SOURCE: Wright, Barbara. “Fromentin's Concept of Creative Vision in the Manuscript of Dominique.” French Studies: A Quarterly Review 18, no. 3 (July 1964): 213-26.

[In the following essay, Wright considers the manner in which Fromentin's use of creative vision in Dominique changed in the transition from manuscript to published text.]

In describing the adolescent awakening of Dominique, Fromentin gives a valuable account of poetic inspiration. The expansive urge of the young hero is closely paralleled in the burgeoning of springtime, as he walks through the countryside in a state of rapture, ‘dans une sorte d'ivresse, rempli d'émotions extraordinaires’.¹ Back in his room, Dominique continues to experience this state of intense vigilance, responding with his whole being to the various sense-impressions which impinge upon him, ‘écoutant, voyant, sentant, étouffé par des pulsations d'une vie extraordinaire’ (D.78). The sunset seems to illuminate the images around him in a new and stimulating way. The sound of a military march is carried clearly through the air; and the rhythm of the music seems to act as a basis on which his poem is constructed, like complex harmonies on a repeated ground bass:

          […] une sorte de mode et d'appui mélodique sur lequel involontairement je mis des paroles.

(D.79)

During the night, Dominique composes feverishly, as though led on involuntarily by a supernatural power, and releasing, in the process of composition, the turbulent feelings which had been welling up within him and clamouring for expression. The work over, there then follows a period of blissful calm, of ‘lassitude délicieuse’ (D.81).

This account of creative vision as a spontaneous outburst, brought about by forces beyond human control, evokes many parallels amongst Fromentin's contemporaries in the nineteenth century. However, an examination of the hitherto unexploited manuscript of Dominique² shows that Fromentin's concept of creative vision is considerably fuller than the definitive text might suggest. Sometimes, it is a relatively minor variant which gives a vital clue; while, at other times, the manuscript contains whole passages on the subject, which never found their way into the text as we now know it.

To reveal this unpublished material is not, in any sense, to suggest a re-assessment of the final text in the light of earlier attempts. The definitive version of any work must surely be judged as it stands. But quite apart from contributing to a deeper understanding of Fromentin's aesthetic development, many of the variants in the manuscript of Dominique may be seen to have an individual and suggestive value of their own.

Whilst always stressing spontaneity as central to the creative process, Fromentin appears nevertheless to be somewhat reluctant to attribute the source of inspiration to the Muse as extolled by the first Romantic generation. In fact, only in one passage in the definitive text of Dominique is the Muse mentioned by name (D.101-102), and even then merely to show that she had little in common with the hero's mood other than a characteristic unpredictability. The manuscript version of the same passage contains no such critical approach, and gives an ardently Romantic account of the Muse's visitation. Her imminent departure fills the aspiring poet with anguish:

[…]—aussi distinctement que je sentirais mon cœur / cesser de / battre, si j'allais mourir en ce moment,—par un commencement de défaillance je sentais qu'elle était prête à m'abandonner; et je la voyais se retirer, comme elle était venue.³

With outstretched arms, he implores her to return, but in vain:

Que de fois, j'ai tendu les bras vers elle, en la suppliant de demeurer. Que de fois, pendant ses longues absences, j'ai—le plus ardemment du monde,—imploré son retour. Jamais, non jamais je ne me suis connu, [une seule] ce pouvoir tant souhaité de la retenir ou de la rappeler à moi.

(f. 110)

This, of course, is the very kind of flamboyancy and exaggeration against which the definitive text of Dominique reacts, with its quiet tone and anti-heroic subject. Indeed, it is interesting to see how far Fromentin was here grappling with tendencies within himself; Romanticism has a curious way of rising phoenix-like from its own ashes. Nevertheless, despite the complexities of Fromentin's love-hate relationship with the first Romantic generation, the changes which he introduced into the characterization of the Muse are clear evidence of his desire to eliminate any elements of spurious sentimentality.

The problem of literary invention goes deeper, however, as the next passage in the manuscript version begins to show—a passage which, though free from the sentimentality of the preceding paragraph, never found its way, as such, into the definitive text. On reading over his compositions the following day, Dominique judges them critically. Their merit, he feels, is one of form rather than substance. Above all, however, they bear the stamp of the spontaneous elation which inspired them:

on / aurait pu y / y distinguait le frémissement ailé d'un cœur qui commençait à battre; et l'élan d'une pensée, [et] / débile / soulevée par une secousse ingénue, jusqu'au lyrisme de l'émotion.

(f. 110)

Dominique then goes on to describe the various elements in his experience of poetic invention. He gives pride of place, as Valéry might have done, to the generative power of rhythm, and stresses, like many of Fromentin's own contemporaries, the alternation between inspired fluency and unproductive non-genius:

Enfin ce don très inattendu de s'exprimer dans une langue qui n'était pas la langue vulgaire, le sens du Rythme des [la sonorité] mesures, des sonorités, cette [facilité] / promptitude / à la parler à certains moments propices;—et dans d'autres, cette impuissance à en retrouver les procédés les plus simples;—il y avait dans ce fait lui-même un mystère plein de jouissances et de tourments.

(f. 110)

‘Un mystère plein de jouissances et de tourments’: it is precisely this mystery in the creative process which has fascinated artists and critics throughout the ages,—a mystery which still remains intangible and insoluble, but to which Fromentin makes an important individual contribution in the unpublished manuscript of Dominique.

Because of the difficulties in portraying any mental event and, in particular, the shadowy and incommunicable elements surrounding the growing point of invention, most artists would agree that they can, at best, give only an approximation of what they felt in their moments of creative vision. The difficulties are manifold, since men must inevitably have recourse to analogies in the material world in order to convey the ineffable qualities of their inner dream-world. Despite the obvious imperfections of the medium, however, the terms in which an artist attempts to set down what he sees within himself can be deeply revealing, the very choice of analogy often reflecting many hidden aspects.

In the case of Fromentin, the trend away from the Muse of Romantic inspiration, as indicated in the transition of Dominique from manuscript to text, is very significant. For, the Muse theory, more than any other, elevates to a dominant position the element of mystery in creation, the terra incognita of genius. Such a view, as held in its extreme form by many representatives of the first Romantic generation, amounted to a belief in a gratuitous grace, a ghostly dictation in which the role of the artist was reduced to that of an amanuensis. This magical intervention by the Muse should, however, be set against the earlier attempts to account for inspiration in terms of a mechanical process,—attempts which aimed at extending to the realm of the mind the discoveries which had recently taken place in science. In a sense, it was this emphasis by previous theorists on the inner workings of the mind as a machine, with a somewhat high-handed postulation of the existence of the machine as a First Cause, which led later artists and critics to turn the tables and to begin their system by glorifying the element of mystery in the initial phase of the creative process. Before the nineteenth century was far advanced, however, a compromise was being reached. The psychology of invention was then coming to be described, not in terms either of a machine or of a Muse, but as a self-generating growth; the warring extremes of conscious application and supernatural vision were gradually becoming resolved, with spontaneity being valued as a fitting recompense for hard-earned skill and life-long preparation. Amongst Baudelaire and his contemporaries in nineteenth-century France, the Romantic concept of divine inspiration was being combined with the Parnassian insistence on workmanship to form a conception of art in which ‘l'inspiration est décidément la sœur du travail journalier’.⁴ Seen in this light, Valéry's exaltation of consciousness in the creative process is the logical outcome of previous trends within the century and suggests a new view of the old Renaissance concept of art as the expression of man in his whole being.

Fromentin did not, however, pursue this question as fully as Valéry. He did not, for example, go to the same lengths in claiming that to attribute inspiration to the Muse leaves the artist little of which to boast, since ‘la Muse et la chance ne nous font que prendre et quitter’;⁵ but he did become noticeably chary of the magical element in this supernatural visitation. Two excised manuscript variants show clearly this lurking fear of cabalistic sorcery. The first example arises in the case of Olivier, whose reaction to Dominique's poetic flights is characterized, in a manuscript variant, by his suspicion of ‘cette langue étrangère à la nôtre, cabalistique, faite à l'usage de certains hommes et qui crée entr'eux une franc-maçonnerie de langage et de pensée’ (f. 113).⁶ ‘Langue […] cabalistique’, ‘franc-maçonnerie de langage et de pensée’: these same ideas are taken up later in the narrative, where Madeleine seeks in vain to encourage Dominique in his literary work. Here, again, the pitch has been tempered in accordance with the modification in Fromentin's viewpoint: in both manuscript and text, Madeleine chides her lover for reducing ‘inspiration’ to the stature of ‘exorcisme’ (D.191, f. 181); but she does so with still more vehemence in the manuscript, where, in her preceding remarks, she characterizes Dominique as making himself out to be ‘une sorte de possédé n'agissant plus qu'en vertu de forces magiques’ (f. 181).

Magic, then, is an unsatisfactory solution to the mystery of creation. It is demeaning to the stature of art, since it leaves out of account the conscious, human contribution. It is also merely a facile escape-route precluding the lucid examination of those inspired phenomena which so many artists seek to analyse within themselves. Certainly, a work of art must begin its growth spontaneously. It must contain ‘cet atome irréductible, ce rien qui dans toutes les choses de ce monde s'appelle l'inspiration, la grâce ou le don, et qui est tout’.⁷ Yet, the example of Les Maîtres d'autrefois has itself shown that, with imaginative insight, it is possible to consider the ultimate work of art as a revelation of the artist's personality at the moment of creation, and to follow the various phases in the evolution of a work as clearly as though it were being executed before one's eyes. It was in this spirit that Fromentin approached the Pêche miraculeuse of Rubens, aiming to plot its growth ‘aussi nettement que si Rubens l'exécutait devant moi’.⁸

No less, as it now emerges, does this same spirit pervade the manuscript of Dominique, where Fromentin discusses the mechanism of his own powers of thought and creation. One of the most important manuscript variants in this respect arises in relation to the analogy of a factory, used, in the text and in the manuscript, to suggest Dominique's state of mind (D.140-141, ff. 151-149). In both cases, the parallel is clear, for the hero's vacillation and fruitless labour are likened to a factory humming with activity, but the end-product of which is unknown. The manuscript version, however, uses the analogy of the machine in order to describe the complex workings of the mind, in an account which was, regrettably, omitted from the definitive text.

In its general framework, the passage in question represents a compromise between conscious will-power and the inscrutable mystery of creation, between ‘la volonté comme levier’ and the unknown ‘force première’: a mere ‘grain de sable’ is capable of overthrowing the whole intricate mechanism:

[…] j'assistais moi-même avec une sorte [d'ivresse] d'enthousiasme à ce prodigieux travail d'un esprit en ébullition qui fonctionne même à vide. Dans ces momens-là, le mécanisme des facultés, leur engrenage, leurs correspondances; les complicités de l'une avec l'autre, comment la mémoire agit, [comm comment qu'elles la] et par quels fils elle s'attache à l'imagination, la multitude et la tenuité de tous ceux qu'elle fait mouvoir à son tour; la puissance de la volonté comme levier; [comme] puis le moteur principal de ce vaste système, la force première, comment elle se produit / et / où? ❙f. 149❙ et la parfaite et fragile union de tant de pièces / si / distinctes, et pourtant si bien assemblées; et le petit accident, un temps d'arrêt, le grain de sable de Pascal qui peut tout suspendre et tout briser […]

(ff. 151-149)

This account of the mechanism of thought processes takes as its starting-point the physical reactions to external stimuli. By thus according primacy to the ‘mécanisme des facultés’, Fromentin attests to the necessity for what Valéry was later to describe as ‘le tempérament poétique essentiel’,⁹ a prerequisite for the poetic state. In his own case, of course, Fromentin was gifted with a more than usually acute sensibility, a quality with which he also endowed Dominique: from an early stage, the hero observed that he differed from his young companions by being able to experience ‘des sensations qui toutes paraissaient leur être étrangères’ (D.44).

Gifted with this keen sensibility, Fromentin was well fitted to indicate something of the complex interfusing of physical sense-impressions either amongst themselves or with mental states, ‘leur engrenage, leurs correspondances’. Hitherto unconnected sensations may thus be brought together, often suggesting inner responses to external stimuli. Indeed, as is implicit in the manuscript passage, sense-impressions can never be considered in isolation, since they need to be completed by the reaction produced on the pre-existing structure of the mind which receives them. If the mind is in a receptive state, an external stimulus is capable of becoming linked, by an elaborate pattern of correspondences, with everything that has previously been perceived or thought by that mind. The powers of memory can open up a vista of unexpected associations, and all these complex activities are linked by tenuous threads to the operation of the imagination, which is thereby stimulated and set in motion. But what is the force which generates this complex process? Fromentin here suggests that the impetus is due partly to the conscious will-power, ‘la puissance de la volonté comme levier’; its ultimate origin remains, however, a mystery, since the whole process is instituted and terminated by forces beyond human control.

Many readers will see in this account an indication of some of the qualities most often associated with Fromentin's achievement in suggestive art, and, in particular, the use of keenly perceived physical sensations to evoke impressions far transcending their original bounds. In relation to the psychology of invention, however, this account of the workings of the mind should be considered in conjunction with Fromentin's description of the moments of vision themselves and their etiology within the artist. By both temperament and experience, he was particularly well suited to this discussion of creative activity which fascinated so many of his contemporaries. To those who knew him personally, Fromentin appears to have spoken freely and abundantly on the subject. Indeed, on the evidence of the Goncourt brothers, he confided to his friend and confidant, Armand du Mesnil, some months before his death, that he wanted to write one last book … ‘un livre qui montrerait comment se fait la production dans un cerveau’, adding in an outburst of enthusiasm: ‘Vois-tu, tu ne sais pas ce que j'ai là-dessous!’¹⁰ It is tragic that this project was never realized. There is, however, enough material, particularly in the manuscript of Dominique, for it to be possible to capture some insight into these moments of creative activity.

Most artists attest to certain rare and infinitely precious periods of creative insight, in which they experience a new vastness and radiance in their physical and mental environment. In the nineteenth century, Flaubert, for one, had his ‘grands jours de soleil’,¹¹ his periods of intense creativity. Baudelaire, too, gave a most valuable account of ‘ces beaux jours de l'esprit’, those in which ‘les sens plus attentifs perçoivent des sensations plus retentissantes’ (O.C., 709). For Coleridge, also, the poet ‘described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity’,¹² both in feeling and in thought. In all of these accounts, to which that of Fromentin can now be added, the value of the testimony is increased by virtue of the fact that it represents neither a trance, nor an abstract philosophical discussion, but a psychological analysis of the actual conditions of creation.

In the definitive text of Dominique, Fromentin concludes Chapter IV with an illuminating account of the hero's self-awareness, in brief but sublime moments of insight, which compensate for the otherwise monotonous tedium of everyday life. The question of self-awareness is not, however, discussed in its full complexity in the definitive text, but only in an abbreviated form, as is clearly indicated by the following remark:

Ce que je vous raconte en quelques mots n'est, bien entendu, que le très-court abrégé de longues, obscures et multiples souffrances.

(D.74)

Just how true this is, what depth and complexity lie behind these remarks, the casual reader of Dominique could never guess. But, to those privileged to have access to the manuscript version of the novel, this is the section which contains the greatest wealth of all, the hidden treasure of Fromentin's key to creative art.

A slight re-arrangement of the existing folio pagination reveals the existence of two main manuscript versions, corresponding to the last two paragraphs of Chapter IV in the definitive text (D.73-74). The earlier of these two versions is contained on ff. 67, 68, 69, 64; the later and more concise version is contained on ff. 62, 63, 65. In these two manuscript versions, self-awareness is shown partly as a danger, in that it may, if carried to excess, have a destructive effect on potential creativity; and partly as a gift, in that, at its highest level, it may be the source of artistic inspiration. The definitive version emphasizes the more negative aspect of self-awareness, while drastically curtailing the discussion of the more positive aspect which, in the manuscript, continues at considerable length. Brevity was, however, achieved at the cost of clarity and involved the sacrifice of some passages which might fairly be claimed to be amongst the most brilliant which Fromentin ever wrote. Here, surely, was gold which was thrown out with the dross.

Of the two manuscript versions, the second is the more polished in form, the more carefully developed in presentation. The substance of these passages is extraordinarily close to the opening pages of Le Goût de l'Infini, in Baudelaire's Poème du Haschisch.¹³ Fromentin describes ‘des jours de vitalité particulière’ (f. 69) in terms which correspond to the ‘heureuses journées’ (O.C., 437) described by Baudelaire. At such times as these, Dominique, who here surely represents the experience of the author himself, feels the vigilance of his awareness so intensified that everything seems to hold delight and meaning for him. He is shaken out of the rut of ordinary perception and is struck with a new sense of sharpness and vitality. These are the luminous intermissions which most of us experience at one phase or another in our lives, without necessarily being able to express what we feel. Who has not had a sudden brain-wave, an unexpected flash of insight? At the highest aesthetic level, these are the experiences which great artists can communicate, thus evoking what Proust describes as ‘les rares moments où l'on voit la nature telle qu'elle est, poétiquement’.¹⁴ For most of us, such experiences occur mainly during childhood and then diminish in frequency as we take our surroundings more for granted and so become less aware of them; in adult life, they are generally provoked by moments of extreme shock, bereavement or humiliation. They may also, in some cases, be induced by drugs or alcohol: De Quincey, Baudelaire and Aldous Huxley are not the only ones to have inhabited ‘les Paradis artificiels’. It is surely one of the greatest attributes of art that such states of being can be set down and communicated as evocatively as Fromentin has done in this manuscript passage:

Il y avait des jours de vitalité particulière où je m'éveillais sous des influences heureuses, où, tout à coup et j'ignorais pourquoi, la flamme intérieure devenait si active, ma sensibilité si vive, le jeu de mes organes si libre, si direct et si prompt, où la lucidité de ma mémoire était telle, qu'il en résultait je ne sais quel équilibre de facultés, quel accord absolu de sensations et de rêveries, et quel bien-être extraordinaire, qui /me/ représentaient, en attendant des félicités plus réelles, l'idéal parfait de la vie humaine dans sa plénitude de force et d'expansion.

(f. 69)

‘Accord absolu de sensations et de rêveries’, ‘idéal parfait de la vie humaine’, ‘plénitude de force et d'expansion’: these are characteristics of the moments of ecstasy experienced by Fromentin in inspired artistic creation. It is moments like these, moments in which he experiences such a heightening of sensitivity, such an intensification of the intellect, such a prolonged nervous tension, that Fromentin seeks to retain in memory and in art,—the expression, for him, of what the memory holds.

These are the pinnacles of human existence, or what Fromentin described in a youthful letter as the ‘lieux culminants de la vie’, from which ‘on domine, on possède, on gouverne en quelque sorte d'un bout à l'autre toute sa destinée’.¹⁵ But for Fromentin, as also for Baudelaire, the causes of such moments of ‘véritable grâce’ (O.C., 438) were quite unknown. The oscillations in Dominique's life had this much in common with the Muse, that they were completely fortuitous. His days were:

[…] tristes ou joyeux, sombres ou rayonnants sans qu['aucun]e nul motif appréciable les rendît tels […]

(f. 68)

The state of rapture would come ‘tout à coup et j'ignorais pourquoi […]’ (f. 69), just as Baudelaire had described in relation to his experience of this ‘état exceptionnel’: ‘[…] il n'a été créé par aucune cause bien visible et facile à définir’ (O.C., 437).

Furthermore, these moments of intense activity bring in their wake long periods of lethargy and stagnation. So great was the contrast between these two extremes in Fromentin's experience that, in the somewhat exaggerated phraseology of the earlier manuscript version, he characterized it in terms of an oscillation between ‘la mort et la fièvre’, between ‘[…] « le pôle glacé et l'Equateur ardent » de ma vie’ (f. 69). ‘Et toute mon inquiétude alors’, he adds, speaking through Dominique, ‘était de savoir si les astres qui présidaient à mon réveil allaient m'entraîner vers l'un ou /vers/ l'autre’ (f. 69). In Fromentin's description of these radiant intermissions, followed by a long and monotonous succession of dreary days, ‘semblables au néant’ (f. 62), one is reminded, yet again, of Baudelaire, who described a similar polarity between the exceptional moments of elation and the ‘lourdes ténèbres de l'existence commune et journalière’ (O.C., 437). The periods of emptiness just disappear into the void, ‘dans l'ombre où vont s'accumuler toutes les choses qui n'ont pas vécu’ (f. 62). Life, then, involves a tragic alternation between ‘les deux [extrémités] /extrêmes/ de la spiritualisation pure ou de la matière inerte’ (f. 64). Man must, in other words, stay alive long for his moments of living.

The central point of the experience here described by Fromentin is the union of two elements which have all too often been separated artificially: feeling and thought. It is worth examining each of these elements, as characterized by Fromentin, together with some of the modifications which their interaction implies.

In relation to feeling, first of all, it is important to note that, in the context of the creative moments, what Fromentin values is not so much direct emotional feeling itself as the mental effects of that emotion. In other contexts, Fromentin had admitted that too deep a personal involvement in any emotion was detrimental to creative expression. With regard to his experiences in North Africa, to give but one example, he found it difficult to convey his impressions in the first flush of excited enthusiasm and needed to attain a mood of composure before expressing himself; characteristically, he wrote to his friend, du Mesnil, saying: ‘[…] l'impression même est trop présente et trop vive pour que je la puisse exprimer’ (L.J., 238). Direct emotion, in other words, needs to be filtered through the memory and the imagination, until the initial experience reaches the point where it contains ‘les traits essentiels à l'unité sans rien perdre de leur vie’ (L.J., 354). Again, one is irresistibly reminded of Baudelaire, with his celebrated distinction between ‘la sensibilité de cœur’ and ‘la sensibilité de l'imagination’:

La sensibilité de cœur n'est pas absolument favorable au travail poétique. Une extrême sensibilité de cœur peut même nuire en ce cas. La sensibilité de l'imagination est d'une autre nature; elle sait choisir, juger, comparer […]

(O.C., 1033)

In the light of this distinction, Fromentin's discussion of feeling, as filtered through the consciousness, becomes particularly significant:

Vivre et ❙f. 68❙ me sentir vivre, être et me souvenir; percevoir à la fois l'ébranlement direct des impressions reçues et les entendre se répercuter à l'infini jusqu'au fond de moi-même; en essayer le choc sur ma mémoire, comme on essaie les vibrations d'un métal sonore; souffrir amèrement sans aucun sujet raisonnable d'amertume ou de plainte; et puiser je ne sais quelle satisfaction inouïe dans le sentiment abstrait que je vivais; tel était l'état de mon esprit à l'époque incertaine dont je vous parle.

(ff. 67-68)

In relation to thought, the merit of these exceptional moments is that the mental elements are given a sense of vividness and immediacy which they would not normally have. Rising out of the paludal wastes of inertia and monotony, these blissful interludes combine an intense mental awareness with an unusual acuity of physical sensation:

Exister c'était la demi-mort; en avoir la conscience /vive/ ardente, émue; [m'éveillant sous des influences heureuses] voilà qui me représentait [en attendant des félicités plus réelles] /en attendant des félicités plus réelles/ [l'i] [un] [l'] /un/ idéal de plénitude et l[e]a [dernier mot] /perfection/ du bonheur.

(f. 62)

Small wonder, then, that these ‘jours de vitalité particulière’ represent such luminous landmarks: they call upon the artist in all his being, and actively involve all his faculties, both internal and external. In this unpublished manuscript account, the experience of Fromentin accords with that so beautifully described by Shelley in his Defence of Poetry:

Poetry is the record of the happiest and best moments of the happiest and best minds. We are aware of evanescent visitations of thought and feeling, sometimes associated with place or person, sometimes regarding our own mind alone, and always arising unforeseen and departing unbidden, but elevating and delightful beyond all expression […]¹⁶

The acme of this aesthetic experience is the sense of equilibrium which it can give. Stimuli, which, in the response of the average person, would merely be confused and therefore neglected, are incorporated into the more highly organized sensibility of the artist during these periods of inspiration. One might go further and see in Fromentin's view of these creative moments, as representing the highest fulfilment of the human personality, a faint echo of Coleridge's celebrated definition of the Imagination:

[…] a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgement ever awake and steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or vehement.¹⁷

Something of the same ‘self-possession’ emerges from Fromentin's manuscript account:

Il en résultait je ne sais quelle ampleur de facultés, quel[le] équilibre et quel accroissement de forces, enfin quel bien-être si extraordinaires et si complets, que je prenais alors seulement possession de tout mon être, et me croyais meilleur, en étant plus ému.

(f. 63)

But, one may justifiably say, Fromentin suppressed all this brilliant analysis of the mind's complexities, which other artists might have incorporated into the most sublime expression of their art. This allegation is, alas! irrefutable. Some of the possible reasons leading to the suppression of this long manuscript passage may, however, be revealing. The fate of Narcissus has constantly threatened the pursuit of self-knowledge, and Augustin's letter to Dominique, in Chapter VI of the novel, is clear evidence that Fromentin was keenly aware of the dangers as well as the rewards inherent in introspection. In the light of the manuscript passage under discussion, Augustin's admonition takes on deeper undertones than the definitive text could ever reveal. For, in the transition of this passage through the two manuscript versions to the text, Fromentin, before our eyes, falls into the very trap of which he was so painfully aware. The element of self-knowledge in the moments of creative vision represents a razor's edge: ideally, it is a state of self-composure, where knowing is equated with creating, or rather re-creating, the inner experience of the artist; but, if the spell is shattered, if the delicate balance is broken, self-knowledge becomes misused and a deadlock ensues, in which a morbid self-observation can endanger the gratuitous enjoyment of the moments of ecstasy. Such was the stumbling-block with Fromentin. Like Constant, he was the victim of a dichotomy within himself, torn between the self that acts and the self that observes. Perhaps inhibited by a fear of indulging in a Romantic outpouring, but also because of a basic lack of self-confidence, he became increasingly haunted by a sense of moral guilt in these exceptional moments and thereby broke their charm. The gradually receding enchantment fades away visibly in the evolution of the passage from manuscript to text. The moral element becomes more and more obtrusive until, in the final rendering, the dominant emphasis is on the ‘ennemi inséparable’ (D.74) of introspection. This passage, as it has gone down to posterity, gives so truncated an account of the moments of vision that their full significance is lost and the ecstasy of the ‘jours de vitalité particulière’ gone for ever.

The first inroad was made on the earlier of the two manuscript versions by an interlinear insertion. The sentence, ‘je me croyais meilleur, en étant plus ému’ (f. 69), was later prefaced by the warning remark, ‘/voyez mon illusion/’. By the time Fromentin had come to the end of the first manuscript version, the moral element had gained yet another foothold, in that Dominique is described as:

[…] étudiant pathologiquement des phénomènes à accès périodiques qui déjà constituaient une véritable maladie morale.

(f. 64)

When it came to the second manuscript version, the moral convictions re-emerged still more strongly with the suggestion that these moments of ecstasy were some form of disease: ‘[…] je prétendais déterminer la cause de ces phénomènes tous maladifs […]’ (f. 63).

And so it was that Fromentin consigned this brilliant passage to the limbo of rarely unearthed manuscripts. One last variant may here be quoted for its poignant testimony to Fromentin's extraordinary power of penetrating to the depths of his inner personality with transparent clarity, while at the same time being impeded in this by a hypersensitive moral awareness. The variant, which was subsequently rejected, occurs at a point corresponding to the end of the second paragraph in Chapter V of the novel:

Tout mon être [en] alors devenait transparent. Je voyais si clair dans tous les replis de ma conscience [que selon moi tout le monde y devait lire aussi bien que dans un livre ouvert]; /qu'il me semblait impossible d'en dissimuler le moindre secret/ et, j'en éprouvais des révoltes [des pudeurs de cet état de nudité], des confusions et des rougeurs exactement comme d'un état de nudité complète dont ma pudeur aurait [souffert] été offensée.

(f. 77)

The suppression of these manuscript passages on the concept of creative vision constitutes an irreparable loss to the definitive text of Dominique. Those who are convinced that the novel falls short of true greatness may possibly contend that, by the omission of these manuscript passages, they are deprived of just that element of complexity which they would have wished to have found in the text as they know it. Equally, however, it should be acknowledged that these belatedly revealed manuscript variants, while in no sense redeeming any inherent defects in the novel, are of considerable value in presenting an account, unique in the known writings of Fromentin, concerning the mechanism of thought and creativity. His achievement in suggestive art is thereby confirmed and enriched. More clearly than ever before, it is possible to trace his impressions from their initial physical impact to the mental states which they suggest. More closely than ever before, we can penetrate into Fromentin's inner dream-world where, like Flaubert, he combined external sensations and inner reactions in order to ‘faire rêver’.¹⁸ In short, the manuscript of Dominique might, in this respect, be considered as a stimulus to discovery, for it comes close to the essence of Fromentin's greatness in terms of Baudelaire's famous definition of ‘l'art pur suivant la conception moderne’:

C'est créer une magie suggestive contenant à la fois l'objet et le sujet, le monde extérieur à l'artiste et l'artiste lui-même.

(O.C., 926)

Notes

1. Dominique, ed. Émile Henriot, Paris, Garnier (1955), p. 77. All subsequent references are to pages of this edition and are indicated by the abbreviation: D.

2. The manuscript of Dominique is not a newly discovered set of documents in that it has remained, to the present day, in the possession of Fromentin's descendants at La Rochelle. It is, however, quite new in the sense that, for many years, it remained in the hands of the family lawyer, M. Pierre Blanchon, who, despite his excellent work in editing the major part of Fromentin's correspondence, never fulfilled his ambition of producing a study of the manuscript of the novel. Many researchers, notably Maxime Revon, went to La Rochelle, only to find the manuscript sources ‘frozen’. M. Blanchon died, however, in 1956, and the manuscripts have now all reverted to M. Erik Dahl, the great-grandson of Fromentin, who has made them available for consultation with unfailing generosity. Apart from five folios, which have been photostatically reproduced at various times, the manuscript remains unpublished and no sustained study of it has previously been made. A detailed examination of the manuscript is being prepared by the author of the present study, but here the manuscript will be discussed only in so far as is relevant to the concept of creative vision. All references to the manuscript of Dominique appear by kind permission of M. Erik Dahl.

3. This extract is taken from f. 110 of the manuscript, as paginated by M. Blanchon. All subsequent references to the manuscript simply give the folio number. In reproducing the manuscript version, the following symbols have been used:

   […] to indicate a deletion by Fromentin in the manuscript

   / / to indicate an interlinear insertion by Fromentin in the manuscript

   ❙ ❙ to indicate the end of a folio, where two consecutive folios of the manuscript are quoted. Exact transcriptions of the original manuscript are given, apart from a few very minor rectifications of accents and capital letters.

4. Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, Pléiade edition, Paris (1954), p. 946. All subsequent Baudelaire references are to this edition and are indicated by the abbreviation: O.C.

5. Valéry, Œuvres complètes, Pléiade edition, Paris (1957), t. I, p. 641.

6. This is a manuscript variant of p. 102 in the definitive text.

7. Les Maîtres d'Autrefois, Vienna, Manz (n.d.), p. 53.

8. Ibid., p. 56.

9. Valéry, Poésie (Essais sur la poétique et le poète), Paris, Collection Bertrand Guégan (1928), préambule, p. xiv.

10. Goncourt, Journal, Paris, Charpentier (1877-1896), 12 décembre 1876, t. V, p. 226.

11. Flaubert, Correspondance, nouvelle édition augmentée, Paris, Conard (1926), t. II, p. 395.

12. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Shawcross, Oxford, Clarendon Press (1907), vol. II, p. 12.

13. Despite the fact that the names of Fromentin and Baudelaire are frequently linked in the course of this study, both artists were unaware of the affinities existing between them. The name of Baudelaire is scarcely mentioned in any of the writings of Fromentin, published or unpublished. That of Fromentin elicits from Baudelaire a profound and sensitive appreciation (O.C., pp. 802-803, 1278), but nothing more. The affinity exists, then, not so much between Fromentin and Baudelaire, as between Fromentin and one of the most brilliant and lucid exponents of suggestive art.

14. Proust, Œuvres complètes, Pléiade edition, Paris (1954), t. I, p. 835.

15. Lettres de Jeunesse, Paris, Plon (1912), p. 126. All subsequent references are to this edition and will be indicated by the abbreviation: L.J.

16. Shelley, Selected Poetry, Prose and Letters, edited by A. S. B. Glover, London, The Nonesuch Press (1951), p. 1051.

17. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, op. cit., vol. II, p. 12.

18. Flaubert, Correspondance, Conard edition, t. III, p. 322.