlier, asserted that the death of the father 4 is the major event in a man’s life, here it is not the father who is mourned, but rather the mother and, in Proust’s case, by extension, the grandmother” 5 (“Barthes’s Way: Un Amour de Proust,” 535). 6 10. “For there were around Combray two ‘Ways’ for strolling, and so op- 7 posed that we would not in fact leave our house by the same door, when we 8 wanted to go one way or the other. . . . Since my father always spoke of the 9 Méséglise way as comprising the most beautiful view of the plain that he knew 10 and the Guermantes way as typical of stream scenery, I gave them, by conceiv- 11 ing them thus as two entities, a cohesion, a unity that only belongs to creations 12 of our mind. . . . This habit that we had of never going both ways on the same day, enclosed them so to speak far from one another, unknowable to each other, 13 in the sealed vessels, between which there was no communication, of different 14 afternoons.” 15 11. In Proust et les signes, Gilles Deleuze argues that the two “côtés” provide 16 the model for other systems of “vases clos” in the Recherche, which are op- 17 posed to “boîtes entrouvertes” (“half-opened boxes”) such as proper names, 18 which do communicate. Deleuze resists the idea that the two “côtés” ever come 19 together. 12. “To start, between space and place, I place a distinction that will delimit a 20 fi eld. Aplace is an order (whatever it may be) according to which elements are 21 distributed in relationships of coexistence. The possibility is therefore excluded 22 for two things to occupy the same spot. The law of the ‘proper’ rules there: ele- 23 ments are one beside the other, each situated in a spot ‘proper’ and distinct to it 24 that defi nes it. A place is therefore an instantaneous confi guration of positions. 25 It implies an indication of stability.” 26 13. “There is space as soon as directional vectors, quantities of speed, and the 27 variable of time are taken into consideration . . . Space would be to place, what the written word is to the spoken word.” 28 14. “The stone for the nave and the towers really came from the cliffs beaten 29 by the tides. But this sea, which for those reasons I imagined as coming to die 30 at the foot of the stained-glass window, was more than fi ve leagues away, at 31 Balbec-Plage, and next to its dome, this steeple, which, because I had read that 32 it was also a harsh Norman cliff where grains were stored, where birds would 33 whirl around, I always represented to myself as receiving at its base the last 34 foam of the rising waves, rose up on a square at the junction of two tramway 35 lines, opposite a café which displayed, in golden letters, the word ‘Billiards’; the steeple stood out against a background of houses whose roofs mixed with no 36 masts. And the church . . . was one with all the rest, seemed an accident.” 37 15. “I could discern that the charm of each of the paintings consisted of a 38 sort of metamorphosis of represented things, analogous to what in poetry is 39 called metaphor and that if God the Father had created things by naming them, 40 it is by taking away their name, or by giving them another that Elstir re-created 41 252 Notes to Pages 209–216

1 them. Names which designate things always correspond to a notion of our 2 intellect, foreign to our true impressions and which force us to eliminate from 3 them everything that does not relate to this notion.” 16. “It is as if she told me: ‘Turn left, then take the path on your right, and 4 you will touch the intangible, you will attain the unattainable distant places 5 that we know on earth only by the direction which leads to them, of which we 6 know only—what I used to believe that I could know only about Guermantes, 7 and maybe, in a sense, I was not mistaken—the ‘path.’” 8 17. “An edifi ce occupying, it can be said, a space in four dimensions—the 9 fourth being that of time—deploying through the centuries its nave [or “ship”] 10 which, from each row of benches, from each chapel, seemed to conquer and 11 breach not only a few meters, but successive epochs from which it emerged victorious.” 12 18. Christie McDonald, in The Proustian Fabric, explains the relation be- 13 tween dream, text, and interpretation: “Because the fundamental structure of 14 the novel is based on the association of ideas, Proust’s equivalent to the basic 15 rule in psychoanalysis, the entire novel calls for a kind of interpretation close 16 to dream analysis in which associations create sense. Through their paratactic 17 power to level hierarchies of thought, books like dreams reorganize time, space, 18 and the sequences of experience” (40). 19 Chapter 10 20 1. Joshua Landy, in “‘Les Moi en Moi’: The Proustian Self in Philosophical 21 Perspective” counts himself, Roland Barthes, and Marcel Muller among those 22 who believe that the Recherche is distinct from the virtual novel of the narrator, 23 and counts Louis Martin-Chauffi er, Jean Rousset, Leo Bersani, Richard Terdi- 24 man, Roger Shattuck, and Gérard Genette among those who believe that the 25 two works are more or less the same (Landy, 127). 26 2. “In fact each moment of the work is in some sort given two times: a fi rst time in the Recherche as the birth of a vocation, a second time in the Recherche 27 as the practice of this vocation; but these ‘two times’ are given to us together, 28 and it is the reader, informed in extremis that the book he has just read remains 29 to be written . . . that it falls upon the reader to go back all the way to the pages 30 of the beginning . . . and that he must now reread.” 31 3. Gérard Genette, in “Littérature et l’espace” in Figures II, while postulat- 32 ing about space in literature in general, notes four manifestations of space in 33 Proust’s Recherche: (1) the preponderance of spatial metaphors in language, 34 which Genette admits was already described by Bergson; (2) the space of the plot, or as Proust calls it, the telescopic aspect of his novel; (3) metaphor, which 35 is the space between “le signifi é apparent et le signifi é réel abolissant du même 36 coup la linéarité du discours” (“the apparent signifi ed and the real signifi ed 37 abolishing at the same time the linearity of discourse”), or as Genette calls it, a 38 “fi gure”; and (4) the space of literary history or intertextuality, perfectly em- 39 bodied by the library. 40 4. William C. Carter’s The Proustian Quest studies Proust’s novel in the his- 41 torical, scientifi c, and ideological contexts of what he calls “the age of speed.” Notes to Pages 218–225 253

5. “I feel tremble inside me something which is moving, which would like 1 to rise up, something that was unanchored, from a great depth; I do not know 2 what it is, but it rises slowly; I feel resistance and I hear the rumbling of the 3 distances traversed. Of course, what fl utters within me must be the image, the 4 visual memory, which linked to this taste, tries to follow it until it reaches me.” 6. “Or, si le temps proustien prend toujours la forme de l’espace, c’est qu’il 5 est d’une nature telle qu’il est directement opposé au temps bergsonien. . . . 6 L’espace proustien est cet espace fi nal, fait de l’ordre dans lequel se distribuent 7 les uns par rapport aux autres les différents épisodes du roman proustien” 8 (Poulet, 135–36) (“If Proustian time always takes spatial form, it is because its 9 nature is such that it is directly opposed to Bergsonian time. . . . Proustian space 10 is that fi nal space, composed of the order in which the different episodes of the 11 Proustian novel are arranged in relationship to each other”). 12 7. “The common sensation sought to re-create around itself the former place, while the current place which occupied the spot opposed with all the inertia of 13 its mass the immigration of a Norman beach or of a railroad embankment into 14 a Parisian ‘hôtel particulier’ . . . Always, with these resurrections, the distant 15 place engendered around the common sensation was for a moment coupled, 16 like a wrestler, with the present place. Always the present place had come off 17 victorious, and always the vanquished one had appeared to me the more beau- 18 tiful of the two . . . And if the present place had not so soon conquered the past 19 one, I think that I would have lost consciousness; for these resurrections of the past, in the second that they last, are so complete that they not only force 20 our eyes to quit seeing the bedroom which is close to them in order to look 21 at the tree-lined path or the rising tide. They force our nostrils to breathe the 22 air of faraway places, our willpower to choose between the different projects 23 which these places offer us, our entire person to believe itself surrounded by 24 these places, or at least to stumble between them and the present places, in 25 the exhilaration of an uncertainty similar to that sometimes experienced when 26 confronting an ineffable vision, at the moment of falling asleep.” 27 8. As I showed in chapters 2 and 4 concerning Stendhal and Nerval, Bergson proposes a model for involuntary memory that describes the consciousness oc- 28 cupying two places and times simultaneously, causing a hallucination (Bergson, 29 161). The consciousness must repress the past as memory in order to focus on 30 immediate danger. 31 9. Proust’s narrator also notices the analogy between his text and Nerval’s. 32 He is reassured that his discovery of the madeleine is more than simply per- 33 sonal, because other writers (Chateaubriand, Nerval, and Baudelaire) have pre- 34 ceded him (TR IV, 498). 35 10. “And now I understood what old age was—the old age that of all reali- ties is perhaps the one for which we keep a purely abstract notion for most of 36 our life, looking at calendars, dating our letters, seeing our friends marry, our 37 friends’ children, without understanding, either out of fear or laziness, what it 38 means . . . I understood what death, love, the joys of the mind, of a vocation, 39 etc. meant . . . Perhaps the cruel discovery that I had just made could only but 40 be useful to me concerning the very material of my book. Since I had decided 41 254 Notes to Pages 225–226

1 that it could not be made up solely of truly full impressions, those outside of 2 time, among the truths with which I hoped to set them, those which were con- 3 nected to time, time in which people, societies, nations bathed and changed, would hold an important place.” 4 11. Maurice Blanchot has argued that the Recherche as literary text cannot 5 consist entirely of “moments bienheureux,” which would lead to something of 6 a “pure narrative,” because there needs to be an articulation of emptiness be- 7 tween each memory that would render the intermittent character of true time. 8 The “privileged instants” of involuntary memory are not “immobile points” 9 but rather are in constant movement from their hidden depths to the surface 10 and back again (Le Livre à venir, 34). Emptiness, conveyed by “the densest 11 continuity” (33) of less pure everyday material and which composes the bulk of the novel, is itself in continual development and movement, turning around 12 itself like a sphere and refl ecting the more profound movement of memory (33). 13 12. “Like the majority of beings, moreover, was she not like the ‘stars’ of 14 crossroads in the forest where paths from the most different points, as in our 15 life as well, come to converge? The paths were numerous for me which led 16 to Mlle de Saint-Loup and which radiated around her. And most importantly 17 what led to her were the two great ‘ways’ where I had had so many walks and 18 dreams.” 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 1 2 Works Cited 3 4 5 6 7 Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic 8 Literature. New York: W. W. Norton, 1971. 9 Ansel, Yves. “Des usages ‘prosaïques’ de la biographie à la ‘Vie de Henry 10 Brulard.’” Stendhal Club 145 (1994): 1–8. 11 Augé, Marc. Non-lieux: Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité. Paris: Seuil, 1992. 12 Bachelard, Gaston. La Poétique de l’espace. Paris: Presses Universitaires de 13 France, 1957. 14 Badiou, Alain. “Logic of the Site.” Diacritics 33, nos. 3–4 (Fall-Winter 2003): 15 141–50. 16 Baguley, David. Critical Essays on Émile Zola. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. 17 ———. Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge 18 University Press, 1990. Balzac, Honoré de. La Peau de chagrin. La Comédie humaine, vol 10. Paris: 19 Gallimard, 1979. 20 Barthes, Roland. “Proust et les noms.” In Le Degré zéro de l’écriture. Paris: 21 Seuil, 1972 22 Becker, Colette. Zola: Le saut dans les étoiles. Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nou- 23 velle, 2002. 24 Beizer, Janet. “History’s Life Story: Nanon as Histoire de ma vie.” In George 25 Sand et l’empire des lettres, edited by Anne E. McCall-Saint-Saens, 275–83. 26 New Orleans: Presses Universitaires du Nouveau Monde, 2004. Bell, David. Models of Power: Politics and Economics in Zola’s “Rougon- 27 Macquart.” Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1988. 28 Bell, Sheila M. “Stendhal’s Vie de Henry Brulard: The Engravings—A Public or 29 Private Matter?” Modern Language Review 93 (1998): 356–69. 30 Bender, John, and Michael Marrinan. The Culture of Diagram. Stanford, Calif.: 31 Stanford University Press, 2010. 32 Benstock, Shari. “The Female Self Engendered: Autobiographical Writing and 33 Theories of Selfhood.” In Women and Autobiography, edited by Martine 34 Watson Brownley and Allison B. Kimmich, 3–13. Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 1999. 35 Bergson, Henri. Matière et mémoire. 1896; Paris: Presses Universitaires de 36 France, 1999. 37 Bersani, Leo. Marcel Proust: The of Life and of Art. New York: Oxford 38 University Press, 1965. 39 40 41

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1 2 3 INDEX 4 5 6 7 Abrams, M. H.: Natural Bastille, fall of, 132. See also French 8 Supernaturalism, 237n4 Revolutions 9 Académie de Dijon prize, 8 Baudelaire, Charles, 176, 233n6, 253n9; 10 Aire Saint-Mittre (desacralized Le Spleen de Paris, 174 cemetery), 170, 174, 182; Zola’s Baudrillard, Jean, 10 11 sketch of, 17, 149, 161–63 Becker, Colette, 159, 165, 245–46nn2,5 12 Alexandria, Egypt, 67, 72–73 Beckett, Samuel, 217 13 Al-Hakim (“Mad Caliph”), 79 Beizer, Janet: “History’s Life Story: 14 Ansel, Yves, 20 Nanon as Histoire de ma vie,” 131 Saint Anselm, 6 Bell, David: Models of Power, 248n3 15 Appian Way, the, 46, 47 Bell, Sheila M.: “Stendhal’s Vie de Henry 16 Apuleius, 102 Brulard,” 235n9 17 Arabic language, 74, 75–77 Bender, John: The Culture of Diagram 18 archives, 169; “archive fever,” 17, 149, (coauthor), 235n7 19 170, 184; origin of word, 169; Zola’s Benstock, Shari, 241n6 dossiers préparatoires, see Zola, Émile Bentham, Jeremy, 9 20 Augé, Marc: Non-lieux, 10 Benveniste, Émile, 26 21 Saint Augustine, 8 Bergson, Henri, 49–50, 106, 218, 221, 22 autobiography, 229; and author as 252n3 23 subject, 27, 40; emergence of, 11; works: L’Évolution créatrice, 9; 24 fi ction confl ated with, 24, 39, 41, Matière et mémoire, 9, 249–50n3 107–9, 189; goal of, 27; Rousseau Berkeley, George, 49 25 and, 8, 11; shift in, 7; Stendhal and, Bersani, Leo, 195, 252n1 26 see Stendhal; subject reborn as text, Bible, the: Latin translation of, 34–35; 27 102; taboo against, 108; women and, stories from, 82 28 107n, 108–9, (Sand) 16, 111–12, 129. Bibliothèque nationale de France, 149 29 See also subjectivity Biggs, Michael: “Putting the State on the Ayers, Edward L.: “Mapping Time,” 11 Map,” 244n7 30 Blanche, Dr. Esprit, 86 31 Bachelard, Gaston: La Poétique de Blanchot, Maurice, 154 32 l’espace, 9 works: L’Espace littéraire, 167; Le 33 Badiou, Alain: “Logic of the Site,” 243n2 livre à venir, 222, 254n11 Baguley, David: Naturalist Fiction, 246n3 Blin, Georges: Stendhal et les problèmes 34 Balbec, 205–7 du roman, 20 35 Balzac, Honoré de, 108, 112, 240n2 Blum, Léon: Stendhal et le beylisme, 19 36 works: Comédie humaine, 166; La Borghèse, François, 47 37 Peau de chagrin, 4–5, 194, 234n6 Bourdieu, Pierre, 10; Les Règles de l’art, 38 baroque, the, 47, 86 11 Barthes, Roland, 251n9, 252n1; “Proust Bowman, Frank Paul: La conquête de 39 et les noms,” 198–99 soi par l’écriture, 66 40 41

263 264 Index

1 Brée, Germaine: “Autogynography,” consciousness, theory of, 49–50, 102; 2 241n6 attention diverted from, 10; Descartes Burke, Edmund, 136; Refl ections on the and, 6; and dreams, 104, 193; “narra- 3 Revolution in France, 135 tive,” 74; Western unconscious, 62 4 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 70; Childe Constantinople, 65–66, 69–70, 74, 5 Harold, 47 80–81; Journal de, 66 6 Cook, Captain James, 70 7 Cairo, allegorized as veiled woman, Corday, Charlotte, 32 74–77 Cornell, Kenneth: “Zola’s City,” 178 8 capitalism: “capitalization of humanity,” Coulont-Henderson, Françoise, 38–39, 9 172; money as metaphor, 174, 177; 51 10 production of space by, 12, (breakup Crouzet, Michel, 44, 234n3 11 of Paris space) 176 Crusades, the, 80 Carpenter, Scott: Acts of Fiction, cyberspace, 5. See also space 12 238n14 13 Carter, William C., 216; The Proustian Dante Alighieri, 102 14 Quest, 252n4 Daru, Martial, 57 15 cartography. See maps Daru, Pierre, 33 16 Casanova, 70 Dear, Michael: GeoHumanities (ed.), 11 Cassini maps. See maps Deleuze, Gilles, 164, 199, 214 17 Cecelia Metella, tomb of, 46, 47 works: Cinéma I, 218; Critique 18 Cellier, Léon, 96 et Clinique, 235n10; Foucault, 10, 19 censorship, mechanism of, 56. See also 235n11; Logique du sens, 164; Mille 20 memory plateaux (coauthor), 88, 239n2; 21 Certeau, Michel de, 10, 204, 216–17, Le Pli, 16, 86; Proust et les signes, 223; L’invention du quotidian 1: Arts 250n3, 251n11 22 de faire, 89, 203 Derrida, Jacques: L’Écriture et la 23 Cestius, pyramid of, 46, 47 difference, 10, 102–3; Mal d’archive, 24 Chambers, Ross: Gérard de Nerval et la 169 25 poétique du voyage, 66; Mélancolie Descartes, René, and Cartesianism, 8–9, 26 et opposition, 103; The Writing of 51; “Cartesian” maps, 7, 34, 42–43, Melancholy, 233n6 59, 189, 235n1, (and autobiography) 27 Charlier, Victor, 111 39, (city plans) 82, (Nerval abandons) 28 Chateaubriand, François de, 23, 40, 65, 85, 99; cogito of, 4, 7, 27, 102, 195; 29 67, 253n9 Discours de la méthode, 5–7, 24; 30 Chotard, Loïc, 103: Nerval: Mémoire de light as metaphor for knowledge, 25; la critique, 61 philosophical doubts, 3, 6, 8, 193 31 Clark, T. J.: The Painting of Modern Diderot, Denis, 235n6 32 Life, 176 Didier, Béatrice, 34 33 Cohen, Margaret, 108; The Sentimental works: preface to Indiana, 111; 34 Education of the Novel, 240n2 preface to Vie de Henry Brulard, 36; 35 Colette, Sidonie-Gabrielle: La Naissance Sade, 119; Stendhal autobiographe, 45 du jour, 107 Domenichino: “San Girolamo nel 36 Colomb, Roland, 52 deserto,” 34 37 Colonna, Francesco, 71; dossiers préparatoires. See Zola, Émile 38 Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, 72 “double aspect.” See novel map 39 Conley, Tom: The Self-Made Map, 6–7; dreams, 101–6; “Cartesian,” 4, 193. See 40 “A Suckling of Cities: Montaigne in also sleep Paris and Rome,” 49 Dreyfus Affair, 13, 210 41 Index 265

Druse religion, 77, 79, 82, 85 129–34, 136; the Terror during, 132, 1 Dumoncel, Jean-Claude, 250n3 134, 146 2 Freud, Sigmund, 251n9; Civilization and 3 École des Hautes Études en Sciences Its Discontents, 49 Sociales (EHESS), 245n14 4 Einstein, Albert, 12 Il Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi): “La 5 Enlightenment, the, 5, 9, 10, 135 Resurrezione di Lazaro,” 35 6 Eschérazy, Sheik, 79–80 Gautier, Théophile, 61–62, 66, 81, 103 7 États-Majors maps, 12. See also maps genealogy: “fantastique,” 85–94 (see etymology. See names also Nerval, Gérard de [works]); of 8 Zola’s Rougon-Macquart family, 16– 9 Faure, Félix, 51–52 17, 150, 190, 224, 229, (genealogical 10 “fêlé,” “fêlure,” 164–68, 169–72, 174, trees) 179–87 11 183 Genette, Gérard, 252n1 12 Felman, Shoshana: La Folie et la chose works: Figures, 198, 214, 250n7, littéraire, 102–3 252n3; “Littérature et l’espace,” 13 Fish, Stanley, 11 252n3; “Métonymie chez Proust,” 14 Flaubert, Gustave, 74, 147, 152–53, 198; “Proust et le langage indirect,” 15 243n1 250n7; “Proust Palimpseste,” 214 16 works: Bouvard et Pécuchet, 156; “geohumanities,” 11 17 L’Éducation sentimentale, 210 Germany, French maps of, 175–76 Fletcher, Angus: Allegory, The Theory of Gianicolo Hill (Janiculum), view from, 18 a Symbolic Mode, 238n10 43, 46–47, 106, 122 19 Foucault, Michel, 10, 102–3; Surveiller Girardin, Delphine de, 109 20 et punir, 9 GIS (geographical information science), 21 France: Central Committee of National 10–11. See also technology 22 Guard of, 133; First Empire, 176; Godard, Jean-Luc, 176 First, Second, and Third Republics, Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Italian 23 130, 135; maps of, see maps; physical Journey, 47 24 space altered, 12, 134–36, 176; Goldsmith, Oliver: The Vicar of 25 Second Empire, 148, 151, 180, 248n3, Wakefi eld, 31, 32 26 (decadence of) 16, 172, (fall of) 152, Gozzi, Marco, 71 175–76, (family life during) 157, 163, Graebner, Seth: “The Bird’s-Eye View,” 27 170. See also French Revolutions; 249n9 28 Paris Greenwich Mean Time, 12 29 Franco-Prussian War, 130, 152, 175–76 Guattari, Félix: Mille plateaux 30 Frederick II, The Great, King of Prussia, (coauthor), 88, 239n2 31 52 Freemasonry, 74, 80, 82, 83 Hadrian’s tomb, 46 32 French Revolutions, 5, 9, 12, 38; Hamon, Philippe: Le Personnel du 33 la grande peur during, 133, 142; roman, 163, 245n1 34 historical space of, 142; July Harvey, David, 12, 176 35 Revolution, 112, 114, 124, 245n17, works: The Condition of 36 (July Monarchy) 52; and maps of Postmodernity, 233n6; Paris, Capital France, 12–13, 134–36; Masonic of Modernity, 248n8 37 role in, 83; Paris Commune and Haussmann, Georges-Eugène, 13, 172, 38 Communards (1871), 129–31, 133, 175–77, 179; Mémoires of, 248nn6,8 39 136, 141–43, 146, (manifesto quoted) Hiddleston, Janet: George Sand and 40 245n15; Sand’s account of, 13, 16, Autobiography, 240n3 41 266 Index

1 Holmes, Richard, 237n2 Lefebvre, Henri, 12; La Proclamation de 2 Holofernes, 47 la Commune, 243n3, 245n15 Homer: The Odyssey, 101, 239n6 Leibniz, Gottfried, baron von, 86 3 Hugo, Victor, 158, 193; Notre-Dame de Leiris, Michel Julien, 65 4 Paris, 155, 157 Lejeune, Philippe, 32 5 works: L’Autobiographie en France, 6 Islamic culture, 73, 76, 81 7, 240n4; Le Pacte autobiographique, 7 31–33 Jacob, Christian, 35; L’Empire des Lethbridge, Robert, 247n11 8 cartes, 13, 36 Levin, Harry: The Gates of Horn, 9 Jameson, Fredric: The Seeds of Time, 239n6 10 233n6 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 10, 65 11 Janin, Jules, 66 literature: belles lettres, 155, 158; life Saint Jerome, 34–35 as, 212; notion of, 154–58. See also 12 Jordan, David P.: Transforming Paris, textuality 13 248–49n8 Louis XVIII, king of France, 116 14 Journal de Constantinople, 66 Louis-Philippe, king of the French, 116, 15 Journal des Débats, 111 117 16 July Revolution. See French Revolutions Lumbroso, Olivier, 160 Jussieu, André de, 25 works: Les Manuscrits et dessins 17 de Zola (coauthor), 162, 245–46n2; 18 Keats, John, 47 Zola: La plume et le compas, 159 19 Kern, Stephen: The Culture of Time and Luria, Sarah: GeoHumanities (ed.), 11 20 Space, 12 21 Ketchum, Jim: GeoHumanities (ed.), Macquart family, 159. See also Zola, 11 Émile (works) 22 Knights Templar, 80 madness: death associated with, 101–4; 23 Kofman, Sarah, 94, 95 Nerval and, 16, 63, 79; Stendhal and, 24 Kristeva, Julia: Le temps sensible, 208, 53–54 25 249–50n3 Mahuzier, Brigitte, 36 26 Kritzman, Lawrence: “Barthes’s Way,” Mallarmé, Stéphane, 156–57; “Crise de 251n9 vers,” 198 27 maps: “Cartesian,” see Descartes, René, 28 Labrunie, Étienne, 92; Labrunie family, and Cartesianism; Cassini, 12, 13, 16, 29 88–93 131, 229, (Carte de Cassini or “Carte 30 Labrunie, Gérard, 91–93. See also de l’Académie”) 135–36, 138–42, Nerval, Gérard de 144, (“Carte générale de la France”) 31 Lacan, Jacques: Écrits I and II, 202 129; États-Majors, 12; of France, 32 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 65, 74 army’s lack of, 175–76; French 33 Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi di: Il Revolution and, 12–13, 134–36; of 34 gattopardo, 113 Germany, 175–76; narrative function 35 Landy, Joshua, 213; “‘Les Moi en Moi’,” of, 34, 37–39, 59; of Paris, 171–79; 252n1 problematic nature of, 35; sketched 36 Lang, Candace, 36 by Stendhal, 13, 34–39, 42–43, 37 Laplanche, L.: The Language of 159, 221, 229, (allegorical) 51–54, 38 Psychoanalysis (coauthor), 202 61; talisman as map, 4–5; in Zola’s 39 Laurent, Marie Antoinette, 92; Laurent dossiers préparatoires, 158–62. See 40 family, 88, 90, 92 also space 41 Index 267

Marder, Elissa: Dead Time: Temporal money. See capitalism 1 Disorders in the Wake of Modernity, Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 90 2 233n6 works: “De la vanité,” 48; Essais, 3 Marie, Aristide: Gérard de Nerval, 48–49, 50; Journal de voyage en 239n1 Italie, 49 4 Marin, Louis, 14 Montesquieu, Charles Louis de 5 works: “The Autobiographical Secondat, baron de la Brède et, 48, 52 6 Interruption,” 26, 33, 234n1; “Sur Moretti, Franco: Graphs, Maps, Trees, 11 7 un certain regard du sujet,” 29, 34; Moss, Howard, 217 Utopiques: Jeux d’espaces, 10, 136 Mossman, Carol, 34–35, 46 8 Marmontel, Jean-François: Bélisaire, 30, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 52 9 32, 58 Mozet, Nicole, 131, 142, 244n13 10 Maronites, 77 Muller, Marcel, 252n1 11 Martin-Chauffi er, Louis, 252n1 Murdoch, Adlai, 118 12 Martineau, Henri: “Avertissement,” 20 Marx, Karl, 248n3; Communist Naginski, Isabelle Hoog: George Sand: 13 Manifesto, 243n4 Writing for Her Life, 108 14 Masonic lodge. See Freemasonry names: Nerval’s etymology, 89–93, 15 McDonald, Christie: “Fractured 94; Proust and, 198–204, 212, 16 Readers,” 234n6; The Proustian (World War I and) 210; pseudonyms, 17 Fabric, 252n18 19–20, 61; spatial dimension of, 199; Mehlman, Jeffrey: A Structural Study of women’s, Stendhal and, 27–29 18 Autobiography, 250n8 Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte), 20, 19 Melara, Miriella, 32 54, 175, 239n1; fall of, 53; statue of, 20 memory: involuntary, 197, 213, 215–24; 177 21 maps producing or replacing, 39, Napoléon III (Louis-Napoléon), 22 59; narrative erasing, 26, 42, 55–58; emperor of France, 16, 161, 170; objective rendering of, 57–58, 195; coup d’état of, 160, 173; plans for 23 pure, or universal, 49–50; text’s Paris, 149, 172, 175; Prussians defeat, 24 invention of, 41 falls, 130, 152–53, 176 25 Merriman, Michael: The Culture of naturalism, Zola’s, 149, 151, 153–54, 26 Diagram (coauthor), 235n7 156–57 metaphor(s): language as, 27; light as Nero (Roman emperor), 79 27 metaphor for knowledge, 25; money Nerva (Roman emperor), 86, 91 28 as, 174, 177; movement in the form Nerval, Gérard de, 14, 15, 191, 253n9; 29 of, 216–17, 220–22, 227; names as, and autobiography, 107–9, 189, 30 89; for struggle with description, 56; double perspective of, 105, 223–24, 31 for surveillance society, 9; in works of 229; mental illness of, 16, 63, 79; art, 207–8 novel maps of, 147, 148; Stendhal 32 Miller, Nancy: Subject to Change: compared to, 61–62, 100, 105–6, 190 33 Reading Feminist Writing, 240nn3,4 works: Les Amours de Vienne, 66; 34 Mitterand, Henri, 160, 177; Les Angélique, 235n6; Aurélia ou le rêve 35 Manuscrits et dessins de Zola et la vie, 62, 67, 82, 100–106, 190, 36 (coauthor), 162, 245–46n2 193–95, (foreshadowed) 79, 90, modernism and postmodernism, 154, (structure of) 13, 96, (subjectivity of) 37 229–30, 233n6 85–86; “El Desdichado,” 89; “Druses 38 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin), 29, 48, et Maronites,” 69, 73, 77–80; “Les 39 53, 70 Femmes du Caire,” 73, 74–75; Les 40 41 268 Index

1 Filles du feu, 86, 93; “Généalogie Petrey, Sandy, 172; In the Court of the 2 fantastique,” 13, 62, 85–94, 96, 99, Pear King, 112 106, 190, 229; “Histoire de la Reine Picon, Georges, 240n4 3 du matin et de Soliman prince des Piranesi, Giovanni Battista, 46 4 génies,” 66, 82; “Histoire du caliphe place: defi ned, 203–4; law of, yields to 5 Hakem,” 66, 79; Lorely, 66; Les time, 215–16, 223; uniqueness of, 6 Nuits d’octobre, 95; “Les Nuits du 206. See also names; space 7 Ramazan,” 73, 80; Oeuvres I and Plato, 155; Republic, 47 II, 65–68, 93–95, 235n6, 237n3; Plauchut, Edmond, 130 8 Promenades et souvenirs, 95; “Les Pliny, 29 9 Pyramides,” 66; Sylvie, souvenirs du “poeticity”: of the novel, 159, 164; of 10 Valois, 13, 62, 67, 85–86, 93–100, the world, 155; Zola and, 247n7 11 106; Voyage en Orient, 16, 61–62, political dissensuality, 157 65–83, 85, 89–90, 101, 104–5, Poncy, Charles, 243n1 12 205, (intertextuality in) 94, 100, Pontalis, J.-B.: The Language of 13 (“Introduction: “Vers l’Orient”) 67, Psychoanalysis (coauthor), 202 14 72, 73, 104 Poulet, Georges, 222; L’Espace 15 Nesci, Catherine: Le fl âneur et les proustien, 9, 221, 249n3, 250n7 16 fl âneuses, 109 Prasad, Pratima: “Espace colonial et New York Times, 11 vérité historique dans Indiana,” 118 17 Nodier, Charles: Franciscus Columna, Prendergast, Christopher: The Order of 18 71–72 Mimesis, 94 19 Noue, M. de, 47 Proust, Marcel, 4–5, 14, 46, 89, 108, 20 novel map, 7, 171, 191; “double 229, 230; and wakened sleeper 21 aspect” of, 63, 105–6, 190; Stendhal (“dormeur éveillé”), 51, 102, 193–97, and Nerval and, 15, 16, 42, 59, 62, 224 22 147–48, (Nerval’s double perspective) works: À la recherche du temps 23 105, 223–24, 229; talisman as, 13–14. perdu, 13, 17, 43, 189–90, 193–212, 24 See also maps 213–17, 224, 227, (madeleine episode) 25 197–98, 220, 221, 250n3, 253n9, 26 Orient, the, 68–77, 100 (Pléiade editions) 249n1; Albertine Othon (Roman emperor), 89 disparue (AD), 200, 208–9, À l’ombre 27 des jeunes fi lles en fl eurs (JF), 121, 28 panopticon, invention of, 9, 10 200, 202, 205–7; “Combray,” 102, 29 Paris: autonomy of, in Paris Commune, 196–202, 209–10, 217–18, 223, 228; 30 245n15; conservative provinces’ Contre Sainte-Beuve, 200, 239n4, distrust of, 243n5; Haussmann’s plan 250n6; Du Côté de chez Swann 31 for, 175–76; Ministry of War in, 33; (CS), 13, 193, 200–202, 204–5, 209, 32 Napoléon III’s plans for, 149, 172, 211, 219; Le Côté de Guermantes 33 175; as setting for Rougon-Macquart (CG), 13, 198–202, 208–9, 212, 34 series: (maps of) 171–79, (photograph 218; “Nom de pays: le nom,” 204–5; 35 and engraving of) 178; World War I “Nom de pays: le pays,” 205, 208; and, 210 La Prisonnière (P), 43; Sodome et 36 Paris Commune and Communards Gomorrhe (SG), 198; Le temps 37 (1871). See French Revolutions retrouvé (TR), 106, 197–99, 204–8, 38 Saint Paul, 47 210–12, 217–20, 222–23, 225–26 39 Pelletier, Monique, 139 Prussia. See Franco-Prussian War 40 Perec, Georges: Espèces d’espaces, 189 pyramids: of Cestius, 46, 47; Egyptian, Saint Peter, 46 69, (Great) 77 41 Index 269

Rancière, Jacques, 15, 159, 163–64, 193 “Notice” to) 111, 113–15, 117, 1 works: La Parole muette: Essai sur (utopian spaces) 129–30, 190, (see 2 les contradictions de la littérature, also utopia); Nanon, 13, 16, 108–10, 3 126, 154–58, 170; Politique de la 129–46, 160, 172, 190, (alternative littérature, 126 titles) 144, (endnote to) 244n13, 4 Rannaud, Gérard, 22 (preface to) 131; Rose et Blanche 5 Raphael, 46; The Transfi guration, 44, 45 (coauthor), 111 6 “referential illusion,” 13–14, 191 Sand, Maurice, 94, 95, 139 7 religion, “universal,” 79. See also Druse Sandeau, Jules: Rose et Blanche religion; Islamic culture (coauthor), 111 8 Renaissance, the, 90; cosmography of, 5 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 24, 53, 154 9 Restoration, the, 52, 115, 116 Schaeffer, Gerald, 72; Le Voyage en 10 Revolution of 1848, 66. See also French Orient de Nerval, 237n4 11 Revolutions Schehr, Lawrence, 236n7 12 Richard, Jean-Pierre, 90; Microlectures, Schivelbusch, Wolfgang: The Railway 86 Journey: The Industrialization of Time 13 Richardson, Douglas: GeoHumanities and Space in the 19th Century, 233n6 14 (ed.), 11 Schor, Naomi: George Sand and 15 Richardson, Michael: “Enough Said,” Idealism, 107, 129; Zola’s Crowds, 16 238n9 163 17 Richer, Jean, 90, 92 Scott, Sir Walter, 34, 55 works: Nerval: Expérience vécue Serres, Michel, 152 18 & Création ésotérique, 86, 239n1; Shattuck, Roger, 210, 218, 252n1; 19 Nerval et les doctrines ésotériques, 82 Proust’s Binoculars, 217 20 Ricoeur, Paul: Temps et récit II, 213–14 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 47 21 Rogers, Nancy E.: “Nanon: Novel of Sheringham, Michael: French 22 Revolution,” 131 Autobiography: Devices and Desires, Rome, Stendhal’s view of, 42–51, 54, 235n7 23 59, 72; “double aspect” of, 105–6; as sleep, 104; awakening from, 213, 24 novel map, 229 (Proust’s wakened sleeper, “dormeur 25 Ross, Kristin: The Emergence of Social éveillé”) 51, 102, 193–97, 224; 26 Space, 243n4 “invisible world of,” 101–2. See also Rougon family, 159, 170. See also Zola, dreams 27 Émile (works) Smith, Sidonie, 241n6 28 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 9, 40, 52, 108 space: alteration of French, 134–36, 29 works: Confessions, 4, 7–8, 11; (capitalism and) 12, 176; conception 30 Émile, 8 of, during Revolution, 134, 142; 31 Rousset, Jean, 252n1 narrative and, 89; place distinguished from, 203–4; self as subject of, 229; 32 Said, Edward: Orientalism, 73–74, shrunk by speed of communication 33 237n1 and transportation, 10, 12, 216, 230– 34 Sand, George, 14, 107–10, 145, 147–48, 31; spatialization of thought, 5, 9–12, 35 189, 229; “masculine” narrative of, 14, (in Nerval’s “Généalogie”) 92–93, 36 117 99, (spatial dimension of names) 199, works: Correspondance XI and (and utopia) 136; textual, 6, 9, 15, 37 XXII, 130, 139; François le Champi, (text structured by) 94, 96, 199; and 38 222; Histoire de ma vie, 107, 111–12, time, see time. See also maps 39 240n4, 244n13; Indiana, 16, 108–10, Stanton, Domna, 108; The Female 40 111–27, 146, 229, (prefaces and Autograph, 241n6 41 270 Index

1 Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), 14, Tasso, Torquato, 46, 52 2 107, 112–13, 148, 151, 240n2; and technology: effect of, 10, 12, 216, autobiography, 19, 27–33, 100, 230–31; World War I, 221 3 147, 189–90, 236–37n7, (absence Terdiman, Richard, 252n1 4 of mother’s name) 35–36, 92, Terror, the. See French Revolutions 5 (autobiographical truth) 21–22, textuality, 14, 58; and inter-textuality, 6 39, 55, 57, 59, (distinguished from 30; power of, 22, 41, (control of) 8; 7 fi ction) 32, 62, 108, 165, (early 42; sanctity of, 35; textual space, see diaries) 20; fi rst use of pseudonym, space; textual subject, 40; textual 8 20; ichnographic maps by, see maps; subjectivity, see subjectivity; for 9 Nerval compared to, 61–62, 100, women, 190. See also literature 10 105–6, 190; “rebirth” of, 21, 27, 102, Thiers, Adolphe, 130, 133 11 197; Rome as viewed by, see Rome, time, 12; atomistic nature of, 12; Stendhal’s view of; women writers chronological, 12, 41, 216, 223, 12 and, 108 (cartography and) 22; place yields to, 13 works: La Chartreuse de Parme, 59; 215–16, 223; “pure,” 222; the self 14 Histoire de la peinture en Italie, 20; changed by, 190; space in relation 15 Journal, 20–21, 34, 57, 233n1; Lucien to/as function of, 11, 50, 51, 86, 98, 16 Leuwen, 22, 235n9; Oeuvres intimes, 189n, 215–16, 221; spatialized in 20–22, 23–26, 34, 36, 46, 48, 57–58, “Généalogie,” 92–93 17 59, (sketches in) 51–52; Promenades Titus-Livy, 48, 50 18 dans Rome, 44–46; Rome, Naples, et Tristan, Flora, 109 19 Florence, 20; Le rouge et le noir, 32, 20 54; Souvenirs d’égotisme, 21–22, 34, universality, 27, 105; price of, 85 21 45, 57, 233n1; Vie de Henry Brulard, utopia: “located” by Cassini maps, 15, 19, 21, 23–40, 41–60, 83, 194, 140–42; Marin’s defi nition of, 136; 22 (“Edition diplomatique” ) 22, (maps Sand’s, 16, 109–10, 127, 129–30, 137, 23 in) 13, 34–40, 42–44, 52–54, 57, 61, 143, 146, 190, (personifi ed by Nanon) 24 189; Vies de Haydn, de Mozart, et de 145–46 25 Métastase, 20 26 Sterne, Laurence, 70; Tristram Shandy, Valabrègue, Anthony, 246n2 33–34, 58, 62, 83 Vatican, the, 44, 45 27 structuralism and poststructuralism, 10 Vienna, 70–71, 72 28 subjectivity: Cartesian, 24; determined Virilio, Paul, 10; L’inertie polaire, 230 29 by space, 10; models for, 5–6, 9; Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 35 30 modern conception of, 5; Nerval’s works: La Henriade, 30, 32, 58; development of, 85–86, 107; Zadig, 28, 32, 58 31 new conception of, 204; planned 32 invention of, 7; two components of, Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 71 33 190; uncertainty principle of, 14; Winkelman, Johann Joachim, 46 34 women’s, 16, 108–10, (Nanon’s) 145, women: marriage contract and, 116; 35 (Sand’s models of) 107, 108; textual, propaganda stereotyping, 146; 101, 107, 109, 189, 229. See also Revolution of 1830 and, 129; sheik’s 36 autobiography daughter Salèma, 79–80; slave 37 surveillance society, 9, 230–31 woman (Zeynab) in Cairo, 76–80; 38 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 102 women writers, 107–10, 111–13, (and 39 autobiography) 107n, 108–9, (Sand’s 40 Taine, Hippolyte, 12, 151 position as woman writer) 16, 107, talisman, the, 3–5, 13–14 111–12, 129 (see also Sand, George); 41 Index 271

in Stendhal’s life, 27–30; subjectivity Balzac et moi,” 166; Le Docteur 1 of, 16, 108–10; textuality and, 190; Pascal, 149–50, 167, 171, 181–85; 2 women’s rights, 130 “Ébauches,” 159, 165–67; La 3 Woolf, Virginia, 157 Fabrique des Rougon-Macquart, World War I, 208, 210–11, 221 159, 160, 161, 165, 178, (preface to) 4 246n5; La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret, 5 Zola, Alexandrine, 181 171; La Fortune des Rougon, 17, 6 Zola, Émile, 14, 147–50, 151–68; 159–60, 163, 165, 180, (“Plan de la”) 7 dossiers préparatoires, 13, 148–50, 160, (preface) 151–53; Germinal, 154, 170, 172, 189–90, 194, 159, 166; La Joie de vivre, 171; 8 247n4, (Paris described in) 176–78, letter to Huysmans, 147; “Mon 9 (partitioning the) 158–64, (Rougon- voyage à Sedan,” 166; Nana, 159, 10 Macquart genealogy developed 171; L’Oeuvre, 165, 166, 177–78; 11 in) 181–84, 187, 224; “fêlure” of, Une Page d’amour, 159, 171, 177, 12 164–68, 169–72, 190; maps drawn 180–81; Le Rêve, 167; Le Roman by, 159–60, 177–78, 229, (sketch of expérimental, 158; The Rougon- 13 Aire Saint-Mittre) 17, 149, 161–63 Macquart series, 148–49, 151–67, 14 works: L’Argent, 159, 171, 172, 169–87, (genealogy) 16–17, 150, 190, 15 182; L’Assommoir, 177–78, 182; 224, 229, (maps) 13; Les Rougon- 16 , 159; La Macquart, 161–63, 166–67, 173, 177, 17 Bête humaine, 164, 166, 171, 182; (genealogical trees) 179–87, (Pléiade La Conquête de Plassans, 165, 171; edition) 245–46n2; Son Excellence 18 La Curée, 149, 171–72, 177–78; Eugène Rougon, 156, 171; La Terre, 19 La Débâcle, 149, 159, 166, 175, 166, 171, 180; Le Ventre de Paris, 171 20 (notes for) 166; “Différences entre 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41