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Critique de Williamine
Je propose une critique très personnelle du roman, à la lumière de la préface de Henry James lui-même.
L'auteur décrit son roman comme « a great oak from a small acorn » (un magnifique chêne né d'un petit gland).
Le roman de Maisy comparé à un magnifique chêne, arbre vénérable et majestueux qui est devenu tel qu'on ne l'aurait pas imaginé au départ, à partir d'un « small acorn» (petit gland).
« What Maisie knew is at least a tree that spreads beyond any provision its small germ might on first handling have appeared likely to make for it. »
Le roman semble s'être développé de sa volonté propre, au-delà de tout ce que l'auteur aurait pu imaginer. Mais le roman a-t-il germé pendant l'écriture ou après qu'il l'ait terminé lorsqu'il se serait rendu compte qu'il avait écrit bien au-delà de ce qu'il avait imaginé ?
Ou encore, la petite Maisie, grandie au pied des adultes qui l'entourent 'oak' deviendra elle aussi un chêne robuste.
« … so that, thanks to the limited desire for its company expressed by the step-parent, the law of its little life, its being entertained in rotation by its father and its mother, wouldn't easily prevail. Whereas each of these persons had at first vindictively desired to keep it from the other, so at present the remarried relative sought now rather to be rid of it – that is to leave it as much as possible, and beyond the appointed times and seasons, on the hands of the adversary ; whice malpractice, resented by the latter as bad faith, would of course be repaid and avenged by an equal treachery. The wretched infant was thus to find itself disowned, rebounding from racquet to racquet like a tennis ball or a shuttlecock. (...)
The second step-parent would have to be correspondingly incommoded by obligations to the offspring of a hated predecessor for the misfortune of the little victim to become altogether exemplary. »
« The law of the little life wouldn't prevail » : ou l'enfant considérée comme sans importance dans l 'aventure de ses parents et beaux parents, comme une « quantité négligeable ».
L'enfant est utilisée comme un projectile, un objet envoyé d'une raquette à l'autre.
« The second step-parent would have but to be correspondingly incommoded by obligations to the offspring of a hated predecessor for the misfortune of the little victim to become altogether exemplary. The business would accordingly be sad enough, yet I am not sure its possibility of interest would so much have appealed to me had I not soon felt that the ugly facts, so stated or conceived, by no means constituted the whole appeal. The light of an imagination touched by them couldn't help therefore projecting a further ray, thanks to which it became quaintly clear that, not less than the chance of misery and of a degraded state, the chance of happiness and of an improved state might be here involved for the child, round about whom the complexity of life would thus turn to fineness, to richness – and indeed would have but so to turn for the small creature to be steeped in security and ease.»
James indique que c'est n'est certainement pas le sordide de la situation qui l'a finalement conduit à écrire un roman à partir de l'histoire qu'on lui avait racontée. Mais, c'est au contraire l'espoir d'un dénouement heureux pour l'enfant pour laquelle la complexité de la vie se transformerait finalement en finesse, en richesse et lui apporterait sérénité et bonheur.
Ainsi James explique que l'histoire, pour triste qu'elle soit, n'aurait pas suffi à l'intéresser comme sujet de roman s'il n'avait pas détecté autre chose, au-delà de la situation si triste et horrible de l'enfant. Il a fallu la perspective d'une issue heureuse pour l'enfant pour le convaincre d'écrire.
« To which I may add that the more I scratched the surface and penetrated, the more potent, to the intellectual nostril, became this virtue. At last, accordingly, the residuum, as I have called it, reached, I was in presence of the red dramatic spark that glowed at the core of my vision and that, as I gently blew upon it, burned higher and clearer. This precious particle was the full ironic truth – the most interesting item to be read into the child's situation. For statisfaction of the mind, in other world, the small expanding consciousness would have to be saved, have to become presentable as a register of impressions ; and saved by the experience of certain advantages, by some enjoyed profit and some achieved confidence, rather than coarsened, blurred, sterilized, by ignorance and pain. This better state, in the young life, would reside in the exercise of a function other than that of disconcerting the selfishness of its parents. »
Le sujet le plus intéressant serait donc la situation de l'enfant dont la petite conscience en éveil devrait être sauvée et deviendrait un réceptacle d'impressions. Elle serait sauvée par l'expérience, tirerait finalement profit de la situation et ne serait pas blessée par l'égoïsme de ses parents.
« The early situation would be exchanged for a later ; instead of simply submitting to the inherited tie and the imposed complication, of suffering from them, our little wonder-working agent would create, without design, quite fresh elements of this order – contribute, that is, to the formation of a fresh tie, from which it would then (and for all the world as if through a small demoniac foresight) proceed to derive great profit. »
La situation initiale se transformerait et notre « merveilleux petit agent laborieux » contribuerait, involontairement, à modifier certains éléments de cette situation et créerait un lien nouveau dont elle devrait tirer un grand profit.
« (…) the child becoming a centre and pretext for a fresh system of misbehavior , a system moreover of a nature to spread and ramify : there would be the 'full' irony, there the promising theme into which the hint I had originally picked up would logically flower. »
« To live with all intensity and perplexity and felicity in its terrible mixed little world would thus be the part of my interesting small mortal ; bringing up people together who would be at least more correctly separate ; keeping people separate who would be at least more correctly together ; flourishing, to a degree, at the cost of many conventions and proprieties, even decencies, really keeping the torch of virtue alive in the air tending infinitely to smother it ; really in short making confusion worse confounded by drawing some stray fragrance of an ideal accros the scent of selfishness, by sowing on barren strands, through the mere fact of presence, the seed of moral life. »
Maisy est le prétexte, le facteur involontaire qui réunit des personnes qui ne devraient pas l'être et sépare des personnes qui devraient être ensemble. Au milieu de l'immoralité du monde des adultes, la fillette brandit le flambeau de la morale. Elle semble être là pour racheter les adultes qui l'entourent. Elle est exemplaire et incarne la vertu.
« … my light vessel of consciouness (…) couldn't be with verisimilitude a rude little boy, since, beyond the fact that litle boys are never so 'present', the sensiblity of the female young is indubitably, for early youth, the greater, and my plan would call, on the part of the protagonist, for 'no end' of sensibility ».
James a délibérément choisi une fille pour incarner l'enfant. Selon lui, un garçon serait moins sensible, moins perméable aux éléments hostiles qui l'entourent. Il décide que Maisy fera montre d'une sensibilité extrême ('no end of sensiblity') et absolue.
Il désigne la fillette comme « son petit vaisseau de conscience », expression que l'on pourrait traduire par « le fragile esquif de sentiments et d'émotions ballotté sur l'océan tumultueux du monde des adultes ».
« … I should have of course to suppose for my heroine dispositions originally promising, but above all I should have to invest her with perceptions easily and almost infinitely quickened. »
Le personnage de Maisy doit être doté d'une sensibilité exacerbée et capable de ressentir des émotions instantanément. Sa sensibilité est à fleur de peau.
« … the project for 'Maisy' rounded itself and loomed large – any subject looming large, for that matter, I am bound to add, from the moment one is ridden by the law of entire expression. »
Le sujet a pris de l'ampleur de lui-même. Il est devenu autonome et l'auteur a suivi une dynamique qu'il avait suscitée, mais désormais ne maîtrisait plus. James est entraîné par son sujet (à la fois le 'sujet' thème du roman, et le 'sujet' personnage du roman.
« The one presented register of the whole complexity would be the play of the child's confused and obscure notation of it, and yet the whole, as I say, should be unmistakably, should be honourably there, seen through the faint intelligence, or at least attested by the imponderable presence, and still advertising its sense. »
C'est à travers la perception de Maisy que la tragédie se déroule et est décrite. D'où le titre « Ce que savait Maisy ». La relation des faits est donc réduite à la perception de la fillette « the child's confused and obscure notation of it ».
« seen through the faint intelligence, or at least attested by the imponderable presence, and still advertising its sense ». La tragédie est vue et vécue au travers de la « fragile » intelligence de Maisy, et parfois par la seule présence de l'enfant.
« I recall that my first view of this neat possibility was as the attaching problem of the picture rectricted (while yet achieving, as I say, completeness and coherency) to what the child might be conceived to have understood – to have been able to interpret and appreciate. (…) The infant mind would at least have great gaps and voids ; so that with a systematic surface possibly beyond reproach we should nevertheless fail of clearness of sense. I should have to stretch the matter to what my wondering witness materially and invistably saw ; a great deal of which quantity she either wouldn't understand at all or would quite misunderstand – and on those lines, only on those, my task would be prettily cut out. To that then I settled – to the question of giving it all, the whole situation surrounding her, but of giving it only through the occasions and connexions of her proximity and her attention. »
James devait se limiter à ce que Maisy comprenait, interprétait. Cela devait immanquablement donner lieu à des manques, des erreurs. L'auteur ne rend compte que de ce Maisy voit, perçoit, ce dont elle est témoin et qu'elle interprète.
Mais, une question se pose : si le personnage principal était un adulte, est-ce que sa vision des choses ne serait pas tout aussi subjective ? On peut même aller jusqu'à se dire que la description des événements ne dépassera jamais le prisme de l'auteur lui-même, présentant autant de subjectivité que le récit de Maisy enfant.
« Small children have many more perception than they have terms to translate them ; their vision is at any moment much richer, their apprehension even constantly stronger, than their prompt, their at all productible, vocabulary. »
L'enfant perçoit beaucoup plus de chose qu'il ne peut exprimer. Il ne dispose pas encore de tous les outils du langage pour les exprimer … mais l'adulte est-il vraiment mieux armé que l'enfant ? Réussit-il toujours à traduire en mot exactement tout ce qu'il éprouve ? Si c'était le cas, les salons d'attente des psychiatres et autres psychanalystes seraient presque vides !
« Maisy's terms accordingly play their part – since her simpler conclusions quite depend on them; but our own commentary constantly attends and amplifies. This is that on occasion, doubtless, seems to represent us as going so 'behind' the facts of her spectacle as to exaggerate the activity of her relation to them. The difference here is but of a shade : it is her relation, her activity of spirit, that determines all our own concern – we simply take advantage of these things better than she herself. Only, even though it is her interest that mainly makes matters interesting for us, we inevitably note this in figures that are not yet at her command and those parts of her experience that she understands darken off into others that she rather tormentedly misses. »
Parfois l'auteur ajoute des commentaires, mais il ne le fait qu'à partir des perceptions de Maisy
« it is her relation, her activity of spirit, that determines all our own concern »
« … beyond this, was another and well-nigh equal charm (… ). This was the quite different question of a particular kind of truth of resistance I might be able to impute to my central figure – some intensity, some continuity of resistance being naturally of the essence of the subject. Successfully to resist what would that be, on the part of so a young person, but to remain fresh, and still fresh, and to have even a freshness to communicate ?- the case being with Maisy to the end that she treats her friends to the rich little spectacle of objects embalmed in her wonder. She wonders, in other words, to the end, to the death – the death of her childwood, properly speaking ; after which (whith the inevitable shift, sooner or later, of her point of view) her situation will change and become another affair, subject to other measurements and with a new centre altogether. »
James s'est interrogé sur la capacité de résistance qu'il devait attribuer à Maisy. L'enfant devrait conserver sa fraîcheur et même parvenir à la diffuser, la communiquer à ses amis considérés comme des objets 'embaumés dans son étonnement'. Elle protège ses amis par sa faculté à s'interroger, à s'étonner, à réagir pour résister à l'adversité à laquelle la soumettent ses parents et beaux-parents.
« Truly, I reflect, if the theme had had no other beauty it would still have had this rare and distinguished one of its so expressing the variety of the child's values. She is not only the extraordinary 'ironic centre' I have already noted ; she has the wonderful importance of shedding a ligth far beyond any reach of her comprehension ; of lending to poorer persons and things, by the mere fact of their being involved with her and by the special scale she creates for them, a precious element of dignity. »
La petite Maisy est dotée d'une sorte de pouvoir extraordinaire. Sa seule présence auprès de personnes et d'objets iradie sur eux une partie de son aura et les revêt d'un élément précieux de dignité.
« They become, as she deals with them, the stuff of poetry and tragedy and art ; she has simply to wonder, as I say, about them, and they begin to have meanings, aspects, solidities, connexions – connexions with the 'universal !' – that they could scarce have hoped for. (...) alone, (…) what intensity, what objectivity would they have ? … Maisy makes them portentous all by the way of the good faith (…) so that we get (…) the thoroughly pictured creature, the striking figured symbol ».
Finalement les autres personnages ne sont que des 'créatures' de Maisy. C'est à travers elle, ses perceptions, ses valeurs, sa vertu – son prisme – qu'ils existent. Sans Maisy, les autres personnages ne mériteraient même pas l'attention du lecteur.
« Yet the thing has but to become a part of the child's bewilderment for these small sterilities to drop from it and for the scene to emerge and prevail – vivid, special, wrought hard, to the hardness fo the unforgettable. »
Les scènes ignobles imposées à Maisy vont susciter un tel étonnement de sa part, qu'elles l'aideront finalement à s'en détacher, même si elles resteront vivantes et inoubliables.
« The human substance here would have seemed in advance well-nigh too poor for conversion, the three 'mature' figures of too short a radiation, too stupid, (...) too vain, for any clear application ; but promptly, immediately, the child's own importance, spreading and contagiously acting, has determined the total value otherwise. »
Les rencontres ridicules entre les quatre adultes, les deux couples recomposés, sont sans intérêt, sans valeur. Mais, par leur vacuité même, elles ont engendré, puis accru, l'importance de l'enfant.
« The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities. »
L'auteur se trouve confronté à la confusion extrême de la situation, ce qui rend sa tâche difficile.
« Thus it might be, for example, I might gather, that the very principle of Maisy's appeal, her understroyed freshness, in other words that vivacity of intelligence by which she indeed does vibrate in the infected air, ideed does flourish in her imoral world, may pass for a barren and sensless thing, or at best a negligible one. For nobody to whom life at large is easily interesting to the finer, the shyer, the more anxious small vibrations, fine and shy and anxious with the passion that precedes knowledege, succed in being negligible : which is doubtless one of many reasons why the passage between the child and the kindly, friendly, ugly gentleman who, seated with her in Kensington Gardens (…) becomes the type-passage.
(…)
The active contribution close-circling wonder, as I have called it, in which the child's indentity is guarded and preserved, and which makes her case remarkable exactly by the weight of the tax on it, provides distinction for her, provides vitality and variety, through the operation of the tax – which would have done comparatively little for us hadn't it been monstrous. A pity for us surely to have been deprived of this just reflexion. 'Maisy' is of 1907. »
En écrivant cette préface, James comprend ce qui lui avait échappé en 1907.
Même par sa timidité, sa finesse, les réactions de Maisy sont fortes, vitales et très intenses (non négligeables). Au milieu d'adultes médiocres, égoïstes et égocentriques, Maisy est majestueuse, elle brille et fait paraître les autres personnages d'autant plus ternes et inintéressants.
Maisy fait preuve d'une extraordinaire capacité d'étonnement dans le huis-clos dans lequel la confinent les quatre adultes. Cette qualité étonnante sauvegarde son identité, lui confère vitalité et rend son cas exemplaire. Tout ceci par la magie de l'écriture, l'auteur s'étant fixé le devoir de sauver l'enfant. Maisy brille littérairement, par la magie de la littérature.
Au-delà de ses indéniables qualités littéraires, ce magnifique roman constitue aussi une sorte de manifeste en faveur de l'enfance oubliée, bafouée par les adultes.
Un roman qui ne sera jamais démodé, à lire et faire lire donc !
L'auteur décrit son roman comme « a great oak from a small acorn » (un magnifique chêne né d'un petit gland).
Le roman de Maisy comparé à un magnifique chêne, arbre vénérable et majestueux qui est devenu tel qu'on ne l'aurait pas imaginé au départ, à partir d'un « small acorn» (petit gland).
« What Maisie knew is at least a tree that spreads beyond any provision its small germ might on first handling have appeared likely to make for it. »
Le roman semble s'être développé de sa volonté propre, au-delà de tout ce que l'auteur aurait pu imaginer. Mais le roman a-t-il germé pendant l'écriture ou après qu'il l'ait terminé lorsqu'il se serait rendu compte qu'il avait écrit bien au-delà de ce qu'il avait imaginé ?
Ou encore, la petite Maisie, grandie au pied des adultes qui l'entourent 'oak' deviendra elle aussi un chêne robuste.
« … so that, thanks to the limited desire for its company expressed by the step-parent, the law of its little life, its being entertained in rotation by its father and its mother, wouldn't easily prevail. Whereas each of these persons had at first vindictively desired to keep it from the other, so at present the remarried relative sought now rather to be rid of it – that is to leave it as much as possible, and beyond the appointed times and seasons, on the hands of the adversary ; whice malpractice, resented by the latter as bad faith, would of course be repaid and avenged by an equal treachery. The wretched infant was thus to find itself disowned, rebounding from racquet to racquet like a tennis ball or a shuttlecock. (...)
The second step-parent would have to be correspondingly incommoded by obligations to the offspring of a hated predecessor for the misfortune of the little victim to become altogether exemplary. »
« The law of the little life wouldn't prevail » : ou l'enfant considérée comme sans importance dans l 'aventure de ses parents et beaux parents, comme une « quantité négligeable ».
L'enfant est utilisée comme un projectile, un objet envoyé d'une raquette à l'autre.
« The second step-parent would have but to be correspondingly incommoded by obligations to the offspring of a hated predecessor for the misfortune of the little victim to become altogether exemplary. The business would accordingly be sad enough, yet I am not sure its possibility of interest would so much have appealed to me had I not soon felt that the ugly facts, so stated or conceived, by no means constituted the whole appeal. The light of an imagination touched by them couldn't help therefore projecting a further ray, thanks to which it became quaintly clear that, not less than the chance of misery and of a degraded state, the chance of happiness and of an improved state might be here involved for the child, round about whom the complexity of life would thus turn to fineness, to richness – and indeed would have but so to turn for the small creature to be steeped in security and ease.»
James indique que c'est n'est certainement pas le sordide de la situation qui l'a finalement conduit à écrire un roman à partir de l'histoire qu'on lui avait racontée. Mais, c'est au contraire l'espoir d'un dénouement heureux pour l'enfant pour laquelle la complexité de la vie se transformerait finalement en finesse, en richesse et lui apporterait sérénité et bonheur.
Ainsi James explique que l'histoire, pour triste qu'elle soit, n'aurait pas suffi à l'intéresser comme sujet de roman s'il n'avait pas détecté autre chose, au-delà de la situation si triste et horrible de l'enfant. Il a fallu la perspective d'une issue heureuse pour l'enfant pour le convaincre d'écrire.
« To which I may add that the more I scratched the surface and penetrated, the more potent, to the intellectual nostril, became this virtue. At last, accordingly, the residuum, as I have called it, reached, I was in presence of the red dramatic spark that glowed at the core of my vision and that, as I gently blew upon it, burned higher and clearer. This precious particle was the full ironic truth – the most interesting item to be read into the child's situation. For statisfaction of the mind, in other world, the small expanding consciousness would have to be saved, have to become presentable as a register of impressions ; and saved by the experience of certain advantages, by some enjoyed profit and some achieved confidence, rather than coarsened, blurred, sterilized, by ignorance and pain. This better state, in the young life, would reside in the exercise of a function other than that of disconcerting the selfishness of its parents. »
Le sujet le plus intéressant serait donc la situation de l'enfant dont la petite conscience en éveil devrait être sauvée et deviendrait un réceptacle d'impressions. Elle serait sauvée par l'expérience, tirerait finalement profit de la situation et ne serait pas blessée par l'égoïsme de ses parents.
« The early situation would be exchanged for a later ; instead of simply submitting to the inherited tie and the imposed complication, of suffering from them, our little wonder-working agent would create, without design, quite fresh elements of this order – contribute, that is, to the formation of a fresh tie, from which it would then (and for all the world as if through a small demoniac foresight) proceed to derive great profit. »
La situation initiale se transformerait et notre « merveilleux petit agent laborieux » contribuerait, involontairement, à modifier certains éléments de cette situation et créerait un lien nouveau dont elle devrait tirer un grand profit.
« (…) the child becoming a centre and pretext for a fresh system of misbehavior , a system moreover of a nature to spread and ramify : there would be the 'full' irony, there the promising theme into which the hint I had originally picked up would logically flower. »
« To live with all intensity and perplexity and felicity in its terrible mixed little world would thus be the part of my interesting small mortal ; bringing up people together who would be at least more correctly separate ; keeping people separate who would be at least more correctly together ; flourishing, to a degree, at the cost of many conventions and proprieties, even decencies, really keeping the torch of virtue alive in the air tending infinitely to smother it ; really in short making confusion worse confounded by drawing some stray fragrance of an ideal accros the scent of selfishness, by sowing on barren strands, through the mere fact of presence, the seed of moral life. »
Maisy est le prétexte, le facteur involontaire qui réunit des personnes qui ne devraient pas l'être et sépare des personnes qui devraient être ensemble. Au milieu de l'immoralité du monde des adultes, la fillette brandit le flambeau de la morale. Elle semble être là pour racheter les adultes qui l'entourent. Elle est exemplaire et incarne la vertu.
« … my light vessel of consciouness (…) couldn't be with verisimilitude a rude little boy, since, beyond the fact that litle boys are never so 'present', the sensiblity of the female young is indubitably, for early youth, the greater, and my plan would call, on the part of the protagonist, for 'no end' of sensibility ».
James a délibérément choisi une fille pour incarner l'enfant. Selon lui, un garçon serait moins sensible, moins perméable aux éléments hostiles qui l'entourent. Il décide que Maisy fera montre d'une sensibilité extrême ('no end of sensiblity') et absolue.
Il désigne la fillette comme « son petit vaisseau de conscience », expression que l'on pourrait traduire par « le fragile esquif de sentiments et d'émotions ballotté sur l'océan tumultueux du monde des adultes ».
« … I should have of course to suppose for my heroine dispositions originally promising, but above all I should have to invest her with perceptions easily and almost infinitely quickened. »
Le personnage de Maisy doit être doté d'une sensibilité exacerbée et capable de ressentir des émotions instantanément. Sa sensibilité est à fleur de peau.
« … the project for 'Maisy' rounded itself and loomed large – any subject looming large, for that matter, I am bound to add, from the moment one is ridden by the law of entire expression. »
Le sujet a pris de l'ampleur de lui-même. Il est devenu autonome et l'auteur a suivi une dynamique qu'il avait suscitée, mais désormais ne maîtrisait plus. James est entraîné par son sujet (à la fois le 'sujet' thème du roman, et le 'sujet' personnage du roman.
« The one presented register of the whole complexity would be the play of the child's confused and obscure notation of it, and yet the whole, as I say, should be unmistakably, should be honourably there, seen through the faint intelligence, or at least attested by the imponderable presence, and still advertising its sense. »
C'est à travers la perception de Maisy que la tragédie se déroule et est décrite. D'où le titre « Ce que savait Maisy ». La relation des faits est donc réduite à la perception de la fillette « the child's confused and obscure notation of it ».
« seen through the faint intelligence, or at least attested by the imponderable presence, and still advertising its sense ». La tragédie est vue et vécue au travers de la « fragile » intelligence de Maisy, et parfois par la seule présence de l'enfant.
« I recall that my first view of this neat possibility was as the attaching problem of the picture rectricted (while yet achieving, as I say, completeness and coherency) to what the child might be conceived to have understood – to have been able to interpret and appreciate. (…) The infant mind would at least have great gaps and voids ; so that with a systematic surface possibly beyond reproach we should nevertheless fail of clearness of sense. I should have to stretch the matter to what my wondering witness materially and invistably saw ; a great deal of which quantity she either wouldn't understand at all or would quite misunderstand – and on those lines, only on those, my task would be prettily cut out. To that then I settled – to the question of giving it all, the whole situation surrounding her, but of giving it only through the occasions and connexions of her proximity and her attention. »
James devait se limiter à ce que Maisy comprenait, interprétait. Cela devait immanquablement donner lieu à des manques, des erreurs. L'auteur ne rend compte que de ce Maisy voit, perçoit, ce dont elle est témoin et qu'elle interprète.
Mais, une question se pose : si le personnage principal était un adulte, est-ce que sa vision des choses ne serait pas tout aussi subjective ? On peut même aller jusqu'à se dire que la description des événements ne dépassera jamais le prisme de l'auteur lui-même, présentant autant de subjectivité que le récit de Maisy enfant.
« Small children have many more perception than they have terms to translate them ; their vision is at any moment much richer, their apprehension even constantly stronger, than their prompt, their at all productible, vocabulary. »
L'enfant perçoit beaucoup plus de chose qu'il ne peut exprimer. Il ne dispose pas encore de tous les outils du langage pour les exprimer … mais l'adulte est-il vraiment mieux armé que l'enfant ? Réussit-il toujours à traduire en mot exactement tout ce qu'il éprouve ? Si c'était le cas, les salons d'attente des psychiatres et autres psychanalystes seraient presque vides !
« Maisy's terms accordingly play their part – since her simpler conclusions quite depend on them; but our own commentary constantly attends and amplifies. This is that on occasion, doubtless, seems to represent us as going so 'behind' the facts of her spectacle as to exaggerate the activity of her relation to them. The difference here is but of a shade : it is her relation, her activity of spirit, that determines all our own concern – we simply take advantage of these things better than she herself. Only, even though it is her interest that mainly makes matters interesting for us, we inevitably note this in figures that are not yet at her command and those parts of her experience that she understands darken off into others that she rather tormentedly misses. »
Parfois l'auteur ajoute des commentaires, mais il ne le fait qu'à partir des perceptions de Maisy
« it is her relation, her activity of spirit, that determines all our own concern »
« … beyond this, was another and well-nigh equal charm (… ). This was the quite different question of a particular kind of truth of resistance I might be able to impute to my central figure – some intensity, some continuity of resistance being naturally of the essence of the subject. Successfully to resist what would that be, on the part of so a young person, but to remain fresh, and still fresh, and to have even a freshness to communicate ?- the case being with Maisy to the end that she treats her friends to the rich little spectacle of objects embalmed in her wonder. She wonders, in other words, to the end, to the death – the death of her childwood, properly speaking ; after which (whith the inevitable shift, sooner or later, of her point of view) her situation will change and become another affair, subject to other measurements and with a new centre altogether. »
James s'est interrogé sur la capacité de résistance qu'il devait attribuer à Maisy. L'enfant devrait conserver sa fraîcheur et même parvenir à la diffuser, la communiquer à ses amis considérés comme des objets 'embaumés dans son étonnement'. Elle protège ses amis par sa faculté à s'interroger, à s'étonner, à réagir pour résister à l'adversité à laquelle la soumettent ses parents et beaux-parents.
« Truly, I reflect, if the theme had had no other beauty it would still have had this rare and distinguished one of its so expressing the variety of the child's values. She is not only the extraordinary 'ironic centre' I have already noted ; she has the wonderful importance of shedding a ligth far beyond any reach of her comprehension ; of lending to poorer persons and things, by the mere fact of their being involved with her and by the special scale she creates for them, a precious element of dignity. »
La petite Maisy est dotée d'une sorte de pouvoir extraordinaire. Sa seule présence auprès de personnes et d'objets iradie sur eux une partie de son aura et les revêt d'un élément précieux de dignité.
« They become, as she deals with them, the stuff of poetry and tragedy and art ; she has simply to wonder, as I say, about them, and they begin to have meanings, aspects, solidities, connexions – connexions with the 'universal !' – that they could scarce have hoped for. (...) alone, (…) what intensity, what objectivity would they have ? … Maisy makes them portentous all by the way of the good faith (…) so that we get (…) the thoroughly pictured creature, the striking figured symbol ».
Finalement les autres personnages ne sont que des 'créatures' de Maisy. C'est à travers elle, ses perceptions, ses valeurs, sa vertu – son prisme – qu'ils existent. Sans Maisy, les autres personnages ne mériteraient même pas l'attention du lecteur.
« Yet the thing has but to become a part of the child's bewilderment for these small sterilities to drop from it and for the scene to emerge and prevail – vivid, special, wrought hard, to the hardness fo the unforgettable. »
Les scènes ignobles imposées à Maisy vont susciter un tel étonnement de sa part, qu'elles l'aideront finalement à s'en détacher, même si elles resteront vivantes et inoubliables.
« The human substance here would have seemed in advance well-nigh too poor for conversion, the three 'mature' figures of too short a radiation, too stupid, (...) too vain, for any clear application ; but promptly, immediately, the child's own importance, spreading and contagiously acting, has determined the total value otherwise. »
Les rencontres ridicules entre les quatre adultes, les deux couples recomposés, sont sans intérêt, sans valeur. Mais, par leur vacuité même, elles ont engendré, puis accru, l'importance de l'enfant.
« The effort really to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities. »
L'auteur se trouve confronté à la confusion extrême de la situation, ce qui rend sa tâche difficile.
« Thus it might be, for example, I might gather, that the very principle of Maisy's appeal, her understroyed freshness, in other words that vivacity of intelligence by which she indeed does vibrate in the infected air, ideed does flourish in her imoral world, may pass for a barren and sensless thing, or at best a negligible one. For nobody to whom life at large is easily interesting to the finer, the shyer, the more anxious small vibrations, fine and shy and anxious with the passion that precedes knowledege, succed in being negligible : which is doubtless one of many reasons why the passage between the child and the kindly, friendly, ugly gentleman who, seated with her in Kensington Gardens (…) becomes the type-passage.
(…)
The active contribution close-circling wonder, as I have called it, in which the child's indentity is guarded and preserved, and which makes her case remarkable exactly by the weight of the tax on it, provides distinction for her, provides vitality and variety, through the operation of the tax – which would have done comparatively little for us hadn't it been monstrous. A pity for us surely to have been deprived of this just reflexion. 'Maisy' is of 1907. »
En écrivant cette préface, James comprend ce qui lui avait échappé en 1907.
Même par sa timidité, sa finesse, les réactions de Maisy sont fortes, vitales et très intenses (non négligeables). Au milieu d'adultes médiocres, égoïstes et égocentriques, Maisy est majestueuse, elle brille et fait paraître les autres personnages d'autant plus ternes et inintéressants.
Maisy fait preuve d'une extraordinaire capacité d'étonnement dans le huis-clos dans lequel la confinent les quatre adultes. Cette qualité étonnante sauvegarde son identité, lui confère vitalité et rend son cas exemplaire. Tout ceci par la magie de l'écriture, l'auteur s'étant fixé le devoir de sauver l'enfant. Maisy brille littérairement, par la magie de la littérature.
Au-delà de ses indéniables qualités littéraires, ce magnifique roman constitue aussi une sorte de manifeste en faveur de l'enfance oubliée, bafouée par les adultes.
Un roman qui ne sera jamais démodé, à lire et faire lire donc !
