PASTICHE AND PREJUDICE
PASTICHE
AND
PREJUDICE
BY
A. B. WALKLEY
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF MCMXXI
Reprinted, by the courtesy of the Proprietors,
from The Times.
Printed in Great Britain.
Writing of Lamennais, Renan says: “Il créaavec des réminiscences de la Bible et du langageecclésiastique cette manière harmonieuse et grandiosequi réalise le phénomène unique dans l’histoirelittéraire d’un pastiche de génie.” Renan wasnothing if not fastidious, and “unique” is a hardword, for which I should like to substitute themilder “rare.” Pastiches “of genius” are rarebecause genius is rare in any kind, and more thanever rare in that kind wherein the writer deliberatelyforgoes his own natural, instinctive form of expressionfor an alien form. But even fairly plausible pastichesare rare, for the simple reason that though, with tasteand application, and above all an anxious care forstyle, you may succeed in mimicking the literaryform of another author or another age, it is impossiblefor you to reproduce their spirit—since no two humanbeings in this world are identical. Perhaps theeasiest of all kinds is the theatrical “imitation,”because all that is to be imitated is voice, tone,gesture—an actor’s words not being his own—yet Ihave never seen one that got beyond parody. Thesense of an audience is not fine enough to appreciateexact imitation; it demands exaggeration, caricature.
Parody, indeed, is the pitfall of all pastiche.Even Mr. Max Beerbohm, extraordinarily susceptibleand responsive to style as he is, did notescape it in that delightful little book of his wherein,some years ago, he imitated many of our contemporaryauthors. I can think of but a single instancewhich faithfully reproduces not only the languagebut almost the spirit of the authors imitated—M.Marcel Proust’s volume of “Pastiches et Mélanges.”The only stricture one can pass on it, ifstricture it be, is that M. Proust’s Balzac andSt. Simon and the rest are a little “more Royalistthan the King,” a little more like Balzac and St.Simon than the originals themselves; I mean, alittle too intensely, too concentratedly, Balzac andSt. Simon. But Marcel Proust is one of my prejudices.To say that his first two books, “Swann”and “Les Jeunes Filles,” have given me moreexquisite pleasure than anything in modern Frenchliterature would not be enough—I should have tosay, in all modern literature. Mrs. Wharton, I seefrom the “Letters,” sent Henry James a copy of“Swann” when it first came out (1918): I wish wecould have had his views of it. It offers anotherkind of psychology from Henry James’s, and hewould probably have said, as he was fond of saying,that it had more “saturation” than “form.” ButI am wandering from my subject of pastiche.
I was present one afternoon at a curious experimentin theatrical pastiche. This was a rehearsal[3]of a rehearsal of the screen scene from The School forScandal, which was supposed to be directed bySheridan himself. Rath