The Gates of Horn: A Study of Five French Realists

by Harry Levin

"The author explores this tradition in depth and defines it with a breadth of vision, a dynamic vigor and freedom rarely paralleled today....His method, flexible, generous, humane in the best sense of the word, eschews pedantry, dogma, useless theorizing and scholastic argumentation."--The New
York Times Book Review. "I wish to make it clear that The Gates of Horn represents an outstanding critical accomplishment."--Saturday Review. In the Odyssey, Homer describes two gates of the one of ivory through which fictitious dreams pass, and the other of horn, through which
nothing but the truth may pass. Realism is the type of literature that passes through the horn, and in this significant study of the genre Levin examines a major form of Realism--the French novel--and focuses on five of its masters--Stendahl, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, And Proust. Now available in
paperback, Levin's study is a veritable reconstruction of the artistic and intellectual life of a nation.

Genres: Literary Criticism

576 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1963

About the author

professor of comparative literature

Reviews

[Jeffrey Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this magistral book over a period of several months, while I was reading Balzac, and then later on. Originally published in 1963, it is the fruit of research dating back to the late 1930s, according to the acknowledgments. To my mind, it is literary criticism at its very best. It addresses a theoretical issue: what is the connection between realistic fiction and the real world? But Levin's approach is historical as well as philosophical. There is no jargon. He seems to have read everything written in nineteenth century France, all the long and demanding works of the writers he discusses (Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, and Proust) plus everyone else who was writing at the time, as well as British and American novelists. The chapter on Proust is particularly fine.
He was the chairman of Harvard's Comparative Literature program when I was a student there and one of the readers of my dissertation (about the French Renaissance, not nineteenth century novels). I was not as much in awe of him then as should have been. Now I appreciate his fine writing, deep thinking, extraordinary erudition, and intellectual boldness. He was a pioneer in introducing modern literature in university studies.
As I read his book, long after it was written, long after I left Harvard, and years after his death, I wanted to communicate with him, to tell him I regard it as a great privilege to have known him.