The Visva-Bharati Quarterly August—October 1948

The effort to study man to explore the secrets of his mind and his desires to define his position with respect to life and death to the cosmos and to truth is the motivation and the activity of the French literary mind. [...] Many answers have been given to these questions in the various periods of French history but all the questions might be summarized by the one question : what is man ? And this question provides the stimulation and subject matter of French writing whether it be the ballades of the gangster-poet Villon in the i5th century or the involved psychological novel of Proust in the zoth century. [...] And then on the other hand a spirit ofsliquietude and even of anguish manifesting itself in the lineage of"THE F RENCH LITERARY MIND 93 Pascal where the study of man is carried on in an austere trembling and fearfulness where the complexities of the heart overbalance the logical reasonableness of the mind. [...] This is the key to French writing in every century : in the poetry of Villon in the story of Rabelais' giants in the thoughts of Pascal in the novels of Andre Malraux. [...] It is a theme which more than other literary themes defines and limits the work of the artist and emphasizes the primacy of the spirit in the activity of the artist.