![]() ![]() ![]() By substituting “immaterial…things…which the spirit can assimilate to itself” for the “opaque sections” of “real” human existence, the trick of sympathy is enacted we now can substantiate and corroborate the veils which the novelist has created for us, and feel corresponding emotion for the illusory “feelings,” in the “guise of truth,” of literary creations (83). How a novel works, Proust’s narrator suggests, is by a trick of illusion, a sleight of hand, towards the end of eliciting sympathy. ![]() If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. “A ‘real’ person,” he begins, profoundly as we may sympathize with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift. When we encounter the narrator addressing the problems faced by the artist, he notes that “the ingenuity of the first novelist” lay in the realization that a simplification of characters that corresponds to the “suppression” of “‘real’ people” inevitably makes novels stronger, more effective in conjuring a sympathetic response from a sensitive reader. ![]()
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