http://jes.sagepub.

com
Journal of European Studies
DOI: 10.1177/004724418801800418
1988; 18; 300 Journal of European Studies
Malcolm Cook
Newcastle upon Tyne: Avero Publications, I986. 4I6 pp. 30
of a Revolutionary Royalist Espionage Agent. By Colin Duckworth.
Reviews : The D'Antraigues Phenomenon: The Making and Breaking
http://jes.sagepub.com
The online version of this article can be found at:
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at: Journal of European Studies Additional services and information for
http://jes.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:
http://jes.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Reprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Permissions:
1988 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
by Grald Arboit on November 20, 2007 http://jes.sagepub.com Downloaded from
300
clearly
from an
early
date the
political struggles going
on under the
surface of
many
so-called
literary squabbles.
CHRISTOPHER TODD
The
DAntraigues
Phenomenon: The
Making
and
Breaking of
a Revolution-
ary Royalist Espionage Agent. By
Colin Duckworth. Newcastle
upon
Tyne:
Avero
Publications, I986. 4I6 pp. £30.
This book is written with evident enthusiasm. After Professor
Duckworths
long study
of his
phenomenon
there can be little left to
add. And
yet, perhaps
because of the nature of
DAntraigues,
and
perhaps
too because Duckworth
appears, occasionally,
to lose
sight
of his
aims,
the book
may
well
please
neither the historian nor the
literary
critic.
DAntraigues certainly
lived a colourful life and the
author
spares
us few details in his lurid account. But
DAntraigues
had an
extraordinary ability
to confuse fact and fiction. He is a most
unreliable witness. He claimed to be
friendly
with Rousseau but
Rousseau never mentions him. He claimed in his somewhat fictional
memoirs an intimate
relationship
with a Mrs Howard of
Corby
and
Duckworth
proves beyond
reasonable doubt that
DAntraigues
did
in fact meet her. But so what? Had we been
dealing
with a
major
writer of sentimental fiction that fact
may
have had a certain
interest. But in
DAntraiguess (and
not
&dquo;DAntraigues&dquo;)
sordid life
the fact is
barely
worth a mention and it must be
questioned
whether
it
justified
the immense amount of time Duckworth must have
spent
on it.
This book
is,
without
doubt,
the result of a
long period
of research
and extensive
study
of archival sources. Duckworth has left no stones
unturned in the relentless search for details. The
picture
we are
given
of DAntraigues
is a
fascinating
one: it
provides
a taste of the
reality
of life in
Revolutionary Europe
and a number of
insights
into the
history
of the
imigris.
Some,
no
doubt,
will consider that we see too
much of the
subjects personal
and not
enough
of his
public
life. It is
a view which I can understand but do not share. I confess that I
enjoyed reading
his
history
of
DAntraigues:
but then I
prefer
reading
fiction to
history.
Duckworth
occasionally gets
a little carried
away.
He tells us on
page 78:
&dquo;He therefore returned to
Paris,
where he saw Rousseau
regularly,
and showed him his own
writings,
which the
great
man
read and corrected
(so
he
claims).&dquo;
I
thought
it had been established
by
this time that
DAntraigues
did not
actually
meet
Rousseau,
even
1988 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
by Grald Arboit on November 20, 2007 http://jes.sagepub.com Downloaded from
30I
though
he
may
have
thought
he did. We are told twice in the same
paragraph
on
page 33
that
Andromaque
&dquo;was not
played
at all in
~ 76g&dquo;.
Most readers will discover
something
new about the
period by
reading
this book.
Unfortunately,
and this is
my major
criticism
of it,
this
study
does not
distinguish
the
significant
from the trivial.
Everything
but
everything
is
presented
before us.
Frankly,
was
DAntraiguess
contribution to
history
and literature
sufficiently
great
to warrant so much of our
(and Duckworths)
time?
MALCOLM COOK
Proust et la chose envolée.
By Margaret
Mein. Paris:
Nizet,
I986.
The theme of this detailed and
extremely
well-documented
study
of
Proust is the interest which A la recherche du
temps perdu
reveals for the
fleeting
and the evanescent. The
people
who fascinate the Narrator
are,
as he makes
very
clear,
&dquo;des etres de
fuite&dquo;,
and this interest
extends to real or
imaginary physical things
such as
tears, snow,
the
wings
of
angels
and of
aeroplanes,
the
flight of zeppelins
and of
birds,
the movements of
dancers,
the frail
beauty
of
young girls
and of
springtime
blossom on fruit trees. The
argument
is illustrated
by apt
and
plentiful quotations
from
Blake,
Francis Thomson and Words-
worth,
so that the book becomes as much an exercise in
comparative
literature as a close
reading
of Proust himself.
Margaret
Meins
conclusion,
illustrated in a
quotation
from The
Excursion,
is that
Proust is concerned with the
quest
for a
fleeting
moment of balance
which reveals the essence of the universe but can be obtained
only by
perpetual
movement. It is
undoubtedly
true,
but the reader who
comes to A la recherche du
temps
as a novel is bound to
wonder,
just
occasionally,
whether such an intense concentration on the
poetic
side of Prousts work is not a
very slight
distortion of his total
achievement.
PHILIP THODY
Czeslaw Milosz
and the
Insufficiency of Lyric. By
Donald Davie. Cam-
bridge : Cambridge University
Press, I986.
xiii +
76 pp. £I7.50.
Professor Davies new book
grew
out of a series of lectures delivered
at the
University
of Tennessee in
i g84.
Its theme is the
lyrical poetry
of the Nobel
Prize-winning
Polish
emigre poet
Czeslaw
Milosz,
but
Davie uses him as a
pretext
to address himself to wider issues. In the
1988 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
by Grald Arboit on November 20, 2007 http://jes.sagepub.com Downloaded from