Writer 1879: Solitary Journey in France

Chapter 60 Lionel's Matches, Flaubert's Torch
"...The environment not only shapes behavior, but also shapes how we perceive?"

This sentence was like a pebble thrown into a calm lake, its ripples spreading silently through the smoke-filled study.

The idea that the environment influences human behavior, a basic principle in literature and psychology, began to gain popularity in the 19th century and has been put into practice in a large number of literary works.

This is also the main reason for the decline of "Romanticism" - in novels before the 19th century, there were always characters who existed outside or even beyond their environment, especially the protagonists, who often changed their environment and turned the tide with great spiritual power.

It stems from the emphasis on human beings as independent individuals since the Renaissance—affirming human value, potential, and worldly happiness, and advocating human reason, emotion, and creativity.

Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe is a typical example, although it is not a work of Romanticism.

The rise of realism and even naturalism questioned and subverted this creative approach, placing characters within an environment and arguing that human behavior is a product of the environment, but without revealing why this happens.

The naturalist writers in this room could only attribute it to natural heredity and human pathology—which was of course too far-fetched, so naturalism only lasted for less than 30 years before it faded away.

Lionel's newly proposed concept of "environment shaping perception" is novel and seems to touch upon a faint glimmer that everyone has only vaguely noticed but cannot capture.

A brief silence enveloped the room, broken only by the crackling of the firewood in the fireplace and the sounds of traffic flowing by on the street outside the window.

Zola was the first to lift his head from his reverie. He leaned forward like a lion that had caught the scent of new prey, his eyes sharp: "Leon, please continue! This goes beyond simply recording the effects of behavior and environment!"
You're saying the young man's 'numbness' and 'sense of participation' are 'perceptions' shaped by the environment? Does that mean our eyes, the way we see the world, are like our lungs, breathing in the air of the environment and then being modified by it?

Lionel, smelling the acrid fumes from cigarettes, cigars, and pipes filling the room, thought that if he attended a few more salons, his lungs might really be transformed.

So he slightly raised his hand: "I forgot to bring cigarettes, can someone give me one?"

The old smokers in the room laughed. Young Hussman pulled a gleaming silver box from his pocket, opened it to reveal a row of cigarettes, and casually tossed one out: "'Caporar,' made with the finest Indian tobacco."

Lionel picked it up and put it in his mouth, and Huysmann lit it with a match for him.

He took a deep breath, and without the buffer of a filter, a pungent yet fragrant smoke instantly filled his mouth and nasal cavity, causing him to cough several times.

However, no one laughed at him; instead, they looked at him with even more kindness.

Lionel slowly exhaled a puff of smoke before nodding: "Yes, Mr. Zola, our eyes will indeed be modified. What does the 'waitress' witness every day? Workers haggling over a few sous for a drink, bosses racking their brains to dilute the wine with water, and vulgar bargaining and arguments..."

In such an environment, 'sympathy' or 'profound thought' is a luxury, and may even become an obstacle to survival. In order to adapt, or rather, in order to live 'normally' in this environment without being crushed or rejected, his perception must undergo a certain... dulling.

“Passivation?” Flaubert repeated the word, his eyes gleaming beneath his thick eyebrows. He turned to Zola. “Emile, this sounds like your domain. We all understand physiological adaptations, like the calluses that form on a worker’s hands.”

"Will our noble souls also grow calluses?" Flaubert's words were less of a question and more of a guidance, directing his "young" old friend to unleash his talents. (Zola was not yet 40 at this time.)
“Perfectly possible, Mr. Flaubert!” Zola exclaimed excitedly, as if Lionel’s words had opened a new window for him.

"Think about those workers who have spent their whole lives working in the mines. Isn't their 'habit' of darkness and dust a kind of dulling of their senses?"

"Leon, do you mean that the young man's 'indifference' to the old guard's suffering is not an innate coldness, but a 'habit' formed by his mind for self-protection under that particular 'social climate'? A kind of...learned numbness?" At the end, Zola couldn't help but stand up and walk to Leon's side.

“That is indeed the case, Mr. Zola,” Lionel affirmed, admiring Zola’s keen associations and Flaubert’s skillful guidance.

"The tavern was his mine. Long-term immersion in it made him spontaneously shield himself from the perception of 'suffering'—especially the kind of 'untimely,' unchangeable, and potentially troublesome suffering like that of the old guard."

He sees it, but he no longer 'feels' the sharp sting. He might even unconsciously participate in the mockery, because it allows him to briefly integrate into the group and gain a false sense of security.

This 'shaping of perception' is more thorough than any external coercion because it becomes internalized as his instinctive way of seeing the world. Lionel skillfully avoids some of the terms that were yet to be coined and required tedious explanation.

Flaubert said instinctively, “You mean ‘spectators’ and ‘collective unconscious’? — Oh, others may not have seen it, but it’s a term that Léon used at an internal inquiry at the Sorbonne.”

I've already had a copy made; you can take a look.

As he spoke, he walked to his large desk, lifted the red velvet cloth covering it, and handed a stack of manuscripts to Émile Zola.

The others pondered the new terms they had heard that evening: "environment shapes perception," "dulling," "spectator," "collective unconscious"...

Ivan Turgenev, who had been listening silently, spoke slowly in his Slavic, melancholic voice, smoke curling between his fingers: "Ah...this reminds me of a winter in the Russian countryside."

Extreme cold not only freezes the body, but sometimes it freezes the soul. The serf owners were indifferent to the suffering of the serfs, and the neighbors were apathetic to the plight of their neighbors... not because they were inherently evil.

In that kind of 'purgatory,' the soul, in order not to be swallowed by despair, has to wrap itself in a thick layer of ice. Mr. Sorel, the gaze of the young man in your writing is that layer of ice.

It is both protection and a cage.

Alphonse Daudet was deeply moved, his gentle face etched with compassion: "This explains the strange sense of oppression I felt when reading *The Old Guard*. We are not struck directly by the old guard's suffering, but rather by the piercing gaze of the 'blind' young buddy!"

This is more...more suffocating than simply describing suffering itself. Today I know—it forces us to reflect: have we ourselves become 'dull'? Have we become accustomed to certain sufferings that are right before our eyes?

……

Flaubert listened quietly to the discussion, and after a long while, he slowly spoke, his voice deep and powerful: "So, Leon, you made the narrator 'Young Chef' a prisoner of his environment, and used the prisoner's eyes to watch the suffering of another prisoner, 'Old Guard'."

Prisoners looking at each other, suffering becomes like scratches on the cell walls, ordinary, even...tinged with a sense of amusement. This is the deepest tragedy, the coldest truth! This is a 'confined perspective,' one I've never seen or imagined before!

His words astonished everyone present.

If Lionel's "perception of environmental shaping" was like striking a match in the dark, Flaubert used that match to light a torch.

(End of this chapter)