Au Monde Research Articles

Introduction: Katharine D. Newman and Redefining American Literature

What do you see Walt Whitman? Who are they you salute, and that one after another salute you? ... I see the curious rapid change of the light and shade, I see distant lands, as real and near to the inhabitants of them as my land is to me ... All you continentals of Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, indifferent of place! All you on the numberless islands of the archipelagoes of the sea! And you of centuries hence when you listen to me! And you each and everywhere whom I specify not, but include just the same! Health to you! good will to you all, from me and America sent! Each of us inevitable, Each of us limitless--each of us with his or her rights upon the earth, Each of us allow'd the eternal purports of the earth, Each of us here as divinely as any is here. --From Walt Whitman, Salut Au Monde In July 2001, Veronica Makowsky invited us to guest-edit a special issue of MELUS in celebration of Katharine Dealy Newman's life and work. We knew then already that our festschrift for Newman would have to be more than just a miscellaneous volume to honor the memory of the woman who had played a more crucial role than any other individual in bringing MELUS--and MELUS--into existence in the early 1970s. Imbued strongly with what we know today as the MELUS mission, Katharine herself would have liked such a celebration to be more than a compendium of her life and achievements. So we decided in our Call to spread our net as wide as possible to attract scholarly fish of all hues, and see what we could gather. Call stated in part, Our objective in bringing out this special number is to preserve and expand Newman's legacy by attempting a retrospective evaluation of the role played by MELUS during the past three decades in the ongoing re-definition of American Literature by taking stock of developments in ethnic and cultural studies since the 1960s. We welcomed especially essays on pedagogy, canon, theory, and ethnic literary studies as a discipline, as well as others on the role of anthologies and critical editions in transforming curriculum. We had also hoped to include some new interpretations of by-now canonical ethnic American authors or texts, as well as some pieces dedicated to the recovery of lost, neglected, and forgotten figures or texts. As our table of contents indicates, we have every reason to be happy with the wide-ranging response from our fellow scholars. To be sure, like the persona in that elusive Emerson poem, Days, we might acknowledge the understandable gap between what one wishes for and what one actually receives. And yet, this gathering of essays by Americanists from around the globe, seasoned and emerging scholars as well as graduate students still discovering their voices, represents some of the most exciting scholarship in US literary studies on issues of canon and context, pedagogy and theory, race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, nation and diaspora, individual and group identity. We are especially pleased to include quite a few international scholars: from Ireland, Germany, India, Italy, Poland, and Israel. We expect that this collection as a whole, and through its individual essays, will raise new debate and discussion, and for us, that is indeed the best measure of how we might remember Newman and honor her legacy. In relation to the many shared spaces and intersections among the interconnected and overlapping areas of American Studies and Cultural Studies, multi-ethnic literary studies as a field--in tandem with African American literary studies--is now so vast that it would be foolhardy for any one volume to cover all its subsets systematically and exhaustively. While limited in many ways by what we could accept from the submissions we received--or at times, what we could nudge or commission into being to fill up some lacunae--we were attentive to the need to cover a wide and suggestive range of issues in relation to the multiple ethnicities and historical experiences that make up the United States and the Americas beyond. …

Une odeur de schizophrénie

Une odeur de schizophrénie

Merleau-Ponty and Whitehead on the Concept of Nature

To be is to be "given" to a subject: that is a key-insight of phenomenology. Here Whitehead fully agrees: to be is to be a subject or to be "prehended" by a subject. For phenomenology, the subject to which the world is given, is the human subject (Dasein, etre au monde). Whitehead, through the method of descriptive generalization, extends the subject-character to every actual entity (his rendering of the 'really real'). Merleau-Ponty starts from a strict phenomenological viewpoint. At the end of his career he realized however that the structure to see/to be seen, to feel/to be felt had to be generalized and had to apply to any reality whatsoever (the flesh of the world). This is a clear instance of what Whitehead would call descriptive generalization. In his search for an ontology of the flesh, Merleau-Ponty paid attention to Whitehead's The Concept of Nature (1920/1998). He reacts against scientific materialism for the same reason and along the same lines as Whitehead. The ontology of the later Merleau-Ponty and that of Whitehead have much in common. It is our contention that the Whiteheadian conceptuality is a great help in understanding the ontology-in-the-making of The Visible and the Invisible (1968b).

Nineteenth-Century Racial Thought and Whitman's "Democratic Ethnology of the Future"

Whitman's apparently positive depictions of racial others are intepreted in the light of his assumptions about biological indicators of racial identity and the role literature plays in recording that identity. Part one demonstrates that in the context of nineteenth-century racial thought a poem like "Salut au Monde!" seems directed less toward celebrating cultural diversity and more toward indicating the less-evolved status of other races compared to Americans. Whitman cannot describe the typical American as fulsomely as he can others, however, who serve in his poems as models of racy individuality-however backward they may seem. Part two therefore looks at Whitman's examination of various "specimens" of American identity, such as Lincoln, and at the ironies and contradictions that frustrate this examination. The problem for Whitman was not racial difference (racial others being for him and his contemporaries known quantities) but racial sameness. What Whitman needs, then, is some symbolic means of bridging the gap between actual American diversity and the ideological imperative of American identity, and this he finds in the concept of similitude (adumbrated in "Song of Myself"). But Whitman's poetry offers resolutions unavailable (and undesirable) in American culture. Part three describes Whitman's cultural discontent, chiefly as expressed in Democratic Vistas, where he chastises Americans for their bodily grossness and bad manners and discusses what he calls "the democratic ethnology of the future," a racial solution to America's cultural problems.

Rape or Obscene Copulation?: Ambivalence and Complicity in Djebar's L'Amour, la fantasia

Women In French Studies Rape or Obscene Copulation?: Ambivalence and Complicity in Djebar's L'Amour, lafantasia . . . lame de couteau dans la laine de l'abandon: tout à fait au fond, pourtant, comme une bête hurlant le refus, la révolte aveuglée, le durcissement dressé: 'Non!', un corps peut-il hurler 'Non!' en son profond et que ce soit pourtant un don?" Assia Djebar, Les Alouettes naïves Many Algerian women come to writing in French through the optic of war and inscribe in their texts a discovery of the female body and of personal sexual desire: "what we have is nothing less than a literary 'event'," as Marx-Scouras so accurately describes this contemporary problematic (174). Celebrating erotic self-discovery and sexual difference among women, western feminists have considered writers such as Assia Djebar a paradigm of liberation, despite accusations of imperialistic "internationalist" feminism that may be leveled at them as a result. Anne Donadey, for example, sees in the strategies structuring the use ofepigraphs in Djebar's L Amour, lafantasia an act of "reappropriating and subverting not only the discourse of (Western and Arabic) patriarchy about women, but also the discourse of colonialist imperialism about Algerians" (1 ??- ? 11). She relies on Irigaray's notion of mimicry to explain how Djebar's "deliberate repetition of a male discourse of female representation" (110) functions as resistance and illuminates "ce qui devait rester occulté" (qtd in Donadey 1 10, 74). Algerian women writing in French "sont aussi ailleurs" and thus are able to free themselves from the shackles of patriarchal discourse by virtue ofpositioning themselves at a vantage point above/beyond it (1 10, 74). Clarisse Zimra also reads liberation in Djebar's use of the French language, itself a legacy of colonization and war (or "war booty") deployed by Djebar against traditional Muslim subjugation of women. "She uses the colonizer's language against the colonized's own gender code, showing it for what it is, an argument ad feminam" (77). A means of escape from sequestration and the veil, French provides access to sexual liberation; it 42 Women In French Studies "brings freedom, a freedom expressed through the contrapuntal images of naked/clothed, covered/uncovered body" (77). Déjeux finds in Djebar similar reasons to applaud what could only be called a feminist consciousness. "Chez Assia Djébar nous découvrons avant tout la découverte du corps par la femme, la découverte ensuite du couple et de l'amour pour soi-même. Bref, la femme naît au monde, elle s'affirme elle-même et non plus en dépandence de l'homme, frère ou époux" (qtd in "The Evolution . . ." 11). Along the same lines, Tahon explores the use of homoerotic imagery as a form of subversion of the patriarchal economy of desire. While these readings are unquestionably valid on the one hand, it seems undeniable, on the other, that Djebar's relationship to French is at best ambivalent. Perhaps some of the feminist praise mentioned above may be on a certain level too hastily accorded, or rather, anchored in a convenient gloss of the problematic Djebar faces when writing in French as an Algerian woman. Several of these same critics have noted, to be sure, Djebar's ambivalence. In her analysis of Les Alouettes naïves, Zimra discusses the moment of sexual truth for the protagonist, Nfissa. "The last sentence remains poised between Man's passive fascination to watch and his active urge to sculpt; not much is left for Woman's desire to sculpt herself. As for Nfissa, the most intimate act uncovers absolute indifference" (74). Surprisingly, Zimra draws no conclusions from this revealing example of the lack of inscription of heterosexual female desire at a moment where, if any, it would most likely be located. In his article on the construction of textual identity of the colonized woman, Murdoch explores at great length Djebar's ambiguity in regards to the colonizer's language. Following Lacanian theory, he sees the central problem as one of the search for textual subjectivity: the Algerian woman desired as Other by the French and desiring as subject to be recognized in the oppressor's tongue (75...

Before and after 1789: A cantonal markets economy

Richard Cantillon identified in early eighteenth-century Europe two distinct forms of mercantile economy, one that economist Antoin E. Murphy calls ‘a centralized command economy’ and a second that he designates as ‘a competitive market economy’ or ‘decentralized market system’. The first system had a basis, writes Murphy, in a ‘centralized estate’ model, with the landlord determining what was to be produced. Under the second system, the entrepreneur was a risk taker. Buying goods ‘at a known price’, he sold them later at what was at the time of purchase ‘an uncertain price’.’ Murphy’s identification of the ‘centralized command economy’ with the large centralized estate stems from Cantillon’s own depiction of the great landlord or his property ‘comme s’iln’y en avoit aucune autre au monde’.2 The great landlord (an ideal type often comprising several real landlords) did not act in isolation. But while the role of the superlandlord or expanding and increasingly powerful territorial state-in Cantillon’s terminology, the ‘Court’-complicates matters, it does not alter the fundamental analysis. A crucial element that Murphy omits from Cantillon’s paired scheme of the command economy, on the other hand, is the market place or cantonal market. For a necessary complement to the network of landlords in a command economy is the market town, indeed, a polycentric model of semiautonomous markets. Cantillon explains the nature and function of the market town (bourg) or cantonal market:

"One Wife Be for One Man": Mariama Bâ's Doctrine for Matrimony

"One Wife Be for One Man":Mariama Bâ's Doctrine for Matrimony J.O.J. Nwachukwu-Agbada (bio) I done try go church, I done go for court Dem all dey talk about di new culture. Dem talk about equality, dem mention "divorce" Dem holler am so-tay my ear nearly cut: One wife be for one man —Aig-Imoukhuede, "One Man One Wife" I Frank Aig-Imoukhuede's pidgin poem points to the predicament faced by an African man who, in spite of his approval of Western tenets and norms, is reluctant to accept monogamy, one feature of the European metropolitan civilization. It emphasizes the chaos in the life of the modern African male desirous of a second wife, especially when the reason has little to do with the quest for a male child or the fact of the ascertained barrenness of the first wife—repugnant as these conditions are to the [End Page 561] feminist. The protagonist of the above poem sounds like a "civilized" African whose attempt to have more wives is either the result of a need to sexually gratiate himself or a desire to shame an older wife who had refused "to take her place" as dictated by oppressive traditional norms and customs. These men appropriate what is "good" in Western culture and turn to their hitherto rejected culture to seek legitimacy for their palpably animal passion for more marital partners. Two of Mariama Bâ's compatriots-Sembène Ousmane and Aminata Sow Fall—have each considered the impact of a later-day polygyny on the chief characters of Xala (1974) and The Beggars' Strike (1979) respectively. One is impoverished by multiple marriage, the other humiliated in the hands of his "sweet-sixteen" second wife. In each case, the first wife is an accomplished woman, wife, and mother, an aesthetically pleasing female well-versed in good comportment and self-respect who considers marriage as a positive social and customary commitment in which the man is unquestionably the lord and the master. For instance, in Sembène Ousmane's Xala, Adja Awa Astou, El Hadji Bèye's first wife, is said to have "given up her Christian faith so as to enjoy more fully the pleasures of married life" (11). [« s'était apostasiée par amour pour mieux partager les félicités d'une vie conjagale » (24)]. Before he introduces the discussion on his move to bring in a second wife, Mour Ndiaye in Sow Fall's novel acknowledges Lolli's goodness and addresses her thus: Lolli, you know how much you mean to me. You know I wouldn't exchange you for anything in the world. . . . I appreciate all your good qualities, your patience, your kindness. Life hasn't always been easy for me; you've put up with all the hardships and difficulties that this has meant for us and you helped me overcome all the obstacles. You're my lucky mascot and you know it. (26) [—Lolli, tu sais combien je tiens à toi. Tu sais bien que je ne t'échangerais contre rien au monde . . . Je connais tes mérites, ta patience, ta bonté. La vie n'a pas toujours été facile pour moi, tu as enduré tous les maux qui découlaient de cette situation pénible, et tu m'as aidé à surmonter tous les obstacles. Tu es mon portebonheur et tu le sais. (37-38)] Furthermore, the women are productive; in other words, their husbands cannot claim that they are looking for children as they already have many of them. In Xala we are informed that El Hadji Bèye has six children from his first wife and five from the second and yet has decided to take a third: "So, to date El Hadji had two wives and a string of progeny. Eleven in all" (4). [« A ce jour, El Hadji Abdou Kader Bèye avait deux femmes, une Kyrielle de gosses. Onze » (11)]. In The Beggars' Strike Lolli is said to have got "eight children, some of them old enough to be married" (33) [« huit enfants dont quelques-uns son en âge de se marier » (46)]. Much as marriage is a theme in the two works by...

Telling It All: Pandictic Art

Of making books, is no end, not even in the post-Gutenberg, post-Wiener era. Endless, too, is the ancient dream of a book to end all books--the encyclopedic bible that would subsume all previous and all possible statements. Stephane Mallarm6's grandiose statement that tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir a un livre3 is only one of many, many manifestoes for a pandictic art, a single text that comprehends everything. In Biblioteca de Babel, Jorge Luis Borges imagines a measureless treasury of words coterminous with the world. However, he suggests, there must exist a book that would be the cipher and the perfect compendium of all the rest. And he notes later, Strictly speaking, one single volume should suffice: of ordinary format, printed in nine or ten body type, and consisting of an infinite number of infinitely thin pages.4 What we venerate as The Great Books of the World are, then, not so great-to the extent that is more than one, and they leave room for a world. Balzac's worldly ambition was to compete with the Civil Register, faire concurrence A l'Etat-Civil,5 and, at the end of the first paragraph of LeP&re Goriot, he echoes, in English, the Shakespearean claim that All is true. Throughout the scores of volumes that constitute the unfinished cathedral of La Com&die humaine, Balzac's audacious project is to demonstrate that the truth is all, that the writer who would comprehend the universe must omit nothing. Perhaps intelligenti pauca, but not a few intelligent authors have been obsessed, like Whitman, with the goal of giving voice to multitudes by becoming polyphonic, nay omniphonic. This macrological urge is not unique to the age of entropy, but it is temperamentally at odds with the spirit of Neoclassicism. Prescribing moderation and equilibrium, one of its champions, Nicolas Boileau, cau-

The Quadrille of Gender: Casanova's Memoirs by Francois Roustang (review)

124Rocky Mountain Review into an area previously served by women replaced the holistic treatment verified by centuries with men using instruments rarely needed. One thinks of Dr. Slop in Tristram Shandy, who, though originally barred from Tristram's delivery in favor of a midwife, manages to remove the skin from Uncle Toby's hands while demonstrating the advantages of forceps. CHARLES G. DAVIS Boise State University FRANCOIS ROUSTANG. The Quadrille of Gender: Casanova's Memoirs. Trans, by Anne C. Vila. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. 163 p. Roustang offers a provocative analysis ofthe major components ofCasanova's life, emphasizing in particular his hesitation about the differences between the sexes and his fascination with superstitious practices. In chronological sequence Roustang develops the thesis that Casanova attempts to avoid guilt and responsibility for his actions by resorting to dissimulation and deceit and by ridiculing society and its laws in order to drain them of all force. Although Casanova gives the impression ofan unorganized text in The Story of My Life [Memoirs] because hé wished to present his work as the result of chance in a similar way to which he felt his life had been guided, Roustang convincingly contends that the writings have "a physiognomy of striking internal coherence" (2) and "obey calculated rules ofcomposition" (1). He raises Casanova from the level ofa lover to that of a writer worthy ofcritical attention. Roustang uses a classical format with a prelude, an introduction, and twelve chapters of approximate equal length whose titles cryptically capture the progressive thrust of the analysis. They are, in order, "Setting up the Love Scene," "The Perfect Alibi," "The Passage into Horror," "The Irresponsible Runaway," "The Disappearance of the Feminine," "A Uniform on a Whim," "By Magic," "Le Plus Honnête Homme au Monde," "The Quadrille," "The Most Powerful ofMen," "The End ofthe First Act," and "Social Order Through Incest." Interestingly, the two longest chapters are "By Magic," in which he fully carries out his role as a charlatan magician, and "The Quadrille," which highlights his obsession with sexual indiscriminacy and whose heading is borrowed by Roustang in the title of his work. It is in this latter chapter that Casanova completely reverses and confuses gender distinction. A foursome, of which he is a member, carries out a sexual relationship in which each plays changing parts. In this way he underscores his need for gender indeterminacy in order to protect himself and maintain his innocence. He is able to create a feeling of irresponsibility by making his actions the result offate and chance. Roustang succinctly captures Casanova's psyche when he concludes that "he has no sense ofthe tragic side ofexistence, never suspects the consequences of his actions, and certainly does not want to assume responsibility for them" (110). Book Reviews125 Roustang's analysis of the multiple liaisons described in the Memoirs is intelligent and precise. He clearly shows, for example, that the fusion of identities where males are disguised as females, females as males, and mothers as children, helps to absolve Casanova of culpability for he can not be held accountable if everything is uncertain and left to chance. Roustang frequently alludes to Casanova's role as a social revolutionary twisting laws and customs to meet his own needs. He highlights the constant leitmotif of the Memoirs which is that Casanova makes people laugh at authority and ridicules it without ever confronting it directly. Not only does Roustang arouse in the reader a growing interest in Casanova as a rebel, but he offers the rich potential ofunexplored depth in a persona whom many have previously dismissed as a mere lover, and nothing more. It is not until the penultimate chapter of the Memoirs, titled, "The End ofthe First Act," that Casanova finally recognizes himself to be nothing more than a con artist and his life metaphorically ends. He will never again be duped but will purposefully dupe others. Roustang observes that his "power over all women is merely a pale reflection of omnipotence" (133). His imagination is gone; the game is over. He abandons self-delusion and faces the influence of fatality over his life. This change is brought about by a certain Miss Charpillon whom he refers...

The Rose-Gardens of the World: Near East Imagery in the Poetry of Walt Whitman

Explores Whitman's relationship to poetry of the Near East, focusing on "two specific areas of Near East studies: the Persian poets, such as Hafiz and Saadi, who were associated with . . . Sufism, and Egyptology"; applies Whitman's knowledge of the Near East (by way of his reading of texts such as Alger's The Poetry of the East, Emerson's "Persian Poetry" and Glidden's Ancient Egypt) to poems including "Salut au Monde!," "Passage to India," and "Song of the Exposition."

Quarante ans avec les Nations Unies

Forty Years with the United Nations What the United Nations brought to the International Community during its forty years of life cannot be assessed only by referring to the working of the institution and the success or fallures it encountered in dealing with specifie questions or crises. The profound and lasting changes in the International Community itself in which it contributed in bringing about must also be taken into consideration. Undoubtedly, the most considerable of these changes, a mutation, in the real sense of the word, was the passage from an international society centered around Europe and North-America in 1945, to a truly world society in 1985, through the process of decolonisation. The United Nations decisively contributed to the spreading of the ideology of decolonisation, to the enactment of an international law of decolonisation and to the use of multilateral against colonial powers. Eventually, admission to the United Nations became the visible sign as well as the final step of the attainment of political independence. Another remarkable new feature of the international society oftoday, closely related to the preceding one, is the importance of groups of states, like the Seventy Seven and the Non Aligned, acting as pressure groups. This new setting was made possible only with the existence of the United Nations, where group diplomacy was able to deploy itself and to make the power of the felt. Eventually, the whole present diplomatie game, which is played at the level of the world rather than on a bilateral or regional basis in an always growing number offields, is a product of development of multilateral within the United Nations. It is specially true of the so-called North-South dialogue or confrontation. The World Organization is now an irreversible fact of international life and a reflection of the present structure of the International Society that it helped to build up. But on the other hand, it is a very novel experiment in a historical perspective. Much is y et to be learned in order to be able to make the best use of the instruments it affords for managing the world community. Le quarantieme anniversaire de I'ONU a fait lever une riche moisson d'etudes consacrees au bilan de l'action de l'Organisation dans les multiples domaines ou s'est deployee son activite, a l'histoire de ses succes, de ses echecs, des changements qu'elle a connus ou subis, ainsi qu'a des reflexions retrospectives ou prospectives sur l'efficacite des mecanismes onusiens, sur les reformes dont ils pourraient etre l'objet et a des considerations, souvent desabusees, sur l'avenir des organisations internationales, ou sur la crise qu'elles traversent. Quel que soit l'interet de ces etudes et reflexions, elles laissent de cote, semble-t-il, un aspect essentiel. On ne peut comprendre l'apport des Nations Unies au monde dans lequel nous vivons en se concentrant seulement sur l'institution et sans prendre un peu plus * Professeur a l'Universite de droit, d'economie et de sciences sociales de Paris II. Revue Etudes internationales, volume XVI, n° 4, decembre 1985

Apollo and Dionysus: Bedfellows of Colette's "Vagabond"

It might well appear incongruous to bring Nietzsche, one who is often viewed as an archenemy of feminism, to a reading of Colette's Vagabonde, a novel often viewed as one of the most powerful feminist works ever written. But a Nietzschean reading of Vagabonde holds a twofold value. As vitally relevant as issues of feminism happen to be in Vagabonde, those issues can also be considered within a frame of reference which extends beyond the question of a woman's identity and freedom, a frame of reference which brings to mind in striking ways Nietzsche's elaboration of a tragic sense of life. Such a frame accentuates the decidedly modern content and tonality of Colette's portrait of the vagabond Ren6e; it places Vagabonde within the tradition of writers such as Camus and Gide whose perceptions of the modern human predicament were sharpened and enriched by Nietzsche's views. In L'Homme revolt', Camus underscores the Nietzschean affirmation of both joy and pain in the face of a world deprived of unity and immortality. Of all the fictional works by Camus that come to mind as bearing some traces of Nietzsche's position, his short story La Femme adultere is one of the more revealing. In Janine's adulterous fusion with a nocturnal sky over a desert landscape and in her recognition that such a kingdom would never again be hers, there is both tragic awareness and an assent to the totality of human experience. This combination of attitudes suggests Camus's affinities with Nietzsche. And, as I believe will be evident when I discuss Vagabonde, this dimension of the portrait of Janine has much in common with Colette's Ren6e. For Camus, Nietzsche's ultimate message is an exhortation to creation, and this is a central concern of Ren6e: Dire oui au monde, le

The Psychoanalytic "Merveilleux": Suspense in Sade's "Florville et Courval"

As they compose their novels writers of the modem world, according to Sade in his Idde sur les romans (1800), must all face up to a particular difficult problem of creating suspense. Because of the enormity of events leading to the French Revolution this genre devenait aussi difficile a faire, que monotone a lire. His point is that in their everyday lives most readers had personally encountered more misfortunes in four or five years than the best story-teller could describe in a century. In order to attract any attention at all, then, the novelist has to depict extraordinary circumstances and events. In passages somewhat heavy with incestuous images Sade describes what the subject-matter must be: fallait donc appeler l'enfer a son secours; s'il ne devient pas l'amant de sa mere [la nature] d6s que celle-ci l'a mis au monde, qu'il n'6crive jamais; s'il entr'ouvre avec fr6missement sein de la nature. .. voila celui que nous lirons. Even then there is still danger, from the point of view of technique, in laying bare this foyer d'un volcan. Such heady material must be treated carefully if interest is to be maintained. By way of illustration, Sade refers to two English gothic novels, The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Anne Radcliffe (1764-1823) and The Monk (1795) by Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775--1818). Their romances abound in violence, turmoil, terror and mystery, yet both authors fail and Sade explains why: ici n6cessairement de deux choses l'une, ou il faut developper sortilkge, et des-lors vous n'interessez plus, ou il ne faut jamais lever rideau, et vous voilat dans la plus affreuse invraisemblance. 1 Although Sade intends to draw his impact from nature rather than from le pays des chimbresevoked by Radcliffe and Lewis, he knows that he must more successfully than they avoid the twin reefs of monotony and lack of verisimilitude. Radcliffe, giving a natural explanation to her mysteries, destroyed the suspense they had generated. Lewis, implying the reality of supernatural forces, lost his credibility in an age of extreme scepticism. The main object of the present paper is to indicate the formula by which Sade solves this dilemma in Florville et Courval, solution which may later prove to have been standard in many of his short-stories and novels.

Some of Walt Whitman's Borrowings

Do YOU ever think, Horace, what infernal plagiarists the big fellows are-big lawyers, big preachers, big writers-even Shakespeare, Longfellow: how much they borrow and never pay back ?1 Thus spoke Walt Whitman, who would probably have agreed with Poe that out of ten authors of established reputation, plunder recondite, neglected, or forgotten books. The purpose of this study is to indicate with a few examples what Whitman borrowed and never paid back. One example of Whitman's borrowing was brought to light by the discovery of an unidentified newspaper cutting about the burial of old Scandinavian heroes, found among the poet's collection of notes and clippings,2 by Richard M. Bucke, who pointed out that Whitman used this note almost verbatim in Salut au Monde!.:

A List of French Similes

WE all have a tendency to express ourselves in comparisons. If we can find a strong simile, we have at hand a brief and "snappy" illustration which fixes the truth upon the mind somewhat as do the parables of Jesus, for after all a parable is but an extended simile. Some persons are capable of creating very suggestive similes, while others, unaided, make a fiasco of every attempt. It isn't everyone who can suggest that a thing is as useless "as a street-sprinkler in Venice" or "as a washing-machine in a nudist colony," to say nothing of something being as uninteresting "as a Florida newspaper in California." Then we have similes that are of ironical and comical effect, e.g."clear as mud," "to swim like a stone," "to fit like a round peg in a square hole," etc. Some of the French variety are suggested by Ch. Bally in his "Trait6 de Stylistique frangaise," and have been incorporated into the list submitted below, under "clear" and "fit." One of the good French jokes which goes the rounds and which appeared in the little student paper, Le Petit Journal, February 1, 1935, and in the Courrier des tats-Unis, June 25, 1933, is that of the patient who consulted the doctor who, upon learning that he "worked like a horse," "ate like a wolf," and was "tired as a dog" each evening, advised him to consult a veterinary. These similes occur in the present list. We hear the expression in English, "knee-high to a grasshopper." A certain advertisement in the Courrier des Ftats-Unis of December 4, 1935, p. 3, brings us face to face with the equivalent expression in French, with the difference that the French comparison does not carry the hyperbole so far as the English. The advertisement concerns dogs and is in the form of a question: "Vous rappelez-vous, lorsque vous 6tiez haut comme trois pommes, comme vous d siriez poss6der un jeune toutou, plus que n'importe quoi au monde?" Not wishing to be too sensational, I have listed this simile under "small" and "tall."